Ahmadinejad vs. Women

[Mayabird]

AHMADINEJAD'S NEW ENEMY: WOMEN
Ebadi: Nobelist faces threats for backing women's rights.


By AMIR TAHERI

Posted: 4:36 am
September 6, 2008

IN one of his last sermons before his death, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini warned of "three threats" to his vision of Islam: the US, the Jews and women.

Two decades later, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thinks he has the United States and the Jews in hand - and is moving on the third "enemy."

Women were the first to demonstrate against Khomeini's regime with a mass rally in Tehran on March 8, 1979 - less than a month after the mullahs had seized power. Over the next decade, the authorities imprisoned hundreds of thousands of women for varying lengths of time, and executed thousands.

But women continued to fight a regime that deemed them subhuman. Their resistance prevented the mullahs from abrogating pre-revolutionary laws limiting gender discrimination. Thus, women succeeded in keeping their right to vote and win public office.

They also retained a veto, granted by the shah, on their husbands' Islamic right to take up to four permanent wives and countless temporary concubines.

Last June, Ahmadinejad sought to remove that veto, launching a campaign with quotations from the Prophet and the 12 Imams of Shiite Islam to prove that men who took many wives would have a fast track to paradise.

To make polygamy practically impossible, a law predating the revolution required men seeking added wives to prove that they're financially capable of running more than one household. Since few can meet that condition, the number of Iranian men with more than one wife had fallen to a few hundred before the mullahs seized power.

And most of those polygamists were mullahs or wealthy bazaar merchants associated with them.

Last month, Ahmadinejad presented a draft bill designed to "re-Islamicize" the status of women. He claimed that the shah had used laws inspired by "Zionist-Crusaders" to deal with women's issues.

His new law would restore men's Islamic right to divorce their wives without even informing them. Men would also be absolved from paying alimony.

In exchange, they'd be required to pay a mahrieh (a severance payment, whose amount is set in the marriage contract) to a wife they wish to divorce. But the draft law also plans a hefty government tax on the mahrieh. So a divorced woman left with no alimony and no resources except her mahrieh could end up losing most of that to the government. "This text is designed to return women to the dark ages," says Sousan Tahmaspi, a spokesperson for the campaign against the law.

To prevent the law's passage, women have been holding meetings nationwide, and launched a campaign to collect a million signatures in support of gender equality.

This week, their campaign seemed to have produced some results: The speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, Iran's ersatz parliament, opted to delay formal debate on the measure.

"The text has not been withdrawn," a spokesman for Ahmadinejad said Monday. "It will be debated when we have a calmer atmosphere." To get that "calm," the regime has launched a crackdown against women's-rights groups. This week, four leading campaigners (Pari Ardalan, Nahid Keshavarz, Maryam Hussein Khah and Zhaleh Javaheri) got sentenced to six months in prison in what their lawyers call "kangaroo courts." A fifth campaigner, Zeinab Bayazidi got a four-year sentence.

And at least five women's-rights advocates have gone missing. One, Solmaz Igdar, was abducted on her way home in Tehran, her family says.

The Khomeinist propaganda machine seeks to portray the women's movement as part of a plot by "Zionists and Crusaders" to undermine Islam. In recent days, government media have published claims linking Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who has spoken in support of the women's movement, to the Bahai faith, a religion banned by the regime. This is a deadly threat: To abandon Islam for another faith carries a death sentence.

"Free people everywhere should speak out in support of Iranian women," says Tehran feminist Haydeh Karimi. "The proposed law is the thin end of a wedge. Ahmadinejad wants women out of universities and public life. He thinks he can curb mass unemployment by forcing women out of work, giving their jobs to men."

The possibly crazy but definitely puppet of the mullahs strikes again. And seriously, how does anyone claim that Islam is respectful to women?

Link

[Guardsman Bass]

I hope they don't get away with it, and I don't think they will - Iran is not Saudi Arabia. There are quite a few educated, well-connected women in Iran who can vote, as the article points out.

I imagine this is Ahmadinejad once again trying to distract from the fact that he's proving utterly incompetent on what he was actually elected to do - improve the economy and the like.

[Broomstick]

No, actually I think he will succeed in stripping women of the right to vote, and all the other things listed. Ahmeni-whatsit obviously has men of power lined up behind him, and they obviously think that by disenfranchising women they will gain greater power.

