Islamic Regime and America’s Elites

The Islamic regime in Iran has a pool of defenders among the American “elite”
media, political analysts, activists, and academia.

They are invited to and welcomed in Iran, assigned to a “handler” who makes sure the
honored guests are dined (not wined), taken to the assigned places and given approved
talking points. Gifts of Persian carpets and cans of the best caviar at the airport
normally seal the deal.

These American elites never mingle with the “real” people of Iran, and never talk to
their Iranian counterparts. They visit the universities, but never walk the campuses
alone or privately exchange opinions with students and professors. They never visit
the Evin or Kahrizak prisons, nor do they ever even pass by them to see the crowds of
people waiting to hear one word about their loved ones inside.

These visitors never look at the documents -- long lists of inhumane laws against
women and children, photos of tortured and stoned women, hanging teenagers,
strangled men accused of the crime of homosexuality.

They never study Iranian/American relations and history, and never learn about how
the Iranian people have struggled for more than a hundred years against the Shiite
clergy, fighting for modernity and separation of religion from government.

These elites never want to talk to the Iranian American human rights activists to get
the facts or at least hear the other, true, side of the story.

The Islamic regime in Iran is a gender- apartheid regime. It is a cruel, misogynistic

government whose members suffocate women politically, socially, privately, publicly
and legally. They never say that 86% of Iranian women are unemployed. They never
talk about Iranian laws which say women are the property of men, that men can treat
women as they wish, that men can “marry” as many wives as they want, divorce them
anytime they want, take their children away, and discard them with nothing. They
never mention that according to the sharia laws of Iran, women cannot do anything
without the husband’s permission, even step out of the house.

European and American “elite” apologists for the regime have the attitude of cultural
imperialists, and have apparently decided that since the Iranian people are a bunch of
Moslems who live in the Middle East, they do not have a desire for democracy,
prosperity and the pursuit of happiness, and that they volunteer to have their children
tortured, oppressed and denigrated.

The apologists never refer to the fact that there are over a quarter of a million street
children in Iran who do not officially exist. They have no identity, no birth
certificates. They are born and raised on the streets and are the products of “temporary
marriage,” a law which codifies exploitative sex that is not only legal, but encouraged
and pushed by the regime.
In their desire to maintain the all-important “status quo,” they do not fact-check their
talking points to see if they are lies; to see that in 1979, the people of Iran rose up
because they wanted more freedom, not an Islamic theocracy.

The Western supporters of the Iranian regime even ridiculously refer to University of
Tehran polls, and swear by their fairness and accuracy. They do not know or do not
care, or both, that Iranian universities are run by an uneducated Shiite clergy
appointed by the “supreme leader.” They do not know or do not care, or both, that
paramilitary forces are in control of the university campuses around the country, and
that plainclothes guardsmen have been in every hallway and every classroom since
the 1998 nationwide student uprisings.

Are they deliberately trying to mislead Americans?

These are the same people who support liberal groups like the ACLU, which exploit
freedom to take advantage of its privileges -- but when it comes to Iran’s theocracy,
oppression is totally acceptable.

These are the same people who protested against George W. Bush, decrying that he
damaged the image and reputation of the United States of America in the world— but
they do not grant the privilege to protest to the Iranians who have lost human dignity
as the result of the actions of a group of illiterate thieves and hoodlums.

Shame and guilt require awareness of choice. You do not have to be a member of the
elite to know that.

Women’s Rights under Islamic Regime

January 7th, 2010Jahanshah Rashidian (Iran/Germany)

In 1936, Reza Shah prohibited the veiling of women in public in Iran. The clergy
vigorously protested; women of the mercantile middle class stayed home, refusing to
appear „naked” in public. Lower middle class and rural women began to work outside
the home, most of them in small textile shops. It is the labour of women and children,
with their small fingers, which forms the backbone of the carpet industry in Iran.

Any benefits relating to housing or childcare which they receive are given not to them
but to their husbands. Their working conditions are harsh, with long hours, low pay
and inadequate maternity provisions.

In 1964, Mohammad Reza Shah gave women the right to vote. Family planning was
introduced, with free contraceptives and legalised abortion. Clerical jobs in
government ministries, banks and commercial offices were filled with women.
Women from the middle class entered the professions.

In 1975, the Family Protection Act was passed. It gave women the right to divorce
their husbands, required the husband to obtain the first wife’s consent before taking a
second, and fixed the legal age of marriage at 16. It placed some restrictions on
“sigheh” (temporary marriage), the custom where the husband enjoys all the
privileges of marriage for a fixed period of time, usually a few days or hours. After
being discarded, the woman generally becomes a prostitute. The Act was a genuine
reform; but its impact was limited to those women who could afford to defy their
husbands and fathers.

Also in 1975, the Shah spent $50 million to finance the Women’s Organisation of
Iran, headed by his sister, Ashraf Pahlavi, a woman with a bad reputation. The
Organisation sent students into the countryside in a literacy campaign modelled after
the US Peace Corps.

