Observations on the Repression of Women

How are we to interpret and understand the Islamic Republic’s battle against women? Women who want equality and the elimination of discrimination are tried and given hefty jail sentences. In public places throughout the country, the regime has taken up cudgels against women and wants to force them, by intimidation and detention, to observe the covering decreed by fiqh [Islamic jurisprudence]. The question is this: Why has the Islamic Republic gone into battle with women? The answer is clear: Because the women’s question is directly linked to the theory of the velayat-e faqih [rule by an Islamic jurist/cleric, current system of rule in Iran] and the continuation of rule by Islamic jurists/clerics [fuqaha]. Without gender apartheid, the velayat-e faqih ceases to have meaning. Hence, the regime has gone into battle with

We know that the velayat-e faqih lacks a rational justification. The justifications based on narrated accounts of the sayings of the Shi’i Imams are also totally dubious, which is why most fuqaha over the course of history have not subscribed to the theory. So why is political control over Iran in the hands of the fuqaha? What justifies their rule? According to the people who subscribe to the theory of the velayat-e faqih, a faqih has authority because he is well-versed in fiqh. Fiqh is a programme for life, from birth to death. Fiqh has to be implemented so that human beings can achieve felicity in this world and the next. The implementation of fiqh requires two things: first, someone who is well-versed in fiqh (a faqih) and, two, the establishment of a State and the handing over of supreme control to a faqih so that he can implement the shari’ah. The fuqaha are a distinctive class. They have something that others do not have. Fiqh is the sole things that turns them into a distinctive class with special, exclusive rights.

Hence, for a velayat-e faqih-based system, the fact that the system is based on fiqh and implements the shari’ah is the only criterion and measure for the Islamic-ness of the government. But it goes without saying that the implementation of fiqh does not make the government and society religious, because the government can also implement the precepts of fiqh in an atheistic or non-religious society, but such an atheistic society will not become religious by virtue of acting on fiqh. But we will overlook this problem for now and we will accept the claim made by the fuqaha: that a society in which the precepts of the shari’ah are implemented is an Islamic society. Let us look at the record of the fuqaha in this respect over the past 28 years.

1. The precept on cutting off a thief’s hand (Ma’idah, 38) is not being implemented. 2. The precept on cutting off the opposite hand and leg of a wager of war against God ((Ma’idah, 33) is not being implemented. 3. The precept on talion, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (Ma’idah, 44), is not being implemented. 4. The precept on stoning is not being implemented. 5. The precept on apostasy is not being implemented. 6. The precept on preliminary jihad is not being implemented. 7. The precept on the tax paid in lieu of becoming a Muslim (Tawbah, 29) is not being implemented. Tawbah is the last Sura of the Qur’an that was revealed to the Prophet of Islam. In Verse 29 of this Sura, the way of dealing with Jews and Christians has been set out clearly. But the Islamic Republic has disregarded the minimum and maximum set by the precept. 8. The precept on the infliction of lashes in the presence of a group of believers (Nur, 2) is not being implemented. During the reform period [under President Khatami], the judiciary implemented this precept for a year in the city’s main squares so that religious law will have been observed. But, after domestic and international protests, it stopped applying the precept. 9. The precept on interest (Baqarah, 279) is not being implemented. The Qur’an has spoken in the harshest terms about charging interest on loans and described it as waging war on God and the Prophet. But the Islamic Republic’s banking system is a system based on interest and it applies even higher interest rates than the most capitalist systems in the capitalist world. In the USA, anyone who has a job can obtain a loan, with a 6 per cent interest rate, to buy a house. And banks pay about 5.5 per cent interest on long-term personal savings. In this system, anyone who has a job can buy a house. But, in the Islamic Republic, most of the people who have jobs cannot buy a house even if they pay high interest rates. Why are the low profit rates in the capitalist banking system seen as interest rates that are prohibited by Islam, whereas the high profit rates in the Islamic Republic’s banking system seen as acceptable? Is the reason for this not the application of trickery in interpreting the precepts of God? Was this not the reason why Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi described the Iranian banking system as the most interest-based system in the world? 10. Hojjat ol-Eslam val-Moslemin Mohsen Qara’ati, the head of Iran’s prayer HQ, says: “There are 32 verses in the Qur’an on the obligatoriness of the payment of tithes. So why should tithes be forgotten in the Islamic Republic’s system? Our stomachs are filled with forbidden morsels of food, because we have not paid tithes on the wheat used to make the bread that we eat. Twenty eight years after the Islamic Revolution, the observance of ritual prayers is weak, tithes are a dead letter and the Qur’an is neglected. 11. The precepts on owning slaves are not being implemented. When the British sailors were detained, the precept on captive women (Nisa, 24) was not applied to the married British woman among the sailors.

