“We hope that the society of women will arise from the ignorance and false sleep imposed upon them by the plunderers…shoulder to shoulder, we will be able to answer the cries of those who have become toys and guide women to their high station.” – Ruhollah Khomeini, 1981.

“In our society, women change rapidly. The tyranny of our times and the influence of institutions take women away from what she is.” – Ali Shariati, 1971.

Adopted in 1979 by the General Assembly of the United Nations, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) – the most far-reaching international commitment of governments working for gender equality – was the first international human-rights instrument to explicitly define all forms of discrimination against women as fundamental human-rights violations. As of April 2005, 180 states have ratified CEDAW, interpreting their treaty obligations in diverse ways ranging from reluctance to active incorporation. The year that the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted CEDAW coincides with the inception of an Islamic Republic in Iran. The Iranian revolution of 1978 – 1979, and the subsequent establishment of a so-called ‘Islamic Republic’ in Iran, resulted in a massive overhaul of the socio-political and cultural lives of Iranian women. In 1981 – two years after the Iranian revolution – the new government’s position was clearly stated at the 36th UN General Assembly session, when its representative affirmed that the UDHR represented a secular interpretation of the Judeo-Christian secular laws, which could not be implemented by Muslims. Reaffirmed on December 7, 1984, Iran’s representative to the United Nations stipulated that the new Iranian government “recognizes no legal tradition apart from Islamic law and that conventions, declarations and resolutions or decisions of international organizations, which were contrary to Islam, had no validity in the Islamic Republic of Iran” (http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/50/ares50-188.htm ).

As sociologist Haideh Moghissi aptly points out in her book, Populism and Feminism in Iran, the writings of ideologues “represent an attempt to re-assert Islamic values in a changing social atmosphere that inevitably involved the desegregation of women, and their growing presence in public places” (Moghissi, 63). In 1968, influential revolutionary ideologue, Ayatollah Mottahari, in his, The Question of the Veil, asks: Where would a man be more productive, where he is studying in all male institutions or where he is sitting next to a girl whose skirt reveals her thighs? Which man can do more work, he who is constantly exposed to arousing and exciting faces of made-up women in the street, bazaar, office, or factory, or he who does not have to face such sights?

According to Mottahari, by the mere token of women not being present in society, men become hard working geniuses! The crude references made to the adverse effect women’s presence has on men, is indicative of many of the misogynistic statements made by revolutionary ideologues; even the Islamic Republic’s first president, Bani Sadr, often referred to as being secular, believed that a distracting and corrupting sheen bounces off women’s hair and thus, should be covered. As Hammed Shahidian notes, “Mottahari was not the only Iranian Muslim ideologue who disparaged the Western notion of sexual equality” (Shahidian, 89). As a discussion of Ali Shariati’s Fatima is Fatima has shown, a lot of time, energy, and grey matter, was spent on not only peripheralizing women’s voices, but also ensuring that ‘proper’ male-defined boundaries were set for women’s so-called emancipation after the revolution, and their participation during the revolution.

Women and the Iranian Constitution In the preamble to its constitution, the Islamic Republic of Iran makes specific reference to women’s position in society by asserting: Through the creation of Islamic social infrastructures, all the elements of humanity that served the multifaceted foreign exploitation shall regain their true identity and human rights. As a part of this process, it is only natural that women should benefit from a particularly large augmentation of their rights, because of the greater oppression that they suffered under the old regime. This conflation of women’s status with colonialism and nationalism, is indicative of the central role that women’s socio-political status came to play in the state-building process, and the constitution’s assertion that women shall “regain their true identity”, speaks directly to the notion of the construction of a culturally authentic, meaning Islamic, Iranian woman. As discussed earlier, revolutionary ideologues, who were instrumental in drafting the new constitution, were particularly interested in the framing of women’s rights. Making particular reference to ‘the woman question’ in the constitution is but one example. Similarly, offered, as a guide at the end of this paper, is a chronological look at the immediate reining in of women’s rights in post-revolutionary Iran. This timeline is emblematic of the systematic and direct assault on women’s rights in the Iran of the Islamic Republic. It is important to note that Iran is not a signatory to CEDAW, and although the Iranian parliament passed a bill in the legislature to become a signatory to CEDAW in September 2000, the Iranian governments Council of Guardians, a twelve member unelected body responsible for ensuring that all laws passed in the legislature conform to Islam, vetoed the bill as not being in conformity with the principles of Islam. Under the section entitled, The Rights of the People (section III), the constitution of the Islamic Republic states: All citizens of the country, both men and women, equally enjoy the protection of the law and enjoy all human, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, in conformity with Islamic criteria (emphasis my own) – (see Article 20 of the Iranian constitution), in addition, is subsequently followed by a specific section entitled, Women’s Rights, which states:

