Jewels of Allah: The Untold Story of Women in Iran

by Nina Ansary

  12Howard, Inside Iran, 142–144; Rostami-Povey, “Feminist Contestations,” 59; Moghadam, Islamic Feminism, 219; Lichter, Muslim Women Reformers, 140; Shahidian, Women in Iran, 40–41; A. Najmabadi, “Feminism in an Islamic Republic,” in Transitions, Environments and Translations: Feminism in International Politics, eds. J. Scott, C. Kaplan, and D. Keates (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 390–399.

  13A. Najmabadi, “Feminism in an Islamic Republic,” in Transitions, Environments and Translations: Feminism in International Politics, eds. C. Scott Kaplan and D. Keates (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 71.

  14Afary, Sexual Politics, 320; Mir-Hosseini, “Stretching the Limits,” 285–309.

  15Vakili, Women and Politics, 105–106.

  16Zanan, June 1994, no. 18, cover; August 1994, no. 19, 68–72; November 2003, no. 104, 2–6; April 2006, no. 131, 65; April 2007, no. 143, 2–5; July 2007, no. 146, 23–24; October 2007, no. 149, 2–5; March 1995, no. 23, 46–55; February 1992, no. 2, 26–31; November 1994, no. 20, 66–67; August 2007, no. 147, 82–85.

  17Zanan, August 2007, no. 147, 82–84; February 1992, no. 1, 40–51; May 1998, no. 43, 4–10.

  18Zanan, July 1997, no. 35, 28–35.

  19Zanan, February 1994, no. 22, 36–38; November 1992, no. 8, 42–44; April 1994, no. 17, 18–20; December 1995, no. 27, 22–23.

  20Zanan, November 1992, no. 8, 42–44.

  21Zanan, April 1994, no. 17, 18.

  22Zanan, December 1995, no. 27, 22–23.

  23Zanan, February 1994, no. 22, 36.

  24J. Syfers, “Why I Want a Wife,” Ms. magazine, Spring 1972; “Why I Want a Wife,” (“Man Ham Zan Mikhaham”), Zanan, December 1999, no. 58, 44–45.

  25D. H. Currie, Girl Talk: Adolescent Magazines and Their Readers (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 56.

  26Currie, Girl Talk, 7.

  27J. J. Arnett, “Adolescents’ Uses of Media for Self-Socialization,” Journal of Youth and Adolescents 24, no. 5 (1995): 520–523; C. Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993); M. Pipher, Raising Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (New York: Riverhead Books, 1994); D. Gauntlett, Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 2008).

  28Arnett, “Adolescents’ Uses of Media,” 523; S. W. Bowling, T. S. Zimmerman and K. C. Daniels, “Empower: A Feminist Consciousness-Raising Curriculum for Adolescent Women,” Journal of Child and Adolescent Group Therapy 10, no. 1 (2000): 3-28.

  29Pipher, Raising Ophelia, 38–42.

  30N. H. Barazangi, “Self-Identity As a Form of Democratization,” in Democratization and Women’s Grassroots Movement, eds. M. Bystydzienski and J. Sekhon (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999), 146.

  31Moghadam, Islamic Feminism, 177; Mir-Hosseini, “Sexuality, Rights and Islam,” 214; Z. Mir-Hosseini, “The Conservative–Reformist Conflict over Women’s Rights in Iran,” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 16, no. 1 (Fall 2002): 37–53; F. Jahanbaksh, Islam, Democracy and Religious Modernism in Iran (1953–2000): From Bazargan to Soroush (Boston: Brill Leiden, 2001).

  32Vakili, Women and Politics (quotations appear on 106); Shahidian, Women in Iran, 35; Afary, Sexual Politics, 320; Mir-Hosseini, “Sexuality, Rights and Islam,” 204; A. Ashraf and A. Banuazizi, “Iran’s Tortuous Path Toward Islamic Liberalism,” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 15, no. 2 (Winter 2001}: 237–256.

  33S. Macleod, “The 2005 Time 100: The Lives and Ideals of the World’s Most Influential People,” Time, April 18, 2005.

  34N. Keddie, Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 250.

  35C. Kurzman, Liberal Islam (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 244; Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Gender, 218; F. Jahanbakhsh, “Religion and Political Discourse in Iran: Moving Towards Post-Fundamentalism,” Brown Journal of World Affairs IX, issue 2 (Winter/Spring 2002/2003): 243–254.

  36A. Soroush, M. Sadri, and A. Sadri, Reason, Freedom and Democracy in Islam: The Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

  37Afary, Sexual Politics, 320–321.

  38A. Soroush, “The Receipt and Expansion of Women’s Rights,” Zanan, January 2000, (Qabz va Bast-e Hoquq-e Zanan), no. 59, 32–38.