When the precepts of the shari’ah are not acted upon and the State is not based on fiqh, then what makes the Iranian government religious (Islamic) and leads to the perpetuation of rule by the fuqaha? Nothing. Only one thing remains that suggests that the system is Islamic: women’s hijab [Islamic covering for women in public places]. The Islamic Republic’s regime makes women wear the hijab by force so that, one, the country is considered Islamic and, two, there can be a justification for continued rule by the vali-ye faqih [supreme Islamic jurist/cleric].

The Islamic Republic’s regime does not implement the precepts on slavery. But in the days when owning slaves was the norm, once, slaves were brought to a Muslim bazaar for sale. The daughter of the ruler of Tay was among the captives. She was completely naked. When the Prophet saw this scene, he threw his cloak over the girl so that she would not be naked. Allama Iqbal of Lahore recounted this story and, referring to the terrible situation of Muslims today, he wrote: “The daughter of the commander of Tay was taken captive in a battle / she stood naked and shackled / When the Prophet saw her, he threw his cloak over her / We’re more naked than that slave-girl today / we stand before the eyes of the world without a cover”

Today, the Islamic Republic stands naked and without a cover, because, based on to the criteria of the fuqaha, the country is not Islamic; because there is no justification for the continuation of the fiqh-based State; because it is brute force that has made the survival of rule by the fuqaha possible. There is no reason or logic for covering up the naked oppression and intimidation. So, they cover up women in order to put their Islamism on display. It is that simple.

Allowing women to choose what they wear is a part of women’s freedoms. Women must be free to wear or not to wear the hijab. The government has no right to impose a particular form of covering on women in the name of religion. Let us assume that the Iranian government is a religious government. Let us assume that the implementation of the shari’ah is the government’s duty. What is the position of the hijab in the Qur’an’s moral-legal-penal system? Is the hijab more important or not charging interest on loans? Why is it unimportant that Iran’s banking system is waging war on God and the Prophet, whereas it is important that there should be no deviation from the precept on the hijab? Is the hijab more important or prayer? Prayer is a wholly spiritual and worship-related affair. It is the link between the needy and the needed, the lover and the Beloved, the worshipper and the worshipped. Prayer is the central pillar of religion. It is the me-You dialogue. It is contact from the depth of one’s being and heart. But, even so, it serves a very important social function as far as the Qur’an is concerned. Prayer destroys immorality and vice (Ankabut, 45). If the government claims to be implementing the shari’ah and combating immorality and vice, why does it not make prayer obligatory? Why does it not assign a policeman to every Iranian and force them to say their prayers? This would be impossible to do. But even if it were possible, it would defeat its own purpose. Forced prayer is not prayer; it is nothing. It is like when they used to force jailed communists to pray and fast, which was of no use at all. But the hijab is not important as an act of worship or, even if it were, it is not at all comparable in this sense to prayer and fasting. And the Qur’an has not assigned any social benefits to it either (Ahzab 53, 59, 60; Nur 30-31 and 59-61). Failure to observe many precepts leads to punishment in the afterlife, but the Qur’an has not assigned any punishment in the afterlife for failure to observe the hijab. Speaking ill of people is like eating a dead brother’s meat (Hujurat, 12). Why does the government not declare that speaking ill of people is an offence and order Intelligence Ministry agents to combat those who speak ill of people? Is it worse to speak ill of people or to leave the house without a hijab?

