The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution Page 14
On the other side of the issue, some writers blame Islam for having burdened women with restrictions and humiliations that supposedly did not exist in pre-Islamic society. This view is also incorrect. In fact, one could argue that Islam on balance improved the status of women, though without giving them the full legal equality that the modern world demands. What is certain is that Muhammad was no misogynist. He is quoted as having said: “Three things I enjoy above all: Women, perfumes, and daily prayers!” Whether or not this quotation is authentic, we know that Muhammad enjoyed the company of women; he married twenty-nine of them, and according to his biographers he always treated them with kindness and respect.
The Koran does not offer any emphatic, unchangeable rules regarding the status of women. To be sure, it assumes that society will retain a patriarchal structure in which women are deprived of many rights and allowed only a secondary role. In this respect, the Koran reports on things as they were at the time; it does not portray an ideal state of affairs.
Virtually all of the Koran’s specific positions regarding the status of women are included in the sura of al-Ahzab (the parties). Here we learn about rules of marriage and divorce.
O, believers! When you marry believing women
and then divorce them before you’ve touched them,
you have no period to reckon against them;
so make provision for them, and set them free
with kindness.
O Prophet! We have made lawful for you
Thy wives whom thou hast given their dowers
And what your right hand owns, spoils of war
That God has given you, and the daughters of
your uncles paternal and your aunts paternal,
Your uncles maternal and your aunts maternal who
Have emigrated with you; any woman believer,
If she gives herself to the Prophet and if the
Prophet desires to take her in marriage for you
Exclusively, apart from other believers—
We know what we have imposed on them
Concerning their wives and what their right hand owns
That there may be no fault in you:
God is All-Forgiving, All Compassionate.
You may put off whom you wish of them,
And whom you wish thou may take;
And if you seek any you have set aside
There is no fault in you. So it is likelier they
Will be comforted, and not sorrow, and everyone of them will be pleased with
what you give her.
God knows what is in your heart;
God is All-Knowing, All-Clement.
Thereafter women are not lawful to you,
Neither for you to take other wives in exchange
For them, though their beauty please you, except what your right hand
owns;
God is watchful over everything.
The rules spelled out in detail here are clearly addressed to the Prophet and are intended to define his rights and limits in matters regarding marriage and divorce. At no point is there the slightest hint that these are supposed to be universal rules applied till the end of time.
One of the numerous problems that exegetes of the Koran have always faced stems from a peculiarity of the Arabic language, which lacks a verb that is of crucial importance in Indo-European languages: to be. It is hard to convey an exact notion of time in Arabic, and one is never quite sure whether something is described as it is or as it should be. Constructing a precise system of law is difficult on so tentative a basis.
Those who argue that the status of women is defined as permanently inferior in the Koran also say that the book’s version of the Creation myth presents Eve as inferior to man and guilty of being the first to taste the forbidden fruit.10 The Koran, however, never implies any guilt on the part of Eve. As for woman’s inferiority, here is what the Koranic verse says: “It is He who created you out of one being (nafsan) and made of him his espouse, that he might rest in her.” In this verse, the word nafs, for the primeval being out of which God created both man and woman, is linguistically masculine; but one should not read too much into this. When we say “mankind” in English, this does not mean that we are talking only about men. In French, the word for telephone is masculine but the word for television is feminine. In Arabic, almost all noble attitudes such as honor, pride, honesty, and courage are feminine. Does it mean that men are excluded from them?
Anti-woman commentators, like Khomeini, also point out that the Koran implies that man was created before woman, and use this as an argument in favor of their claim that men are masters of women. That, however, is nothing more than a chronological precedence. After all, it is man and woman who together ensure the survival of the species. Creating one creature before another is not, on its own, a sign of discrimination.
In languages that ignore gender, there is no such problem with the reading of the Koranic text on Creation. In Persian, the primeval being (nafs) from which man and woman were created has no gender. Thus, the verse could be read like this: “It is He who created you man and woman from a single being.” The absence of linguistic gender in Persian makes it difficult to use the Persian Koran to support male chauvinistic positions.
To some Iranian writers and poets, covering women was a purely Arab tribal obsession. The poet nasser Bokharai mocked the Arabs for wanting to cover whatever is denoted by a word of the feminine gender—even the Ka’aba, the great black stone in Mecca, which is always covered in black drapes:
The kaaba, because it has a feminine gender,
Is kept behind the purdah like graceful brides.
Once a year, the drapes are removed for laundering or for replacement. On such occasions, the “forbidden precinct” is closed so that men cannot see the black stone without its hijab.
Centuries of anti-woman propaganda and action related to the hijab are based on the following passages from the Koran, also in the sura of al-Ahzab:
O believers! Do not enter the house of the Prophet
without an invitation for a meal, and come on time.
When you are invited, enter; and when the party is over,
Leave.
