The situation for women in Iran is likely to get even worse.
A top Muslim cleric in Iran, Hojatolislam Gholam Reza Hassani (who is the representative of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei in eastern Azerbaijan) said on Wednesday that women in the country who do not wear the hijab should be killed.
“Women who do not respect the hijab and their husbands and fathers deserve to die. … I do not understand how these women who do not respect the hijab, 28 years after the birth of the Islamic Republic, are still alive,” he said.
Thousands of women in Iran have already been beaten this year for their “un-Islamic dress” such as wearing tight, short coats, and skimpy headscarves.
The women in Iran are being abused in at least five ways:
- The fact that their husbands and fathers apparently deserve to die for the ‘disobedience’ of ‘their women’ shows a medieval view that women are inferior to men and somehow meant to be the compliant property of their fathers and husbands.
- Their right to choose their own clothes and determine their own appearance is being denied. They are under constant restriction from the Islamic state with the implicit criticism of the choices that some would wish to make. Any psychotherapist will tell you that criticising another person’s appearance cuts very deep. It expresses disapproval of not just the appearance, but of the person herself (or himself).
- There is an implicit view that they must not express any form of sexuality. Human beings are fundamentally sexual beings. To deny people the right to express themselves are beings with a gender denies a huge part of who they are as human beings.
- There is an implicit view that women are the danger and must accept all the responsibility. If a woman gets raped it is her fault for being a woman. There is no recognition that men are able to resist sexual temptation and should do so. The solution to the problem is to remove any prospect of sexual temptation and blame the woman rather than encourage men to behave responsibly and to accept some responsibility for any attraction.
- The women are abused by the violence that is shown to them if they dare to not conform to the Islamic male agenda.
If women choose to wear the hijab as an expression of faith, let them do so. Any compulsion to do so, including threats of murder to themselves, their husbands, and their fathers is obscenely immoral and makes the whole notion of religious faith look totally ridiculous.
See also: Abandoning the Veil
Information Source: The National Secular Society
While such pronouncements do, as you suggest, presage danger for women in Iran (and for the relatives of women considered “guilty”), they do at least do one good thing: they clearly demonstrate the insanity of religious extremism. There can surely be few people around the world, whether they hold religious beliefs or not, who are not horrified and disgusted by such statements. If someone wanted to turn people away from his religion he could not do better than this man is doing.
How long are such stupidly evil people going to be allowed to continue spewing their verbal atrocities before moderate Muslims start to stand up and protest? We surely need to hear clear voices saying “This man does not speak for us. We repudiate him and all his works.”
Well said, ST.
Thinking Man - I agree with you 100% on this. The world community must stop excusing violence done in the name of religion. Religious tenets and practices must be held accountable to the same scrutiny as all other practices and beliefs. Unfortunately, US greed and adventurism have so badly tainted its stature that its words and actions are regarded suspiciously by everyone else. This is perfectly comprehensible. We’ve squandered our influence. I think it will fall to other enlightened nations to assume human rights leadership in the international arena for awhile. Does anyone care enough about it to take up the mantle?
Once again, this shows the appauling way in which many women are treated in this world. I completely agree with all of this argument for women’s rights here, particulary your last but one point - it must always be the women’s fault for exsisting-never the man to take any shred of responsibility. What would men say if women presecuted them, as much as they are violated and abused time and time again. We should give the men of these nations a taste of their own vile medicine and start killing them for not wearing something, or expressing a view.
This is all about the power of men. The religion, as horrible as this form takes is just another smoke screen for their real agenda: To repress the freedom, the rights, and dignity of women. Paralyse them with fear, for fear they just might what to make a choice and kick their men right out of the equation.
onethoughtfulwoman: I personally don’t see the religion issue as a smoke screen, but as part of the ideological justification for what they are doing. The religion aspect is a major part of the driving force.
[...] hard to imagine the humiliation felt by some women at the receiving end of the contempt of some of the male Muslim clerics in Saudi Arabia or Iran currently ruling what they should wear and publicly denigrating them if they fail to do so. On a [...]
All theocracies are oppressive. The Iranian Shiite regime is certainly revolting although no more so than the disgusting Wahabbi dictatorship of Saudi Arabia which gets far less attention. Fortunately the Taliban tyranny in Afghanistan was short lived, but the underlying attitudes which generated it remain very strong and extend into north western Pakistan. Very large areas of both countries are not subject to the rule of law of the central government and continue to carry out atrocities in the name of religion.
Israel is the most democratic state in the middle east and it makes pretensions to being a secular government, but in truth many of its laws are religious and non jews suffer significant discrimination.
To the extent that all theocracies are male dominated I agree that the oppression of women is one of their most important aspects. However, they chop off the hands and heads of men as well and if you are a gay man being executed by being thrown off a high building, male domination is probably not the foremost thought in your mind.
Religion and the state must always be kept separate. We should not pander to claptrap that insists people are entitled to their own culture where that ‘culture’ involves killing, maiming or imprisoning people becuse they are women or gay or whatever else. Some values should be universal.
[...] - Disse kvinder samt deres mænd og fædre må dø, sagde Hassani, som repræsenterer det iranske åndelige overhoved Ayatollah Khamenei i det østlige Azerbaijan. The women in Iran are being abused in at least five ways: [...]
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