Why is it that, when people were free in their choice of clothes under the Shah’s regime, women and girls used to favour wearing the hijab, but, in the Islamic Republic, where the hijab is obligatory, the regime has totally failed to impose its choice of covering on women even by brute force and even after 28 years? Why is it that, under the Shah’s regime, girls used to go to State schools and come out Muslims, whereas, today, none of the Islamic Republic’s officials are prepared to send their children to State schools? Why is it that before the revolution, girls and women used to use public transport without any problem, but, since the revolution, the State has created problems that cannot even be solved by gender-segregation on public transport? Why do the officials of the Islamic Republic not allow their wives and children to use public transport? Why do girls and women not put on excessive make-up in the West, whereas girl and women use unbelievable amounts of make-up in Iran?

What do women want? Women need security in society, but they do not have it. They want not to be viewed as sex objects, but the Islamic Republic has reduced them to sex objects. Women are the targets of devouring eyes. The problem of women is a question of freedom and equality. They do not want to be discriminated against because of their gender and to be deprived of their self-evident rights. Their demands must not be reduced to one or two specific demands. They are opposed to all discriminatory laws. Why is this rightful demand resisted? Is it because of commitment to Islamic law? No, it is not. Even Mr Khomeini held that belief in God and the Prophet were sufficient to qualify a person as a Muslim and he used to say explicitly that, if someone believes in these two principles “but does not believe in Islamic precepts because of some doubts, this person is a Muslim”. He used to say that, if someone does not consider prayer and hajj [pilgrimage to Mecca] to be obligatory today, he is still a Muslim. Does a superficial approach to religious observance not lead to a situation in which non-spiritual precepts are considered to be more important than spiritual precepts? Mr Khomeini wrote: “What, in truth, constitutes Islam - and anyone who accepts it is considered a Muslim - is the principle of the existence of God and God’s oneness, the Prophethood and, possibly, belief in the afterlife. The rest of the rules consist of the precepts of Islam which have no bearing on the essential belief in Islam. Even if someone believes in the above-mentioned principles but, because of some doubts, does not believe in Islamic precepts, this person is a Muslim, on condition that the lack of belief in the precepts does not lead to a denial of the Prophethood. It is impossible for someone not to accept any of the Islamic precepts and still believe in the Prophethood. So, if we know that someone has accepted the principles of religion and possibly accepts that the Prophet decreed some precepts but has doubts about the obligatoriness of prayer and the hajj - and imagines that prayer and hajj were obligatory in the early days of Islam but are no longer obligatory today - the pious do not consider this person to be a non-Muslim; there are sufficient reasons for considering this person to be a Muslim and the reasoning is that anyone who says ‘there is no God but God and Muhammad is the Prophet of God’ is a Muslim.”

Most of the Iranian women who want equal rights are Muslims. They accept that the precepts of fiqh used to be implemented in the Arab society of the early days of Islam and that they were obligatory then. But, contrary to the fuqaha, they doubt that these precepts hold for all time and everywhere. The unreasoned assumption of the fuqaha is that the precepts of fiqh hold for all time and everywhere unless proven otherwise. The assumption of religious modernists is that these precepts were temporary and belonged to the society of the early days of Islam unless proven otherwise. These precepts solved some problems in the simple society of the past, but, today, they do not solve any problems; instead they make people have a negative perception of Islam.

Is performing Friday prayers not an obligatory duty (Jum’ah, 9-11)? Why did Shi’is not hold Friday prayers for 1,300 years without having an acceptable explanation in response to criticism from their Sunni brothers? Is enjoining virtue and preventing vice not an obligatory duty? Why did Shi’is refuse to perform this duty during the absence of the 12th Imam because of the dangers? Have you forgotten Al-Ghazzali’s fierce criticism in the book on enjoining virtue of his Revival of the Islamic Sciences? He said: “The amazing thing is that the rafidha [“rejecters” (of true Islam), reference to Shi’is] have added another precondition to this one and that is that, as long as the Infallible Imam, who is the Imam of Justice, has not appeared, enjoining virtue is inappropriate. They are too wretched to speak to, for they answer back that now is not the time to prevent injustice and to demand justice, because the Imam of justice has not yet appeared.”

