Religio-patriarchy and the Gendered Risk: The Regulation of Iranian Femininity in Public Spaces Through the Veil
by
TONI EL-HAGE
Certificate., University College of the Cariboo, 1994 Certificate., British Columbia Institute of technology, 1995 Diploma., Kwantlen University College, 1996 B.A., Simon Fraser University, 2000
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of Anthropology and Sociology)
We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard .
THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA July 2002 © Toni El-Hage, 2002 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced
degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it
freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive
copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my
department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or
publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written
permission.
, Deparlmenl of Anthropology and Sodology The UniversiTy of British Columbia 6303 N.W. Marine Drivo Vancouver, B.C. V6T1Z1 Department of xmm^esmm^^£m^SiS^s^^m^^m&
The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada
Date J2o»J
DE-6 (2/88) ABSTRACT
This thesis addresses questions and dynamics of gender and power in Iran, after the Iranian revolution of 1978-1979. My research objective is to uncover the normative assumptions about heterosexual masculinity and femininity that have been formulated, shaped, and reinforced through the re-application and reinterpretation of hegemonic religious edicts. Specifically, I will argue that, since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the regulation of femininity and female sexuality in public spaces has been attempted by the ruling Iranian religio-patriarchal theocracy through the construction of women's bodies both as socio-sexual risk and as at risk within the parameters of public spaces. I suggest that they have done so because women represent risk that potentially threatens not only the ruling theocracy's hegemony, but the very fabric of society. Foucauldian theories of the repressive hypothesis and the surveillance system are used to explore not only how the veil continues to be used in Iran as an instrument of control in the formation of female compliance but, conversely, how many women in Islam have used the veil to gain varying degrees of public mobility and freedom under strict fundament-Islamic scopic regimes.
u TABLE Of CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iii
LIST OF DIAGRAMS AND ILLUSTRATIONS v
ACKNOWLEDGMENT vi
DEDICATION vii
QUOTES viii
INTRODUCTION 1 Research Questions 6
LITERATURE REVIEW 13
History: A Survey Of The Rise Of A Religio-Patriarchal Govern-mentality 16
The Revolution of 1979 And The Rise Of The Islamic Republic Of Iran 18
Women And The Iranian Religious Theocracy 24
Women And The Veil: History 25
Veil: Meanings And Applications 28
Veil: Western Contexts And Symbolism 35
Summary 37
FASHIONING NEW THEORETICAL DIRECTIONS IN STUDIES OF VEILING...40
"Half-Veiled Truths": Iranian Constructions Of Gender And Sexuality 44
Women at Risk: "Domesticities, Differences And Dangers" 47
Women as Risk 51
Veil: Discipline And Punish 54
RESISTANCE 59
Complementarity Rather Than Equality 63
iii Transformations 66
CONCLUSION 69
Questions And Directions For Further Research 73
NOTES 74
BIBLIOGRAPHY 81
iv LIST OF DIAGRAMS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
DIAGRAM:
1: Patriarchal-Religious Relationships And Sexual Control 70
ILLUSTRATIONS:
Figure 1: How Eastern Women Continue To Be Perceived 4
Figure 2: The Burka: Complicity and Resistance 5
Figure 3: The Veil As Outer Ma(r)ker Of The Body 7
Figure 4: Iranian Women In The Domain Of The Public Space 26
Figure 5: The Veil In Different Colors And Contexts (I) 30
Figure 6: The Veil In Different Colors And Contexts (II) 31
Figure 7: East /West; Pure/Impure; Male/Female; Hetero/Homo 35
Figure 8: The Veil As Symbol Of The Exotic And The Erotic 38
Figure 9: The Western Christian Marriage Veil 39
Figure 10: Consequences To Sexual Trespasses 58
Figure 11: "God" Is Called Upon But His Earthly Servants Carry Out His Duties 60
v ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I am grateful to Dr. Becki Ross for granting me a chance to prove myself academically. Her trust and continuous support were crucial to my personal and academic life. A mere thank you would be a gross understatement of my gratitude. I remain in her debt, and I shall strive to make her proud. I take from her a working knowledge of the theories and realities underlying gender-, race-, and sexuality-based discrimination. I will carry these tools, and the precedent set by her actions and ideas in my own quest for fairness and equality for all.
My gratitude also goes to Dr. Dawn Currie (UBC) and Dr. Habiba Zaman (SFU), for their supervision. I shall remain true to the values they have embedded in me, particularly the central importance of fairness and respect, and the courage to ask and ask again, as the answer may lie in what has not yet been said. My sincere admiration and profound appreciation also goes to Dr. Michael Botnick (UBC) for his unwavering guidance, support, and leadership throughout my stay at UBC. This thesis has taken shape during countless hours spent in his office discussing and dissecting the complexities and paradigms that surround the subject of patriarchy, power, and God.
I would also thank the administrative staff, faculty, and fellow graduate students in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology for putting up with me over the past two years. A heartfelt appreciation must also go the lovely Friday "beer drinking bunch" for reminding me of what a terrific experience being a graduate student can be. Thanks to
Dr. Gerry Veenstra (UBC), Dr. Ken Stark (UBC), Dr. Gary Teeple (SFU), Dr. Michael
Kenny (SFU), and Professor Percy Christon-Quao (Kwantlen University College) for their support and advice on many issues throughout my studies. Also, my recognition goes to Marian Smith, Deanna Okun, and Jill MacLachlan for the time spent refining my thoughts and ideas with periods and commas in the name of clarity.
A word of gratitude and appreciation also goes to those whose names did not appear on this page: it does not mean that you were forgotten. I remain grateful to my parents and siblings for their unconditional love. And, last but not least, to the three beautiful cats (Bijou, Button, & —) whose faces, expressions, and love are forever imprinted in my heart.
vi To
Dr. Becki L. Ross, Mentor and Guide
&
To the women of this world who, continue to experience injustice at the hands of religio-patriarchal institutions committing oppression in the name of "God."
Vll QUOTES
For the last one hundred years, whenever women tried or wanted to discard the veil, some men, always upholding the sacred as a justification, screamed that it was unbearable, that the society's fabric would dissolve if the mask is dropped. . . . What is it that Muslim society needs to mask so badly?
Fatima Mernissi (1985)
Vlll 1
INTRODUCTION
On the evening of September 11th 2001,' I received a telephone call from a friend concerned about my well-being following the events of the day. "I know that you are not
Moslem," he said, "but your family name has a Middle Eastern flavor!" He continued by asking, "Do you remember what happened to the Japanese during the Second World
War?"
My friend's concern was not unfounded. In the days and weeks that followed, the horror that was witnessed all over the world after the crumbling World Trade Center towers took with them thousands of innocent people, left those of the Moslem faith and those like myself who have "flavored" family names wondering what would happen next.
Despite my Western place of birth and citizenship (Canada), at times I have found it difficult to escape subtle forms of doubt about that very membership. In other words, although my citizenship cannot be questioned, certainly, my cultural identity and my inclusion in Western society has. I began to wonder whether, in the days following the attacks, I might be forced to wear a yellow star because my name places me as a target for anti-terrorist legislation enacted by my government (Bramham, 2001; Geddes, 2001a,
2001b; Fife, 2002). Will my tears of dismay and anger toward those who committed such an atrocious crime be counted? And, like many others, do I need to justify the origin of my name ad infindum in order not to be looked at as a terrorist?
Post-September lllh, the Moslem community in North America condemned the attacks, and supported punishing those who had committed such cruel, hateful, and calculated acts against innocent civilians (Deziel, 2001; Fennell et al., 2001). At the same time, some outspoken members of various Moslem communities asked that the United 2
States examine its own foreign policies as it prepared to retaliate against those who killed its citizens on its own soil and with its own technology (Deacon 2001; Deziel, 2001;
Kent, 2001a, 2001b).
As noted by Fennel (2001), Fennel et al., (2001), Geddes (2001a), and Lee
(2001), terrorists networks and individuals (such as Ahmed Rassam ) worked and flourished in Canada by exploiting the hospitality of Canadians and of their fellow believers to carry out their own version of Islam and to plan attacks against the United
States and Jewish quarters in Montreal. Those who were arrested were reported to have had a direct link to bin-Ladin's terrorist sponsored network (Fennell, 2001). Also, it was reported that these networks were financed by money channeled from Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations dominated by the Wahabbi version of Islam. Wahabbi, according to
Dr. Amila Buturovic, professor of Islamic studies at York University (referenced by
Fennell, 2001), is a version of fundamentalist Islam that has its roots in Saudi Arabia.
Under the disguise of the Moslem World League, followers of Wahabbi construct mosques and schools with two primary stipulations: the teaching of Islamic Puritanism and the complete veiling of women (Fennel et al., 2001). A similar reference to the
Wahabbi ideology of Saudi Arabia that was embraced by the former Taliban of
Afghanistan is made by Valentine Moghadam (1999).
According to bin-Ladin, the attack against the United States and the deaths of innocent people on September the 11th was undertaken in the name of God, the merciful and the just (Kent, 2001a; 2001b). In the Middle East, praises to God (Allah - <&l) were given by Palestinians and Moslem militants, who celebrated the attacks and the deaths of
U.S. citizens by marching and chanting death slogans to America (Kent, 2001b, 2001c; 3
Nuttall-Smith, 2001a; 2001b). No rabbi, priest, imam, or guru could explain to me how it was possible that their religious institutions, which are founded in preaching peace, could have propagated abhorrence toward their fellow humans.
The focus of this thesis is not the events that led to September 11th or post
September 11th. Rather, I have chosen to begin by acknowledging the horror of that day to show how religion can be exploited to support acts of terror conducted in its name.
More importantly, my interest in the subject of women and the veil was renewed after
September 11th when I saw how the Western media and Western leaders began re- appropriating and exploiting images of veiled women (fig. 1 - p 4) after this date to construct the Middle East as despotic, orientalist, and part of an "Axis of Evil," in order to rally Western public support for military attacks against bin-Ladin and the Taliban in
Afghanistan.4
Given the proliferation of images of Burka5-wearing Afghani women in the press since the morning after September 11th 2001, one would think that this was the very first time that Western leaders and Western media had heard about the plight of Afghani women and the atrocities undertaken against them. Ironically, it is only now that the interest of the West/North world has been threatened, that the Burka (fig. 2 - p 5) has been taken as an emblem of injustice. Officials have begun to heed the calls from Non-
Governmental Agencies to assist in restoring basic human rights to these women suffering under the Taliban's versions of equality and justice, and the Taliban's own interpretation of Islamic traditions (Mackenzie, 2002, Rashid, 1999; Afary, 1997;
Bouchat, 1996; Spillius, 1996a, 1996b; Abu-Khalil, 1993). The Doonesbury Comics by G.B.Trudeau ~ The Vancouver Sun ~ Saturday, February 16, 2002. Obtained from the World Wide Web ~ Search Engine: Google ~ Key words = Veil Photos. 6
More recently, I also began to wonder why the women of Iran clad in their
Chador6 (fig. 3 - p7) have not occupied the attention of the Western media and leaders; perhaps it will take another direct "threat" against Western interests before they too are transformed into victims in need of rescue. For know, they remain on the back burner because Iran's geo-political role after the 11th of September in the American political arena is of interest, but not the status of its women.
Research Questions
My analysis of women and the veil in the context of Iran circulates around a number of questions. Mojab (1998) points out that, historically, wearing the veil was not an essential behavior for a true Moslem woman: the veiling of women is nowhere explicitly recommended or demanded in the Quran, at least not the form that has been so emphasized and approved of by the Iranian Islamic theocracy (Afshar, 1999). Yet, veiling is endorsed within various Islamic contexts. Why? Moghissi (1999a) reminds us that the academic Western community has been silent on the atrocities undertaken toward women in the name of religion. Like Moghissi, I became interested as to why this has been the case. What is currently known about the history, ideology and practice of veiling women in a) Islam and b) specifically within Iranian society? How might a Foucauldian analysis or theories of risk, moral regulation, gender and sexuality contribute to a more detailed and nuanced understanding of veiling as a complex and contradictory manifestation of
Iranian religio-patriarchal norms? Is there consensus among Iranian women about the meaning and consequences of veiling in their own lives? Are there any instances of women's resistance to the practice of veiling? If so, what strategies of negotiation have various women adopted? 7
Figure 3: The Veii As Outer Ma(r)ker Of The Body.
Obtained from the World Wide Web ~ Search Engine: Google ~ Key words = Iran and Veil. 8
This thesis will attempt to address and explore such questions through an analysis of the relationships between religion, gender and power in Iran, after the Iranian revolution of 1978-1979. My research objective is to uncover the normative assumptions about heterosexual masculinity and femininity that have been formulated, shaped, and reinforced through the re-application and reinterpretation of hegemonic religious edicts.
Specifically, with the aid of Foucauldian theories of the repressive hypothesis and the surveillance system, I will explore the ways in which the regulation of femininity and female sexuality in public spaces has been attempted by ruling Iranian religio-patriarchal institutions since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 through the production of two conflicting constructions of women's bodies—women as socio-sexual risk and as at risk—within the parameters of public spaces. My objective is to explore not only how religion and the veil continue to be used in Iran as instruments of socio-sexual control in the formation of female compliance, but conversely, how some women in Islam have used the veil to gain varying degrees of public mobility and freedom under strict fundamental-Islamic scopic regimes. In this way, my work both builds on and interrogates previous studies into the subject of women and the veil which have tended to focus on the repressive aspects of religious discourses and of the practice of veiling for women.
Before I begin with this analysis, Ester Reiter (1996) reminds us that it is important to acknowledge that scientists, like other human beings, invariably have a point of view that is influenced by their gender, class, race, and sexuality. Rather than pretending to embrace a false position of "objectivity," a good scientist must self• consciously lay his or her ideological cards on the table, and outline their biases in the 9 name of fairness and academic integrity. On this note, I would like to make my gendered, raced, and ideological positions clear before turning to my central focus: women, the veil,
o and religio-patriarchal theocracy in post 1979 revolutionary Iran.
