Cultural Relativism, Islam and the Universality of Women’s Rights

Looking at Iranian women’s situation as an observer, we see an amazing and even contradictory picture. On the one hand, we see a complete system of gender apartheid including the utmost anti – women laws in marriage; divorce; legalized polygamy, women’s lack of rights in child custody, the Islamic penal code regarding women; mandatory veil; stoning to death for sex out of marriage, segregation in education; sport, employment; transport; restaurants; and even in the health care; imposed on them, by the Islamic Republic; and on the other hand, we see women actively participate in many aspects of social, economic, and cultural life.

How should we interpret this picture? How could this oppression and religious suppression is explained while women are present everywhere? Can we, as many academics and western mainstream media do, say that this is due to the Islamic and indigenous cultural values, which according to them, have promoted and protected women’s rights?

In explaining this contradiction, some would say: whatever has been said about religious oppression, seclusion and discrimination against women, merely originates from the colonial and racist attitudes and interests of Western countries and the Euro - centrism. They say that veil (hijab) empowers and liberates women. They also tell us that women are actively engaged in public and social life because Islam and the indigenous culture is compatible with women’s needs and expectations, contrary to pre –revolutionary period and the existence of relatively modern values. They tell us that women’s rights and freedom in Iran should not be defined according to universal concepts.

Others tell us that the so – called Islamic feminists who try for a different interpretation of Koranic verses are the initiators and the agents of this advancement, and have the duty of leading Iranian women’s struggle for liberation. All of these interpretations are based on the notion that women’s rights are not universal, and secularism and a secular government are not the pre – conditions for women’s liberation in Iran.

This portrayal of Iranian women under the Islamic Republic got more publicity and speed almost four years ago, when Khatami became president. His smiling face, his ability to speak English and some modifications in his religious dressing were interpreted as signs of the dawn of freedom and women’s rights in Iran. It seems that if Khatami did not exist, western powers and their media would have invented one. In West, Khatami was presented as a hero reforming and improving women’s situation. West was anxious to open its political and trade relations with Iran, therefore, by its media and intellectual means justified this need. Theories such as Cultural Relativism were also used to justify backward, misogynist culture and Islamic dictatorship in the name of respecting non – western cultures and avoiding Euro- centrism.

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But, what is the reality? How do I as an Iranian woman activist look at women’s lives and their struggle for liberation? How is their situation now? What do I mean by a complete system of gender apartheid? How do women actively try to make their lives better, despite the religious repression? What is the trend called Islamic feminism in Iranian women’s movement? How is its impact and possible future in my view? What are the pre- conditions and obstacles in the way of women’s liberation in Iran?

At the threshold of 1979 revolution in Iran, women’s massive participation in the public sphere was an undeniable reality. By transition of Iran into a capitalist society, and the modernization reforms initiated by Mohammad Reza Shah in the 1960s to facilitate this transformation, women’s participation in education and the labor force was accelerated. Two decades later, women were massively engaged in many aspects of economic and social life and were visible as workers, teachers, actresses, writers, musicians, nurses, clerks, doctors, university lecturers and so on. Under the new socio – economic relation, women’s oppression remained as a distinguishing feature of Iranian society. Women had many hopes and expectation of 1979 revolution. They massively participated in overthrowing Shah’s oppressive regime. They, along with men, fought for freedom, equality and justice. The demand for women’s equality was one of the slogans of the 1979 revolution. Iranian revolution was defeated and repressed by the Islamic movement.

The last 22 years have been some of the darkest in people’s lives, especially women’s lives. The Islamic regime brought nothing but repression, death, torture, lack of rights and dark reaction. For 22 years Islamic laws have been and still are in full force against women in Iran. Women were amongst the very first targets attacked by the Islamic Republic. With Khomeini’s pronouncements on the veil, immense outbursts of anger expressed by women on the streets on the International Women’s Day. This anger was not simply because of their rejection of the veil. No matter how confused their political consciousness may have been, they saw in the attempts to impose the veil a much greater implied threat. They felt that this was just the beginning of a whole series of measures, which would lead to the seclusion of women from social and economic activity. In demonstrations and rallies, which took weeks and months women, shouted slogans such as “women’s rights are neither Eastern nor western, but universal” and: “we did not take part in revolution for backward rules and values".

