Mashallah Shamsolvaezin

Mashallah Shamsolvaezin
Mashallah Shamsolvaezin (ماشاءالله شمس‌الواعظین), editor in chief of the now-banned Iranian newspapers Jame'eh, Neshat, Asr-e Azadegan, etc. Photo taken in Kish Island, Iran
Nationality	Iranian
Occupation	journalist
Awards	CPJ International Press Freedom Award (2000)

Mashallah Shamsolvaezin is an Iranian newspaper and magazine publisher who edited many of post-revolutionary Iran's first and most widely circulated independent newspapers, including Kayhan, Jame'eh, Neshat, and Asr-e Azadegan. He currently serves as the spokesman for the Iranian Committee for the Defense of Freedom of the Press, and also as vice president of the Association of Iranian Journalists. A recipient of the 2000 CPJ International Press Freedom Award, Shamsolvaezin has been imprisoned multiple times for his journalistic activities. On June 29, 2014, he was charged with "propaganda against the state" and banned from leaving Iran. As of July 2014, he is on bail.

Shamsolvaezin served as the founding editor-in-chief of the magazine Cultural Kayhan. It served as a platform for spirited debate among intellectuals, and published work by the leading Iranian thinker Abdulkarim Soroush. On the importance of Kayhan, Forough Jahanbakhsh wrote: "The journal Kiyan [sic]... can be credited for its seminal role in fostering the growth of the religious intellectual discourse of post-revolutionary Iran."

In 1984, the magazine Kayhan-i Farghani (Cultural) was founded by Sayyid Mostafa Rokhsefat, Sayyid Kamal Hajj, Sayyid Javadi and Hasan Montazer Qa'im. Kayhan-i Farghani was the first monthly magazine of thought and literature to be published after the Islamic revolution. It addressed a broad range of provocative issues, including social justice, the relationship between religion and science, and the relationship between Islam and the West. The magazine published a groundbreaking series of articles by Abdulkarim Soroush, "The Theoretical Contraction and Expansion of Religion," which laid the foundation for Soroush's influential philosophy of religious modernism. Following controversy over Soroush's articles, the magazine's editorial board was forced to resign, and Kayhan-i Farhangi was closed in 1990.