As I hope the opening anecdote demonstrates, my cultural and ideological relationship to the subject of women and the veil in Iran post-1979-revolution is complicated. For example, my family name gives the impression of a Middle Eastern connection, yet my place of birth and upbringing are Western and rooted in Christian values and beliefs. My cultural and religious positions in relation to Islamic doctrines and values may also be seen as placing me as an outsider looking in and as a Christian
Westerner who has no first-hand experience of Islam and its teachings. Similarly, my intellectual background has been firmly entrenched in Western theories and practices of philosophy, anthropology,9 psychology, and sociology and, thus, my ways of thinking have inevitably been influenced by the works of Durkheim, Weber, Nietzsche, and
Foucault.
Therefore, while this thesis seeks to consciously resist what Edward Said (1978) has labeled as "the Orientalist" tradition,10 as well as the patriarchal suppression of women's freedom of expression, sexuality, and mobility, it is perhaps inevitable that, because of my cultural background, my education, my gender, and my sexuality, I will be seen as occupying the archetypal anthropological position of an objective male, heterosexual, Western, academic observer of an exoticised, eroticized, feminized East.
However, my objective is to move beyond the kind of dichotomous thinking promoted by
Orientalist and patriarchal ways of thinking about the so-called "Occident" and "Orient," as well as the subject of women and the veil. I do not profess to hold the ultimate and 10 final answers to the many questions posed, nor do I speak with the voice of absolute authority on a subject that is bound to raise questions and conflicts.
To counter the essentializing tendencies of the Western academic tradition, the findings of a number of non-Western female scholars such as Haleh Afshar (1999), Ziba
Mir-Hosseini (1999a, 1999b, 1996), Shahrazad Mojab, (1998), Haleh Esfandiari (1997),
Haideh Moghissi (1999, 1996), including Leila Ahmed (1992), and Fatima Mernissi
(1992, 1991, 1985), will be used to gain a more nuanced, diversified, and critical insight into the subject of women and the veil in contemporary Iran.
I seek to avoid what Moghissi (1999a) has called the "Orientalist" and "neo-
Orientalist" views of the subject of veiling (7). By this, Moghissi means that one cannot unequivocally reject or accept veiling practice as completely repressive or liberatory for women, particularly in Iran; rather, one must be sensitive to and aware of both its oppressive and liberating potentials. Thus, while I can appreciate Homa Hoodfar's (1993) criticism of the Western tendency to believe the "static colonial image of the oppressed veiled Muslim" (3) because such images "often contrast sharply with women's lived experiences of veiling" (3), like Moghissi (1999a), I hesitate to make the mistake of embracing a "glorified conception of whatever is non-Western [to] oppose Orientalism and to rise to the defense of the most backward, oppressive institutions in [both Western] and non-Western societies, the Middle East included" (86).
From the outset of this project, the reader must also keep in his/her mind that the research questions purposed are not undertaken to reify, generalize, or stereotype all
Iranian men11 and women or all those who share Islam as a faith. As noted by Moghadam
(1994), one must recognize that to study Iranian women is to acknowledge, first and 11 foremost, that a diverse range of political views, sexualities, educational and class backgrounds, and religious and secular affiliations exists among them. Despite the aspirations of Iranian religio-patriarchal rulers to assimilate all Iranian women into a singular state of subjectification based on outer complicity, they are not homogenous in sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, class, and ideological beliefs (Moghadam,
1994).
Although some of the voices documented suggest a dominant trend of mistreatment of Iranian women by Iranian men, one must note that a common, united front does not exist; it is not possible to paint all men with the same brush as being ill- wishers of women. Not all men are oppressors, nor are all women unequivocal victims or feminist resisters. Writing about men as a homogeneous category assumes that all men have a fixed set of masculine attributes. To this effect, I add my voice to that of Michael
Kaufman (1999), pointing out that there is no one unifying masculinity or manhood—
Iranian men are no exception. Taking cues from theorists such as Jeffrey Weeks
(1986,1985) R. W. Connell (1999, 1998, 1995), Steven Maynard (1998a, 1998b, 1997,
1994), Jonathan Katz (1995), as well as Stevi Jackson (1999, 1996), I recognize that the categories of masculinity, femininity, hetero- and homo- sexual are not essential but, rather, discursively constructed categories that vary across time and space and are, therefore, potentially alterable. Nevertheless, Jackson (1996) makes a pertinent point that, more often than not, patriarchal social constructions of sexuality and gender are patriarchal and heteronormative and serve the interests of men through the eroticism, domination, and coercion of women. Heteronormative constructions of masculinity and 12 male sexuality are often asserted through force and validated through the application of history, religious customs, and claims of biological nature.
It is neither the spiritual component of Islam nor its religious followers that are under scrutiny, but the institutional manipulation of religious teachings to validate, transmit, and implement any form of gender-based oppression. I am interested in Islam as an institution and the ways in which the Iranian religio-patriarchal rulers use religious teachings and writings to justify the exercise of power upon Iranian women. Thus, I am not simply judging Islam as a religion, or deeming it inferior in its care and treatment of women. As rightly noted by Jonathan Spence (1996), Hoodfar (1993), and Moghadam
(1994, 1993), Islam is not the only patriarchally governed religion. Hinduism, Buddhism,
Judaism, and Christianity are also implicated in such practices (Boyer, 1992; Kohn,
1970).
The intention is not to present Iranian women and Moslem women generally as passive victims, subordinated, devaluated, and beaten. The regulation of women's bodies historically and trans-nationally through hetero-patriarchal constraints and dictum does not only lie in the milieu of Islam or fundament-Islamic ideology. Examples of subjectification may be found in medieval Christian12 European practices of witch burning (Kimball, 1998; Barstow, 1994; Hillerbrand, 1969); Western male supremacy over women (Hester, 1992); corseting in Victorian Europe (Fields, 1999; Kunzle, 1982); foot-binding in China (Cummings, 1998; Blake, 1994); and female genital mutilation in
Africa (Boddy, 1991, 1989, 1982; Barnes and Boddy 1995; Constantinides, 1985).
Even our contemporary/modern Western conceptions of freedom involve elements of "subjectifications". This is evident, for example, in the Western media's 13 portrayal of female beauty as based on thinness, and male attraction as muscularity—two social norms which have lead to an epidemic number of both men and women suffering from disordered eating, including anorexia and bulimia (Hay and Bacaltchuk, 2001;
Lybomirsky et al., 2001; MacDonald, 2001; Walling, 2000).
I am also aware of Hoodfar's (1993) and Moghadam's (1999) challenge to the
West's "need" to liberate Eastern women from Western fascinations, fantasies, and frustrations towards Moslem harems and polygamous marriages. Hoodfar (1993) notes that "clearly, societies in both the Muslim orient and the Christian Occident practiced a sexual double standard as it applied to men and women. Both systems of patriarchy were developed to cater to men's whims and to perpetuate their privileges" (8).
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the work of Susan Ilcan (1999) on gender and public spaces, household hierarchies, and women's place on the margin of marginalized spaces in the context of Turkey. Although my specific focus is the veil, I am indebted to Ilcan's work and concur that the gendered division of public spaces is crucial to the sustainability of the patriarchal establishment—particularly where the rule of law is religiously decreed—and that such "spaces" may be reappropriated by marginalized groups to help serve their own subversive ends.
LITERATURE REVIEW
In order to contextualize my specific focus on Iranian women and veiling, I draw on the findings of Shirazi (2001), Afshar (1999), Mir-Hosseini (1999), Moghissi (1999a,
1996), Mojab (1998), Esfandiari (1997), Mernissi (1992, 1991, 1985), and Ahmed
(1992). Some of the challenging topics addressed in this literature relate to gender and
Islamic doctrine; women's rights and the struggle for suffrage; women's described living 14 experiences and aspirations in a society strictly divided along the lines of gender;
13 *
(injustice conducted under Islamic Sharia law; the veil as a demarcation of boundaries between the East and West, men versus women, and women versus state; and some of the effective ways in which Islamic women might ameliorate their positions and livelihoods while still living under a theocratic form of governance. These women are engaging in debates about their place in society, about the "true" teaching of Islam, and the role and impact of religious authorities upon their persons (Lapidus, 1998; Lindisfarne-Tapper and
Ingham, 1997; Arkoun, 1994).
Mir-Hosseini's (1999) book is a collection of transcribed quotations derived from exclusive interviews she conducted with Iranian clergymen in order to find out about their perceptions of the roles of women in Iranian society, as well as their opinion of the veil for women. Afshar (1999) takes a more daring approach by offering alternative readings of the Quran in order to critique the ways in which influential rulers in Iran have
(mis)read, (mis)interpreted, and (mis)applied Islam to justify their desires to control women. Mernissi (1992, 1991) questions whether can one ever simply read a text like the
Quran, in which politics and religion are mingled to the point of becoming indistinguishable from each other. She argues that the sacred text has been altered and manipulated and that patriarchy has committed an outrageous injustice in the name of the
Prophet and his teachings by scapegoating women to proliferate fear and maintain patriarchal dominance. The Prophet, she affirms, preached the language of equality, tolerance, and submission. He did not preach one sex against the other, but sought to direct both towards God (Mernissi, 1992, 1991). 15
Afshar (1999) echoes a similar line of reasoning to Mernissi (1991), who states that the reader must acknowledge that the "Quran is a book rooted in the daily life of the
Prophet and his community; it is often a response to a given situation" at a particular point in time, be it at war, under siege, or at peace (Mernissi, 1991: 87). As articulated by
Mernissi (1992, 1991), it is impossible to understand a verse from an Islamic religious text without knowing the story that preceded each verse. Thus, it is impossible to say that a saying is right or wrong without understanding the context in which it was uttered by the Prophet.
Despite their different methodologies and subjects of focus, all conclude that the
Quran has been erroneously exploited and reappropriated in support of post-revolutionary
Iran's religio-patriarchal agenda of sustaining uneven and oppressive gender ideologies— ideologies expressed through and produced by a gendered division of the public and private spheres, and through the veiling of women. Based on the findings of these scholars, I can offer a partial response to Moghissi's (1999) question, then, by making the claim that religion can serve as a mechanism through which women's bodies are delimited and regulated such that they become the focal point for politico-religious and cultural identities. In so doing, I recognize that my contention is in direct contrast with
Moghadam's (1994) argument that "to ascribe principal explanatory power to religion and culture is methodologically deficient, as it exaggerates their influence and renders them timeless and unchanging. Religions and cultural specificities do shape gender systems, but they are not the most significant determinants and are themselves subject to change. The content of gender systems is also subject to change" (14). (Emphasis my own). On the contrary, my own findings concur with other scholars that, within the 16 modern incarnation of the Islamic tradition, "God" (that is, religion) and the political application of religion are perhaps the most significant and powerful tools utilized by the ruling Iranian theocracy to sanction and implement oppressive patriarchal socio-cultural changes. However, while previous studies have merely attempted to identify and describe what Moghadam calls "[a] sex/gender system informed by Islam," my own work analyzes specifically how, why, and to what ends religion and religious discourses are employed in the regulation of female sexuality in public spaces through the culture of veiling, and how Iranian women themselves are using such constructions and regulations to their own productive ends.
History: A Survey of the Rise of a Religio-Patriarchal Govern-mentality
As delineated in the introduction, my main suggestion is that the literature I have reviewed shares the argument that, since the 1979 Revolution, the religio-patriarchal rulers of Iran have transformed Islamic religious teachings into ideological and epistemological facts used to legitimate the political, cultural, and sexual oppression of
Iranian women. However, religion and patriarchy are not a-historical, natural phenomena but, rather, institutions of social control, shaped by geography and history, which produce particular discursive constructions of the sexes at different junctures of time and space.
Similarly, Islam as a religion and as an institution has been practiced, experienced, and interpreted differently over geography and time (Moghadam, 1994). It is therefore crucial that I begin with a very brief examination of the specific socio-political and religious formations and shifts leading up to the current religio-patriarchal institution that has come to structure Iran since the 1979 Revolution. 17
Sandra Mackey (1998) describes Iran as a mosaic formed by its invaders and later fortified through its trade routes. Since the reign of Cyrus the Great (circa 550-529BC),
Iran has undergone several political changes. Once part of the Persian Empire, Iran is now a distinct nation; prior to the 1930s, Iran was known as Persia. However, Iranians today still consider themselves as Persians so as to prevent being wrongly classified as
Arabs.14 Today, Iran as a nation still seems to be caught between its Persian historical birth and its Islamic values (Mackey, 1998).
Until the Islamic "invasion" of Iran circa 648-49,15 the King was regarded as the instrument of God on earth (Mackey, 1998: 23). Islamic disciples, on the other hand, refuted any "divine" connection between the monarchy and the Supreme Being, and sought to instate a religious theocracy which, centuries later, would come to serve as the ideal model for Khomeni's Islamic govern-mentality. For several centuries, the monarchy in Persia/Iran attempted to wrest its right and privilege to rule from the Islamic clergy, with varying degrees of success.
These socio-political events widened already apparent fissures between upper and lower classes; landowners and peasants; bureaucrats and merchants; the urban and the rural; and the secularists and the religious believers, because the bureaucrats and the upper classes were closely tied to the monarchy, whereas the poor and the laboring classes felt alienated and exploited by the royal system of governance. It is, in large part, due to the alienation and rising discontent among the lower echelons of Iranian society that the working classes were more easily mobilized by the clergy because the clergy claimed to have remained more in touch with and aware of their daily struggles than their
King (Mackey, 1998). 18
Such struggles continued well into the twentieth century, particularly during the reigns of Reza Shah (1925-1941) and his son Muhammad Reza Shah (1941-1979)—with the added pressure of Western colonial desires of expansion into, and economic exploitation of, Iran's natural resources.
