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Iran
Awakening?
By
Farhang
Jahanpour, TFF
Associate*
June 28, 2006
The issue of women's right is a
matter of universal concern, given that they constitute
about half of the entire population of the world. The
status of women in most Islamic countries, which adhere
to old-fashioned patriarchal principles, is under
international scrutiny. Most Muslim governments that wish
to cover up for their own male-dominated views of women
hide behind Islam, alleging that they wish to bring about
sexual equality but they are forbidden from doing so on
the basis of Islamic teachings. This is a deeply flawed
argument, because Islam like any other religion has many
interpretations. The best proof of this is that some
Islamic countries have been able to bring about sexual
equality without compromising their Islamic principles.
Some Muslim countries, such as Indonesia, Bangladesh,
Pakistan and Turkey have already had female presidents or
prime ministers.
In fact, it could be argued that
Islam has done more for enhancing the status of women
than any other traditional religion. Many Muslim
commentators have argued that instead of sticking to the
literal interpretation of some Koranic verses, one has to
look at the spirit of the teachings that have been
progressive given the circumstances of the time when they
were revealed. At a time when polygamy was widespread in
all societies Islam limited the number of wives to four,
and even that on the basis of absolute equality. It
encouraged the economic independence of women by
providing them with a share of inheritance, allowing them
to own property, and alimony in case of divorce. As the
world has moved on and the relationship between the sexes
has changed, reformist Muslim thinkers argue that Islam
must be in the forefront of change in the status of
women.
The present inequality of men and
women in most Islamic countries is particularly
incongruous, given the present level of the education and
sophistication of women in those countries. They reveal a
sharp contradiction between dogma and reality. The
present social situation in Iran is also replete with
these contradictions.
This month a film and a book have
brilliantly exposed some of these paradoxes.
Offside, a film by the multiple award-winning
Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi that was released to
coincide with Iran's participation in the World Cup,
reveals some of the absurdities of the clerical rule in
the present Iranian society. Jafar Panahi who has
achieved international fame for his earlier film
successes, such as the White Balloon, the
Crimson Gold and The Circle, won the Silver
Bear Prize (shared with 'En Soap' by Pernille
Fischer Christensen) at this year's Berlin Film Festival.
Yet, despite the international
acclaim, the film has not been cleared for release in
Iran. Indeed, he faced a great deal of difficulty in
producing the film. He only managed to make the film by
withholding his name as its producer, editor and
director, as well as claiming that the film was only
about football. Very late in shooting, when the
authorities discovered the real identity of the producer,
they tried to stop it but the film was nearly complete
and the last scene was shot quietly outside Tehran.
The film depicts an incident during
the 2005 World Cup qualification match between Iran and
Bahrain at the large Azadi Stadium in Tehran, built under
the shah. A girl disguised as a boy tries to gain entry
into the stadium where the match is due to kick off. But
women are not allowed into stadiums, allegedly because
the rowdy behaviour of the spectators is not suitable for
girls and women. The girl is discovered and is held along
with some street-smart female fans. Eight years ago when
Iran beat Australia and qualified for World Cup, the
Iranian players returned in triumph and a rally was held
for them in Azadi Stadium. On that occasion, over 5000
women turned up and the authorities had no choice but to
allow them in. On another occasion, when the spectators
were leaving the stadium there was a stampede at the
gates and nine people were killed. Newspapers published
the names and pictures of only eight of them, because
allegedly the ninth one was a girl who had sneaked to the
stadium unnoticed.
Offside is a hilarious
tragi-comedy and reveals the absurdity of the situation
in which Iranian women find themselves and the daily
humiliations that they have to suffer. The female fans
are kept under guard outside the stadium, while one of
the guards who can see the match through a fence acts as
a commentator for them. Another naïve guard who
comes from a rural area wants to help the girls, but is
torn between his loyalty to the regime and Islam and his
desire to be rational and humane. The girls get the
better of the guards, and as they are transported to the
headquarters of the vice squad after the match they all
get out of the bus and join the vast crowds singing a
popular patriotic song and are swept away with the guards
in a feeling of euphoria.
Panahi insists that he is not
interested in politics, but is a social film-maker who
simply wishes to expose some of the ills and
contradictions in contemporary Iranian
society.