The government must ensure the rights of women in all respects, in conformity with Islamic criteria, and accomplish the following goals: 1) create a favorable environment for the growth of woman’s personality and the restoration of her rights, both the material and intellectual; 2) the protection of mothers, particularly during pregnancy and child-rearing, and the protection of children without guardians; 3) establishing competent courts to protect and preserve the family; 4) the provision of special insurance for widows, aged women, and women without support; 5) the awarding of guardianship of children to worthy mothers, in order to protect the interests of the children, in the absence of a legal guardian – (see Article 21 of the Iranian Constitution). The two above-noted articles from the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran serve as specific examples of how women’s rights are framed within state policy and why a systemic change would be necessary if Iran were to become a signatory to CEDAW. However, the constitution of the Islamic Republic sets specific ‘rights’ aside for women, viewing women as being outside the polity; instituting a ‘separate but equal’ policy by laying out a descriptive and prescriptive order for women’s place in society. If Iran were currently a signatory to CEDAW, both its constitutional and penal laws would be in direct violation of the women’s convention. Particularly Articles 2, 3, and 15 of CEDAW

The after math of the Iranian Revolution, the inception of the Islamic Republic, and its immediate curtailing of women’s rights and freedoms, has left a bitter taste in the mouths of women, whose participation in the revolution, led to an unequal distribution of rights. In fact, women’s sexuality, their marital and reproductive rights, employment, education, citizenship, mobility, and clothing, have all come to be regulated by the Iranian state and its religio-governmental institutions.