  39Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Gender, 215.

  40F. Vahdat, “Post-Revolutionary Islamic Discourses on Modernity in Iran: Expansion and Contradiction of Human Subjectivity,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 35 (2003): 599–631.

  41Fatma Saqir, “Islam Is a Religion, Not a Political Agenda,” interview with Mohammad Mujtahid Shabestari, en.qantara.de, July 11, 2008.

  42R. Wright, Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East (US: Penguin Press, 2008), 296.

  43“A Scholar and Dissident,” The Chronicle: The Independent Daily at Duke University, December 2, 2011.

  44R. Eftekhari, “Zanan: Trials and Successes of a Feminist Magazine in Iran,” in Middle Eastern Women on the Move: Openings for and the Constraints on Women’s Political Participation in the Middle East, proceedings of a conference of the Middle East Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, October 2 and 3, 2001, published 2003, 18.

  45Mir-Hosseini, “Stretching the Limits,” 296.

  46Ibid.

  47Eftekhari, “Zanan: Trials and Success,” 17–18.

  48Halper, “Law and Women’s Agency,” 136; Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Gender, 24.

  49Halper, “Law and Women’s Agency,” 138.

  50Mehrangiz Kar, http://www.mehrangizkar.net/english/biography.php.

  51Kar, “Women’s Strategies, “178–193.

  52Ibid., 199.

  53Ibid., 191–194.

  54Ibid., 193.

  55Ibid., 194.

  56Mir-Hosseini, “Stretching the Limits,” 296.

  57Kar, “Stretching the Limits,” 194–195.

  58Shahidian, Women in Iran, 41.

  59Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Gender, 248–249.

  60Lichter, Muslim Women Reformers, 199.

  61Afary, Sexual Politics, 48–49.

  62Khiabany and Sreberny, “Women’s Press,” 31.

  63Sedghi, Women and Politics in Iran, 260–269.

  64Ibid., 259.

  65Lichter, Muslim Women Reformers; Afary, Sexual Politics; Vakili, Women and Politics.

  66“Inside Iran: Interview with Zanan Magazine’s Editor Shahla Sherkat,” Asharq al-Awsat, May 11, 2007.

  67S. Sherkat, “Telling the Stories of Iranian Women’s Lives,” Neiman Report, Neiman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard University, Nov. 2009.

  68Lichter, Muslim Women Reformers, 140.

  69Vakili, Women and Politics, 189.

  70Sciolino, Persian Mirrors, 121.

  71Lichter, Muslim Women Reformers, 198.

  72Interview with Mohammad Khatami, Zanan, no. 34, May 1997, 2–5.

  73Z. Mir-Hosseini, “The Conservative-Reformist Conflict over Women’s Rights,” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 16, no. 1 (Fall 2002): 37–53 (quotation appears on 38).

  74Sedghi, Women and Politics in Iran, 268.

  75“Shutting Down Zanan,” New York Times, February 7, 2008; “Iran: Closure of Women’s Rights Publication Zanan,” Frontline, February 5, 2008; Lichter, Muslim Women Reformers, 197–198.

  76Vakili, Women and Politics, 189.

  77F. Farhi, “The Attempted Silencing of Zanan,” Informed Comment: Global Affairs (blog), February 1, 2008.

  78S. Sherkat, “Telling the Stories of Iranian Women’s Lives,” Neiman Report.

  79Howard, Inside Iran, 143.

  80Ibid.

  81Ibid., 144–145.

  82Sedghi, Women and Politics in Iran, 268; Lichter, Women and Politics in Iran, 196; Khiabany, Blogistan, 100.

  83Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Gender, xv; M. Khatami, Islam, Liberty and Development (Global Academic Publishing, 1998), 82.

&nbs
p; CHAPTER Seven

  1Lichter, Muslim Women Reformers, 148–149.

  2Euronews, interview with Mansoureh Shojaee, July 7, 2013, http://www.euronews.com/2013/06/07/iran-s-women-discriminated-against-by-law/.

  3J. Estrim, “Your Veil Is a Battleground,” interview with Kiana Hayeri, New York Times, May 29, 2012, http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/your-veil-is-a-battleground/?_r=0.

  4E. Sciolino, “Daughter of the Revolution Fights the Veil,” New York Times, April 2, 2003.

  5G. Smythe, “Iran’s Khatami Strikes Back,” Guardian, September 20, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2013/sep/20/iran-khatami-revenge-rouhani-victory.

  6“Iran Leader Introduces Plan to Encourage Population Growth by Paying Families,” New York Times, July 27, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/world/middleeast/28iran.html.

  7“Ahmadinejad Offers Iranian Couples Cash to Have Babies,” BBC News, July 28, 2010.