Shirin Ebadi, the only Iranian and
the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize
in 2003, has just published her memoirs, called Iran
Awakening (1). Just like Offside that has been
refused permission to be screened in Iran, Shirin Ebadi's
book that has been translated into 16 languages and is
already among the top ten best sellers in Germany and
Canada has not been allowed publication in Iran.
Ebadi's memoirs demonstrate better
than weighty academic tomes the state of decadence and
decay under a fundamentalist Islamic regime. She too
insists that she is not interested in politics, is not
the leader of an opposition group, but simply a human
rights lawyer who is interested in the plight of the
oppressed, especially women and children.
Ebadi reveals that she was
initially a supporter of the Islamic Revolution as she
was attracted to its slogans of 'freedom' and
'independence'. However, within the first month after the
victory of the revolution when women were forced to wear
Islamic hijab, she discovered that the talk of freedom
had been an empty slogan. Women played an important role
in the revolution, yet no sooner did it succeed than they
were relegated to the status of second-class citizens.
They organised the first massive anti-regime
demonstration in Iran to protest against the wearing of
the veil, but to no avail.
This ardent supporter of the
revolution was put under solitary confinement by the
revolutionary courts for defending the students who had
been attacked in their dormitories by a bunch of paid
thugs in 1999. At least one student was killed and dozens
were badly wounded. In her book she even recounts the
chilly moment when while looking through official papers
for a court case against those responsible for 'the
serial murders' of a number of intellectuals and
political activists, she came upon the transcript of a
conversation between a government minister and a member
of a death squad: "The next person to be killed is Shirin
Ebadi." Fortunately, the case became public and the
culprits were caught before they could carry out their
murderous intent against her.
Iranian women had won the right to
vote and to serve as members of parliament or Majlis in
1962, ahead of women in Switzerland. Since 1962 Iranian
women had served as cabinet ministers, judges, lawyers,
university presidents and directors of big companies.
Since the revolution, as the universities were
'Islamised', traditional fathers who refused to send
their daughters to universities could no longer claim
that education corrupts. So girls rushed to universities
in ever-larger numbers. At the moment, girls constitute
more than 60 percent of some three million students in
Iranian universities. Allegedly, there are more female
doctors and dentists in Iran than male. Women form more
than 35 percent of Iranian workforce, a higher figure
than in any other Muslim country in the Middle East.
Iran has the strongest feminist
movement of any Islamic country. So, paradoxically,
despite - or may be because of - the restrictions imposed
on women, they have proved that they are equal or even
superior to men. Iran has the unique distinction of being
a country where women are better educated than men. Even
after the revolution there have been more than a dozen
women MPs in the Iranian parliament and even the present
fundamentalist president has a female vice-president. In
Ebadi's words, women have been forced "to confront a
visceral consciousness of their oppression."
Yet despite all these advances,
women have to face arbitrary medieval laws that are
completely out of keeping with their level of education
and social status. According to the laws of the Islamic
Republic, the life of a woman is worth half that of a
man. If a man and a woman are involved in a traffic
accident, the man receives twice the amount of damages
than the woman. The testimony of two women is equal to
the testimony of one man. Men can divorce their wives at
will, while it is very difficult and sometimes impossible
for women to divorce their husbands. Men can legally have
up to four wives. A woman cannot leave the country
without the written permission of her husband,
etc.
Ebadi writes of a bizarre incident
when a few years ago she took her two daughters on a
skiing holiday. At a checkpoint, a guard ordered Ebadi
who was then 45, and her two teenage daughters out of the
bus enquiring where they were going on their own
unaccompanied by a male relative. After learning that
they wished to stay a few days at the ski resort, the
guard tells this former judge and human rights lawyer:
"You need your parents' permission to sleep out
overnight." After her pleadings prove pointless, she
gives her mother's number to the guard to phone and ask
permission if they could stay away on their own. She
jokes that after that incident the mother asked her to be
good, otherwise she would refuse her permission next
time!
The film and the book show not only
the absurd nature of those laws, but the way that they
bring Islam into disrepute. All those restrictions are
due to the vengeful attitudes of a male-dominated society
and have nothing to do with Islam. Ebadi insists: "I am
against patriarchy, not Islam".