Do not stay on for chitchat. That is hurtful to the Prophet
And he is too shy to tell you.
But Allah is not shy to tell you the truth.
And when you ask the Prophet’s wives for any object
Ask them from behind a curtain [hijab]; that is more proper
For your hearts as well as theirs.
It is not for you to hurt the messenger of Allah,
Neither to marry his wives after him, ever. Surely,
That would be a monstrous sight in the eyes of God.
Further on we read the following:
O Prophet! Tell your wives and daughters
and other believing women to draw their veils [hijab]
close to them; so that it is likelier
they will be known, and not hurt. Allah is All-Forgiving,
All-Compassionate.
Any unprejudiced reading of this verse would see it as a recommendation, not a stricture—a distinction that is always clear in the Koran. The point becomes more obvious when we study the background to the passages. Muslim theologians have always attached great importance to the study of the background of each sura. This is known as asbab nozul (reasons for revelation). What is curious, however, is that almost no effort has been made to apply the same technique to the passages regarding the issue of the hijab.
The passages in question came to the Prophet in Medina in the fifth year of the Hegira (literally: emigration), his flight from Mecca to Medina in 622 A.D. The Prophet had just married his cousin Zaynab bint Jahsh and had asked one of his aides, a man called Anas Ibn Malek, to organize a wedding party. The party was attended by almost all members of the Muslim community in Yathrib (later renamed Medinat al-nabi or the City of the Prophet). A meal was served, at the end of which the guests wished the Prop
het and his new bride well, and then left. Three guests, however, continued to “chitchat” and showed no signs of intending to leave. The Prophet wanted to be alone with his new bride but was too shy to ask the three to leave; he kept going from room to room in the hope that they would depart. It was in this time of agitation that the verses regarding the hijab descended from heaven. The Prophet pulled a curtain between himself and Anas Ibn Malek, who was present in the house, and recited the verses. Thus the original hijab referred to in the sura is the curtain that separates the Prophet from Anas Ibn Malek, not the headgear that prevents women’s hair from emanating “dangerous rays that drive men crazy.”
As for the second passage quoted above: The fifth year of the Hegira was a particularly difficult one for the Prophet. The defeat of his forces at the battle of Uhud and the siege of Yathrib by the Meccan armies during the Battle of the Ditch (khandaq) had created tension in the small Muslim community. At such low moments, quarrels within a community are to be expected; and in those days, most quarrels involved women. In any case, women captured in war were regarded as booty. It was necessary to mark out Muslim women from others; hence the recommendation about the hijab.
The word hijab, however, does not mean the veil. It comes from the Arabic word hujb, which means “capacity.” Hijab could appear in three aspects, the first being visual. A dust storm could create a hijab that covers the sun. The Ka’aba wears a hijab because it is covered by a sheath of cloth. Many caliphs in Islamic history wore masks to hide their faces from their subjects. A legend popular in most Muslim countries claims that Muhammad himself always wore a mask to protect his followers from being burned to death by the brilliance of his visage. One of Muhammad’s most popular nicknames is Muahhreq, literally “Fire-Raiser,” because his gaze was said to ignite a fire when and if he so wished. Persian classical poetry often refers to Muhammad as “the Wearer of the Medinan Burqah and the Meccan Mask.”
The second aspect of hijab is spatial, relating to physical space. Muslim houses had inner and outer parts (andaroun and biroun); the inner parts were declared haram (forbidden) to unauthorized people. In this context, the hijab divides these two spaces. The concept of “harem” developed from this aspect of hijab.
But the most important aspect of hijab is the ethical one: the distinction between right and wrong. This aspect should not be ignored in favor of the purely visual one.
The Koran uses the word “hijab” seven times. The first refers to the curtain behind which Mary, mother of Jesus, hides herself from her relatives when she is with child and does not want her condition to be revealed. The second instance of hijab is at the end of the Prophet’s wedding party, when he draws a curtain between himself and one of the lingering guests. The third is when the Prophet’s wives and daughters and other Muslim women are recommended to mark themselves out from infidel women, slaves, and women captured in war and considered as booty, so that they are not harmed. In the fourth instance, a curtain separates the believers from the damned on the Day of Reckoning. The fifth time, hijab is a curtain that protects the Prophet from being burned by the light emanating from the divine face during his encounter with Allah in his journey to the seventh heaven on the back of his horse Buraq. The sixth and seventh times the word hijab appears, it is a curtain that prevents the unbelievers, the idolaters, from seeing the One and Only God.
To reduce all these different aspects of the hijab to a piece of cloth behind which women are supposed to hide their hair (and sometimes their faces) requires a great deal of bad faith, both of which the Khomeinists have in abundance. They and other Islamist fascists do not demand that women mask their faces, but do insist on the wearing of a headscarf that covers all of a woman’s head, leaving only her face exposed. The obsession with covering the hair is difficult to justify on any grounds; for if we interpret the hijab of the verses that we have cited to mean a veil behind which women could hide, then what matters is hiding the face, not the hair. But for Islamist fascists, the purpose of the hijab is not really to protect women from supposedly lustful men; the purpose is to deny women their rights and put them in a subordinate position.