  8“In a Death Seen Around the World: A Symbol of Iranian Protest,” New York Times, June 22, 2009.

  9Abbas Milani, “The Green Movement,” The Iran Primer, United States Institute of Peace, http://iranprimer.usip.org/resource/green-movement.

  10Jenny Cleveson, “Interview with Parvin Ardalan,” New Internationalist magazine, Issue 440, March 1, 2011, http://newint.org/columns/makingwaves/2011/03/01/interview-parvin-ardalan/.

  11Haleh Esfandiari, “The Women’s Movement” The Iran Primer, United States Institute of Peace. http://iranprimer.usip.org/resource/womens-movement.

  12Shirin Ebadi, Campaign for Equality, October 15, 2006, http://nobelwomensinitiative.org/2006/10/campaign-for-equality/.

  13“One Million Signatures: The Battle for Gender Equality in Iran,” https://tavaana.org/en/content/one-million-signatures-battle-gender-equality-iran

  14Sussan Tahmasebi, “The One Million Signatures Campaign: An Effort Born on the Streets,” International Civil Society Action Network, September 14, 2013, http://www.icanpeacework.org/the-one-million-signatures-campaign-an-effort-born-on-the-streets/.

  15“Iran’s Banned Press Turns to the Net,” BBC News, August 9, 2002.

  16Khiabany, Blogistan, 75.

  17Lichter, Modern Muslim Reformers, 139; Nouraie-Simone, “Wings of Freedom,” 69; Khiabany, Blogistan, 51–107.

  18Lichter, Modern Muslim Reformers, 151; Azadeh Moaveni, “Slamming Its Doors on the World,” Time, January 15, 2006.

  19“Women driven out of social life in southern port city,” December 6, 2006, Kanoun-e Zanan website, Women’s UN Report Network, http://www.wunrn.com/.

  20Lichter, Modern Muslim Reformers, 139.

  21Jila Baniyaghoob, “A Letter of Hope, Courage and Love from Evin to Rajai Shahr Prison,” October 17, 2012, http://we-change.org/site/english/spip.php?article962.

  22Nouraie-Simone, “Wings of Freedom,” 62–80.

  23Khiabany, Blogistan, 5, 76.

  24Kar, “Standing on Shifting Ground,” 219; Povey and Povey, eds., Women, Power, and Politics, 55.

  25S. Bakhtavar, Iran: The Green Movement (US: Parsa Enterprises, 2010), 206.

  26“Iran’s Youth: The Protests Are Not Over,” US Institute of Peace, Peace Brief, No. 36, June 8, 2010.

  27Bakhtavar, Iran: The Green Movement, 9–10.

  28“Iran’s Youth: The Protests are Not Over,” U.S. Institute of Peace, Peace Brief, No. 36, June 8, 2010, 3; Bakhtavar, Iran: The Green Movement, 47–48.

  29Ali Samadi Ahadi and Oliver Stoltz, The Green Wave, 2010 documentary film on Iran’s 2010 Green Revolution, directed by Ali Samadi Ahadi, 2010.

  30“Mission and History,” Tavaana: E-Learning Institute for Iranian Civil Society, tavaana.org. https://tavaana.org/en/content/mission-history-0.

  31Erin Banco, “Iran’s Internet Repression Draws Yet Another Division Between Hardliners and Rouhani Supporters As Arrests Increase,” International Business Times, December 6, 2014, http://www.ibtimes.com/irans-internet-repression-draws-yet-another-division-between-hardliners-rouhani-1736825.

  32“Iran Protest Biggest Since Revolution,” Washington Times, June 16, 2009; “Post-Election Clampdown,” BBC News, June 15, 2009; “Iran Continues to Crack Down on Women’s Rights Advocates,” Ms. magazine, Winter 2010.

  33Khiabany, Blogistan, 1; “Iranian Women Protesters Sentenced to Jail,” Reuters Press, April 18, 2007.

  34S. Sayyati, “Parvin Ardalan Wins the Olof Palme 2007 Award,” Payvand Iran News, February 14, 2008.

  35“Women’s Rights Activist Missing in Iran,” Guardian, June 22, 2011; M. Sahim, Frontline Tehran Bureau, June 30, 2011 (source of the quotation).

  362007 Interview with Tahmineh Milani posted on YouTube.

  37“Faezeh Rafsanjani: Prison Was the Best Time of My Life,” Iran Pulse, August 19, 2013, http://iranpulse.al-monitor.com/index.php/2013/08/2637/faezeh-rafsanjani-prison-was-the-best-time-of-my-life/.

  38J. Baniyaghoob, Women of Evin: Ward 209 (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2013), 40.