The Revolution of 1979 and the Rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Mackey (1998) notes that Iran has experienced three major revolutions since the turn of the twentieth century. The first occurred in "1905 - 1911" and was named the
Constitutional Revolution; the second revolution was undertaken under the heading of the
Nationalist Revolt in "1951 - 1953," and the third revolution was the "1979" that formed the Islamic Republic of Iran (Mackey, 1998: 124). It is this revolution and its impact upon women that is the central focus of this thesis.
During the Shah's era (Reza Shah and Muhammad Reza Shah), the clergy and their followers held different beliefs about what Iran should be. The King discouraged
Islamic fundamentalism and asked his people to embrace "modern" Western ideologies and technologies, and to support his decision to contract oil companies from places such as Britain and the United States to conduct oil exploration (Mackey, 1998). Mackey
(1998) points out that, to Reza Shah, Islam was responsible for the majority failings of society, particularly its outmoded legal system, the seclusion and veiling of women, and the people's passive acceptance of fate. In an attempt to decrease both Islam's "hold" on the people and the role of the clergy in government, Reza Shah appealed to his people to revisit their ancient Persian roots and end the triumph of Islam (Mackey, 1998: 177).
Persia, the Shah argued, predated Islam: the great Empire which had once given birth to many glorious Kings, traditions, and customs, and had been a highly civilized society, 19 needed to be resurrected. This resurrection could only be achieved by decreasing the power of the Islamic clergy.16
Mackey (1998) suggests that, to Reza Shah, accepting Islam with blind faith was to embrace "backwardness" (173). He mandated "Western style dress in order to erase forever the provincial, tribal, and religious distinction that eroded national unity"
(Mackey, 1998: 172). He took "drastic measures by tearing away the veil [which stood to represent to him] an emblem of religious tradition" (Mackey, 1998: 181). Reza Shah also took away the clergy's autonomy by relegating them to the function of rendering prayers and serving the people—rather than involvement in judgment and law—and by making them "liable for two years active duty in his military" (Mackey, 1998: 180).
Mackey (1998) also notes that, to the Reza Shah, the funereal black chador that enveloped women, "spoke not only of subordination of females but the subordination of
Iran. By tearing away the veil, an emblem of religious traditionalism, [he] announced his intention to enlist women in the resurrection of Iran" (Mackey, 1998: 181). However, by unveiling Iranian women, by force or otherwise, the Shah enraged the religious establishment. Aside from the public and national dispute over the veil during the Shah's reign, Mackey points to a personal incident17 with the Queen which also touched a raw nerve with the King of Iran. From 1928 until 1935, the veil gradually faded as women's groups composed of educated, upper and middle-class women, "organized to beat the drum of support" until veiling was officially decreed banned in 1935 (Mackey, 1998:
181). While one group of women celebrated and participated in the Iranian society unveiled, there were others who retreated into their homes and shied away from public spaces for fear of being attacked by the Shah's police and having their veil removed. 20
The Iranian clergy, on the other hand, sought to eradicate Western secular influence, exploitation of Iranian resources, and interference by the West in Iranian politics. The clergy asked their disciples to re-embrace Islamic teaching and a legal, political, socio-cultural model of governance based on Shia tradition18 (Mackey, 1998).
The representation of new Iran through the Shah's modernization efforts was perceived by the clergy to be an attack on them. These two different views (secularism and traditionalism) meant the monarchy and clergy could not see eye-to-eye.
The Shah attempted to modernize Iran's infrastructure in order to make it secular and on par with the West, and to prevent or extinguish potential socio-political discontent, by building and controlling an army. However, even after trying to woo politicians and parliament, and to decrease uprisings from special interest groups including the clergy, the Shah failed to shred the fabric of traditionalism within Iran
(Mackey, 1998).
A philosophical approach similar to his father's was used by Mohammed Reza
Shah to solidify his place on the throne. Muhammad Reza Shah, became one of the major thorns in the side of the political and religious establishment. The American Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) brought him back to power when he first abdicated the throne in 1953, due to political opposition that came from the Prime Minister Muhammad
Mossadeq, who demanded that the King's absolute power be transferred from him to the
Office of the Prime Minister (Mackey, 1998). After the restoration of Muhammad Reza
Shah to power in the same year (1953), the Prime Minister was arraigned, tried, and imprisoned (Mackey, 1998). From that day forth, the reigning monarch's governance rested on the support of the army, police, and the intelligence agency (Mackey, 1998). 21
After the Shah's solidification of power post-1953, a deal was reached between cleric Ayatollah Borujerdi and the King that the clergy and the monarchy would live in a state of peaceful coexistence—secularism together with Islamic traditionalism—for the sake of the nation (Mackey, 1998). During the tense political climate of the 1960s, a cleric by the name of Ayatollah Khomeini, an Islamic scholar and educator, came to power by arguing that "Islam cannot divide the state from society, the secular from the religious" (Mackey, 1998: 224) and that "all of Islam is politics" (Mackey, 1998: 227).
Khomeini positioned himself to confront the reigning monarch, Muhammad Reza Shah, on the political scene, after denouncing the King, stating that:
You (the King) miserable wretch, forty-five years of your life have passed. Isn't it time for you to think and reflect a little, to ponder about whether all of this is leading you, to learn a lesson from the experience of your father? I hope to God that you did not have in mind the religious scholars when you said, 'The reactionaries are like an impure animal,' because if you did, it will be difficult for us to tolerate you much longer, and you will find yourself in a predicament. ... The nation will not allow you to continue this way (cited in Mackey, 1998: 226).
The following morning, Ayatollah Khomeini was imprisoned and later exiled. He did not set foot on Iranian soil until 1979, the year of the revolution—the result of which was the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
After Khomeini's return from exile, the state of the monarchy was again questioned, particularly given its strong relationship with the United States, whose involvement in Iran was not only to "guard Iranian independence but to buttress the
Pahlavi throne" (Mackey, 1998: 241). Mackey (1998) notes that strikes, demonstrations, and protests were carried out, while some Iranians died at the hands of the military dispatched by the Shah to quell the demonstrations. Heading and supporting these 22 demonstrations against the monarchy, Khomeini came to symbolize a new beginning for
Iran as the call for the Shah to step down increased (Mackey, 1998).
The poor citizenry and the working class of Iran, including its clergy, could no longer cope with the rising inflation, the widening economic gap between them and the upper-middle-class, and the employment of the military for the purposes of securing the
Shah's political interests and throne. Mackey (1998) remarks that even foreigners in Iran were living much better than the working classes. She makes the point that American employees and servicemen (including others) were "liv[ing] far better in Iran than they did in the United States" (Mackey, 1998: 251). We learn that, by 1975, in established
American quarters, goods and services were exchanged in American dollars, Hollywood films played, and fast-food restaurants serving pizza and hamburgers dominated the scene
(Mackey, 1998). In these quarters, travelers and journalists such as American feminist
Betty Friedan stayed. In 1975, Betty Friedan wrote "my first few days in Tehran were strictly caviar and jet lag and a sense of being strangely at home" (cited in Mackey, 1998:
251).
On January 16th 1979, the end of one era departed with the deportation of the
Shah into exije and the new leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini; Islamic religious values set the living standards of the people of the land known today as the Islamic Republic of
Iran, governed under the Sharia Law of Sheist Islam (Mackey, 1998). Shahin Gerami and
Melodye Lehnerer (2001) note that the Iranian revolution of 1979 created an Islamic republic replacing a secular dynasty of Kingdomhood. As a result, "the revolution and the republic partitioned social groups along an Islamist19 and secular divide" (Gerami and
Lehnerer, 2001: 558). The revolution of 1979 instated a paradigmatic shift from secular 23 monarchism to its current state of religious theocracy; Islamic clerics are now the ruling
20 political leaders.
Contemporarily, and on the political front, images of black-covered women, whose steps are subjected to fundamentalist religious decrees, represent fear and misgivings to Western media and leaders. This fear has been reinforced since Iran's 1979 revolution, which instituted its own radical form of Islam at home, and sponsored other fundamentalist groups abroad. Historical landmarks such as the American hostage crises, the Iraq-Iran war, and the Iranian-inspired Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah (party of God) 21 networks operating out of Lebanon further perpetuated such fears (Mackey, 1998).
During its 25-year civil war, Lebanon served as an operating theater and testing ground for these networks—Iran is by no means an exclusive nation in this endeavor (Mackey,
1991).
More recently, the seizure of fifty thousand pounds of weaponry destined for the
Palestinian Authority in Israel (Abu Toameh, 2002) did not help alleviate Western trepidation and concerns about Iran's foreign policies. Mackey (1998) makes the point that Western fear and naivety about Iran is to be blamed on Western interests in Iran's natural resources and political affiliation. The botched CIA operation and the support and supply of American arms to Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war rendered Iran as a threat to its ideology because it was seen to be encouraging the Moslem World to shed any Western influence and power (Mackey, 1998).
According to Mackey (1998), the basic element in the "Islamic republic's ethos is the ideal of Iran leading the oppressed Moslem masses against arrogant Western powers"
(xxii). Change in Iran was radical; Revolutionary Guards implemented order by 24 sentencing to death the opponents of the newly founded Islamic state, as well as by charting their own version of proper Islamic behavior (Nuttall-Smith, 2001a, 2001b;
Mackey, 1998).
Women and the Iranian Religious Theocracy
The transformation of Iran was seen by some as a catalyst for the transformation and improvement of women's place and role in society. Indeed, "(re)definition[s] of gender are frequently central to political and cultural change" (Moghadam, 1994: 176).
The sentiments expressed by many Iranian women (particularly) of the working class reveals that many welcomed the change and participated in the 1979 demonstrations.
Similarly, Esfandiari (1997) argues that the 1979 Iranian revolution gave many women hope for equal economic opportunity and for the elimination of class barriers. Iranian women expected the revolution to bring about an expansion of their rights and freedom, rather than a retrenchment of them.
22
In fact, with the reinstitution of restorationism, many women felt that the revolution did little to transform how women were viewed and perceived socially and sexually; the Iranian patriarchy seemed to be appropriating Islamic teachings to support a return to oppressive traditional gender relations; According to one woman, Iranian men are selfish, patronizing, and domineering. They have watched the behavior of their fathers and imitated them. Even the European educated men behave no differently. The revolution reinforced all these characteristics. If you see women not respecting men and a permissiveness pervading our society, it is because men always did what they wanted (Esfandiari, 1997: 180).
Similarly, another of Esfandiari's interviewees stated: "Male chauvinism and male dominance have increased in society. This is the reality. Male chauvinism is not only the 25 law of the land; it also reflects the true historical consciousness of the people that was awakened by the revolution" (Esfandiari, 1997: 176).
Perhaps the most radical change which the 1979 Revolution brought about in
Iranian society was the installment of a masculinised, divided public space—a space in which women once could circulate freely. Without chaperonage and without covering their bodies, they could now only enter into providing they wear the chador. Women must wear the chador at all times while in public spaces (Afshar, 1999: 197-198) (fig. 4 - p 26). Esfandiari (1997) argues that if there is any solidarity among women created by the
Revolution, it is their shared experience of being subjected to a similar dress code, harassment by the religious police at any given moment while in public domain, and regulation by laws that have been drafted specifically for them.
Shirazi (2001) recounts that during her three-weeks visit from the United States to
Iran in 1997, she watched television shows depicting women wearing the proper form of the chador and extolling its virtues. She continues by stating that the print media such as newspapers and magazines explained the benefit of the chador and advised women on its proper deportment.
Women and the Veil: History
In order to contextualize a more focused study of women and the veil in contemporary Iran, I will first draw on, expand, and extend a range of recent scholarly work that has addressed the subject of the veil and Islam and that has connected the act of veiling to broader socio-cultural and symbolic frames (Afshar, 1999; Mir-Hosseini, 1999;
Mojab, 1998; Esfandiari, 1997; Moghissi, 1996, 1999; Ahmed, 1992; Mernissi, 1991,
1985). Obtained from the World Wide Web ~ Search Engine: Google ~ Key words = Iran Veil. 27
The literature that was reviewed in this thesis contained much disagreement as to the history and origins of the veiling practice. Shirazi (2001) cites Nikki Keddie to illustrate that "the first known reference to veiling was made in an Assyrian legal text of the thirteenth century BCE," although "the veil is also mentioned in the Middle-Assyrian
Laws (750-612 BCE), more than twelve hundred years prior to the advent of Islam" (3).
Reference to the veil was also made according to Shirazi (2001) by the Roman social commentator Ovid (43 BCE - CE) in his account of the tragic love story of Pyramus and
Thisbe in "Book IV of his Metamorphoses'*.24
Ahmed (1992) argues that the veil existed in pre-Islamic periods, and was worn both by women of nobility and by those women who belonged to a harem. By the time that Islam was on the rise in Middle Eastern regions, upper-class women of the Byzantine
Empire and their Christian Middle Eastern counterparts donned the veil. Within the
Byzantine Empire, the veil was worn by Christian women of the ruling upper classes and, later, this was followed by women of the Harem who donned the veil outside the palace.
Similarly, Shirazi (2001) argues that "[i]n the Assyrian, Greco-Roman, and Byzantine empires, as well as in Pre-Islamic Iran, veiling and seclusion were marks of prestige and symbols of status"; thus, "[fjhe veil was a sign of respectability but also of a lifestyle that did not require the performance of manual labor" (4). In this context, Shirazi (2001) notes that "a harlot or slave girl found improperly wearing a veil in the street [was] ordered to be brought to the palace for punishment" (3).