This paper will address the relationship between Iranian women and the process of state building in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Concerned also with the writings of revolutionary ideologues from ‘the time’ of the revolution, this paper aims to move beyond the dominant narrative of a “tradition” versus “modernity” paradigm when analyzing the Iranian revolution, and will not engage in the debate about whether the Iranian revolution was Islamic in nature or not. I am avoiding this debate particularly because my findings have made it quite clear that depending on one’s theoretical perspective, the religious aspect of the revolution is either over-emphasized, or negated altogether. Moreover, although emphasis should not be based solely on Islamic revolutionary symbols and discourses in analyzing the Iranian revolution, by not studying Islam and its ever-present dominance of the Iranian state, and the theological / ideological underpinnings of the establishment of an Islamic Republic in Iran is intellectually precarious, and would be on par with trying to do a comprehensive analysis of the Inquisition, without focusing on the doctrinal justifications for it. Furthermore, this paper will analyze the revolutionary discursive through which women’s increased presence and participation in Iranian society, prior to the revolution, was viewed as an extension of a pervasive socio-cultural imperialism emanating from the proverbial West. In the decade preceding the Iranian Revolution of 1978 – 1979, revolutionary ideologues, like Ali Shariati, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, among others, wrote and spoke extensively about women’s increased presence in Iranian society. This became the framework for depicting the cultural demise and encroachment of Iran, by a perceived enemy from without: the West, and a constructed enemy from within: the immoral and undignified modern Iranian woman. Although this paper acknowledges the socio-political context in which the writings and lectures of various revolutionary ideologues was produced, meaning an acknowledgement of the fact that an alternative discourse to modernity was being constructed as a tool for mobilization against the authoritarian rule of the Pahlavi regime, it will not excuse the utilization and demonization of women as embodiments of this so-called socio-cultural malaise that Iran was suffering from in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Rather, this article will explore how although there were divergent views on governance post-Shah, and other seemingly conflicting ideologies of the various political groups involved in the revolution, they often concurred and re-enforced one another when it came to the question of women’s rights. As a result, this paper will not espouse any single form of feminism in analyzing the interconnectedness of religion, patriarchy and law in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Instead, in wanting to reflect the make-up of the CEDAW convention itself, which is inclusive of different feminist theoretical perspectives, this paper will encompass various forms of feminism and integrate them in its analysis of how women are deprived of de jure and de facto equality under a so-called Islamic system of governance in post-revolutionary Iran. As a result, an inter-disciplinary approach is vital in providing a comprehensive analysis of the ideological underpinnings of women’s systemic oppression in Iran. Although there is a proclivity to compartmentalize feminist theories into fixed categories when looking at women’s oppression, no single theoretical approach or method seems adequate. Through researching this topic, I became aware of the challenges faced by historians attempting to work with the elusive concepts of ‘gender’, ‘woman’, and ‘women’. While most historians would agree that ‘gender’ and ‘woman’ are socially constructed concepts, it is difficult to pin down complete definitions of these terms, not only because they are in a state of constant flux and political dispute, but also because of the enormous scope of history and lived experience they claim to incorporate and address. Looking at my own intellectual history, I can observe a distinct movement from the general to the specific, reflecting my current methodology in feminist historiography towards a more contextualized approach which stresses the different causes and experiences of ‘female oppression’, no longer understood as essentially the same phenomenon across cultures. To a certain extent, this reflects the movement from a rallying call to a more introspective period in feminist history. However, it also forces the question: is it at all possible to understand ‘women’ as a larger category when experiences of womanhood vary between and within cultures and political systems? Correspondingly, is ‘women’ a category worth preserving as definitions of ‘woman’ become increasingly complex? One important effect of this specialization is to force the historian to acknowledge and reconsider the assumptions and abstractions that may be limiting his or her analysis of the historical experiences of women. Feminist historian, Joan Scott, outlines a number of these traditional assumptions, including the essentialist arguments that root patriarchy in physical differences between the sexes or the orthodox Marxist insistence on a material explanation of gender inequality, both of which downplay or ignore complex psycho-social and cultural factors that resist inclusion in an overarching theory. A reconsideration of traditional assumptions must also lead to the reconsideration of white Western values, which have been purposely or inadvertently been applied to non-Western, or non-white subjects whose experiences resist integration into the larger designation of ‘women’ without additional qualifying information. Similarly, Chandra Mohanty criticizes the ideal of the ‘secular, liberated, Western woman’ that often emerges in writings on what she calls the ‘average Third world woman’, who is cast as unprogressive, traditional, ignorant and backward, in contrast (Mohanty, 69). Mohanty takes aim at universalist, cross-cultural notions of ‘women’ that assume they belong to a unified group with a coherent identity prior to social relations (Mohanty, 52, 56). To counteract this she proposes that “context-specific differentiated analysis” (Mohanty, 63) should be conducted from which effective political strategies can be generated. The specialization or contextualizing approach to ‘women’ causes a moment’s hesitation in my mind. While I agree that it provides an appropriate point of intervention for race, class, sexuality, and post-colonialist categories and anticipates insightful conclusions that may arise from these intersections, a movement towards greater specialization potentially fragments whatever collective power women might have as a trans-national group. The fragmentation of terminology and categories make it increasingly difficult for scholars and ‘ordinary’ women alike to effectively communicate with one another and pool resources at the political level in order to organize the effective local strategies that are needed. Within academia, it may serve to further obfuscate the term ‘woman’ and unsettle its relatively new place in historical inquiry. ‘Woman’ becomes ever more contested and complicated and cannot be understood without more and more footnotes. As Denise Riley says, “However the specifications of difference are elaborated, they still come to rest on ‘women’, and it is the isolation of this last which is in question.” In the last two decades feminist scholars, in particular, historians, have shown that gender is a noteworthy aspect, or dynamic site, of inquiry in politics and history. As feminist historian Janet Afary notes, the discipline of gender studies can be used in “defining the complex discourse on imperialism and nationalism as well as the uneasy relationship between secularism, modernity, and religion.” Although a comprehensive inquiry of this ‘uneasy’ relationship is outside the scope of this study, this paper argues that despite the obvious androcentric characteristics, and traditional negation of women’s stories or voices in Iranian historiography, women figured prominently in the discourse of various social movements. Cultural relativism is the view that all ethical truth is relative to a specified culture. According to cultural relativism, it is never true to say simply that a certain kind of behaviour is right or wrong; rather, it can only ever be true that a certain kind of behaviour is right or wrong relative to a specified society. The cultural relativist might thus be happy to endorse the statement that it is morally wrong to deny women equality in the work-place in modern America, but would not endorse the statement that it is morally wrong to deny women equality in the work-place. The latter statement implies the existence of an objective ethical standard of the kind that cultural relativism rejects. There are societies, the cultural relativist would say, where for historical and cultural reasons it is acceptable that women are limited in their freedom. The strength of cultural relativism is that allows us to hold fast to our moral intuitions without having to be judgmental about other societies that do not share those intuitions. If we reject cultural relativism then we face a difficulty: if we are to be consistent about our moral beliefs, then it seems that we ought to condemn those past societies that have not conformed to our moral code and perhaps even seek to impose our moral code on those present societies that do not already accept it. This, though, smacks of imperialism. Cultural relativism allows us to evade this difficulty. Meaning, our moral code applies only to our own society, so there is no pressure on us to hold others to our moral standards at all. On cultural relativism, we can say quite consistently that equality in the work-place is a moral necessity in our society but is inappropriate elsewhere around the globe. In an age where tolerance is increasingly being seen as the most important virtue of all, this can seem to be an attractive position. However, this so-called strength of cultural relativism, is also its weakness. Cultural relativism excuses us from judging the moral status of other cultures in cases where that seems inappropriate, but it also renders us powerless to judge the moral status of other cultures in cases where that seems necessary. Faced with a culture that deems slavery morally acceptable, it seems appropriate to judge that society to be morally inferior to our own. Faced with a culture that deems ethnic cleansing morally acceptable, it seems appropriate to condemn that society as morally abhorrent. In order to make such judgments as these, however, we need to be able to invoke an ethical standard that is not culturally relative. In order to make cross-cultural moral comparisons, we need cross-cultural moral standards, precisely the kind of moral standard that cultural relativism claims do not exist. Moreover, the model of ‘to each their own oppression’ runs the risk of perpetuating what Charlesworth and Chinkin refer to as a “fetishising of the particular” (2000, p55). This position is quite problematic because it speaks to an essentialist view of culture that grounds the absence of women’s rights in the Middle East as a by-product of an ontological and epistemological difference between cultures and societies. Likewise, legal feminist scholar and Middle Eastern historian, Ann Elizabeth Mayer, dissuades the use of a culturally relativist framework in the discussion of women’s rights by noting, “Cultural relativist proclivities mean that the reality of male domination and women’s oppression is obscured and that people can be persuaded that women’s status is merely an expression of cultural and religious traditions that outsiders are bound to respect.” Specifically, in her study, Islam, Human Rights, and Gender: Traditions and Politics (1999), Ann Elizabeth Mayer, deconstructs the notion of cultural authenticity and looks critically at the claims of religious legitimacy that various states make when denying women civil and political rights. Speaking against the use of polemics when looking at the various ways in which women are denied their rights in so-called Islamic states, Mayer asserts: Those in the West who imagine that there is a natural Western affinity for human rights and a corresponding Muslim antipathy towards human rights standards may be influenced by Muslim countries who assert that Islam has its own unique approach to human rights. Ignoring the vigorous clamour coming from Muslim societies for expanding women’s rights and freedoms, these Westerners may be persuaded by claims made like Iran and Saudi Arabia on behalf of an Islamic particularism that sets Muslim women apart and means that omen’s international human rights do not apply to them (1999, p.7) As this study has shown women were and continue to be at the centre of the debate over culture and authenticity in the Middle East. Yahya Sadowski speaks directly to this constructed binary by noting, “It is long past time for serious scholars to abandon the quest for mysterious “essences” that prevent democratization in the Middle East and turn to the matter-of-fact itemization of the forces that promote or retard this process” (Sadowski, 20). If we add the words women’s rights to Sadowski’s assertion, we will begin to acknowledge the various ideological, socio-historical, and political obstacles that women in the Middle East have had to contend with when working towards an improvement in their personal status.

