Women, modernity and political Islam

Exaggerated claims over recent legal gains by women, and Islamic feminists, distract attention from economic, social and cultural conditions that have mobilised wide sections of Iranian society against Islamisation and Islamic morality

Reports of cultural and legal gains by Iranian women has had a mesmerising, not to say tranquillising, effect in the West, particularly on its governments. The spell became particularly powerful after last year’s unexpected election of Khatami to the presidency. Khatami’s smiling face, his knowledge of foreign languages, even the fact that he wears laced up shoes rather than slippers as other mullahs do, is taken by influential Western newspapers as sign of the dawn of democracy in Iran. It seems that if Khatami did not exist, he had to be invented.

It was time the West found a way to smooth diplomatic and commercial relations with Iran so that here would be no need to keep on repeating over and over again all that exaggerated talk about violation of women’s rights, and those of religious and ethnic minorities in Iran. An excuse was needed and the academic and intellectual climate of the world, and especially the USA gives the political excuse an intellectual legitimacy.

This is why it has become fashionable to speak sympathetically and enthusiastically about the reformist activities of Muslim women, and to insist on their independence of thought. Their agency and the effects their activities are having in bringing change to highlight the importance of the “choice” of the veil and the head-scarf as a consciously chosen identity by them. If you add to all this a short trip to the country and a few interviews with women activists (especially the hand-picked group of Islamic women), and one or two ayatollahs you will have a huge audience.

Tradition versus modernity

I contend that what is taking place in Iran today is the continuation of the conflict between tradition and modernity, rather than evidence that political Islam is a solution to the cultural, social and political problems arising from the policy of modernisation and the experience of modernity. To one degree or another this conflict has been chronic in the social life of Iran ever since the county’s political formation during the Constitutional period [1].

Tradition and modernity have been at loggerheads over the replacement of an absolutist, authoritarian religious outlook (which by nature is against critical judgement and insists on the absolute supremacy of religious belief and its clerical guardians which everyone else must obey) with a modern outlook which believes in human reason, ability, merit, and agency. In this latter vision humans are given the right to free thought, critical judgement and the possibility to intervene in their own destiny. Political and religious power is de-sanctified. Political power is seen as a means to improve the lot of citizens, to establish a society with cultural and ethical pluralism in place of reactionary religious dogmatism.

Few people will deny that the process of modernisation and modernity in Iran ended in crisis, confusion and chaos. Modernisation and modernity in the West had various dimensions little of which we experienced in Iran. What we experienced was economic upheaval at a giddy speed. Social change was superficial, patchy and unrelated to the cultural milieu, an poorly-thought out carbon copy of others. We experienced neither cultural nor political transformation, or democracy, cultural or political tolerance.

Fascinated with the modern

Those who claim that what we experienced was not a conscious modernisation and modernity but a fascination with everything labelled modern have a point. The monarchical modernity was no more than ornamented clothes made to European patterns which hung miserably on the bony and pained body of traditional Iran.

Political Islam, the system of the velayate faghih [2] and the disastrous moves towards older and obsolete political and cultural forms was the reflection of this crisis. Some experts on Iran consider the Islamic revolution as a reaction to modernity and modernisation - a revolution to return to the traditional self, to native cultural and traditional roots. Yet what we are witnessing today in the form of popular protest at the religious-political aggression and cultural repression is after all the continuation of the century-old confrontation between tradition and modernity.

Without wishing to exaggerate I will allow myself to declare that in this confrontation the urban population of Iran have taken the lead in the struggle for modernity against the Islamic government and the system of velayate faghih and its ethical teachings and values. This they have done independent intellectuals and their explanations, and on the back of experience gained in 20 years of rule by this regime. Theirs is a no vote to religious government.

It is therefore a pity that some intellectuals, influenced by post-modernist and post-colonial theories, and lagging behind these spontaneous, but highly purposeful moves of the people, try to persuade us that political Islam is a native alternative to Western-oriented outlooks and a road for progress and change in step with the culture and religious beliefs of Iranians.

Islamic adaptability?

Supporters of this account normally resort to two arguments in relation to women’s rights:

1. The fact that Islam is adaptable to time and place, and that there are differences between what fundamentalists say and do. Islam and the sharia’, therefore do not prevent women from achieving equal rights.

