Political Islam and the Secularist Liberationist Women’s Movement in Iran

The situation of Iranian women presents a remarkable and even contradictory picture to the external observer. On the one hand, we see a complete system of gender apartheid, including fiercely misogynistic laws imposed on them by the Islamic Republic in segregation in all aspects of civil and public life, in legalized polygyny, in divorce and women’s lack of rights in child custody, in the Islamic penal code regarding women (including stoning to death for sex outside marriage), and in the mandatory veil. On the other hand, we see women actively participate in many aspects of social, economic, and cultural life.

How should we interpret this picture? How can religious oppression be compatible with the presence of women everywhere? Should we say, as many academics and western mainstream media do, that this is due to Islamic and indigenous cultural values which, according to them, have promoted and protected women’s rights?

Some argue that perceptions of religious oppression of women originate from the colonial and racist attitudes of Western countries and from Eurocentrism. They say that the veil (Hijab) empowers and liberates women. They tell us that women are actively engaged in public and social life because Islam and the indigenous culture are compatible with women’s needs and expectations, contrary to the relatively modern values of the pre- revolutionary period. These cultural relativists tell us that women’s rights and freedoms in Iran should not be defined according to universal concepts.

Others tell us that the so-called Islamic feminists who seek a different interpretation of Koranic verses are the initiators and agents of this advancement, and have the duty to lead Iranian women’s struggle for liberation. All these interpretations are based on the notion that women’s rights are not universal, and that a secular government is not the precondition for women’s liberation in Iran.

This portrayal of Iranian women under the Islamic Republic gained a higher profile when Khatami became president. His smiling face, his ability to speak English and some modifications in his religious dressing were interpreted as signs of the dawn of freedom and women’s rights in Iran. It seems that if Khatami did not exist, western powers and their media, eager to reopen political and trade relations with Iran, would have invented him.

What, then, is the reality? At the threshold of the 1979 Iranian revolution, women’s massive participation in the public sphere was an undeniable reality. Iran’s transition into a capitalist society, and the modernization reforms initiated by Mohammad Reza Shah in the 1960s accelerated women’s participation in education and the labour force. Two decades later, women were massively engaged in many aspects of economic and social life as workers, teachers, actresses, doctors, and clerks. Nevertheless discrimination against women remained. Women had many hopes and expectations of the 1979 revolution. But the Iranian revolution was defeated and repressed by the Islamic movement.

The past 24 years have been some of the darkest in the memory of Iranian women. The Islamic regime, the first established government of political Islam, has brought nothing but repression, torture, and death. Women were amongst the very first targets attacked by the Islamic Republic. With Khomeini’s pronouncements on the veil, immense outbursts of anger were expressed by women on the streets on International Women’s Day in 1979. This anger was not simply because of their rejection of the veil. They saw in the imposition of the veil a much greater implied threat. And it proved to be so.

Political Islam is a major force that has imposed serious setbacks on women’s lives in the region. It is a political movement that came to the fore against the secular and progressive movements for liberation and egalitarianism. In Iran, the Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Islamic regimes proceeded to transform women’s homes into prison houses. The confinement of women, their exclusion from many fields of work and education, and their brutal treatment became the law of the land. In addition, the misogynist rhetoric they have let loose in the social sphere implicitly sanctions male violence towards women.

As the first victims of political Islam, women also became the pioneer force fighting against political Islam in Iran. In fact, the post-revolutionary period in Iran has seen an extraordinary gender awareness among Iranian women. Women’s resistance against Islamic laws has been a daily fact of life. The penalty for breaking the rules of segregation and Hijab has been insult, cash fines, expulsion and deprivation from education, arrest, imprisonment, beating, and flogging. Tens of thousands of women, the great majority born after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, have defied the rules and have been attacked by Islamic moral squads with fists, knives, cutters, and acid.

Women in Iran have struggled to open spaces and make opportunities for themselves. They have organized associations for the defence of women and children’s rights. They campaign against Islamic and traditional images of women dictated and portrayed by the Islamic cultural authorities in films, theatres, newspapers and magazines. They are actively involved in clandestine political struggle. Inch by inch, they have succeeded in pushing back the offensive of the Islamic regime, re- appropriating spheres of public life that were lost immediately after the revolution. Their success in forcing the government to remove, at least on paper, the ban on certain fields of higher education is a case in point. Women have succeeded in placing their plight at the centre of politics in Iran.

In contrast to these efforts, the trend of Islamic or Muslim feminism so highly publicized in the West has been of little significance within Iran. With their efforts

to improve the situation of women by limited reform and reinterpretation of Koranic verses, they are the political allies of the so-called reformist faction of the Islamic government, a faction whose agenda for shaping a tolerable Islamic regime has been badly defeated in recent years.

The fact is that Iranian society has changed dramatically and deeply since 1979. The movement for secularism and atheism, for modern ideas and culture, for individual freedom, for women’s liberation and civil liberties has been widespread and deep. Women and the youth are the champions of this battle – a battle that threatens the basic pillars of the Islamic system. The most hopeful signs and the most remarkable stimulus for change continue to come directly from Iranian women both in Iran and in exile. Any change in Iran will not only affect the lives of people living in Iran, but will have a significant impact on the region and worldwide.

Women’s rights are universal and women’s liberation can only be achieved under an egalitarian, progressive and secularist form of government. These are the basic prerequisites of women’s liberation in the Middle Eastern countries. Secularism has been and continues to be a prerequisite for women’s liberation.

Our objectives must be the complete separation of religion from state; the elimination of religion from law and from education; and the declaration of religion as a private affair for individuals.

Secularism is not only realizable, but also, after the experiences of Iran, Afghanistan, the Sudan, and Algeria, an urgent and pressing need and demand of the people of the region.

Azam Kamgouian is an Iranian writer and activist in exile.