This framing of women’s rights as a collective betterment for society, is often portrayed as a utilitarian project that is not based on the individual emancipation of women, but as a necessary step in the progress of the nation. It is important to note that feminist scholars and theologians work with the same texts as Islamists, but provide radically different interpretations of Islamic history. The scholarship of Muslim feminists is considered Islamic because the texts they draw upon are seen as Islam’s ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ history. Therefore, these feminist scholars are using a discourse of cultural authenticity which validates their work, firmly grounding them within the Islamic tradition. The obvious critique here would be that by choosing to adopt or adapt to a discourse of cultural authenticity, fundamentally negates the process of these scholars. By laying claim to an ‘untarnished’ or ‘authentic’ Islam, Muslim feminists are espousing a relativist attitude when advocating for women’s rights. Although some scholars have argued that the experiences of women in the Middle East are not homogenous and just too varied to be able to make socio-historical, cultural, or political links, others have argued for the necessity of crossing national borders and making the necessary associations that tie women’s struggles together. Whereas this study is not interested in pitting these two camps against one another, substantial focus should be paid to the various debates surrounding women’s rights in the Middle East. While acknowledging the forces of colonialism, imperialism, and orientalism, this paper has shown that despite their obvious differences, women’s bodies and personal status becomes a primary battleground for nationalist and Islamist ideologues, who believe that the dress, manner, mobility, education, and occupation of women were clear indicators of a pervasive social and cultural imperialism that had been corrupting society. In this equation, women ultimately became the barometers by which Western infringement was to be measured.

