Overload of injustice
As Iran marks the 20th anniversary of a revolution that set women
back a century, an Iranian scholar has hope that the regimes' excesses
will backfire.
By Azar Nafisi
02/11/1999
Star-Tribune
Newspaper of the Twin Cities Mpls.-St. Paul
I would like to begin with a painting. It is Edgar Degas' "Dancers
Practicing at the Bar," as reproduced in an art book recently published
in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The book gives an explanation of Degas'
placement of the ballerinas: "The two major forms are crowded into
the upper right quadrant of the painting, leaving the rest of the canvas
as open space."
So far, everything seems normal. But, like most things in Iran today,
it is not. Upon closer inspection, there is something disturbingly wrong
with the accompanying picture: The ballerinas, you see, have been airbrushed
out. There is only an empty space, the floor, the blank wall and the bar.
Like so many other images of women in Iran, the ballerinas have been censored.
But the irony is that, by their absence, the dancers are rendered glaringly
present. The censors have only made them the focus of our attention. In
this way, Degas' painting is emblematic of a basic paradox of life in
Iran on the 20th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
On the one hand, the ruling Islamic regime has succeeded in completely
repressing Iranian women. Women are forbidden to go out in public unless
they are covered by clothing that conceals everything but their hands and
faces. All government institutions, universities and airports have separate
entrances for women, where they are searched for lipstick and other weapons
of mass destruction. No infraction is too small to escape notice. At the
university where I used to teach, one woman was penalized for "laughter
of a giggling kind."
Yet, while these measures are meant to render women invisible, they
are making women tremendously visible and powerful. The regime, by trying
to control and shape every aspect of women's lives and by staking its legitimacy
on the Iranian people's supposed desire for this control, has unwittingly
handed women a powerful weapon: Every private act or gesture in defiance
of official rules is now a strong political statement. And because the
regulation of women's lives intrudes on the private lives of men as well
(whose every interaction with women is closely governed), the regime has
alienated not just women but many men who initially supported the revolution.
Western ignorance
This tension between the Islamic ruling elite and Iranian society at
large has been vastly underestimated by Western observers of Iran. In part
this is because, over the past 20 years, American analysts and academics
as well as the Iranian exile community have had little or no access to
Iran. They have relied unduly on the image presented by Iran's ruling clerics.
That image is one of increased openness - as symbolized by the election
of the moderate cleric Muhammad Khatami to the presidency in 1997. Recently,
for example, CNN cheerfully informed us that, after 20 years, the Islamic
Republic has begun to show Hollywood movies. What CNN failed to mention
was that Iranian television's version of, for example, "Mary Poppins,"
showed less than 45 minutes of the actual film. All portions featuring
women dancing or singing were cut out and instead described by an Iranian
narrator.
Meanwhile, even as the regime purports to have softened its hostile
stance toward the United States, it has not softened the punishment meted
out to Iranians who dare show an interest in American culture. Soon after
he was appointed, Khatami's new education minister issued a directive forbidding
students to bring material bearing the Latin alphabet or other "decadent
Western symbols" to class.
These are just mild examples of the many ways in which the "new
openness" that characterizes Khatami's rule has been accompanied
by increased repression. The brief spring that followed his victory - during
which freedom of speech flourished in public demonstrations and new newspapers
- ended with an abrupt crackdown. The government banned most of the new
papers and harassed or jailed their editors (they have since been released.)
Many of the progressive clergymen who took advantage of the opening to
protest the current legal system were also arrested.
The parliament has passed two of the most reactionary laws on women
in the republic's history. The first requires that all medical facilities
be segregated by sex. The second effectively bans publication of women's
pictures on the cover of magazines as well as any form of writing that
"creates conflict between the sexes and is opposed to the Islamic
laws."
In the fall, two nationalist opposition leaders, Dariush Foruhar and
his wife, Parvaneh, were murdered, and three prominent writers disappeared.