Yes, I'm being a pessimist today, why do you ask?

[Gil Hamilton]

Who'd have thought it was Fran Drescher that was the ultimate enemy of Islam.

[Tribun]

I doubt that actively pissing off the female population will help the government in other situations, where they need woman's help. I believe the government's plans to raise the birthrate (Iran's birthrate had fallen into a deep hole in the last decade, lower than most states in Europe) won't have much success if they plan stuff like this.

[Stark]

It's interesting that the nature of Iranian culture and politics is such that even reforms have to be couched in lunatic language - it's okay to change the status of women, because the original laws were unorthodox, supplied by Jews, part of a secret US plot, etc etc etc.

[Adrian Laguna]

The Persians are so annoying, they have fits of progressiveness and then fits of... this. Can we stick to just the bursts of forward thinking? Please?

This is really just Ahmadinejad trying to distract people from the fact that he is a) an idiot, and b) a fuck-up. However, if Republitard conservative bullshit can succeed in the US, it can definitely do the same in Iran, after all, they have actual religious officials as part their government.

The only thing we can really do is hope this thing fall through and they go back to occasionally doing something enlightened.

[Broomstick]

I doubt that actively pissing off the female population will help the government in other situations, where they need woman's help.

The thing is, the men running the government believe they have no need of "women's help" in anything.

I believe the government's plans to raise the birthrate (Iran's birthrate had fallen into a deep hole in the last decade, lower than most states in Europe) won't have much success if they plan stuff like this.

If you take away all of a woman's rights how is she going to stop her lord and master from siring offspring on her? Not to mention that education and birthrate in women are inversely related - keep women ignorant and only teach them they're wombs with legs they'll pop out a kid every 18 months to 2 years.

[Adrian Laguna]

Incidentally, throwing women out of their universities and "male jobs" would have an adverse effect on the Iranian economy. Women represent a significant portion of the country's intellectual resources. For example, the vast majority of engineering students are women, not men. I can't imagine telling all these engineers to get back in the kitchen isn't going to backfire spectacularly.

[hongi]

The possibly crazy but definitely puppet of the mullahs strikes again. And seriously, how does anyone claim that Islam is respectful to women?

They can't of course. Ahmadinejad is clutching at straws here. The abysmal state of his presidency (ironically mirroring that of a certain hated-Zionist-crusader President overseas) means that he's just trying to appeal to the religious lobby, the only side that actually likes him.

[Darth Wong]

It's interesting that the nature of Iranian culture and politics is such that even reforms have to be couched in lunatic language - it's okay to change the status of women, because the original laws were unorthodox, supplied by Jews, part of a secret US plot, etc etc etc.

Actually, the US desire to overthrow the society of Iran and replace it with a mirror image of its own is anything but a looney conspiracy theory. It is, if anything, public policy, openly promoted by countless chickenhawk neo-cons and the entire Bush Administration. That's probably the least looney of Ahmadinejad's various ramblings: he doesn't just think the US wants to wipe out Iranian culture and replace it with their own; he knows they do, because the US says so at every opportunity. They want to spread their value system throughout the entire Middle East.

[Guardsman Bass]

I doubt that actively pissing off the female population will help the government in other situations, where they need woman's help.

The thing is, the men running the government believe they have no need of "women's help" in anything.

Again, this isn't Saudi Arabia. There are actually women in the government, and in politics.

I believe the government's plans to raise the birthrate (Iran's birthrate had fallen into a deep hole in the last decade, lower than most states in Europe) won't have much success if they plan stuff like this.

If you take away all of a woman's rights how is she going to stop her lord and master from siring offspring on her? Not to mention that education and birthrate in women are inversely related - keep women ignorant and only teach them they're wombs with legs they'll pop out a kid every 18 months to 2 years.

They would actually have to get away with it first, then they'd have to do something about the countless educated women in Iran already. Like I said, I don't think they are going to successfully pull it off - they've done repressions before, but they've never pulled off something like this successfully, even when Khomeini himself was alive.

[Broomstick]

I doubt that actively pissing off the female population will help the government in other situations, where they need woman's help.

The thing is, the men running the government believe they have no need of "women's help" in anything.