With regards to women’s rights, the discourse of cultural authenticity is deeply rooted in what Aziz al – Azmeh, in his article, The Discourse of Cultural Authenticity: Islamist Revivalism and Enlightenment Universalism, calls a “biological metaphor” (al-Azmeh, 42). Although al-Azmeh’s article deals explicitly with Islamist revivalism in the Arab world, and not women’s movements in the Middle East, the Islamist modernist projects of Egyptians, Muhammad Abduh and Qasim Amin are quite indicative of an appeal being made for the need to reform society (al-Azmeh, 43). Although Qasim Amin is traditionally known as a champion for women’s rights in Egypt, and throughout other Arab countries, Amin asserts in his Tahrir al – Mara that woman “undertakes her heavy load in all civilized countries where we see her giving birth to children, then fashioning them into men” (Amin, 131-132). Once again, women are reduced to their biological functions. For al-Azmeh, central to the notion of cultural authenticity is a romantic notion of history, which al-Azmeh asserts, “is consequently an essentialist discourse, much like the reverse it finds in Orientalism” (al-Azmeh, 42). This is certainly the case when one explores the writings of Islamic feminists whose framing of women’s rights does not diverge much from the works of Abduh and Amin. When speaking to the project of women’s liberation, Yazbeck Haddad notes, “…its most prominent advocates have been men who took up the cause of women, but found it necessary to convince others that the liberation of women was primarily in the interest of men since it produced better wives, homemakers, and mothers” This paper will offer a critical perspective of the dichotomies constructed surrounding the discourse of women’s rights in so-called Islamic countries, dichotomies such as, East / West, secular / religious, tradition / modernity. By using the example of post-revolutionary national laws in Iran, this paper also aims to analyze how the Islamic Republic has actively pursued a policy of Islamizing gender relations as a project of state-building and nation-building. Beginning with this conclusion, namely that the post-revolutionary government in Iran reconstructed national laws and penal codes in order that they may conform to a so-called “Islamic criteria” (see Article 20, 21 of the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran), this paper will also provide a discussion of how women’s personal status was/is implicated in this project. A broad coalition came together to topple Iran’s authoritarian monarchical system in 1979, and yet, although there were divergent views on governance post-monarchy, and other seemingly conflicting ideologies of the various political groups involved in the revolution, they often concurred and re-enforced one another when it came to the question of women’s rights. Similarly, in 1995, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) noted, “Ironically, what unites countries across many cultural, religious, ideological, political and economic divides is their common cause against the equality of women – in their right to travel, marry, divorce, acquire nationality, manage property, seek employment and inherit property.” This was certainly the case at the 1995 Beijing Women’s Conference when Vatican officials, delegates from the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Christian Evangelical groups in the United States, despite their religious differences, formed an alliance against women’s equality. Even the Islamic Republic’s first liberal Prime Minister, Mehdi Bazargan, who differed with the reactionary clerics on their role in governance concluded in a 1979 interview in French magazine Le Monde: “talking of absolute equality of the sexes is impossible. Nature did not want it either for the human race or for plants and animals.” By tracing the development of how Iranian women’s increased presence was vilified and utilized by Islamist intellectuals, the clerical class, and various leftist organizations, in order to develop a revolutionary, religio-nationalist, anti-imperial, Islamic discourse, it is not difficult to understand why a revolution, which was initially undertaken in a struggle for ‘freedom’, ‘independence’, and ‘equality’, achieved neither. In fact, nowhere is the quote by J. Dunn more applicable than in the case of women and the Iranian revolution: “All revolutions are supported by many who would not have supported them had they had a clear understanding of what the revolutions were in fact to bring about.”