All three were later found dead. Many Iranians were outraged, and tens
of thousands attended the Foruhars' funeral in a tacit protest.
To the extent that the Western media have taken note of such incidents,
they have mainly cast them as the symptoms of a struggle between the moderate
Khatami and his reactionary fellow clerics. The media portray acts of repression
as measures taken by the hard-liners against Khatami - as if he, and not
the people who were murdered or oppressed, were the real victim.
This simplistic portrayal of Khatami vs. the hard-liners misrepresents
the situation in Iran. Khatami does not represent the opposition in Iran
- and he cannot. True, in order to win a popular mandate he had to present
an agenda for tearing down some of the fundamental pillars of the Islamic
Republic. But to even be eligible for election he had to have impeccable
political and religious credentials. In other words, he had to be, and
clearly is, committed to upholding the very ideology his constituents so
vehemently oppose.
Khatami's tenure has revealed the key dilemma facing the Islamic regime.
To maintain the people's support, the government must reform, but it cannot
reform without negating itself. The result has been a kind of chaos. One
day a new freedom is granted; the next day an old freedom is rescinded.
The struggle is not just between Khatami and the reactionary clerics,
but between the people of Iran and all representatives of the government.
And at the center of this struggle is the battle over women's rights.
Memory of a martyr
A second image comes to mind, a woman from the past, Dr. Farokhroo Parsa.
Like the ballerina, her presence is felt through her absence.
Parsa had given up her medical practice to become principal of the girls'
school in Tehran I attended as a teenager. Slowly her pudgy, stern face
looms before me, just as it did when she used to stand outside the school
inspecting the students as we entered the building. Her smile was always
accompanied by the shadow of a frown, as if she were afraid that we would
take advantage of that smile and betray the vision she had created for
her school. That vision, her life's goal, was for us, her girls, to be
truly educated.
Under the shah, Parsa rose to become one of the first Iranian women
to be elected to the Iranian parliament, and then, in 1968, she became
Iran's first female cabinet minister, in charge of higher education. In
that post she tried not only to raise the quality of education but also
to purge the school textbooks of sexist images of women. When the shah
was ousted in 1979 by a diverse group of opposition figures that included
Muslim clerics, leftists and nationalists, Parsa was one of the many high
functionaries of the previous government whom the revolutionaries summarily
tried and executed.
Since then, time and again, I have tried to imagine her moment of death.
But, while I can see her living face with its smile and frown, I cannot
envision her features at the specific moment when that smile and frown
forever disappeared. Could she have divined how, not long afterward, her
students and her students' students would also be made shapeless and invisible
not in death but in life?
For this, on a broader scale, is precisely what the clerics have done
to all Iranian women. Almost immediately upon seizing power, Ayatollah
Khomeini began taking back women's hard-won rights. He justified his actions
by claiming that he was actually restoring women's dignity and rescuing
them from the degrading and dangerous ideas that been imposed on them by
Western imperialists and their agents, among which he included the shah.
In making this claim, the Islamic regime not only robbed Iran's women
of their rights; it robbed them of their history. For the advent of women's
liberation in Iran was the result of a homegrown struggle on the part of
Iranian women themselves for the creation of a modern nation, a fight that
reached back more than a century.
Leafing through the books about women's movements of the early 20th
century, one is amazed at their members' courage and daring. So many names
and images crowd the pages. I pick one at random: Sediqeh Dowlatabadi,
daughter of a learned and religious man from an old and highly respected
family, who was the editor of a monthly journal for women. In the 1910s
she was beaten and detained for three months for establishing a girls'
school. One can only guess the degree of her rage and resentment against
her adversaries by her will, in which she proclaimed: "I will never
forgive women who visit my grave veiled."
It was only appropriate that those who murdered Parsa should also not
tolerate Dowlatabadi, even in her death. In August 1980, Islamic vigilantes
demolished her tomb and the tombs of her father and brother who, although
men of religion, had supported her activities.