Shah’s reforms of women’s right actually brought women into public life in Iran. For
the upper and middle class, women’s partial emancipation was part of their adaptation
to western behaviour. For the Shah, it was a way of challenging the authority of
clergy, who repeatedly called for a return to Islamic values.

Ayatollah Khomeini, upon arriving in Paris in October, 1979, was asked by a reporter
what the position of women would be in an Islamic society. He replied, “Women are
free in the realm of education and in the professions, just as men are. Islam does not
exclude women from social life but elevates them to a platform where they are not
objectified, where they can assume responsibility in the structure of the Islamic
government in accordance with their development”. Immediately upon coming to
power, Khomeini declared the Family Protection Act null and void and announced a
ban on abortion and contraceptives.

On March 7, 1979, on the eve of International Women’s Day, Khomeini decreed that
all women employed by the government must wear the “chador” (an all-enveloping
black veil), an extension of four walls of the home.

Thousands of women filled the streets in protest. For three days they marched and
rallied; on the third day staged a sit-in at the Palace of Justice, demanding a legal
guarantee for their right to choose what to wear and where to work, at home and in
society at large.

Women’s demonstrations erupted in Kurdistan, Azarbijan and Isfahan as well. They

chanted “At the dawn of freedom, there is no freedom.” The women were attacked by
Khomeini’s supporters, armed with knives, who cursed them, yelling “Wear a head or
get your head rapped.” They stood at windows along the parade route and exposed
their genitals: “This is what you want, you whores!” The women’s male supporters
linked arms and formed a protective barrier around them.

The demonstrations forced Khomeini to retreat; he claimed to have said only that
women should be modestly dressed. Nevertheless, thousands of women were fired
from their jobs in the beginning of 1979, accused of looking like “western dolls”.

On June 29, 1980, mandatory veiling was imposed. No exceptions are made for
women of religions other than Islam.

March, 1979. On the eve of the referendum for the Islamic Republic, Khomeini
reiterated his promises in order to lure voters to the polls. “Islam has considered
women’s right to be higher than those of men. Women have the right to vote which is
denied them in the West. Our women can vote and be elected. They are free in all
aspects of their lives and can freely choose from most areas of employment. We
promise you that in the Islamic government, every person will be free to achieve his
or her rights.”

But what does freedom mean to the Islamic Republic? The first women to lose their
jobs were the radio and television announcers, whose presence on the airwaves was
considered immodest. Then women lawyers were forbidden to practice and dismissed
from their jobs at the Justice Department. Their efforts to retain their positions met
with failure. Thousands of workers were laid off in the industrial slowdown which
followed the revolution, among them a disproportionate number of women. Children
centres were closed down and the new labour laws did nothing to relieve their right.

October 2, 1979. A bill is passed, establishing a special civil court to handle

matrimonial cases. It legalised polygamy and sigheh and lowers the marriage age for
girls to 13 years. In fact, girls can be married at age of 9 with their father’s consent.
Women can divorce their husbands only if they stipulate that possibility in a contract
made prior to the marriage.

The school have been segregated by sexes, thus barring women from religious
seminaries and technical colleges and halting the education of girls in villages.

The school books have been revised, showing veiled women in the home, raising
children and cooking; Darwin’s theory of evolution has been expunged. The schools
are used to hunt down critics of the regime; attempts are made to trick children into
releasing incriminating information about their parents.

Women’s participation in sports has been crippled; they are forbidden to enter
international contests and are required to wear voluminous clothing, even while
swimming. Men and women are segregated at all times, at public stadiums, at the
beach and etc.

Islamic morality demands an end to pleasure: wine, music, dancing, chess (for a few
years) and backgammon, have been all banned. Women’s part in theatre and cinema
stipulates that female actors wear Islamic veil.

Soon after the revolution, Mr. Bani Sadr, who has lived 15 years in France, was asked
by a television interviewer if it was true that women’s hair emits sexually enticing
rays and if this is why Islam requires the veil. “Yes, it is true,” was his reply.

In November 1979, a conference drew 2,500 women, who met by candlelight when
the Tehran authorities cut off the electricity at their meeting place. A rally on
International Women’s Day, 1980, drew a crowd of 7,000-8,000.

The regime has responded by forming its own women’s group, which produced a
newspaper, “The Moslem Women,” which the main task was to inculcate
misogynistic norms into mind of women.

The Constitution was announced on December 1, 1979. It regards motherhood as

women’s reason for being. “Since the family is the unit of Islamic society, all relevant
rules and regulations and planning should be done to facilitate its formation and to
guard its continuity on the basis of Islamic laws.” (Article 10).
The Bill of Retribution, a criminal law passed in 1981, stipulated that women have
half the value of men in the eyes of the law. In this Bill, a murderer may pay a sum of
money, called blood money, to his victim’s family in order to escape punishment by
death. If the murderer is a man and the victim is a woman, the woman’s family is
required to pay half the man’s blood money if he is to receive the death sentence; this
is because her life is equal to only half of his, so the family is required to pay for the
other half. If they do not pay, the man can pay them the women’s blood money and be
set free.

The Bill of Retribution was the platform to which Khomeini has elevated Iranian
women.