As many scholars have noted (Mojab, Keddie, Azari, Moghissi, Tabari, Afkhami, Ferdows, Friedl, Shahidian, Yeganeh, Sanasarian, Betteridge) the rapid process of modernization in Iran, and the increase in women’s education, was coupled with changes in the personal status laws of women. All of the above-noted scholars have highlighted the rejection and condemnation by revolutionary ideologues, with respect to the changing gender roles that were taking place in Iran, and the particular advancements made by women under the Pahlavi regime came to occupy a prominent place within the development of an anti-monarchical / anti – Western discourse. As Janet Afary notes, referring to the accord that developed among the various revolutionary groups with regards to women’s role in society, in her article, Steering Between Scylla and Charybdis: Shifting Gender Roles in Twentieth Century Iran, “ultimately the convergence of these multiple discourses on the problematic of modernity in a nationalist coalition made the 1979 revolution possible – with hostility toward feminism forming one of the main pillars of the new alliance” (Afary, 29). Most of the literature also notes how the subject of women’s struggles for equality, was often associated with the autocratic Pahlavi regime. Meaning, despite the legal changes implemented in favour of women’s rights, because these changes took place under the Pahlavi monarchy, they were dismissed by various political organizations as ‘bourgeois’ and ‘decadent’, while modern Islamists, like Shariati, lewdly referred to them as merely “a liberation of bottoms.” Considering that every source that focuses exclusively on women and the Iranian revolution, regardless of theoretical perspectives, has overwhelmingly focused on the writings of Ali Shariati, for the purposes of this paper, an analysis of Shariati’s too often cited work, Fatima is Fatima (Fatemeh Fatemeh Ast), is necessary in order to illustrate how the discourse of cultural authenticity has hindered women’s autonomous movements for emancipation. Originally delivered as a lecture in 1971, during his time at the Hosseiniyeh Ershad (a seminary in Tehran), Shariati’s, Fatima is Fatima, begins with his concern for women’s traditional characteristics, which he asserts, have “been taken away from her until she is made into a creature ‘they want’, ‘they build’.” Shariati, while pointing out the need for, and lack of, women’s agency in deciding who she wants to be for herself, immediately proceeds to construct what he feels should serve as a tool for women’s emancipation. For Shariati, women’s liberation is akin to a natural disaster. He refers to it as a “crisis”, a “problem”, a “fire”, and a “flood” (Shariati, Muslim Women: Part One). Shariati operates in a binary world, where the weak and susceptible Iranian woman becomes a weapon of infiltration, which the West uses to pollute the East. Not only is Shariati critical of the West’s influence on the minds of women, he is also critical of traditional religious teachings on women, which he asserts is one of the reasons why women are so easily enamoured by the “decadence of the West”. For Shariati, “this is why the task of introducing the Prophet’s family, the task of the advertisement of religion and the study of the truths of Islam fall prone to the `failures of the old schools of religion’.” (Shariati, Fatima is Fatima). Shariati argues that once women have been exposed to the true teachings of Islam, and are told about the life of Fatima, they will no longer continue to be a lost hich va puch (null and void) creature. Shariati, with his constant warnings of adultery, corruption, and promiscuity, often reads like a person whose wife just left him. In fact, it was quite difficult to see beyond Shariati’s crude comments, moralistic meanderings, and constant use of polemics. In a study of Shariati, Adele Ferdows, in her article, Women and the Islamic Revolution, highlights Shariati’s shortcomings by noting that Shariati is both obsessed with the image of the Western woman as a “participant in and an object of exploitation by dominant male standards” (Ferdows, 287). In describing the Western woman, Shariati notes how her economic independence has led to her shirking her ‘family obligations and standards of behaviour.’ While Shariati, lauds women such as Angela Davis, and admonishes the Iranian media for not portraying the ‘real’ image of women in the West, he also abhors the modern woman who, according to him, “aspires toward the fulfillment of herself instead of her family” (Shariati, Fatima is Fatima). As Ferdows notes, “Shariati blames the failure of Western family structure on the sexual freedom of women” (Ferdows, 288) and two decades later the runner-up in Iran’s presidential elections last year declared – “equality does not take precedence over justice. One of the mistakes that Westerners make is to forget the difference in the stature, vitality, voice, development, muscular quality and physical strength of men and women which shows that men are stronger and more capable in all fields…men’s brains are larger…men incline toward reasoning and rationalism while women basically tend to be emotional…it is these differences that affect the delegation of rights and responsibilities” The insistence on a culturally authentic return to Self, or bazgasht, is/was seen as an important tool in combating the West, which is why Shariati found it imperative to shape women’s emancipation within the confines of a religious discourse. Like traditional clerics, Shariati also believed in the so-called inherent psychological and biological differences in men and women. For instance, while slandering the independent modern woman “who seeks pleasure”; Shariati explains how “many of her deep feelings have been taken away from her. Her hereditary feelings, which are other than the intellectual, have been removed” (Shariati, Fatima is Fatima). As noted before, although the dominant discourse surrounding nationalist movements in the Middle East are androcentric, meaning male-centred, women have figured prominently in that discourse without actively shaping it. Scholar Nira Yuval-Davis eloquently describes this ambiguity in Gender and Nation: Women usually have an ambivalent position within the collectivity. On the one hand, they often symbolize the collective unity, honour and raison d’être of specific national and ethnic projects, like going to war. On the other hand, however, they are often excluded from the collective ‘we’ of the body politic, and retain an object, rather than a subject position.