But over the ensuing years, the modernizers gained ground. By 1979,
women were active in all areas of life in Iran. The number of girls attending
schools was on the rise. The number of female candidates for universities
had risen sevenfold during the first half of the 1970s. Women were encouraged
to participate in areas normally closed to them through a quota system
that gave preferential treatment to eligible girls. Women were scholars,
police officers, judges, pilots, and engineers - active in every field
except the clergy.
Many-hued protest
Another image surfaces - this one a photograph that appeared in an American
magazine; I can't remember which one. It was taken on a snowy day in
March 1979 and shows thousands of shouting women massed into one of Tehran's
wide avenues. Their expressions are arresting, but what draws my attention
is how, in contrast to today's pictures of women in Iran - depressing images
of drab figures cloaked in black cloth - this photograph is filled with
color. The women are dressed in vibrant reds, bright blues, almost as
if they had tried to make themselves stand out as much as possible. On
that March day, they had gathered to express their resistance to - and
their outrage at - Khomeini's attempt to make them invisible.
Some days earlier, the ayatollah had launched the first phase of his
crackdown on women's rights. First, he had announced the annulment of
the Family Protection Law that had, since 1967, helped women work outside
the home and given them more rights in their marriages. In its place the
traditional Islamic law, known as Sharia, would apply. In one fell swoop
the ayatollah had set Iran back nearly a century.
Under the new system, the age of consent for girls has been changed
from 18 to 9. Yet no woman no matter what age can marry for the first time
without the consent of her father, and no married woman can leave the country
without her husband's written and notarized consent. Adultery is punishable
by stoning. On the witness stand it takes the testimony of two women to
equal that of one man. If a Muslim man kills a Muslim woman and is then
sentenced to death, her family must first pay him compensation for his
life.
As if all this were not enough, Khomeini also announced the reimposition
of the veil, decreeing that no woman could go to work unless she was fully
covered. Later, his regime prohibited women from shopping without a veil.
By the early '80s, and after much violence, the regime had succeeded in
making the veil the uniform of all Iranian women.
Even as it enabled the regime to consolidate its control over every
aspect of its subjects' lives, this act firmly established the separation
between the regime and the Iranian population. To implement its new laws,
the regime created vice squads that patrol the cities on the lookout for
any citizen guilty of a "moral offense." The guards are allowed
to raid not just public places but private homes, in search of alcoholic
drinks, "decadent" music or videos, people playing cards, sexually
mixed parties or unveiled women.
Ordinary Iranian citizens - both men and women - began to feel the presence
and intervention of the state in their most private daily affairs. These
officers were not there to arrest criminals who threatened the lives or
safety of the populace; they were there to control the populace, to take
people away, and to flog and imprison them.
Youthful rebels
The government had claimed that only a handful of "Westernized"
women had opposed its laws, but now, 20 years after the revolution, its
most outspoken and daring opponents are the children of that revolution.
The suppression of culture in the name of defending against the West's
"cultural invasion" has made these youths almost obsessed with
the culture they are being deprived of.
Young girls have turned the veil into an instrument of protest. They
wear it in attractive and provocative ways. They leave part of their hair
showing from under their scarves or allow colorful clothing to show underneath
their uniforms. They walk in a defiant manner. And in doing so they have
become a constant reminder to the ruling elite that it is fighting a losing
battle.
In fact, there is an almost artistic symmetry to the way Iranian women
at the end of the 20th century, as at its beginning, are at the center
of the larger struggle for the creation of an open and pluralistic society
in Iran. The future twists and turns of this struggle are uncertain, but
of one thing I am sure: A time will come when the Degas ballerinas return
to their rightful place.
- Azar Nafisi, a former professor of English at the University of
Tehran, is a visiting professor at the Johns Hopkins University School
of Advanced International Studies. A longer version of this article first
appeared in the New Republic.
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