Did Mr. Khomeini not say explicitly: “Governing is one of the primary precepts of Islam and it takes precedence over all secondary precepts; even prayer, fasting and the hajj. The ruler can… prevent anything, whether worship-related or not worship-related, which would run counter to the interests of Islam as long as this is the case.” You put the hajj in abeyance for years. Today, all the precepts of fiqh that lead to inequality between women and men “run counter to the interests of Islam”. They, too, can be and should be put in abeyance, because they are not more important than prayer, fasting and the hajj. When Mr. Khomeini expressed views of this kind, the Guardian Council wrote him a letter and said that, on the basis of these views, all the primary precepts of Islam would be put in abeyance. Mr. Khomeini wrote in reply: “What you said about the rumours that contracts for leasing land and limited partnerships and the like would be destroyed, let me tell you frankly that, even if this were to occur, it is among the prerogatives of the State and even higher things, which I will not trouble you with.” When ‘the destruction’ of all the precepts of fiqh is unproblematic, why are the hijab and precepts relating to women so important?

Because this system is naked and exposed, it needs a cover to lend legitimacy to the rule of the fuqaha. But there is no such cover. Oppression, violence and intimidation cannot be rendered legitimate with a forced covering for women. You have tried these methods for 28 years, but the project for making a fiqh-based society has failed totally. You think that half the country’s population (women) are like a few intellectuals who can be brought into line on the face of it through assassination and prison. Women will not submit to the facades you devise. Their lifestyle is not the lifestyle of your choosing. You wanted to lock them up in their houses. You used to say that, if women succumbed to difficult-to-treat illnesses, the cost of treatment did not fall on their husbands. You retreated step by step and you will have to retreat on the remaining precepts too.

 

Any regime has an ideology to lend it legitimacy. The ideology justifies rule by the State (the authorities) and makes it appear rightful. Fiqh-based Islam is the legitimizing ideology of the Iranian State. But the State is now facing a crisis of legitimacy for the following reasons:

a. The fuqaha have deviated from the precepts of the shari’ah and have placed the most important precepts of fiqh in abeyance.

b. The formulation, by religious intellectuals, of a modernist reading of Islam as opposed to the prevailing fundamentalist Islam.

c. The universalization of democracy and human rights as values that legitimize political systems with which other ideologies are unable to compete.

d. The fact that various sections of the population are turning away from the system’s legitimizing ideology.

 

As we showed, the fuqaha have themselves deviated from the precepts of fiqh and the only thing that remains is the discriminatory precepts of fiqh on women. Now, women are standing up to these laws and are rejecting them. But their rejection should not be seen as a move against religion. On the basis of Mr. Khomeini’s view or, more importantly, on religious modernists’ reading of Islam, women’s resistance can be seen as a move that favours religion. And the State’s opposition is not based on a defence of religion either. The State is opposing women’s demands because the only thing that justifies the authority and guardianship of the fuqaha is the implementation of the precepts of fiqh and the only precepts that remain are the precepts that rule out freedom and equality for women. So, the quarrel is essentially not over religiosity or irreligiosity. The quarrel is over democracy or dictatorship, since equality is the shared foundation of democracy and human rights. Anyone who is opposed to the equality of women and men, believers and unbelievers, clerics and non-clerics, etc. is opposed to democracy and human rights. And anyone who fights for equality in any arena is, knowingly or unknowingly, fighting for democracy and human rights.