Afshar (1999) recounts how "Verse 53 of Sura 33," descended from God upon his
Prophet Muhammad when he was to take his newly wedded wife to bed;23 Mernissi
(1999) recounts that the reasoning behind Verse 53 of Sura 33 was thought to be that the 28
Prophet, who was eager to be with his new bride, had become flustered after some of the guests had overstayed their welcome. After having bid his other wives good night, he returned to his nuptial chamber to find that some of the guests were still around. Thus,
Mernissi (1991) argues that the veil was first implemented not as a piece of clothing worn by a woman, but a curtain-like boundary dividing one space from another. Drawing the veil was used as a method of granting the Prophet privacy with his bride, and of separating the Prophet and his wives from other men.
As Mernissi (1991) recounts, while the Prophet was under siege in Medina, he was pressured by his lieutenants such as "Caliph26 Umar" to seclude and veil his wives, in order to distinguish them from slave women so as to render the Prophet's wives identifiable from other women at a time when thugs were sexually exploiting women at will (11.4). Other verses are said to have "descended" upon the Prophet while the city was under siege, such as verse 59 of sura 33, in which God is said to have advised the
Prophet's wives "to make themselves recognized by pulling their jilbab [or veil] over themselves" (Mernissi, 1991: 180).
Ahmed (1992) notes that, toward the end of the Prophet's lifetime, his wives were the only Moslem women who were instructed to veil. After the Prophet's death, and as
Islam expanded through the conquest of neighboring regions, the veil became a "common place item of clothing among Moslem upper-class women, by a process of assimilation that no one has yet ascertained in much detail" (5).
Veil: Meanings and Applications
Hoodfar (1993) acknowledges that "veiling is a lived experience full of
* 27 contradictions and multiple meanings" (5). The literature reviewed indicates that the 29 subject of women and the veil in Islam has been treated with different and often opposing approaches and views, and many critics have been locked in a web of irreconcilable conflicts over the interpretation of the relationship between the veil and religious, sexual, gendered, colonial, and national ideologies, values, and applications.
Across the Islamic world, arguments both for and against the veil have been attributed to religious sayings referenced in the Quran. This is related to the fact that, as noted by Afshar (1999), "interpretations of the Quranic demands [have] never been easy and are always time and place specific" (13).
As Figures five and six (p 30 - 31) demonstrates, the color, size, and application of the veil varies from one Moslem country to another; for example, Afshar (1999) notes that, in Iran, women appear to be in a constant state of bereavement, because the color of the chador they are required to wear is black, and black is a color also worn when in mourning; in other Moslem nations such as Egypt and Jordan, women are allowed to choose the color of their head covering. Unlike women in other contexts who have the option whether or not to wear the veil in public, Iranian women have no choice but to don the chador (Afshar, 1999).
The veil is promoted in most Moslem countries as an expression of religious identity (Afshar, 1999; Moghadam, 1999, 1993; Ahmed, 1992). There are Moslem women who reject the veil and the concept of veiling, while there are others who embrace it as part of custom and tradition as well as an item of identity of faith (Moghadam,
1994). Moslem Middle Eastern countries as well as North Africa, where the veil was primarily instituted, have recently seen a resurgence in veiling where women initially did not veil as part of their traditional dress (Nordholt, 1997). However, followers of Islam in Time Magazine December 3rd, 2001. 158 (23), 44-46.
32 many countries have modeled their "prayers, diet, clothing, and social life" (Ong, 1990:
267) after those practiced in many Middle Eastern Moslem nations (Ong, 1990) and, in
Malaysia, wearing the veil represents a symbolic emblem of allegiance to the dakwah.
For example, Indonesian and Malaysian women historically did not veil as part movement (Islamic revivalist movement ) (Stimpfl, 2000; Anwar, 1990).
In the diaspora, veiling is often debated but not necessarily employed (Farhad,
2000). Moslem women of various ethnic backgrounds have embraced as well as rejected the use of the veil in the West. We learn from Shahnaz Khan (2002) that, in Canada, for example, some diaspora women from Pakistan, India, Egypt, Turkey, Somalia, Iran and
Uganda have freely chosen to embrace the veil and exercise their right to practice Islamic faith as guaranteed by the Canadian legal statute protecting the freedom of religious affiliation. As well, Khan (2002) notes that these women must also continue to negotiate their way around not only the Orientalist view of the veil as either oppressive or sexualized but also around views in their community about gendered expectations of women as upholders of "communal dignity and cultural identity" (Moghissi's, 1999a:
207),
Victoria Bernal (1994) and Farida Shaheed (1999) affirm that most of the Moslem states have a shared history of colonization though not all are "restorationist." As a result,
Bernal (1994) and Shaheed (1999) point out that many Moslem countries have embraced the veil as a symbol of post-colonial resistance. Afshar (1999) and Moghissi (1996) state that, in many contexts, women "are exalted to wear the veil as symbol of Islamism and support of the oppressed Moslem women in the West" (Afshar, 1999: 200). Similarly, in
Indonesia, Islamic activists don the veil not only to demonstrate their relationship to other 33
Islamic movements but their position "as part of the modern world without the need to adopt a Westernized way of life" and dress (Brenner, 1996: 678).
Moghadam (1994) notes that:
Within some political projects, women are linked to modernization and progress. In other cases, women are regarded as central to cultural rejuvenation and religious orthodoxy. In Moslem countries, polemics surrounding veiling and unveiling are tied to different conceptions of the ideal society, and to strategies of state building. In some historical instances, representations of modernity and national progress include the unveiled, educated and emancipated modern women, whereas, the woman who is veiled signifies cultural and economic backwardness. In other movements, the search for authenticity, cultural revival, and reproduction of the group seems to be incumbent upon re-veiling and family attachment for women (3).
As noted in the literature review, several "reforms" were instituted by the Islamic
Republic of Iran following the 1979 Revolution. These changes were deemed by the religio-patriarchal rulers to be positive steps needed to be taken to move the Iranian nation forward, towards the realization of a "true" and "authentic" form of Islam
(Esfandiari, 1997; Moghissi, 1996). Religious restorationism has been applied with the apparent aim of "overthrowing or reforming the existing regime as a necessary step to
Islamize all social institutions" (Moaddel, 1996: 331).
The restorationist movement stipulated that to advance, Islamic Iran must return to its roots as a means of finding an alternative to secular Western influences and ideologies (Taslima, 1996; Mustikham, 1999; Mustikham and Ansari, 1998).29 In this context, one can synthesize from Mernissi's (1992) findings on the veil, that the application of veiling practices in Iran has come to serve as "an iron curtain intended to delimit the land of Islam, and protect it from the rest of the world" (8). Iranian women are expected to don the chador as a key identifier of the success of the Revolution and their standing among other Moslem Nations (Shirazi, 2001; Afshar, 1999; Mackay 1998). 34
According to Esfandiari (1997), the veiling of women in countries such as Iran was said to be carried out in the name of protecting women against potentially demoralizing and sexually corrupt Western values and influences. Shirazi (2001) notes that "to Ayatollah
Khomeni, unveiled women embody Western [signifiers], and thus he sought to promote
Islamic values by forcing women to veil" (8). The religio-patriarchal theocratic rulers of
Iran believes that, in order for Iranian women not to fall victims to "sinful acts" like their
Western counterparts, the patriarchal religious establishment must take it upon itself to safeguard women specifically against "moral" and sexual corruption by sanctioning the veil.
In this way, veiled Iranian women are viewed as the symbolic embodiments of
Islamic devotion, icons of purity, solidarity, and impenetrability of the Iranian state from prying, sexualizing, and colonizing Western eyes. In such cases, a reversal of Orientalist discourses seems to be working, whereby the East constructs the West as sexually deviant, impure, and potentially contaminating the religious and cultural purity of the
Islamic state of Iran (fig. 7 - p 35). Interestingly, Moghissi (1999b) notes that:
In the end, ironically, Islamic fundamentalists, by embracing the female body as the symbolic representation of communal dignity, and by drawing only on the Quran and orthodox texts to explain, as divine, the historically developed subjugation of women in Islamic societies, recycle the totalizing colonial conception of Islam and women's rights as a static, unchanging and unchangeable order. As with other forms of extremism, the two opposing poles end up on the same side on certain important issues. By manipulating the female body as a playing card in oppositional politics, fundamentalists, in fact, embrace, however unsought and uncomfortable, the views of the Western colonizer (30). Photo by Schultz, M. Published in FJORDS. # 3, 2001. 36
Veil: Western Contexts and Symbolism
As the work of Elaine Showaiter (1990), Faegheh Shirazi (2001), and Neil
Macmaster and Toni Lewis (1998) reminds us, the image and history of the veil has a long tradition within Western mythology and iconography. I include reference to such work in order to remind the reader that it is difficult yet important to remain aware that
Western readings of such symbols do not necessarily concur with the culturally and historically specific applications and readings of the veil occurring outside the Western world, particularly those endorsed in the context of contemporary Iran.
According to MacMaster and Lewis (1998), "in the heterogeneous field of
'Orientalism', 'Europe's collective day dream' of the East, a particularly prominent part has been played by the image of veiled women" (121). Particularly since the latter decades of the nineteenth century, the figure of the veiled woman has had a number of symbolic associations. Showalter (1990) notes that:
The veiled woman had many nuances and meanings for fin-de-siecle artists, and one can construct 'a poetics or thematics of the veil in the texts of literature, psychoanalysis, and philosophy, as well as in the cinema'. To male scientists, adventurers, and explorers, the veiled woman was the image par excellence of the unknown, of a feminized, sexualized nature whose hidden inner secrets the penetrating observer sought to use his powers to uncover and lay bare [the veiled woman]. The veiled woman in this context "signifie[d] the quest for the mystery of origins, the truth of birth and death (145).
Lifting the veil (a classic trope in erotic Orientalist images of the East which MacMaster and Lewis have termed the "Scheherezade Syndrome") becomes "self-empowering and self-dangering [for her master] because what lies beneath the veil is the specter of female sexuality" (Showalter, 1990: 146). 37
As figure eight (p 38) demonstrates, the image of the veil has long been associated with an illicit, exotic, oriental sexuality and femininity. In Victorian Western imperialist literature, for example, the East was often figured as a seductive yet dangerous veiled woman. According to Showalter (1990), "she was associated with the mysteries of the Orient, the Sotadic Zone, and the harem or seraglio. Indeed, the Oriental woman behind the veil of purdah stood as a figure of sexual secrecy and inaccessibility for Victorian men in the 1880s and 1890, much as the nun, another veiled woman, had done for Gothic novelists in the 1780s and 1790s" (143-145). The most celebrated veiled figure in the West is Salome "the dancing daughter of Herodias" (Showalter, 1990: 149).
Salome is depicted as the sexual "Goddess of Decadence," the image of female sexual attraction and danger, who is at once capable of attracting the male observer and leading him to destruction.
In response to the crucial question of why "the veil [was] linked with femininity,"
Showalter (1990) argues that "veiling was associated with female sexuality and with the veil of the hymen. The veil thus represented feminine chastity and modesty; in rituals of the nunnery, marriage (fig. 9 - p 39) or mourning, it concealed sexuality" (145). As the ensuing discussion reveals, although the context differs, some of the gendered and sexualized facets of the symbolism continue to circulate around the figure of the veiled woman in the context of Islamic Iran.
Summary
As the literature reviewed indicates, the veil has been transformed in many contexts from a marker of class boundaries into a cultural symbol of political, social, and religious affiliation to be demonstrated upon women's bodies (Gerami and Lehnerer, Obtained from the World Wide Web ~ Search Engine: Google ~ Key words = Veil Nude. 39
Figure 9: The Western Christian Marriage Veil.
Obtained from the World Wide Web ~ Search Engine: Google ~ Key words = Bridal. 40
2001; Shirazi, 2001; Ouaknin, 1995; Moghadam, 1994, 1993). In some contexts, embracing the veil signifies either the adoption of Islamic faith or post- or anti-colonial intentions.
My work on the subject of the veil in the context of Iran is indebted to the insights and firsthand accounts in the scholarly work cited above. However, I seek to extend and refine this work in the following section by suggesting that the appropriation of the veil in its present use in the context of Iranian fundament-Islam has less to do with anti- colonial sentiment and more to do with the patriarchal manipulation of religious discourses to assert absolute control over women, and to justify the male regulation of
30 female sexuality through the veil in the context of public spaces.
FASHIONING NEW THEORETICAL DIRECTIONS IN STUDIES Of VEILING
My central claim throughout the ensuing sections is that the ruling Iranian theocracy has used Islamic religious teachings to construct and enforce as "natural" two conflicting yet interrelated images of women: women at risk and women as risk. The use of "risk" in this section is indebted in part to recent literature on risk but extends it by applying Foucault's term "discourse" and adding the work of Judith Walkowitz (1992),
Mary Douglas (1966), and others on the subjects of purity discourses, sexual danger and moral panic. I will use this work on risk in order to aid me in my examination of the ways in which (and reasons for which) particular constructions of gender and sexuality (i.e. the ideal woman as a veiled woman) have been produced, celebrated, and enforced by the ruling theocracy in Iran. 41
Prior research on risk addressed topics such as drugs, crimes, pregnancy (Lupton,
2000); financial risk over time; and sexual risk and pleasure (Lupton, 2001, 1999); police as front line workers in terms of knowledge brokers in risk society (Ericson and
Haggerty, 2001, 1997); risk and its perpetuation of anxiety in contexts ranging from commerce to cyberspace (Wilkinson, 2001); and risk in the context of globalization
(Beck, 1999). Although each work presents its own findings and definitions of risk,
Elaine Freedgood (2000) argues that, generally speaking, all "work on risk is always aimed - symbolically or materially - at increasing safety and reducing danger. Whether a theorist argues that risk can or cannot be eliminated, whether a risk-taker inspires fear or confidence, the hope is always, as Wildavsky's title - Searching for Safety - suggests, for ever-greater security" (11). Following Freedgood's (2000) suggestion that examining risk in a particular historical-cultural context "might provide new ways of understanding the conflicts and anxieties of particular historical moments" (11), I will use the term "risk discourse" to explore the ways two particular constructions of femininity are being deployed by current Iranian religio-patriarchal rulers in order to authorize and uphold both a public sphere unevenly divided along the lines of gender, and the application of the veil to the bodies of its female citizens. In the context of Iran, the term "risk" is being applied to describe a combination of physical, emotional, sexual, and moral anxiety or sense of danger that is said to circulate around women's bodies, particularly in the public sphere.