2. The appearance of Islamic feminists and their achievements in imposing reforms on the system.

The subtext is that these realities invalidate the long-held belief that it is necessary to

fight for a secular pluralistic state and a separation of religion and the state - i.e. the essential elements of modernity - as prerequisites for equal rights between men and women. The message is that a new road has been opened up for women - Muslim and non-Muslim alike - to gain equal rights to men: a road based on feminist interpretations of Islamic sharia’ laws.

Firstly, there is no debate that ultimately Islam is any less able to adapt, adjust and soften its moral messages than any other official religion. The possibility of altering Qur’anic and other textural interpretations to improve the lot of women can obviously not be discounted. But this is only on condition that Islam is seen as a collection of ethical teachings, and as an instrument for spiritual calm in response to individual spiritual needs.

I deliberately emphasise features such as choice, and being an instrument of spiritual and moral solace, because these are incompatible with Islam as a legal and political system that relies on religious devotion to give holy legitimacy to oppressive tools and relations. In Iran we are dealing with the second variety - Islam as a legal and political system. This point seems to evaporate in most of the discourses about Islam and women’s rights in Iran.

Islam in political rule is incompatible with the cultural pluralism that is after all the pre-requisite of the right to individual choice. Indeed, lack of cultural and religious tolerance is the most visible characteristic of every existing version of political Islam in our world. Iranian fundamentalists cannot tolerate other Islamic interpretations, such as the Sunnis, let alone those of other religions or non-religious persons or ideologies.

In relation to women, too, the particularity of political Islam has been to revitalise and reinforce paternalistic relations. Several decades of modernisation and its consequences on the relations of men and women are to be rubbed out. Extinct Islamic traditions are re-instated. The duty of purifying women from the assault of foreign cultures and Islamisation of social and sexual relations of women unites the various strands of political Islam. The similarities of the teachings and beliefs of divers leaders of a wide variety of political Islams at different times on women, from Hasan al-Banna in turn of the century Egypt, to Mawdudi in Pakistan, to our own Khomeini (all of whom claim sole inheritance of undiluted Mohammadan Islam) is too striking to ignore. The only differences relate to the level of the economic, political and social development and the level of consciousness and expectations of women in these societies.

Secondly, the gap between what fundamentalists say and do is smaller than is generally made out. When waxing enthusiastically on the agency, struggle and independence of women in the Islamic Republic it is easy to forget that citizenship is a male prerogative; The legal status of women is defined in relation to their fathers and husbands; for example The woman chosen to be a vice-president can only fulfil her duties with her husband’s permission and authorisation…

Half an eye for an eye

The law of Retribution, confirms gender inequality and is a major factor in encouraging violence against women. How can society remain impervious to a law that calculates human life in monetary terms and gives the woman half the value of the man? As one Islamic reformist commented, “in the Islamic Republic of Iran the life of a murdered woman is officially and legally less than the life of a male murderer.” This is because when a man murders a woman the latter can avoid punishment until the victim’s family has paid his “blood money”.

A particularly tragic example is the case of an 11 year-old girl in Kurdistan who was raped, murdered and her body cut up. The money her father got by selling his house was not enough to pay for her murderer’s blood money. Hence for the last two years the family are without a roof over their heads, while the Islamic judicial system refuses to bring the murderer to justice until his blood money is fully paid. Recently even judiciary head ayatollah Yazdi had to admit that cheap blood-money of women encourages their murder at the hands of their men-folk for vacuous reasons. A series of horrendous crimes against women and children reflect the rise in violence in the country. It appears that the torturing of children to death has reached epidemic proportions. The law of Retribution is equally lenient to fathers if they “punish” their children to death.

Islamic feminists

Let us now turn to the other point: the emergence of Islamic feminists, and the extravagant reports on their achievements in imposing some reforms. Islamic feminists are supposed to offer a new road, one that moves through feminist interpretations of Islamic texts.

Can me clarify my own position about the term “Islamic feminism” which seems to have fascinated many political activists in exile. The debate usually starts from the following point: can one use the term feminist to identify those who use an Islamic discourse to struggle for women’s rights in Iran, even though their activities are outside what is generally recognised as feminist, and regardless of whether or not they call themselves feminist? In my view this is in essence not a particularly useful argument.

Today, feminism encompasses such a broad framework, and such plurality of viewpoints that it can be applied to all those who believe in the existence of legal, cultural, social, and economic inequality of women and men, who condemn the male centred and patriarchal relations in family and social life, and who struggle to end these relations. The fact that they differ in what they see as the roots of this inequality is no barrier to the common epithet of feminism. We have Right feminists, Jewish and Christian feminists, black and native American feminists, homosexual feminists and dozens of others. Islamic feminists can join the ranks.