One of the pivotal slogans of feminists was ‘the personal is also political’. This descriptive and normative proposition definitely holds true in Iran. Descriptively, we thereby underline that most of the precepts that discriminate on the basis of gender belong to the private sphere. But the velayat-e faqih cannot exist and survive without these precepts. And, normatively, we underline that women’s liberation not only leads to freedom and equality for them, but, by robbing the velayat-e faqih of justification, it also leads to freedom, equality, democracy and human rights for Iran. So, although women are not seeking to topple the State or to launch a velvet revolution, their personal and private concern has turned into the most important political conflict.

Al-Ghazzali underlined many centuries ago that the velayat-e faqih was rule and authority over bodies, not rule and authority over hearts. If Al-Ghazzali was in our midst today, he would say that the velayat-e faqih is rule over women’s bodies, remove this rule and the velayat-e faqih will end.

Allama Iqbal continued his tale about the daughter of the governor of Tay by saying: “He’s our good repute on Judgment Day / and he protects our dignity here and today”

If we want the Prophet of Islam to protect our dignity here and today, we must recognize that God sent us prophets so that they would spread justice (Hadid, 25), not so that they would implement precepts or force women to wear a hijab. Shura, 15; Nisa, 3, 58 and 135; Ma’idah, 8, 95 and 106; An’am, 152; Bagharah, 282; Talagh, 2; Nahl, 76 and 90; and Hujurat, 9 are examples of verses in the Qur’an that underline justice. Gender discrimination, owning slaves and patriarchy did not conflict with people’s understanding of justice in pre-modern times. But, based on modern human beings’ understanding of justice, everyone is equal regardless of race, class, religion, gender, etc. If the Prophet of Islam were to appear today, he would undoubtedly defend equal rights for all human beings. In the 20th century, blacks and women were gradually brought into the system; superficial-legal equality is the first stage of equality. Equal opportunities, equality of resources, etc. complete the process. In order to resolve women’s problems, not only must the equality of women and men be accepted, but a system of positive discrimination must be devised to eliminate the huge gap gradually.

Justice ranks among [revelation-]independent reasons. Justice takes precedence over religion in two contexts. First, justice is the criterion for accepting or rejecting a religion. Secondly, justice is the basis for understanding religion. So, religion must be just and rational. Precepts that are not worship-related are for solving practical problems. Rational people in past times devised solutions to problems. Those solutions do not solve any problems today. Rational people today have presented new solutions to problems. Let us not forget: The Legislator follows the conventions of rational people, the conventions of rational people do not follow the Legislator. Rawls, as one of the rational people of the modern world who tried to make justice and freedom compatible, used to emphasize that any interpretation of justice had to give priority to freedom. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women are the handiwork of the modern world’s rational people. They must replace the conventions of the rational people of the 7th century.

What is the solution to this problem? It goes without saying that men and women do not walk around totally naked in any society. Convention and law have accepted a minimum of clothing. But this minimum is the product of long, historical experience in conditions of freedom. In Iran, the people do not trust the political system. They know that morality and religiosity are mere slogans; power and pretentious religiosity have the last word. Inconsistency in the State’s words and deeds has made people disbelieve the State’s claimed sensitivity to sin. In a democratic system, mutual trust solves problems. A despotic political system cannot decide unilaterally about what people should wear and impose it on people by force. The question of clothing must be left to male and female members of the public, so that they can reach a consensus, through dialogue, on the accepted minimum.

The regime’s battle to impose its chosen dress code on women is not a guarding of or a return to traditions. It is essentially not a ‘traditional’ measure. What the Islamic Republic is doing in fact resembles measures taken by States in modern times that have used brute force to create ‘a human being in line with the ideology’ and, in this instance, ‘a woman in line with the ideology’. In Muslim societies, measures of this kind began in Central Asia after the Bolshevik Revolution, reached a peak in Turkey and were imitated by Reza Shah’s pseudo-modern dictatorship in Iran.