The writings of Michel Foucault about sexuality in the context of nineteenth- century Europe also proves relevant to my discussion of women and the veil in Iran.
Foucault (1977) notes that: "It is said [of the Victorians] that no society has been more 42 prudish; never have the agencies of power taken such care to feign ignorance of the thing they prohibited, as if they were determined to have nothing to do with it" (49). As noted by Hoodfar (1993) and others, a similar perspective has been (often wrongly) applied to the image of the veiled Muslim woman, particularly in the context of the Islamic
Republic of Iran. Certainly, on the one hand, as the following discussion will reveal, the veil and discursive constructions of women as both at risk and as risk have been viewed by many (particularly from the West) as instruments of control and repression. However, as Foucault (1978) reminds us, discourses are not merely repressive, but productive. The ruling religio-patriarchal rulers in Iran have not merely produced a set of discourses and physical practices to restrict, control, and erase female sexuality, but, like the Victorians,
"it is the opposite that has become apparent, at least after a general review of the facts: never have there existed more centers of power; never more attention manifested and verbalized; never more circular contacts and linkages; never more sites where the intensity of pleasures and the persistency of power catch hold . . ." (49).
Along with Foucault (1978, 1977), the works of Western feminists McClintock
(1995), Valverde (1991), and Douglas (1966) will also offer potential insight into at least one way that particular forms and ideologies of sexuality and gender are discursively produced and supported: the strategic utilization of notions of cleanliness and dirt; purity and pollution; and the licit and the illicit. As Douglas (1966), Walkowitz (1992), and others have noted, within the patriarchal social order, the discourses of impurity and risk often become the very tools that are employed to construct a wider conceptual gap between women and men, and to legitimate patriarchal authority and female compliance. 43
Douglas (1966) argues that "as we examine pollution beliefs we find that the kinds of contact which are thought dangerous also carry a symbolic load . . . Some pollutions are used as analogies for expressing a general view of the social order. For example, there are beliefs that each sex is a danger to the other through contact.
According to other beliefs only one sex is endangered by contact with the other . . . Such patterns of sexual danger can be seen to express symmetry or hierarchy" (3). Similarly,
McClintock (1995) has discovered in her work on race, gender, and Western colonialism that "... the iconography of dirt [can] become a poetics of surveillance, deployed increasingly to police the boundaries between [categories such as] 'normal' sexuality, and
'dirty' sexuality . . . Dirty sex—masturbation, prostitution, lesbian and gay sexuality, the host of Victorian [and modern] 'perversions'—transgressed the libidinal economy of male-controlled, heterosexual reproduction within monogamous marital relations (clean sex that has value) . . . [Those figures who] stood on the dangerous threshold of normal work, normal money and normal sexuality [often] came to be figured increasingly in the iconography of 'pollution,' 'disorder,' 'plagues,' 'moral contagion,' and racial
'degeneration'" (154).
As pointed out by Weeks (1985), gender and sexuality are socially constructed, not inherent or "natural," although they are dependent upon the guidelines that are laid- out by a given society; such social constructions are used to support and solidify beliefs, rituals, customs, and costumes among the general masses to produce hegemony:
The construction of categories defining what is appropriate sexual behaviour ("normal" / "abnormal"), or what constitutes the essential gender being ("male" / "female"); or where we are placed along a continuum of sexual possibilities ("heterosexual," "homosexual," "paedophile," "transvestite" or whatever); this endeavor is no neutral, scientific discovery of what was already there. Social institutions which 44
embody these definitions (religion, the law, medicine, the educational system, psychiatry, social welfare, even architecture) are constitutive of the sexual lives of individuals. Struggles around sexuality are, therefore, struggles over meanings—over what is appropriate or not appropriate—meanings which call on the resources of the body and the flux of desire, but are not dictated by them (1985: 178).
In order to understand why and how the Iranian theocracy has attempted to control women's gendered and sexed bodies in public spaces through the application of the veil since the 1979 Revolution, one must examine (in order to de-colonize and de-construct) the prescribed dominant ideologies and standards of "masculinity" and "femininity" expressed through discourse. Discourse, according to Nicholas Green (cited in Rose,
2001), and as Foucault conceived of it, is a "coherent pattern of statements across a range of archives and sites" (143). Gillian Rose (2001) argues that "to study discourse is to examine how specific views or accounts are constructed as real or truthful or natural by various institutions through [what Foucault calls] 'regimes of truth.'" As the following study will indicate, "discourse has productive power"; rather than simply functioning as a mode of repression, discourse produces particular views of the world as it understands it.
Discourse not only disciplines subjects, it produces them. To explore the discursive construction of gender and sexuality in the context of contemporary Iran in greater detail,
I surveyed Mir-Hosseini's (1999) interviews with Iranian clerics, and Afshar's (1999) analysis of the teachings, sayings, and writings produced by the Islamic Iranian theocracy. The following sections outline my findings.
"Half-Veiled Truths": Iranian Constructions of Gender and Sexuality
It is perhaps no surprise that the literature reviewed outlines that the Iranian regime is run by men and is built upon the presumption of male dominance. In many 45 contexts, the Iranian "orthodoxical" assembly has employed religious writings to support male superiority. For example, Ayatollah Ahmad Azari-Qomi emphasized Sura Nisa 34, arguing that "God has made men superior to women and put them in charge" (Afshar,
1999: 64). (Emphasis my own). Such a point of view gives credence to Ahmed's (1992) argument that "Islam enjoined the worship of a God, referred to by a male pronoun, and endorsed the patriarchal family and female subordination, as key components of their socio-religious vision" (Ahmed, 1992: 4). The arrogant appointment of "man" as superior human being in the eyes of God, as written in his text, and as interpreted by his faithful lieutenants, has further lead to a belief that "man" in all aspects of life should be the final decision maker. Mir-Hosseini (1999) provides an example of such a belief, paraphrasing
Azari-Qomi as follows:
the way a woman wears clothes and her appearance outside the home concern her husband, and in this matter a woman must obey her husband. The first and most important quality in a good woman is to be obedient to her husband. She must in no way expose herself to the eyes of unrelated men and ruin her character under their lustful and poisonous gaze (in Mir-Hosseini, 1999: 64).
The dominant Iranian religio-patriarchal belief is that women's power lies in the bonds of families and societies (Afshar, 1999). Women are thereby sanctified as life- givers and, in this capacity only, are highly valued: "The true Islamic woman is a wife, a nurse, a mother, a worker, and an artist. She gives her love with the purity of a turtledove" (Ali Shariati cited in Moghissi, 1996: 69). Afshar (1999) points to the preamble to Article 10 of the constitution which clearly states that men and women are not equal: "women are said to be freed from the objectification imposed on them by the
West, [and instead, are] given the critical duty of motherhood, and placed firmly in the 46 home. [Women are also] to guard [the] family, which are declared to be the fundamental basis of the Islamic Republic" (Article 10, cited by Afshar, 1999: 16).
Similar sentiments are mirrored in the responses given by Azari-Qomi during his interview with Mir-Hosseini (1999). Ayatollah Azari-Qomi is one of the most influential clerics of the first decade of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Azari-Qomi employed in his writing the art of manipulating language to serve the ruling orthodoxy. He did so by always fortifying his statements with verses from the Quran, and by using Fatima (the
Prophet's daughter) as an icon for Iranian Moslem women to follow. In his construction,
Fatima is the picture of ideal femininity, especially in her "devotion to God, knowledge of the [Islamic] traditions, self-denial, self-sacrifice, politics, hejab, housekeeping, and finally, her heavenly progeny" (Mir-Hosseini, 1999: 56). This patriarchal interpretation of Islamic religious chronicles by Azari-Qomi argues that, if a woman wants to find her
"place in an Islamic society, in the eyes of God and the Prophet, she must adjust the program of her life in accordance with feqh" (religious laws). In order to do so, a woman
"must model her life on Fatima's" (in Mir-Hosseini, 1999: 56).
An opposing voice to that of Azari-Qomi is Ali Shariati (a cleric, cited in
Esfandiari, 1997) who argues not for the subordination of women but, rather, for their empowerment based on the same highly venerated figure—the Prophet's daughter
Fatima. For example, Ali Shariati points out that Fatima was actually an active participant in the "great religious and political struggles of the time, and an intrepid warrior for justice and truth" (Esfandiari, 1997: 35).
Ali Shariati's contradictory reading of the figure of Fatima highlights the subjective nature of religion, while demonstrating the ways in which Iranian clergy such 47 as Azari-Qomi have re-applied such teachings to further an oppressive religio-political agenda upon the female body. Cleric Azari-Qomi's ability to play with words (veil, housekeeping, denial, and sacrifices) and his ability to use a venerated and highly esteemed figure in Islamic history31 is powerful; his intention is to inform contemporary
Iranian women that being a housewife, veiled, and submissive, is pure and holy.
32
Women at Risk: "Domesticities, Differences and Dangers"
In Iran, male religio-political domination is attempted not only by exploiting religious writings to support a construction of women as weak, domestic, and pure but also through the depiction of savage, potentially polluting public spaces. The savage public spaces that are depicted cannot be trespassed unless women adhere to the dictum set forth by men, as instituted through cultural normalization of the sexes and through the veil. Quasi-religious discourses concerning moral and sexual risk and purity are applied to construct public space as taboo for women; transgression through movement outside their "traditional" domains means they risk sexual and/or physical danger, as well as social ruin of their reputations. According to Mersinni (1992), "women who walk in the streets without the [chador], unveiled, are seen as out of bounds, beyond the norm. They are considered defenseless because they have left the boundaries of the harem, the forbidden and protected space, but also because they have ventured into areas that are not theirs" (7).
Azari-Qomi stipulates that, "Islamic morality and the salvation of men in Iran demand that women should be publicly invisible" (Afshar, 1999: 199). Mohammad
Hasan Sa'idi an official from the Propagation Office states that: 48
The nature of male/female relations is fixed, governed by instinctive drives that not only create chaos but lead to women's oppression if left unregulated: in other words, women need protection; religion, by regulating male/female relationships, can provide women with this protection; and women have been wronged, in the name of religion, by the very men whose religious duty was to protect them (cited in Mir- Hosseini, 1999: 90).
Such representations of the public space as dangerous to women are remarkably comparable to those uncovered by Walkowitz (1992), a social historian of Victorian
Britain. Walkowitz (1992) argues that in late-Victorian England public spaces were considered immoral and dangerous places for women to inhabit. This reference was made toward women (primarily middle-class) who were not in the business of prostitution
(primarily lower-class) but who had ventured into the city to earn their keep and, most likely, to compete with men for jobs. The Victorian male establishment in late-Victorian
England expressed concern for middle-class women in particular and women in general because it was deemed that, by venturing into metropolitan "city centers, women entered a place traditionally imagined as a site of exchange and erotic activity, a place symbolically opposed to orderly domestic life" (Walkowitz, 1992: 46). Similar to the social order governing late-Victorian England, the Iranian religio-patriarchal rulers see public arenas as inhospitable and sexually dangerous for women, not because they are inherently so, but because the ruling theocracy regards women's place as in the home.
Constructions of the public space as dangerous seem to pivot around notions of
Iranian women as benevolent, pure, passive creatures in need of protection and care: in essence, they are viewed as at risk and in need of protection, both from corrupting
Western influence, and from "impure" public non-marital scopic or sexual contact with men. Veiling in this context is said to be endorsed to protect women from the predatory 49 sexual advances of men who are not their husband; for, "man was created weak, says the
Quran in verse 28 of sura 4" (Mernissi, 1992: 8). Given that women are unable to control men's sexual urges, they must render themselves invisible through the institution of the veil in order to avoid sexual solicitations.
Cleric Mohammad Hasan Sa'idi, an official from the Propagation Office, uses the analogy of wine to describe the effect of women on men. The following is what Mir-
Hosseini (1999) transcribed: "As with wine, the Holy Quran says that it brings great harm for people, and little benefit. We can't allow great harm just for the sake of a little benefit. With women's hejab, we believe that not only is it not arousing, on the contrary it lowers spontaneous and irrational stimulation in men" (93). Furthermore, Mohammad
Hasan Sa'idi states that:
Every man, if not restrained by legal, ethical, and ideological forces, desires any women he sees and wants to satisfy this desire by whatever means he can. So, if men aren't restrained and women don't cover themselves, women will be abused, unable to do anything, and will be transformed into objects of men's desire. So it's women's primary mission to preserve herself, and conduct herself so as not to cause herself trouble (cited in Mir-Hosseini, 1999: 91).
Also, cleric Azari-Qomi states that "If a woman understands properly why a man is attracted to her, she will feel degraded, not respected, because the opposite sex has seen her as a mean of satisfying his own sexual and animal urges: That is to say that he has considered her as a worthless animal" (cited in Mir-Hosseini, 1999: 68).
Statements of such nature suggest that, while women are expected to be weak, and protected within the context of public spaces, they actually carry a great deal of power and responsibility; in essence, the national morality of the Islamic Republic of Iran is seen to lay in the hands and actions of women. Female purity seems to be the primary 50 preoccupation of the patriarchal religious theocracy, and it is emphasized in language, dress, and body.