“Feminism” and “Islamic” are two terms each portraying their own particular characteristics. To combine them creates a term with its own peculiar meaning. Someone holding “Islamic feminist” views can be distinguished from someone who is either Islamic or feminist alone. They can be recognised as Islamic feminists if they views and beliefs adopted from the two outlooks of feminism and Islam.

However, my argument about “Islamic feminism” is not whether or not it is correct to identify as Islamic feminist the women who are struggling to improve the lot of women in the framework of an Islamic ideology. My argument is about the political consequences of the irresponsible way the term has bee used.

I am of course deeply happy that, after the systematic repression of non-religious women in the months after the revolution, our sisters in Iran have continued the struggle in many candid ways in keeping with the new conditions.

I even consider it as being in the long term interest of the women’s movement that a number of Islamic women who were essentially recruited in support of sexist policies of the regime have now raised their voice in support of reforms in women’s favour. Not to mention the activities of women who work outside the regime, who for political or ideological reasons, use Islamic discourse to struggle for some improvement in the condition of women. These are women who in recent years have been identified as Islamic feminists. Their number are so great, and their views and politics so diverse, that I see no point in highlighting names.

However, as I have argued in my previous work, this term has been used in an inaccurate, and I would like to say irresponsible, way. It has come to encompass almost all Islamic and active women, even though their activities might not even fit the broadest definition of feminism. This include, for example, the activities of a handful of Muslim women who have entered public life and political activities and who believe in the sharia’ and its prescribed gender-rights a roles. The fact that some of these women occasionally speak in favour of women does not make them feminists. Because their world-view and the general tenet of their activities are against the interests of women in Iran.

The obvious examples are two pieces of legislation. One prohibits publication of pro-women materials “which cause division between men and women.” The other is the sexual segregation of health care which places women’s health at grave risk for lack of sufficient female health care workers. Both these legislation were initiated and pushed for by ”Islamic feminists” such as Monireh Nowbakht, the spokeswoman for the Women, Family and Youth Commission in the Majles, together with Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, and Nafiseh Fiaz-Bakhsh, who are in the directorate of this commission. ,

Islamic feminists or Islamisation of feminism?

Let us now turn to the activities of the Islamic feminists outside the regime. First, not all those who are using Islamic language are necessarily Islamic feminists. They have been forced into this outfit by the force of circumstances. Now we should ask why lumping all activists, and indeed all Iranian women, into one Islamic or Muslim sack is any different from what anti-Iranian and anti-Arab Orientalists did a century or two ago. Why ignore the ethnic, regional, class, and religious differences which expresses of the diverse identity of Middle Eastern women.

The point is that scholarly work can sometimes turn into propaganda mouthpieces for dictatorial rule, cause confusion, advocate the status quo, and prevent change. Unfortunately, the academic exaggerations on recent developments, over Islamic feminism is not encouraging pluralism in the women’s movement. Nor is it helping the women’s movement inside Iran.

Exaggerated claims over recent legal gains by women, and the role of Islamic feminists in bringing them about, draws attention away from the economic, social and cultural conditions that have mobilised wide sections of Iranian society against the policy of Islamisation and Islamic morality. Reports on the resistance of ordinary passers-by against the “morality police”, roaming the streets, show the widespread hatred for the cultural and social repression imposed and drilled into the population under the guise Islamic values.

Moreover, after experiencing modernity and its cultural and social impacts, the level of awareness, expectations, and cultural and moral beliefs of women has undergone such changes as to make the acceptance of the political and cultural programmes of the mullahs an impossibility.

The current one-sided picture of the Iranian women’s struggle has the paradoxical effect of making it easier for the Islamic regime to continue its anti-women policies. It weakens the struggle of women inside Iran.

Haideh Moqeisi

July 1998, Washington

This is an abridged version of a talk delivered at the 9th annual conference of the Iranian Women’s Studies Foundation. It was translated by Mehdi Kia

Footnotes (by MK)

1. For the Constitutional Revolution (1905-6) see E. Abrahamian. Iran between two revolutions. Princeton UP 1982

2. Article 5 of the Constitution which gives absolute rulership (velayat) over political, civil and religious society to a just an knowledgeable religious jurist (faqih)