Protesting Misogyny in Iran

International Women's Day was on March 8 and some marked the day by holding a 'Great Walk Against Anti-Women Punitive Laws in Iran's Islamic Republic' that travelled through three major cities in Germany, ending at the Hague.

Sunsara Taylor posts a report she received from a colleague who was participating:

I am so inspired by the women here - their stories of the horrors they have experienced at the hands of the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the stories of the women (and men) who were executed, are beyond words but this march is not about suffering. It is about the strength and courage of revolutionary and progressive women whose refusal to submit to Islamic fundamentalist repression as well as to US imperialist domination is an example for everyone who wants a better world.

One short story. Yesterday as the snow fell in Cologne and we marched and rallied in the center of the city, two women met. One, in her 20s, was a girl of 6 when her mother, a fighter against the regime, was executed in prison. The other, a woman in her late 40s, also at that time a prisoner who was one of the last to see the young woman’s mother alive. The older woman told the daughter that her mother’s last words were about her refusal to accept the offer by her captors, that if she would renounce her beliefs she would be spared execution. Instead, her mother told the guards, there is a valley of blood between me and you and it is too deep to cross!

I put my arm on the young woman’s shoulder and she said to me, don’t be sad, Mary, I had the best mother in the world!

We must always keep in mind that the repression of women in places like Iran is not merely an academic topic, something to be discussed at conferences and in hushed tones. The repression of women is the repression of real human beings — it involves real suffering, torture, and death. Human beings are suffering because they are women who want to be treated equally to men and to have the same rights as men; they are being denied equality because of bigoted adherence to ancient religious codes.

Civil Liberties Guide Tom Head writes about “Blog Against Sexism,” which also marked International Women’s Day, and quotes from a declaration by the Morocco-based Islamic Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (ISESCO), founded by the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers:

ISESCO stressed the need to eliminate the material and moral barriers that hinder women in several Islamic countries from carrying out their role in serving society and furthering its progress. It stated that these obstacles are manmade and are the result of historical accumulations that date back to the ages of backwardness and the forsaking of the Islamic teachings that have guaranteed women the same rights as men in the frame of an integrated system of rules, principles and values.

There is hope for progress in the Muslim world, but how long will it take before real, measurable progress is made?

 

Women & Religion:

• Books on Women & Religion
• A Woman's Place in Christianity
• Women in the Vatican
• Women as the Keepers of Virtue, Men as the Victims
• Women's Role in Society
• Men Defined as Not Women
• Status of Women in Christianity & Islam
• Women in Islam