Women are expected to uphold the superior moral values of purity and honor that have been divinely bestowed upon them. Restricting and controlling encounters between the sexes in public spaces through the veil is based on the premise that society will come to its demise without such regulation (Afshar, 1999; Mir-Hosseini, 1999; Mernissi, 1991;
Moghissi, 1996). Mohammad Hasan Sa'idi concurs: "As for why women should cover themselves and a man should guard his gaze, this is rooted precisely in their psychological and inner characteristics. The uncontrolled attraction of men to women often emanates from a simple gaze, and if women didn't cover, if they didn't protect themselves [by covering], there'd be no safeguard for them in society" (in Mir-Hosseini,
1999: 91). According to this outlook, lust of men for women is caused by women. Cleric
Mohammad Hassan Sa'idi continues: "So it's woman's primary mission to preserve herself and conduct herself so as not to cause herself trouble. She can't say, I don't cover myself, but I want to fulfill my role in society, there can be no guarantee for her in that case" (cited in Mir-Hosseini, 1999: 91).
Similarly, Azari-Qomi argues that the line between the "human" and the
"animal," the "civil" and the "uncivil" is as thin as the veil:
It is for women's human dignity that she must observe the hejab, because one of the differences between a female animal and a female human is that the former will surrender to any male by instinct. If a woman does not cover herself she may attract any man, and this is certainly not in her interest. The human female has been created to be part of an order and if she defies the rules of this order she will be separated from it and might not be able to rejoin a new order. This what happened to Western women (cited in Mir-Hosseini, 1999: 68). 51
While extremely powerful and pervasive, such constructions deceptively "veil" what has been another agenda of Iran's patriarchal theocracy: the systematic oppression and control of Iranian women through the manipulation of ancient Islamic religious doctrine to produce and construct an image of women's bodies, sexualities, and essential
33 natures as dangerous, as risk, and in need of veiling.
Women as Risk:
Subjugation, domination, and human actions are the product of their history, because what the individual represents has been shaped by what is excluded, fashioned, and suppressed. Sex and, in particular, female sexuality, has been constructed as risk in a variety of cultures for centuries, and has been under the constant surveillance and management of many religio-patriarchal institutions.
On the surface, the belief that emerged from the clerics interviewed by Mir-
Hosseini (1999) seems to be that it is men's "naturally" assertive sexual drives which may serve as an imposition upon women. Thus, while the construction of women as "at risk" and its attendant argument of "protectionism" professes to assist women and to protect them34 from the sexual licentiousness of men, it in fact appears to legitimate male control over women's sexualities and freedoms. Afshar (1999) as well as Makhlouf,
(1979: 38 referenced in Lindisfarne-Tapper and Ingham, 1997) concur that the modesty code of Iran "rests on two contradictory assumptions: that woman is weak and needs to be protected from threats to her honor, and that she has strong sexual impulses which threaten the honor of males and the integration of the group. . . . [Thus] the veil is a double shield, protecting the woman against external offences of society and protecting society against the inherent evil of woman" (Lindisfarne-Tapper and Ingham, 1997: 15). 52
Rather than policing, controlling and containing heterosexual male "lust," the neutralization and desexualization of the public domain is attempted by veiling the imagined source and object of men's lust: women. In this way, the culture of the veil does not seek to protect men from their own bodies and sexualities; the veiling practice thereby supports and perpetuates aggressive hetero-normative masculine behavior as
"natural," inevitable, and unquestionable, while labeling the uncontrolled sexual female body as source and symptom of deviance and social ill.35
Lila Abu-Lughod (1986) notes that, insofar as women are "associated with sexuality through their reproductive capacities, they represent not the embodiment of that social order, as do the mature men at the top of the hierarchy, but its antithesis" (130).
The sexually mature woman is "fitncT (temptation), the epitome of the uncontrollable, a living representative of the dangers of sexuality and its rampant disruptive potential"
(Mernissi, 1985: 44). Showalter (1990) also notes that "women have traditionally been perceived as figures of disorder [and most certainly as] potential disrupters of masculine boundaries (8). Unveiled (that is, naked) women equal chaos and lust, and are evil in nature. According to Moghissi (1999), "since a man may be expected not to have much control over his sexual desires, men are understood as victims of female seductive powers
... Women's seductive power is a threat to Muslim social order. Woman, in Imam Ali's words, is wholly evil; and the worst thing about her is that she is a necessary evil" (24).
Allowing unveiled women in public spaces represents risk to the "orthodoxical" patriarchal institutions because women are perceived as natural adulterers. According to
Shirazi, "in Islam, menstrual blood is surrounded by many taboos and restrictions. The
Muslim scholar Ghassan Ascha explains . . . that the Quran decrees that the menstrual 53 blood is an evil from which one must be purified" (25). This view of women's "natural" reproductive functioning as "evil" has led to an extended reading of a woman's entire body (Shirazi, 2001: 26). Because of the belief that women's bodies are considered innately profane, when in public, both single and married women must hide their imperfect and impure flesh, both from the eyes of God and those made in his image: man.
In this way, the veil is seen as producing and policing (rather than expressing) the inner goodness and purity of women, by outwardly denying that which would betray them, while reminding all of the hidden element which marks them as different, inferior, and deviant: their impure bodies. In fact, if as suggested by Abu-Lughod ([1986] referenced in Shirazi, 2000: 26), "... while the color black expresses shame, particularly sexual shame, its opposite, white, is the color of religion and purity," the Iranian woman's black veil is seen as an outer reminder of the inherent impurity of her hidden body.
The cultural expectation is that single women will remain asexual in the sense that they are expected to be chaste until marriage, and married women will participate in sexual activities not for the purpose of pleasure but for the purpose of procreation. Sexual intercourse is deemed a potentially impure endeavor that women can only find a
36 legitimate outlet through the institution of marriage (Moghissi, 1999; Mernissi, 1991).
In this way, sex for women is constructed as paradoxically both "defiling and most sacred, allowing contact with it [only] at certain prescribed times and places" (Lupton,
1999: 165). To adopt Foucault, ... the Iranian theocracy does "not confront sex with a fundamental refusal of recognition. On the contrary, it [has] put into operation an entire machinery for producing true discourses concerning it" (Foucault, 1978: 69). Thus, sex and sexuality for women in the context of Iran are not completely forbidden; rather, a 54 specific and uniform set of parameters delineating acceptable forms, situations, and types of sexuality have been produced and enforced: in particular, monogamous heterosexual sex within the confines of marriage. Sex for women for the sake of pleasure is turned into impurity because the act of sex for a woman is viewed as sacred, but only within the context of marriage. Virginity, purity, and innocence are to be understood as forms of masculine/patriarchal power exercised over women's bodies. They are valued for what they signify and not what women physically feel and desire (Jackson, 1999). Also, Blye
Frank (1999) notes that "power in and through the body has always been an important part of the production of masculinity" (178).
Clearly, both veiled and unveiled female bodies have been fortified with rich vocabulary in the context of post-revolutionary Iran. The veil itself has come to be viewed as a physical manifestation not of a woman's religious or political beliefs but of the ideological and socio-political effects of Iranian patriarchal regime: a regime that seeks to place a veil over the minds as well as the bodies of Iranian women, and to homogenize their outer appearances. Wearing the veil, then, in essence is donning patriarchy, because the veil serves as a constant reminder to individual women and to society at large of prohibited places and spaces. The veil as a headdress emphasizes gender segregation while it disallows the external social expression of the individual
"inner" self upon the body—a facet which, in other cultures, plays an important role in
38 establishing one's relationship to micro and macro communities.
Veil: Discipline and Punish
Building on the writings of Michel Foucault (1977), it may be argued that the
Iranian Revolution of 1979 led to a massive restructuring of Iran's social order—a 55 restructuring that sought to implement a new regime of power and a new scopic order.
Under this new regime, women's bodies have become an object of focus and a subject of scrutiny. The Iranian religious theocracy has come to serve as the "technicians of behavior: engineers of conduct, orthop[edists] of [female] individuality" (Foucault, 1977:
294) whereby their function is to ensure and produce submissive subjects; a woman in this context become "a 'soul' to be known and a subjection to be maintained" (Foucault,
1977:295).
Women's bodies are directly involved in and linked to the political religio- patriarchal agenda of governance; the religio-patriarchal theocracy seeks to invest its power upon the female body, to "mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, [and] to emit signs" (Foucault, 1977: 25). Iranian women must mark themselves out as "docile bodies"; they must become subjects by "subjecting" themselves to a new "normalizing" regime of power and control by covering the body with an instrument of control (the chador/veil) in public—a covering which at once renders the body invisible and is made to act as a visible outer marker of the inner purity and complicity of the body it covers. Thus, while the woman's "level of religiosity cannot be perceived, symbols such as [the veil] are used [by the ruling theocracy] as evidence that
[she] is on the 'right and true path'" (Arthur 1999: 1). The woman must discipline her own body in order to avoid punishment of that body in accordance with a newly resurrected scopic regime that equates the public exposure of female flesh with sexual impurity, deviance, and non-conformity.
In this way, post-revolutionary Iranian society has taken on what Foucault calls "a carceral texture"; the uneven scopic regime "assures both the real capture of the [female] 56 body and its perpetual observation" (Foucault, 1977: 304). Like Jeremy Bentham's
Panopticon, the circular prison design which he devised in the early nineteenth century, the gendered division of Iranian society is intended to produce "a type of location of bodies in space, of distribution of individuals in relation to one another, of hierarchical organization, of disposition of centers and channels of power" (Foucault, 1977: 205).
Like the Panopticon, the divided sphere and the veil
induce in [women] a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the persons who exercises it; in short, that the inmates would be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers (Foucault, 1977: 201).
In this way, women are self-policing agents, suspects, and offenders.
Crossing the boundaries of prescribed gender and heterosexual roles is a dangerous transgression because it threatens the balance of power. Each time that a woman makes a move that is perceived as a threat to patriarchal authority, she is seen as in opposition to both its authority and legitimacy. Unregulated female sexuality is considered impure in Iran because it threatens the patriarchal social order (Mustikhan
1999; Kazemzadeh, 1998; Karabell, 1996; Bauer, 1985). Those women who dare to transgress the instituted rules and regulations of Islamic orthodoxy in Iran, represent the disruption or failure of the patriarchal and patrilineal orders.
The enforcers of God's will consider actions, such as the violation of social and sexual boundaries by the opposite sex, a form of uncertainty. According to Lupton
(1999), to the patriarchal institutions, "the danger which is risked by boundary 57 transgression is power" (165). Despite their strength and bravery, Iranian Moslem women like Mir-Hosseini et al. who oppose the established religious institution often express their dissidence at the expense of their own lives, given the history of the Iranian regime for severely persecuting dissidence (Afshar, 1999). Immediate and swift action is taken to deter any future deviations.
There are consequences for not donning the veil in countries that sanction its application.39 Women engaging in sexual activities outside of marriage are constituted as disrespectful (along the lines of prostitutes), and therefore they face the degradation and shame of society (fig. 10 - p 58). One may observe traces of discourses of purity and danger in the creation of such governmental machinery as the Office of Propagation of
Virtue and Prevention of Vice, and the deployment of police by the government to carry
"veil patrol" in order to guard against moral degeneracy and eliminate the contamination of public spaces of any sexual contact or encounter (Jebreili, 2002; Mackey, 1998).
Moghissi (1999) notes that the "purification of the women's body and soul" is not only the responsibility of the woman herself, it "is a religious and political duty for the individual man, and through him, by extension, for the Islamic state. By the same token, when moral rules are perceived to have been broken, the man has the obligation (and therefore the justification) to punish the rule-breaker. The violent solution is bound up in the fundamental inequality assumed and enforced between women and men" (Moghissi,
(1999: 110).
One woman interviewed by Esfandiari (1997), railed angrily against the fact that, in essence, "a bunch of unmarried young kids, I mean boys, regardless of their age, are asked to keep an eye on women, to see whether they are dressed properly or not ... Yet Photograph obtained from a mainstream women's magazine. Marie Claire. January 2000. 7 (1). 59 you hear the government talk about the "special status" of women and the respect women should be accorded..." (143).
The price that is paid by women who deviate from the ascribed standard norms of veiling in public spaces is paid for in a number of ways. Ahmed (1992) states that the sanctioned penalties of dress violation can be stoning, flogging, banishment, imprisonment, or worse; all such punishments being violations of the rights and freedom of persons as outlined by the United Nations guidelines. The moral entrepreneurs who serve as the "guardians" of the Islamic Revolution (known as the komiteh or religious police) (fig. 11 - p 60).
are composed of both male and female believers [whose task] is to safeguard people's moral conduct in public by looking for women who show a 'bad hejab'. Bad hejab refer to any garment, adornment, or appearance that, intentionally or unintentionally, might have the potential to draw the male gaze. It can include letting the hair show from under the veil, wearing clothes that cling to the body or are otherwise ostentations, and using makeup, lipstick40, nail polish, or perfume. Punishment for bad hejab were up to the discretion of the komiteh members and ranged from scolding and name-calling to jail sentences and fines (Shirazi, 2000: 94).
Shirazi (2001) also alludes to the graffiti plastered on some of the walls of homes and factories in Iran's Capital city. This graffiti reads " the improperly veiled woman is a stain on the Islamic Republic of Iran who must be eliminated immediately" and "death to the improperly veiled woman!" (Shirazi, 2001: 2).
RESISTANCE
Moghadam (1994) states that:
modern societies are too heterogeneous for a single system to remain intact without challenges. Challenges to a strict gender system may derive from economic imperatives and/or from the growth of the ranks of educated women who reject domestication. Ideologies and practices of gender inequality may exist, but these are subject to the challenges 60
Figure 11: "God" Is Called Upon But His Earthly Servants Carry Out His Duties.