The best proof of their
arbitrariness is that, despite the fact that some
fundamentalist mullahs claim that they are Islamic laws
and cannot be changed, under intense pressure they do
change them. For instance, up to a few years ago, mothers
were given custody of their sons up to the age of two and
daughters up to the age of seven, and then the children
were forcefully removed from the mother and given to the
father. As the result of a campaign led by Shirin Ebadi
the custody law was changed. She acted as the lawyer of
the mother of a seven-year old girl who had been forcibly
returned to her father and had died under abuse. That
case produced such a backlash that the reformist sixth
Majlis changed the law. Now mothers have custody of their
sons and daughters up to the age of seven, and then
family courts decide custody on the basis of the
children's interest, and in most cases custody is given
to the mother.
The inconsistent nature of those
laws also proves that they are not based on divine laws,
but on the whims of some narrow-minded lawmakers. The age
of criminal responsibility in Iran is 15. If a child of
15 commits an offence, he or she would be liable to the
same punishment - in some cases execution - as a grown up
person. Yet a 45-year old woman cannot go on holiday on
her own without the permission of her mother or husband.
While at the beginning of the revolution women judges
were dismissed on the grounds that Islam would not allow
it, a few years later again as the result of campaigns by
Shirin Ebadi and others the judiciary admitted its
mistake and is appointing women judges. Ebadi refuses to
act as a judge now because she says that she cannot
implement the present unjust laws.
In Iran, books, plays, films and
poems have had an impact on society that goes beyond
anything one is accustomed to in the West. The person who
was really responsible for the Islamic Revolution and who
popularised political and militant Islam was not
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but a little known writer
and speaker, Ali Shari'ati. In the 60's and 70's through
a series of lectures in Tehran that attracted vast
audiences and were later published as books, he
popularised politicised Islam and turned it into a rival
ideology to Marxism. He paved the way for Ayatollah
Khomeini to reap the benefits of his campaign.
The anti-shah movement was
bolstered by a few poems by the likes of Forugh
Farrokhzad, Ahmad Shamlu and Akhavan-Thaleth who gave
voice to the people's feeling of frustration with the
lack of political freedom.
Forugh Farrokhzad's famous poem
'Someone is Coming' produced a feeling of expectation for
a stern Messiah-like figure who would put an end to
oppression and injustice:
I have
dreamed
that someone is coming …
Someone different
someone better
someone who isn't like anyone,
isn't like father
like Jonah
like John
like mother,
but is just like the one that should be
And his name is
(just as mother says in the beginning and the end
of her prayer)
the Judge of all Judges,
the way of all the ways….
Ahmad Shamlu, a severe critic of
the shah, lived long enough to see that he who came was
not the 'Promised One'. In a bitter poem entitled 'Dar in
Bonbast' (In this Dead End) written a year after the
revolution he described a new kind of hell:
They sniff
your mouth
lest you've said 'I love you',
They sniff your heart
These are strange times,
darling…
And they whip Love
on the barricades…
We must hide Love in the backroom of the
house
They keep the fire
burning
in this crooked dead-end of the Cold,
with fuel of songs and poems.
Don't endanger yourself
by thinking
These are strange times,
darling…
Yet, despite all the talk of doom
and gloom, the Iranian society is very dynamic. The
reform movement is still alive and some brave artists,
poets, political activists and intellectuals keep the
torch of enlightenment burning at real risk to their
lives. The way to change the Iranian society is through
such peaceful and lasting campaigns, rather than through
bombs and missiles. One can only hope that films like
Offside, and books like Iran Awakening could have a
similar effect in rousing the people against the
absurdities of the life under the mullahs as did similar
works under the previous regime.
1. Iran Awakening is confirmed for
Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 from Monday 18th
to Friday 22nd September (0945-1000 with a repeat
2430-2445). Fantastic news for this very special
memoir:
- "Illuminating and inspirational" Woman and Home
on Iran Awakening
- "An incredible memoir.
beautifully written. This is a book infused with humanity
and astounding hope" 4 stars The Works, May
2006.
- "One of the most remarkable
resistance heroines of our dangerous times" Saturday
Telegraph 15th April, 2006
* Farhang Jahanpour is a former professor of
comparative literature at the University of Isfahan. For
the past 20 years he has been a part-time tutor at the
Department of Continuing Education at the University of
Oxford.
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