  39Ibid., 41.

  40Khiabany and Sreberny, “Women’s Press,” 35.

  41Ibid, 36.

  42L. Farhadpour, “Women, Gender Roles and Journalism in Iran,” (presentation, Development Studies Association, Women and Development Study Group, York University, UK, May 6, 2006, 6).

  43L. Gemholtz and F. Sanei, “Iran’s Islamicisation Program Threatens Civil Society,” Public Service Europe, October, 5, 2012.

  44Ibid.

  45Ibid.

  46Afary, Sexual Politics; P. Mahdavi, Iran’s Sexual Revolution: Passionate Uprisings (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).

  47Afary, Sexual Politics, 322–337; Mahdavi, Iran’s Sexual Revolution, 36.

  48Afary, Sexual Politics, 322.

  49“Throwing off the covers: An official report blows the lid off the secret world of sex,” The Economist, August 9, 2014, http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21611117-official-report-blows-lid-secret-world-sex-throwing.

  50“Iran’s Persecution of Gay Community Revealed,” Guardian, May 17, 2012.

  51Ibid.

  52“Iran Curtails Female Education,” interview with Haleh Esfandiari, U.S. Institute of Peace, August 20, 2012.

  53Ibid., 33–35; D. Bagchi and D. Steinmetz, The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

  54R. Wright, “An Iranian Luther Shakes the Foundations of Islam,” Guardian, February 1, 1995; R. Wright “Islam and Liberal Democracy: Two Visions of Reformation,” Journal of Democracy 7, no. 2 (1996): 64–75.

  55“Who Wrote the Koran?” New York Times, December 5, 2008.

  56Interview with Mohsen Kadivar in the 2010 documentary The Green Wave.

  57P. Fritzsche, Nietzsche and the Death of God: Selected Writings (Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007), 2; C. Lindberg, The European Reformations, 2nd edition (U.K: Blackwell Publishing, 2004); J. Dillenberger, ed. Martin Luther: Selections from his Writings (New York: Anchor Books, 1962).

  58C. Kurzman and M. Browers, “Introduction: Comparing Reformations,” in An Islamic Reformation?, eds. M. Browers and C. Kurzman (New York and London: Lexington Books, 2004), 6.

  59Rex Welshon, The Philosophy of Nietzsche (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004), 40.

  60F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2006), Section 125, 90–91.

  61New World Encyclopedia, http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Death_of_God.

  62Ibid.

  63P. Van Buren, The Burden of Freedom: Americans and the God of Israel (New York: Seabury Press, 1976), 976, 56; R. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz: History, Theology, and Contemporary Judaism, 2nd edition (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966), 293–294

  64Mohammad Khatami, quoted in A. Bayat, Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 85.

  65Ibid., 34, 84, 93

  66Kar, “Women’s Strategies,” 194–196.

  67
Amin, Making of the Modern Iranian Woman, 246.

  68Khatami’s oft-quoted claim, cited in The Intellectual Bases of the Khatami Phenomenon in Iran (New York: Middle East Institute, Columbia University, 1999), 7.

  69H. Moghissi, Populism and Feminism in Iran (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 183.

  70Saeed Kamali Dehghan, “Iranian Media Banned from Mentioning Former President Mohammad Khatami,” Guardian, February 17, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/17/iranian-media-banned-from-mentioning-mohammad-khatami.

  71An abridged version to Karl Marx’s infamous proverb, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opiate of the masses.” In “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” K. Marx, first published in Deutsch-Französiche Jahrbücher 7 and 10, February 1844.

  The Book Cover Artist

  Born in Ahwaz, Iran in 1985, Morteza Pourhosseini has been the recipient of numerous accolades and awards, and his paintings have sold at Sotheby’s London auction house and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

  A child of the revolution who has never left Iran, Pourhosseini courageously expresses the denigration of women in Iran today and captures the foundational precepts of a patriarchal order enshrined since the ascension of the Safavid Dynasty (1501-1722) and the declaration of Shi’ite Islam as the official state religion.

  The dagger, emblematic of this sixteenth-century ruling dynasty and their doctrinal justification for women’s diminished capacity, is a metaphor whose ripple effects continue to contaminate the soul of Iran.

  About the Author

  Born in Tehran, Iran, Nina Ansary left her country of birth at the onset of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and has not returned since. Growing up in New York City, she received her BA in Sociology from Barnard College and her MA in Middle Eastern Studies from Columbia University. Most recently, Ansary completed her doctoral studies at Columbia University, earning a Ph.D. in history. Inspired by her scholarly journey into the feminist movement in post-revolutionary Iran, she seeks to rectify the stereotypical assumptions and the often misunderstood story of women in Iran today.