Again, this isn't Saudi Arabia. There are actually women in the government, and in politics.

So?

There are men HERE who want to force women back into the kitchen and the bedroom and keep them out of public life, economic consequences be damned. What the hell makes you think that attitude is somehow limited to just the Saudis?

Religious fanaticism is NOT rational! It doesn't matter what the consequences are to some people, they believe their beliefs give them the right - nay, mandate - to rework the world into their ideal no matter now impractical or insane it may be. Kick 1/2 or 2/3 of a profession out of public life and confine them solely to house and reproduction? It doesn't matter! God will provide a new generation of (male) engineers to replace them!

[Guardsman Bass]

The thing is, the men running the government believe they have no need of "women's help" in anything.

Again, this isn't Saudi Arabia. There are actually women in the government, and in politics.

So?

There are men HERE who want to force women back into the kitchen and the bedroom and keep them out of public life, economic consequences be damned. What the hell makes you think that attitude is somehow limited to just the Saudis?

We're not talking about what they think - we're talking about what they can do. Undoubtedly there are many men both in the US and Iranian government who would prefer that women be at home and not seen in public - but they don't have the ability to make that happen.

Religious fanaticism is NOT rational! It doesn't matter what the consequences are to some people, they believe their beliefs give them the right - nay, mandate - to rework the world into their ideal no matter now impractical or insane it may be. Kick 1/2 or 2/3 of a profession out of public life and confine them solely to house and reproduction? It doesn't matter! God will provide a new generation of (male) engineers to replace them!

Then why haven't they done it before, when Khomeini was alive and the population was far more devout and dedicated to the Iranian Revolution? Besides, the Guardian Council and their ilk may be religious fanatics, but they're not stupid religious fanatics; they're politicians, and they know how to negotiate and when to back down (they backed down on the hostages taken in the Embassy seizure in 1989 when the US government agreed to sell them weapons in secret).

Again, this isn't about what they think. I have no doubt many of them think that Iranian women should be in the home. It's about what they can do, and the fact that they've had women attending university and not only working, but working in government positions (and I'm not talking about secretaries and the like, but actual leadership positions), through the entire period when the Guardian Council has had complete control as it has always has, suggests that they won't be able to get away with this kind of shit. I suspect it's just Ahmadinejad doing another fucking distraction, which is pretty much all he's good at.

[Sarevok]

Does it mention in the article Ahmadinejad is going remove women's right to vote ?

[Guardsman Bass]

Does it mention in the article Ahmadinejad is going remove women's right to vote ?

No - it's a spat over inheritance laws. Ahmadinejad is trying to get them changed back to a crappy, anti-women's right version where women wouldn't get alimony and can be divorced on command.

[Stark]

Actually, the US desire to overthrow the society of Iran and replace it with a mirror image of its own is anything but a looney conspiracy theory. It is, if anything, public policy, openly promoted by countless chickenhawk neo-cons and the entire Bush Administration. That's probably the least looney of Ahmadinejad's various ramblings: he doesn't just think the US wants to wipe out Iranian culture and replace it with their own; he knows they do, because the US says so at every opportunity. They want to spread their value system throughout the entire Middle East.

Heh, very true - sabre-rattling certainly gives any Iranian conservative an easy excuse for all kinds of changes. I just found it amusing that in that environment, even a theoretical 'liberal' or 'progressive' Iranian government would have to use the same language and excuses. It's a very paranoid political culture from the sounds of it... and there are probably good reasons why (even putting aside simple religious tribalism).

[Vehrec]

The Persians are so annoying, they have fits of progressiveness and then fits of... this. Can we stick to just the bursts of forward thinking? Please?

This is really just Ahmadinejad trying to distract people from the fact that he is a) an idiot, and b) a fuck-up. However, if Republitard conservative bullshit can succeed in the US, it can definitely do the same in Iran, after all, they have actual religious officials as part their government.

The only thing we can really do is hope this thing fall through and they go back to occasionally doing something enlightened.