Extensive measures (known as ‘hujum’ or ‘assault’) taken in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to force women not to wear the hijab reached a peak in 1927. And, on International Women’s Day, on the orders of the women’s section of the Communist Party, thousands of women threw their scarves and traditional garments into fires in public squares in some cities. The liberation of women by force and through legal reforms ‘from above’ never produced the desired results in the Central Asian republics. Douglas Northrop’s very valuable study on Uzbekistan showed that the ‘assault’ did not succeed in producing a substantial change to the power relationship between men and women to women’s advantage, and that, in a paradoxical way, it increased Uzbeks’ propensity to wear the hijab as ‘a symbol of ethnic and national identity’ and as a form of resistance to the Soviet State. The Islamic Republic’s use of force in this respect has likewise produced an outcome that is the reverse of what the State intended.

In Turkey, too, the creation of ‘a woman in line with civilization’ was part of the project for State- and nation-building by authoritarian means. Ataturk used to say: “I’ve seen women in some places who throw a cloth or a towel over their heads to hide their faces and, when men pass by, they turn their faces and move out of the way. What’s the meaning and significance of this sort of thing? Gentlemen! Can the mothers and daughters of a civilized nation resort to this kind of strange behaviour and return to barbarous times? This is a scene that brings ridicule for the nation. This problem has to be solved immediately.” How arrogant must a person be to describe half of his country’s population as barbarous? This problem remains unresolved to this day. In May 2007, the Turkish army threatened the country’s parliament and said that it would not, under any circumstances, allow a man to become president whose wife observed the Islamic hijab. Turkey’s Islamists respect the separation of the State and religion, they do not seek to implement the precepts of the shari’ah, and they approved all the laws relating to human rights and democracy which were endorsed by the EU in the years when they controlled the government and parliament. But Turkey’s army and Kemalists cannot tolerate the fact that Islamist politicians’ wives wear the hijab. Women do not own their own bodies; they have to present their bodies in a way that is in line with the commands of the Kemalist army. Here, the body is reduced to a product produced by power.

In order to solve this ‘problem’, Iran’s pseudo-modern, authoritarian government during Reza Shah’s time devised the policy of the forced discarding of the hijab. Paternalistic and authoritarian elites, who had the cures to all of humanity’s ills in their ideological pockets, decided to ‘liberate’ women, who still did not have the right to vote and whose opinion no one ever asked, and to grant them ‘equality’. The radicals in the Islamic Republic, too, with the assistance of the oil-funded State and in their own way, are trying to ‘elevate women’s dignity and standing’. Today, they can see the results of their liberating prescriptions but they do not learn anything from history and continue to resort to force and intimidation.

The women’s question, as defined by rulers in the era of the formation and development of pseudo-modern authoritarian governments, has been part of the discourse of power and projects to build States and nations ‘from above’. It is of no particular importance whether ‘the other’ in these projects for constructing an identity has been Islam, tradition or the West. The identity of these States has been constructed in the political arena without an organic connection with indigenous groups, interests and wishes. Creating ‘a woman in line with the ideology’ - whether the ideology is Bolshevism, secularism, Kemalism, Reza Shah’s brand of authoritarianism or political and fundamentalist Islam - has always been part of the State-building project of authoritarian elites. In all these projects, States distinguish between ‘good women’ and ‘bad women’. The discerning analyst can clearly see the power-gender relationship behind these structures.

Women’s liberation will be achieved when the plurality of women’s social identities is officially recognized and when the State - any State - stops imposing on women norms that suit the ruling elites and trying to create ‘a woman in line with the ideology’. Turkey’s Kemalists see women who observe the hijab as barbarous and Iran’s fundamentalists consider women who do not observe the hijab or who do so improperly as barbarous. But is barbarity anything other than a State that drives its citizens in a direction that they do not want to go by brute force and makes them wear clothes that they do not want to wear? We must accept human beings’ right to choose their own customs. Women must not be used as a means for achieving States and ideologies’ ends. Freedom and equality have to be accepted so that everyone can live their lives on the basis of their own understanding of the good. The modern individual is someone who creates him/herself as a work of art. Every work of art is different from every other work of art. Democracy means recognizing differences and the right to be different and to think differently.

Akbar Ganji, California, 14 May 2007