This cartoon can also be interpreted to suit the Iranian religious police who in "God's" name implement "justice" in the domain of public spaces upon the bodies of women.
The Family Circus Comics by Bill Keane ~ The Vancouver Sun ~ Saturday, May 18, 2002. 61
of economic development and demographic changes, such as the growth of an educated female population (201).
Indeed, as noted by Foucault (1978), "where there is power, there is resistance" (95).
Thus, moving past the notion that Iranian women are victims and victimized, Gerami and
Lehnerer (2001) argue that we view their current place in the religious theocracy of Iran as "discursive rather than determined" (258). Many Iranian women have continued their struggle towards emancipation by not totally discounting men's influence but, often, by working within and around the limitations set forth by the religio-patriarchal system that grants men power in most, if not all, facets of life.
In previous sections, I have suggested that the veil is the visible, corporeal manifestation (and instrument) of the Iranian religio-patriarchal leaders' authority and control over every facet of its women's lives and identities.41 Like the condemned prisoners noted by Foucault (1977) who, in Paris circa 1832, "were led to the scaffold wearing a black veil" (11), the image of the veiled woman is, to the ruling religious theocracy, a visible sign that it has successfully turned its female subjects into what
Foucault would call "docile bodies." However, while it has clearly been a mechanism in the service of patriarchy, a means of regulating and controlling women's bodies and lives, the veil has been used by many women as a particularly useful tool to free themselves from the bonds of patriarchy. For many Iranian women, the application of the veil is viewed not as a burden, but as a means of gaining freedom and mobility from a scrutinizing, sexualizing, objectifying patriarchal gaze.
Hypothetically, the chador is intended to keep female subjects under control and is supposed to reduce the power, mobility, and agency of those wearing it. However,
Bernal (1994) states that the appropriation of the veil has granted many Moslem women 62 the outward appearance of religious and sexual conformity and obedience and, thus, has allowed them to gain access to the labor market, to assume public roles, to participate in education and health, and to leave their homes without escort. One of Esfandiari's (1997) interviewees points out that a woman can be wearing just about anything (or nothing) under the chador:
We live in a society and in a culture that is trying to kill the spirit of women, to take advantage of women's patience, but the authorities don't succeed. Take the problem of the hejab. They forced women into wearing the roupoush42 [similar to a housecoat]. What happens is that under the baggy roupoush43 women wear miniskirts, jeans, or leggings. They want us to look dirty, disheveled, and shapeless, and women resent this interference. So they react by wearing more color and fashionable robes [under the roupoush and/or chador when in public] (cited in Esfandiari, 1997: 152).
There exist Islamist women who believe that donning the veil gives them greater freedom and comfort because, by covering their bodies, they are rendered unavailable for visual solicitation by men (Afshar, 1999). This puts an end to the pursuit of beautification products and the latest fashion trends. Iranian women can abandon makeup and concern with being en vogue, and direct their concerns towards personal and professional matters.
The following example, derived from Esfandiari's (1997) interviewees, reflect such sentiments of liberation: "Unlike others, I feel the revolution made it possible for men to evaluate women differently. They do not treat women like made-up dolls. They see how competent and capable women are. I think the revolution created a positive reaction in men toward women. I think the revolution had a maturing effect on women as well as men" (in Esfandiari, 1997: 177).
Many more fashion-minded young Iranian Moslem women have found ways to both conform to and challenge the Islamic dress code imposed upon them by showing "a 63 puff of hair - called a kakol - under their scarves, [as well by applying] lipsticks and nail polish" (Esfandiari, 1997: 6). Like the guard in the tower of Bentham's Panopticon, those who wear the veil have the ability to look out more than "others" can look in; in essence they can enjoy at least a small amount of power and pleasure derived from looking without being objectified. This is particularly the case with the more complete forms of veiling sanctioned in Taliban Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia (Schuon, 1994; Willsher,
1996). Admittedly, however, the patriarchal orthodoxy's willingness to tolerate minor alteration to the wearing of the veil is in part acceptable in capital cities and major metropolitan centers, which tend to be more lax, and less conservative than rural regions
(Latif, 2001; Beyer, 2001; Nordland, 1996; Bauer, 1985). As Esfandiari (1997) points out, even before the Revolution of 1979, the mixing and assimilation of women into the public labor market in the provinces lagged behind that of metropolitan city centers.
Complementarity Rather than Equality
One view that is held by Islamist Iranian women is that they should accept the dominant construction of femininity as based on "complementarity" rather than equality
(Afshar, 1999). In support of Bernal (1994), Hirshmann (1997) notes that the segregation of public spaces, veiling, and the discourses surrounding these practises are not merely tools of suppression, but instead, could be used as tools allowing for moments of resistance.
In the process of creating a segregated society, the Islamic Iranian theocracy has, as an unintended consequence, created the need for parallel services comprised solely of women to serve its female population. As a result, Esfandiari (1997) states that the 64 creation of a "women only" parallel system has opened up many opportunities for women in academia, medicine, law, and the public sector.
Despite the fact that, as noted by Stephen Murray and Will Roscoe (1997) in their citation of Reza Baraheni (1977: 47-48 in Murray and Roscoe, 1997: 102), "female homosexuality in Iran is hushed up in such a way that no woman, in the whole Iranian history, has been allowed to speak out for such tendencies ... To attest to lesbian desires would be an unforgivable crime" (102), these newly established women's spaces have also likely opened up unprecedented opportunities for unregulated and unmonitored homosocial and homosexual bonding between women. At present, however, homoerotic and homosexual acts continue to be condemned and are not to be publically advertised because men (as well as women) are expected to fulfill their role in the formation of a heterosexual family unit (Shahidian, 1999).
The following statements, derived from Esfandiari's (1997) female interviewees, affirm that many women have come to accept the construction of men and male sexuality as threatening, polluting, often while embracing the essentialist image of the superiorly moral and maternal "woman at risk." One woman states that: "I have come to the conclusion that Iranian men habitually cast lascivious looks on women. It is uncomfortable to be in their presence" (Esfandiari 1997: 176). Another Iranian woman interviewed by Esfandiari (1997) responds to the question of whether or not she considers herself to be a feminist, with vigour:
Of course, I am a feminist. What a question! For me, a feminist is a woman who works and looks after the well being of her family. At work I see myself equal to a man. I work just as hard and as much as they do. But I also have the delicacy of a woman. When I come home, I forget my professionalism and become a wife and a mother. I am at ease in both worlds. There are a number of workingwomen who ignore 65
their families. I do not approve of such an attitude. I also believe there is a physiological difference between men and women, so I don't have any problem with women being barred from becoming judges. I am among those who believe that when women have their monthly period their condition is not stable enough to judge cases (cited in Esfandiari, 1997: 161).
Other women are striving to be completely freed from more conservative models of femininity and the religio-patriarchal theocracy's heavy-handed governance (Mernissi,
1991; Afshar, 1999; Mir-Hosseini, 1999). Mir-Hosseini (1999) for example, asked
Hassan Sa'idi "Why the focus is on veiling women and not men? Why shouldn't we
[women] work on men? Why shouldn't they [men] learn to respect women and treat them as social beings?" (92). She continues by pointing out to Hassan Sa'idi that men and women in many societies work beside each other where men do not get excited, lose control, and attack women just because women are adjacent to them: "Let's face it, they
[women] too are human beings, with the same drives"(92).
Women have at times also presented artistic and literary work addressing their concerns. Some have even managed to attain the court favor as a collective opposition to certain family issues related to marriage, children, and unpaid homework (Gerami and
Lehnerer, 2001).
While a paucity of published literature regarding the nature, depth, and scope of women's resistance to practices of veiling and gender-based segregation persists, one can synthesize from the existing literature (Moghadam, 1993, 1994; Hoodfar, 1993; Shirazi,
2001) that Iranian women, like all women, are social actors, many of whom are working within and around the allowable legal-social freedoms available to them, in order to influence, reform, and change existing social institutions to their own ends, and to varying degrees. Despite the heavy price paid by Iranian women, whether secularist or 66
Islamist, many have weathered the tide of oppression, are standing their grounds, demanding to speak and be heard; many adamant women have posed a powerful challenge to the established regime, even during the reign of Khomeini (Moghissi, 1996).
Regardless of how minor this rebellion, such behavior reaffirms Foucault's (1978) point whereby every form of power contains its own downfall, and for every prohibition, there lies its possible transgression. Any amount of progress attained by women in countries that employ radical orthodoxical tools such as the veil as a form of justice and governance, is a success and should be celebrated.
Transformations
Maurice Copithorn, a special representative to the United Nations on the
Commission on Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, reports that official measures have been taken by the Iranian government to improve the status and treatment of women through: "legal and judicial measures, a public information campaign, and the establishment of a women's police college and an organization for defending women in peril as well as victims of violence" (Distr. GENERAL: A/54/365 - Maurice Copithorn.
September 21, 1999: 7). According to Copithorn, "starting modestly in 1991, the Bureau of Women's Affairs in the Office of the President has developed a number of programs with the declared objective of realizing social justice and the advancement of women. In
1997, the first National Plan of Action for Women was published as part of an effort to
"mainstream women's concerns in the national planning process." The objective was "a balanced gender perspective within the framework of Islamic principles." The plan acknowledged that women were still behind in certain areas resulting from "the lack of proper mechanisms which are needed to promote more positive action in issues related to 67 women." The principle aim was "to improve the qualitative and quantitative indices of education, culture, health, social welfare and employment for all women" (Distr.
GENERAL: E/CN.4/2000/35-Maurice Copithorn. January 18, 2000: 7-8).
In contrast to women under the former Taliban regime, many women in the
Islamic Republic of Iran have managed to attain education and occupy positions as members of parliament. This is hardly matched in numbers elsewhere in the Moslem
Middle East such as the Gulf States (Afshar, 1999; Mir-Hosseini, 1999; Esfandiari,
1997). Also, unlike women under the Taliban, women of the Islamic Republic of Iran may enjoy many amenities of the Western World.
The former fundamentalist Taliban regime has been said to make the late
Ayatollah in Iran, "look like [a] Western playboy" (Nordland, 1996: 51). Governance of risk in public spaces relegated Afghani women to a chaste life. Here, the restoration of
Sharia laws mandate that women were to be veiled and secluded from public observations.
Unlike Iranian women, Afghani women were banned from receiving education, and prohibited from working.44 In an architectural extension of the practice of veiling, their windows were to be painted black to deter onlookers, medical help was to be solicited from female medical doctors only, and if a woman was not escorted by her husband, son, or relative, a letter of permission was required (Armstrong, 1997a, 1997b;
Horner, 1996; Jones, 1996; Kampease, 1996; Willsher, 1996). If a woman was found in public alone, she would be questioned. In addition, under the former governance of the
Taliban, the following feminine items were banned because they were considered non-
Islamic: the Western style of dress including high-heeled shoes, makeup; engagement in 68 sports, photography, television, radio, music, singing, dancing, clapping, and alcohol consumption (Armstrong, 1997a; Kampeas, 1996; Nordland, 1996; Spillus, 1996a; 1996 b; Willsher, 1996).
Nevertheless, in his interim report to the General Assembly, Special
Representative Copithorn stated that, despite certain improvements in the status of women, there had been little if any change in the systematic discrimination face by
Iranian women.45 In the second half of 2000, the newly elected Sixth Majlis (Parliament) became the most active player in seeking improvement in the status of women. Too often, however, the reform legislation passed by the Majlis was rejected by the Guardian
Council, apparently because it was deemed to be "un-Islamic" (Distr. GENERAL:
E/CN.4/2001/39 - Maurice Copithorn. January 16, 2001: 8). Thus, "the condition of women in the Islamic Republic has remained much the same for some years: steady improvements in some respects such as education but no change in the foundational, legalized discrimination faced by women almost across the board. Perhaps the most graphic recent portrayal of this situation is the Iranian film, "the Circle", with its strong overtones of the Islamic Republic as a prison for women (Distr. GENERAL: A/56/278 -
Maurice Copithorn. August 10, 2001: 5). Despite several attempts at progress, three fundamental rules continue to govern the Iranian theocracy's visions of ideal gendered and sexual behaviour for its women: first, while in public, women must be totally veiled; second, women must maintain their public segregated spaces at all cost; and, third, in the context of law and religion, men are the final arbiters. 69
CONCLUSIONS:
"Again, we see the semantic versatility of the hejab " (Shirazi, 2000: 93).
Drawing on the findings of Haleh Esfandiari (1997), Haleh Afshar (1999), Ziba
Mir-Hosseini (1999), Haideh Moghissi (1996, 1999), and theories derived from work on risk, moral regulation, purity and taboo, gender and sexuality, I have attempted to gain insight into how and why a dual construction of women (as and at risk) was undertaken by the Iranian religio-patriarchal rulers. I have argued that ruling theocracy has armed itself with the quasi-religious discourses inflected with images of purity, risk, and moral regulation, in order to control women under the auspices of "protecting them," and in order to successfully implement a belief in the minds and hearts of Iranian women that
"they [have] to wear [their] belief in the form of hejab" (Mir-Hosseini, 1999: xiii).
The decision of many Iranian women to consciously adopt the veil, as a means of freedom of mobility, even if it is undertaken from the position of sovereignty and agency, still signifies that they are operating from within historical-cultural forces and gender power struggles that seek to produce different sorts of subjects. The following diagram
(Diagram 1, p. 70), may help to summarize my previous discussion, while elucidating these complex and often contradictory forces and struggles. As noted by Moghissi
(1994), "gender systems are designed by ideologies and inscribed in law, justified by custom and enforced by the police, sustained by processes of socialization and reinforced through distinct institutions ..." (201). Patriarchal institutions attempt to gain and maintain power through the production of ideologies (in this case, ideologies of gender and sexuality) which are produced, perpetuated, and transmitted to and from men and 70 women through discourses such as science, medicine, and (the particular focus of my work) religion as outlined in Diagram 1.