In fact, the post – revolutionary period in Iran has seen an extra ordinary gender- awareness amongst Iranian women. During the last twenty - two years women’s resistance against Islamic laws has been a daily fact of life. Tens of thousands of women have offended the rules and have been attacked by Islamic moral squads with fists and kicks, knives, cutters and throwing acid on their faces yearly. The penalty for breaking the rules of segregation and hijab has been insult, cash fines, expulsion, and deprivation from education, arrest, imprisonment, beating and flogging. 80 percent of women resisted against these rules have been young women who were born after the revolution. No day has gone without resistance, hope and movement during the last two decades.

Women in Iran have succeeded in pushing back the offensive of the Islamic regime inch by inch, re – appropriating spheres of public life that were lost immediately after the revolution. Their success in forcing the government to remove, at least on paper, the ban on certain fields of higher education is a case in point. Women have succeeded in placing their plight at the center of politics in Iran and as a major issue of conflict in political discourse and ideological mobilization. In the streets of Iran’s major cities, growing clashes between the morality police and bystanders over the arrest of violators of the Islamic dress code demonstrate that women’s resistance, together with the overall political and economic crisis of the Islamic regime have caused a disenchantment of ordinary Iranians with the Islamicists who continue their policy of purifying the female soul and body from secular ideas and practices. Women and the politics of gender continue to be the Achilles’ heel of the Islamic Republic.

During the post revolutionary period, women have struggled to open spaces and make opportunities in education and employment. They have campaigned against Islamic child abuse and have organized association for the defense of children’s rights. They are actively involved in semi – legal and clandestine political struggle. Culturally, they resist and campaign against Islamic and traditional images of women dictated and portrayed by the Islamic cultural authorities in films, theatres, newspapers and magazines.

Despite strict Islamic moral code and preserving taboos, more than ever before pre – marital sexual relationship is common and taboos have been broken. All of these make the women’s movement a strong political reality at the center of Iran’s political scene.

Here, I would like to talk about the so – called Islamic Feminism. This is a tendency, which tries to improve women’s situation by reforming some of Islamic principles and Koranic verses. They were amongst women who eagerly advocated Islamic Republic and actively participated in Islamic government’s campaigns against women. In the 1990s, they started to distance themselves and mildly criticized some aspects of Islamic Republic’s policies and some of its leaders. This trend is not of any importance inside Iran, but again it has got publicity due to the efforts of some feminists and academics and also western mainstream media that try to portray a distorted image of women’s demands in Iran and reduce them to those of Islamic feminists expectations.

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Women have fought for freedom and equality during the revolution and the post – revolutionary period. What is disturbing in reflecting women’s demands and struggle in the study of and by women in Iran and in the Middle East is the attempt to refute women’s rights concepts and theories altogether as western ideas and incompatible to women’s situation in the Middle East. The suggestion is that the ideas of women’s rights and equality essentially functioned to provide moral justification for the attack on native societies or their indigenous culture and traditions.

According to Cultural Relativism, women’s quest for legal, political and economic equality is considered as culturally specific. It permits the justification of practices that oppress and dehumanize women in non- western cultures, when similar practices would be condemned as outrageous, unacceptable and barbaric in western culture.

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Cultural Relativism is a cover to create a comprehensive social, legal, intellectual, emotional, geographical and civil apartheid based on distinctions of race, ethnicity, religion and gender. This complete system of apartheid attacks women’s basic rights and freedom and justifies savagery and barbarism inflicted on them by Islamic movements and Islamic governments in the region.

The idea of women’s liberation and equality for women is a universal one. There should not be any cultural restriction on it. Any attempt to restrict these rights in the name of culture and identity, or defining freedom and equality according to different cultures and religions, puts a major obstacle in the way of women’s liberation.

Women’s rights are universal and women’s liberation can only be achieved under an egalitarian, progressive and secularist form of government. These are the basic prerequisites of women’s liberation in the Middle Eastern countries.

Azam Kamguian's speech on March 8 2000 seminars held in Copenhagen, Helsinki and Cambridge - England.