Whereas women are held as representative of the nation in its ideal form, they are too often denied equal status in what would be the nation in that ideal form. This ambiguity, or paradox of women’s central place in nationalist discourse, and at the same time the peripheralization of their demands and concerns are further illustrated in Suad Joseph’s article, Gender and Citizenship in Middle Eastern States. Focusing on the politicization of women, Joseph shows how women have, “been crucial in maintaining the boundaries of nations” (Joseph, 4). Joseph’s assertion that “the use of women – or more particularly their status and relations with others – in competing claims to modernity and tradition is further evidence of the symbolic centrality of women as markers of the nation”.

The “generation gap” is an important social tool for any repressive society. If the younger members of a community view the older members as contemptible or suspect or excess; they will never be able to join hands and examine the living memories of the community, nor ask the all important question, “Why?” This gives rise to a historical amnesia that keeps us working to invent the wheel every time we have to go to the store for bread. - Audre Lorde from The Masters Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House (1984) Solidarity is the politics which interests me. I am not a lover of theory, nor a worshipper of method. I believe that the claim made about the ‘natural’ inferiority of women has not confined itself to any specific religion, race, or region; patriarchy has unabatedly crossed borders, methodologies, and academic disciplines. It is imperative that the women’s rights movement and feminist pedagogy follow suit.