Women are angry with the state, of course. But they are also angry with the passive way men have accepted discrimination. Be strong! Fight harder! These are immediate messages summoned from old frustrations. Their courage and pain haunt me. We need Delacroix to paint them. We need President Obama to put engagement — still the right medium-term objective — on hold in their name. Islam has a lot to say about the rights of women; the mullahs of Qom have lots of training in how to say the opposite of what they said before. The revolution might have bent toward the women it fashioned. But it has stiffened against what it birthed, never wise.
