Feminism in Iran?

The first encounter I ever had with 'mutah' was when one of my very close friends got mutah-fied (can't think of a better phrase). I told my family members, and I clearly remember how they told me that it isn’t possible. “It must be nikah,” said one of them.

Juliet A. Williams in her piece ‘Unholy Matrimony?’ talks about temporary marriages and marriages in the west. Williams talk about how she got introduced to sigheh and how she rejected this idea.

Although temporary marriage isn’t her focus in this piece, I can’t help but ask few questions about sigheh?

·       Williams write that how sigheh ‘for some  stands as a proud example of Islam’s ingenuity in adapting to changing times by reconciling the demands of tradition with the realities of contemporary social life.’  I wonder when in the history of Islam sig heh came about and when was this when Islam needed to reconcile with contemporary social life?

·       Sigheh, in practice, writes Williams ‘ has been limited to … male travelers have sought to fulfill a presumptive need for intercourse with women at times when men must be away from their permanent wives.’ – Why is it that a men in Islam gets sexual freedom and women don’t? Why can’t I, as a Muslim woman, sigheh to ‘fulfill a presumptive need for intercourse with men’?

o   This is little bit off topic and Williams doesn’t talk about it in her piece at all but reading the piece made me question why is it that Muslim men are allowed to have four wives at the same time and Muslim women aren’t?

There are other very interesting points she has made:

·       She talks about her difficulties when she encountered with temporary marriage and how it is so easy for the West to consider themselves ‘as the seat of moral and social progress.’ Something to ponder on is that how the western media covers temporary marriages and the marriages in West differently even though both has similarities as pointed by Williams in this piece.  

o   The orientalism is so strong, us (west) VS them (Middle East) is so prominent that all the traditions, religious acts, the culture, language, nation, economy, politics is viewed through the western moral lens.

o   The other point she makes is that how self-representation is very important and they (Middle Eastern women) shouldn’t be generalized as one.

·       Other points she makes is how once we have a stereotype about someone, we tend to stick to it instead of looking for other explanations.

The second article for this week was (Un)Veiling Feminism by Afsaneh Najmabadi. Honestly, I decided for this week’s readings because I thought it will be about veils in Islam. Although it did talk about veiling in Iran, it wasn’t the focus of the article.

Najmabadi tells us it is important to know the historical background in order to understand the secularism, nationalism, and feminism in Iran. She argues that it’s important not to generalize history to conclude about Feminism and Islam.  She talks about Iranian revolution and women, and how it changed feminism in Iran.

Again, I’d like to point out few things I found very interesting in her article.

·       She mentions how Iranian women are given voice to reinterpret history and religious texts, but these interpretations are limited to the public sphere and not to the religious sphere.

o   I think this is true for other places too where a women have a voice as ‘public intellectuals’ but aren’t invited to speak on religious occasions. This is true for local MSAs, local mosques and for national debates.

o   Recently on twitter, there was a trend with the hashtag #NextTimeRememberHer, where women were talking about the absence of Muslim women at the important debate.

·       Another thing which is quite interesting is that before the revolution in Shah’s regime women were forced to unveil and today after the revolution women are forced to veil.  This makes me think if women do get to choose their clothing themselves.

o   Recently with the burqini ban, it was a French male who decided that women are being oppressed and their freedom is taken away from them, and therefore they shouldn’t be wearing burqini. Ironically enough it was him who took away their freedom of choosing by themselves.

o   This also made me think that it’s not just men who force women to act in a certain way, but women are doing the same thing. During Shah’s regime, there was a group who was for veiling and there was a group that was anti-veiling. I didn’t read about a group that was pro-choice.