Four years ago today, the first Farsi blog appeared. Today, with the help of Hossein Derakhshan (aka "Hoder") and others, there are believed to be 75,000 Farsi blogs in Iran. Today on Global Voices, Iranian blogger Farid Pouya marks the occasion with a post about Iran's "blogistory".
There are of course a number of Iranians blogging in English, whose blogs you can find over at the Global Voices bridge blog index page for Iran. They include "Mr. Behi," who I interviewed for Global Voices not long ago. He is one of the many progressive young Iranians blogging in English, who want the outside world to know that many young Iranians are not particularly fond of their current leaders or the way their country is being run, and wish they could engage more directly with the Western world while maintaining their identity as Iranians at the same time.
As my colleagues note in their Report on Internet Filtering in Iran, the Iranian government censors and blocks a lot of blogs. Farid also notes that blogging can be dangerous if you're too critical of the government . Blogger Mojtaba Saminejad is now serving a 2-year prison sentence (you can sign a petition for his release here.) Blogger Omid Sheikhan is facing trial in October.
Farsi blogs do span the gamut of religious and political views. Farid points out that there are even Hezbollah blogs, like this one. And as I reported last year, Hossein received a death threat from an extremist blog called "Islamic Army."