To be honest, when National Geographic goes to Iran, they talk to a lot of rational Persians who blame these sorts of things on Arabs. This probably have very little support, but Iran is a traditional country-its just that the traditions of Iran are older than those of Islam. They don't want anyone from outside telling them what to do-if they were reactionary towards the west, then they are almost as reactionary towards Islam. On the other hand, a lot of the generations that's recently come of age is rushing towards the future, and with the same breath that they condem 300 they mock their own countrymen for living in the past. Iran's future is still up in the air-and if the US wants to change it it can do a better job by reaching out than by drawing back to strike.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Heh, very true - sabre-rattling certainly gives any Iranian conservative an easy excuse for all kinds of changes. I just found it amusing that in that environment, even a theoretical 'liberal' or 'progressive' Iranian government would have to use the same language and excuses. It's a very paranoid political culture from the sounds of it... and there are probably good reasons why (even putting aside simple religious tribalism).

The United States could well be the singular most unifying issue Iran, and the only reason why the various factions haven't started killing each other.

Seriously, which Iranian politician would dare allow too much US influence from entering Iran and the surrounding areas, after what happened between the Shah and the US?

[Elfdart]

This is the same Amir Taheri who made up the story about Iranian Jews having to wear yellow Stars of David. He's pulled other fanciful stories out of his ass, too:

link

It was in 1989 that Taheri was first exposed as a journalistic felon. The book he published the year before, Nest of Spies, examined the rule and fall of the Shah of Iran. Taheri received many respectful reviews, but in The New Republic Shaul Bakhash, a reigning doyen of Persian studies, checked Taheri's footnotes. Suddenly a book review became an investigative exposé. Bakhash, a history professor at George Mason University and a former fellow at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, detailed case after case in which Taheri cited nonexistent sources, concocted nonexistent substance in cases where the sources existed and distorted the substance beyond recognition when it was present. Taheri "repeatedly refers us to books where the information he cites simply does not exist," Bakhash wrote. "Often the documents cannot be found in the volumes to which he attributes them.... [He] repeatedly reads things into the documents that are simply not there." In one case, noted Bakhash, Taheri cited an earlier article of his own--but offered content he himself never wrote in that article. Bakhash concluded that Nest of Spies was "the sort of book that gives contemporary history a bad name." In a response published two months later, Taheri failed to rebut Bakhash's charges.

Yet, thanks to Benador and the outlets that publish its writers, Taheri survived to publish again. And again. The concoctions continued, with the full knowledge of his enablers. In a New York Post column last year, Taheri identified Iran's UN ambassador, Javad Zarif, as one of the students involved in the illegal 1979 seizure of hostages at the US Embassy in Tehran. San Francisco State University professor Dwight Simpson wrote the Post politely to request a correction. "This allegation is false," he explained. "On November 4, 1979 [the day of the seizure], Javad Zarif was in San Francisco. He was then a graduate student in the Department of International Relations of San Francisco State University. He was my student, and he served also as my teaching assistant."

"The newspaper didn't print the letter, and I never got an acknowledgment," Simpson told me. When an Iranian friend of Simpson's, Kaveh Afrasiabi, called Eleana Benador about the error, she initially promised to seek a retraction from Taheri if he faxed her Simpson's letter, Afrasiabi related. When he followed up, "she became hysterical," he said. And when Afrasiabi called Taheri himself, "he hung up on me."

I'd also like to point out that the New York Post is published by Rupert "ARGH!" Murdoch, who also brings Fox News to the lemmings.

[CmdrWilkens]

Does it mention in the article Ahmadinejad is going remove women's right to vote ?

It dopesn't, but again with much of what is going on there is what Ahmadinejad wants to do and what he can do. So long as women retain the right to vote they can use it against proposals to strip them of the vote. The same is the case with any proposal to strip the veto power over polygamist marriage. There is clearly a deep seated and wholly local version of feminism in Iran that I rather suspect will be incredibly difficult to overcome from a practical perspective.

[Guardsman Bass]

Does it mention in the article Ahmadinejad is going remove women's right to vote ?

It dopesn't, but again with much of what is going on there is what Ahmadinejad wants to do and what he can do. So long as women retain the right to vote they can use it against proposals to strip them of the vote. The same is the case with any proposal to strip the veto power over polygamist marriage. There is clearly a deep seated and wholly local version of feminism in Iran that I rather suspect will be incredibly difficult to overcome from a practical perspective.

They've pretty much been fighting over inheritance laws since the Iranian Revolution. I doubt Ahmadinejad will get away with it.