Obsession with covering women dictates part of the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy as well. Throughout the 1980s, the Khomeinist regime spent substantial sums to persuade Senegalese Muslim women not to appear topless in public. The going rate for covering the breasts was around two dollars a month, paid in cash by agents of the Khomeinist embassy in Dakar. In the 1990s, the Islamic Republic was paying Muslim women in war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina an average of five dollars a month to cover their hair. In Western Europe and north America, the mission to persuade Muslim women to cover up is assigned to special “Offices of the Supreme Guide” that act as unofficial embassies, thus avoiding laws and rules applied to diplomatic legations.
Khomeinists often criticize the West for having turned women into mere objects in male-dominated societies. But it is Khomeinism itself that treats women as objects at the disposal of men for sexual gratification and procreation. In his Tahrir al-Wassilah (“Release of the Means”), a kind of do-it-yourself book addressed exclusively to men, the ayatollah fixes the age at which a “woman” could be taken as a temporary or permanent “wife” at nine. This is because the Prophet took his favorite wife, Ayesha, when she was only nine years old. The founder of the Islamic Republic rules that a man should not have sex with his wife, whether temporary or permanent, if she is below the age of nine, but allows other “gratifications,” such as “touching with lust, embracing and foreplay, even if [the female child in question] be a nursing baby.” If, however, a man ignores the rule and, in effect, rapes the baby girl, his only punishment is that if he ends up divorcing the female in question, he will not be able to marry any of her sisters. If the baby girl dies on account of the rape, her supposed husband will have to pay blood money to her relatives. Even then, the price of a woman’s blood is half that of a man’s.
Khomeini also sanctions prostitution, provided that it is covered by the Shiite tradition of mut’ah, the taking of “temporary wives.” In the chapter on “ copulation” (nikah) in the same book, he writes: “Temporary marriage with an adulteress is allowed, even though she is a notorious prostitute. [But this must be done] with displeasure. Once copulation is done with her, she should be advised to give up her profession.”11 Khomeini also claims that men who take temporary wives, for periods lasting from one hour to ninety-nine years, are performing “a high religious duty.” The Islamic Republic has a policy of encouraging “temporary marriages” under which men can obtain sex in exchange for the payment of a fixed sum to women who agree to enter into such contracts. Once the contract runs out, the man has no obligations towards the woman or any child that she might bear from him. The phrase “like the child of a temporary wife” has entered the Persian language to describe a person or a business that is nobody’s responsibility. Many women have been drawn by poverty into the “temporary marriage” business, especially in shrine cities such as Mash’had and Qom. In Tehran, an estimated fifty thousand women, many of them war widows, are reportedly engaged in the “temporary marriage” business.
That Khomeini and other contemporary Islamists are more reactionary than their peers centuries ago is illustrated by the fact that one of the ayatollah’s first acts in power was to forbid the admission of women into theological courses at universities. The so-called “Science of Faith” (Ilme-Din ), he said, was far too noble to be made available to mere women. In contrast, Emineh Begum, sister of Mullah Muhammad Baqir Majlisi, the true founder of Shiite theology in the seventeenth century, was allowed to study theology and achieved the position of ayatollah. She also took part in the compilation of her brother’s Bahar al-Anwar (“Sea of Lights”) in 132 volumes, which remains the largest encyclopedia of Shiite theology.
Four centuries later, Iranian women are denied the right even to study their religion. As “feeble ones,” they are supposed to be incapable of handling “the weighty matters of fait
h.” Women have also been slowly edged out of public life. There has also never been a woman in the Council of Ministers, although Massoumeh Ebtekar, one of the “students” who held American diplomats hostage in 1979-80, worked as Khatami’s assistant on environmental issues.12 Whereas the last pre-revolutionary parliament counted thirty-two women as members, the latest general election in Iran reduced the number of women in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, the Khomeinist ersatz parliament, from thirteen to just eight. In 2008, Iran was behind its Muslim neighbors in terms of women’s representation in parliament. Iraq and Afghanistan had instituted special quotas for women’s representation; Iraq had 44 and Afghanistan 68 women parliamentarians. The parliament in Turkey, another neighbor of Iran, included 46 women. In Pakistan, also a neighbor of Iran, women occupied 20 percent of the seats in the national parliament. During the three decades of Khomeinist domination in Iran, three major Muslim nations—Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Turkey—had women as prime ministers, while women had risen to senior ministerial positions in 27 others. Iran, which had pioneered the rise of women in politics as early as the 1960s, had fallen to the bottom of the list on that score.