The Ayatollah’s Feminist Streak

How soon the BBC forgets…

Execution of a teenage girl

On 15 August, 2004, Atefah Sahaaleh was hanged in a public square in the Iranian city of Neka.

Her death sentence was imposed for “crimes against chastity”.

The state-run newspaper accused her of adultery and described her as 22 years old.

But she was not married – and she was just 16.

In a town like Neka, heavily under the control of religious authorities, Atefah – often seen wandering around on her own – was conspicuous.

It was just a matter of time before she came to the attention of the “moral police”, a branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, whose job it is to enforce the Islamic code of behaviour on Iran’s streets.

Secret relationship

Being stopped or arrested by the moral police is a fact of life for many Iranian teenagers.

Previously arrested for attending a party and being alone in a car with a boy, Atefah received her first sentence for “crimes against chastity” when she was just 13.

Although the exact nature of the crime is unknown, she spent a short time in prison and received 100 lashes.

The Persian Constitutional Revolution

Iranian women played a significant role in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905–11, which became a turning point in their lives. They participated in large numbers in public affairs and held important positions in journalism and in schools and associations that flourished from 1911 to 1924.^[1] Prominent Iranian women who played a vital part in the revolution include Bibi Khatoon Astarabadi, Noor-ol-Hoda Mangeneh, Mohtaram Eskandari, Sediqeh Dowlatabadi, and Qamar ol-Molouk Vaziri.

Shah’s era

The shah’s government began its “White Revolution” in 1962 and ratified important women’s rights measures, including suffrage and the Family Protection Law of 1967, later amended more heavily in favor of women in 1975, which ended extrajudicial divorce and restricted polygamy.^[3][4] It also raised the minimum age of marriage of girls to 18 that had been 13-15.

Women and the Iranian Revolution

Women participated heavily in the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that toppled the shah.

Not withstanding this, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini severely curtailed rights that women had become accustomed to under the shah.^[5] Within months of the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the 1967 Family Protection Law was repealed; female government workers were forced to observe Islamic dress code; women were barred from becoming judges; beaches and sports were sex-segregated; the legal age of marriage for girls was reduced to 9 (later raised to 13); and married women were barred from attending regular schools.

Almost immediately women protested these policies.^[5][8] The Islamic revolution is ideologically committed to inequality for women in inheritance and other areas of the civil code; and especially committed to segregation of the sexes. Many places, from “schoolrooms to ski slopes to public buses”, are strictly segregated.

The BBC is right that women in Iran have more access to education now but that comes not from the ‘Revolution’ but from reforms to the regime of the Revolution.

The BBC is being disengenuous here and is trying to paint the Islamic Revolution as a glorious thing for women when it wasn’t.  Previous eras provided just as much momentum for women’s rights if not more…and the Shah’s regime was not merely a ‘corrupt and brutal regime’ as the BBC painted it….and it’s not as if the present regime is any better.

How happy is this woman to be under the protection of the Islamic Republic as she is about to be stoned to death for adultery?

And what about gay rights?