“Some historians celebrate Tahereh as an icon of the women’s movement in Iran. Others, perhaps emboldened by self-righteousness or feeling threatened by Tahereh’s prodigious abilities as a thinker and speaker, have besmirched her honor, questioned her character and even accused her of plagiarizing her poems. Contrasting images of Tahereh have lingered: a saintly heroine, a dangerous heretic. She lived at a time when Iran, the heartland of Shia Islam, was facing the complex concept of modernity. The urgent question of the time was to decide who speaks for religion; and, no less, what religion has to say.”