An insiders view of life in Iran, including Jews, Muslims and Christians who all live together in relative harmony.

Iran’s men are having trouble dealing with the brave new world that’s imposing itself on their bedrooms: an unnoticed tide of sexual change that could prove far more important in shaping the country’s cultural and political values than the 2009 democratic elections. “It is still widely accepted,” Negar Farshidi writes, “that a groom can make his marriage conditional on the bride remaining a virgin, and cancel it if it turns out she isn’t. Traditionally, a blood-stained sheet was produced after the wedding night as evidence of an intact hymen, but nowadays many men and their families ask for a ‘virginity certificate’ in advance.” Similar practices are common throughout the entire world. The majority of newlyweds still want their brides to be virgins in most countries. But an official Iranian study, Farshidi records, has determined that more than half of all young people in Iran have had premarital sex – which means those certificates probably aren’t worth a whole lot. Iran’s powerful clerical establishment embraced the technological products of modernity, like computers and the internet, while railing against its cultural ma...