Diagram 1: Patriarchal-Religious relationships and sexual control.
This diagram can also be read to mean that in the context of Iran, women's bodies and lives have been colonized through the production and often violent reinforcement of two contradictory discursive constructions of femininity: woman as at risk and women as risk. In essence, Iranian women's minds and bodies have been doubly colonized: not only by other Western nations, but by their own. In a sense, the veil has come to serve as a symbolic marker or "flag" of these processes; however, the veil is not simply a cloth that flutters against the wind, but is instead, a powerful instrument of control used to shape and transform the minds and bodies of women to fit a particular set of ideals set forth by the ruling theocracy. In short, as argued by Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis (1989), we can note how, in the context of Iran, "central dimensions of the roles of women are 71 constituted around the relationships of collectivities to the state" while, at the same time,
"central dimensions of the relationships between collectivities and the state are constituted around the roles of women" (1).
Despite its different historical, cultural, and political uses and meanings, the current use of the veil by Iranian women in both private (among other women) and public domains appears to have been reinstated and reinforced through the re-working and re- application of various Islamic teachings, often in a way that has ignored the lived experiences of previously unveiled women in Iran. Mojab (1998) also notes this hypocrisy. She explains that the orthodoxy draws on history to justify veiling, although those women who chose to veil in Iran in the past constituted a minority of the population, as the majority of women did not veil. In this way, my own findings agree with those of Mojab (1998) who believes that state-instituted veiling is "an instrument of sexual apartheid," designed to bring to a halt equality between the sexes. However, as the previous section indicates, Iranian women are not unequivocal victims of an oppressive and repressive system of domination; many have remained strong, resilient, and have demonstrated their strength, their adaptability, and their resistance through a reappropriation and reapplication of the veil, not as an instrument of control, but as a key to mobility.
On a final note, I would like to point out that the arguments put forth in this thesis are not exclusively applicable to Iran. Protecting female virginity, venerating marriages, and shielding communal dignity and cultural identity are problems and subjects of debate shared by diaspora Iranian communities in countries such as Canada. Many Iranian women in the diaspora face often seemingly insurmountable challenges, as they strive to 72 create new lives for themselves, and as they attempt to negotiate a lived existence between Iranian Islamic traditions, religion, and the Western values of their new home
(Moghissi, 1999a; Shahidian, 1999; Abu-Ali and Reisen, 1999)—a home which is, quite often, "home of not belonging" (Said, 1978). Khan (2002) notes that these women must not only also continue to negotiate their way around racist, Orientalist views of the veil as either oppressive or sexualized, but also around views in their community about gendered and heteronormative expectations of women as upholders of "communal dignity and cultural identity" (Moghissi, 1999a: 207). 73
Questions and Directions for Further Research
As with any study, my work is by no means without gaps or absences. Some possible avenues of further exploration for future scholars interested in the subject of women, the veil, and/or religio-patriarchy in the context of Iran might be:
1) A study of prostitution in the context of Islamic Iran. If all women are expected to don the veil in public spaces, how might a female prostitute mark herself out as distinct from other women? Male prostitutes? How does the Iranian Islamic regime attempt to deal with such practices?
2) An exploration of how gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, trans-gendered or trans-sexual Iranian men and women form and/or join relationships and communities under such a regime.
What are the socio-political, legal, and cultural discourses surrounding such practices?
3) A comparative study of various Islam-dominated regions with a specific focus on the responses and voices of the women themselves regarding veiling practices in various contexts might help us gain a more detailed and nuanced understanding about the apparent reasons for the different approaches of these nations to the question of veiling for women and other gendered, heteronormative practices. Critics are certainly noticing such variances; for example, Moghadam points out that "gender segregation is the law in Iran and Saudi Arabia but is not in Syria, Iraq, [Turkey] and Morocco" (Moghadam,
1994: 14). However, to my knowledge, no existing study attempts to address why. 74
ENDNOTES
On the morning of September 11 2001, four American civil jetliners were hijacked in New York by a terrorist cell operating from within the United States and financed by bin- ladin. These aircraft, full of their human cargo and fuel, were commandeered a few minutes apart after takeoff and were used to target American infrastructures. One of the aircrafts crashed in an open field before reaching its intended target (the White House), the other struck the Pentagon, and the other two struck the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in downtown New York. The Twin Towers were reduced to rubble, and took down with them thousands of innocent lives (Milner, 2001).
2 Ahmed Rassam sought to bomb the Los Angeles airport New Year's Eve, 1999. Rassam was captured in Washington State with a trunk full of explosive materials after crossing over to the US, from Victoria, British Columbia (Farrell, 2002; Sslahuddin, 2002).
3 bin-Ladin was identified as the culprit who financed the terrorist attacks on September 11th. He lived and operated the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan. While this thesis was being written (2001-2002), "The War on Terrorism" was still going on in Afghanistan against the Taliban and bin-Ladin. His whereabouts (it has been suggested that he is dead) is unknown to the allied forces and he is yet to be captured and brought to face punishment.
4 MacMaster and Lewis (1998) concur that "the central importance of the veil in European representations of Oriental society derives not only from its role as the most public and visible signifier of radical sexual segregation, but also as the key marker of the essential inferiority of Islamic societies. The image of the veil, both in texts, paintings and photographs is strategically placed to signify a much wider field of religious, social and cultural practices which include purdah, the harem, polygamy, a repressive political order based on the subjugation of women, Oriental despotism, sadism and lasciviousness" (121).
5 The burka is a blue flowing robe that covers the entire body of its female wearer. It has a mesh on the face allowing the wearer to see and breathe through;.
6 The chador is a single piece of material that covers the body in its entirety. The chador is black in color and is worn over the head and held in place by the wearer. Iranian women must wear the chador at all times while in public spaces (Afshar, 1999). The chador is pulled together to cover part of the face; unlike the burka, it does not obstruct the face of the wearer.
7 Islam is a belief system that has resulted in a religious organizational frame of thinking (Hodgson, 1977) and a practiced legal system (Mir-Housseini, 1999). From a Western perspective, the word "Islam" seems often to convey the imagery of a faithful collective rallying in the name of a cause toward an enemy or an objective. Such generalizations, as 75
noted by Mojab (1998), serve to remind us that such a narrow understanding ignores any heterogeneity and diversification among Moslem men and women as people, and amoung the various states sharing the Moslem religion. This thesis is grounded in the understanding that Islamic orthodoxy is based upon various historical-cultural and ideological practices and applications of the Quran.
8 The terms, "religio-patriarchal rulers," "religio-patriarchal theocracy," and "religious theocracy" will appear to denote the combination of religion and politics that structures Iran, and which have come to alter and reorganize Iranian society along gender lines. According to Maria Mies (1986), patriarchy, literally translated, means "the rule of fathers. But today's male dominance goes beyond the 'rule of fathers'. It includes the rule of husbands, of male bosses, of ruling men in most societal institutions, in politics and economics, in short, what has been called 'the men's league' or 'men's house'" (37).
9 It was in an introductory anthropology class during my undergraduate years that I became intrigued and fascinated with how certain practices were adopted by one culture but not another. I read the classics as well as countless ethnographies and articles exploring topic such as how politics and ideologies determine roles of men and women in particular cultures and geographies. This fascination led me to a more particular interest: the ways that the Islamic systems of governance and religious observance dictate all aspects of its disciples' lives, from sunrise to sunset. This in turn led me to my current focus: Islam and women, Islam and patriarchy, and Islam and the use of the veil as an instrument of patriarchal control and resistance. In other words, my question is how a religion that preaches submission and equality toward God and among the sexes has ended up with such great inequality between its men and women in every aspect of life.
10 In order to avoid reiterating the reductivist tendencies of Orientalism, Said reminds us that it is crucial that one be "aware, however dimly, that one belongs to a power with definite interest in the Orient, and more important, that one belongs to a part of the earth with a definite history of involvement in the Orient almost since the time of Homer" (Said, 1978: 11).
11 An Iranian of the Muslim faith is a citizen of Iran that is expected to follow the edicts of the Quran and do so with loyalty and fidelity. This also means that as an Iranian of the Muslim faith, one must behave according to the cultural norms and social mores that have been laid down by the authoritative body of judicial and religious leaders that have designed the traditional Iranian-Muslim way of life according to the religious and legal ascriptions of the Quran (Mackey, 1998).
12 Pope Innocent the VIII in the world of 1480s commissioned two Dominican Fryers (Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger) to write a manifesto aiding in the identification of witches (primarily women), as well as offering methods of prosecution, and forms of extracting confessions. The result was the creation of a book The Malleus Maleficarum (The Witches' Hammer) that was used by the inquisitionists in collaboration with the Christian clergy to burn women at the stake for over three hundred years. Images of 76
women in this text depicted them fornicating with the devil, wreaking social havoc by conducting spells. The Sharia is an ancient Islamic social and penal code (Armstrong, 1997). The genesis of this Islamic law began during the final turmoil caused by the Iranian revolution of 1978-79 which lead to the formation of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Also, Mir-Hosseini (1999) notes that the Sharia law is Islamic sacred law based on the implementation of the teaching of the Quran.
14 Although they share Islam as a religion and learn Arabic as part of that religion, Iran has never been part of the Arabian Empire.
15 For further reading on the invasion of Islam into Persia please see Mackey, 1998 page 41-65.
16 Islam is not the only religion practiced in Iran. There are Zoroastrians, Christians, Jews, and Bahai followers. Additionally, Iran has other minority groups who not only speak Farsi but have kept their own traditions and languages such as Arabic and Turkish (Mackey, 1998).
17 "The confrontation between Reza Shah and the clergy over the veil began almost by accident. In March 1928, the Shah's wife came to Qom to pray at the shrine of Fatima. While in an upper gallery, changing from a heavy chador designed for the street to a lighter one for prayer, she momentarily exposed her face. A mullah happened to see her. With a chorus of students behind him, he poured shame upon her. The next day, Reza Shah pulled up in front of the gold-domed shrine accompanied by two armored cars and four hundred troops. He strode through the gate in his heavy military boots and across the graves of Shiism's holy men. Finding the offending mullah, he knocked off his turban, grabbed him by the hair, and thrashed him with a riding crop. Then he turned and left, leaving Qom and Iranian Shiism stunned" (Mackey, 1998: 181).
18 The Islamist Shiist clergy in Iran remains strong and their ability to call up images of martyrdom from times past as a way of uniting and rallying the community toward a common foe remains one of their powerful assets. Shia Islamists, who emerged as followers of the fourth caliph Ali in 661, believe that the overall leadership of the Moslem community belongs to the descendants of the Prophet, whereas, Sunni Islamists do not subscribe to such a belief and follow an elected leadership (Mackey, 1998; Hodgson, 1977). For further information on the expansion of Islam please see Hodgson (1974). A Caliph is a supreme leader of the Muslim community. He stands in as the successor of the Prophet to lead his people during war and peace and promote the teaching of Islam as preached by the Prophet (Hodgson, 1977).
19 The label "Islamist" or "pro-regime" is used by Gerami and Lehnerer, (2001) to describe women who have endorsed and embraced the religio-patriarchy's agenda of segregation as a mean of validating their self-expression and "of building autonomy and identity" (558). 77
Islam is not the only religion practiced in Iran. There are Zoroastrians, Christians, Jews, and Bahai followers. Additionally, Iran has other minority groups who not only speak Farsi but have kept their own traditions and languages such as Arabic and Turkish (Mackey, 1998).
21 According to Sandra Mackey (1998), the "ideology of revolutionary Islam was pushed by Ayatollah Khomeini and the political clerics into the Persian Gulf and on to Lebanon. There it won adherents within [the Moslem] Shia population demanding justice and equality in a Lebanese political system shredded by war. It was the Lebanese Shia who engaged the United States in another confrontation between Islam and the West. On October 23, 1983, their passion, generated by Khomeini's politicized Islam, killed 241 U.S. Marines. In 1984, Islam as politics began to sweep civilians from Western countries off the streets of Beirut to become hostages of political agendas often inspired by Iran" (302). For further information on this subject please see Mackey (1991) Lebanon: The Death of a Nation.
22 Restorationism has called upon Moslem women to "return to more traditional norms ... emphasizing women's roles in procreation, the adoption of [a proper Islamic dress code (hejab)], and submission to patriarchal values" (Afary, 1997: 91). The restorationist movement under which Islamic fundamentalism operates, seems to suggest that Islam must return to its roots as a mean of finding an alternative to Western ideology. An example that is at the heart of such restorationist movements is the Sharia. The Sharia which is an ancient Islamic social and penal code, mandates that women are to be veiled and be secluded from public observation (Armstrong, 1997b; Hirschmann, 1997).
23 Faeghe Shirazi (2001) investigates the usage of the veil in popular culture such as advertisements (print and television), erotica, in Hindi films, and in written words such as graffiti and poetry.
24 The story depicts two Babylonians who, because their love was forbidden by their families, agreed to meet in secrecy "at the tomb of the Babylonian King Ninus. Thisbe, arrives early, sees a lioness and flees into a cave, leaving her veil behind. The lioness, whose muzzle is dripping with the blood of a fresh kill, rips Thisbe's veil. When her love Pyranmus finds the torn and bloodstained veil, he concludes that the lioness has killed Thisbe and commits suicide with his sword. When Thisbe finds Pyramus's dead body [after emerging from the cave], she throws herself on his blade" (Shirazi, 2001: 3-4).
25 "O ye who believe! Enter not the dwellings of the Prophet for a meal without waiting for the proper time, unless permission be granted you. But if ye are invited, enter, and, when your meal is ended, then disperse. Linger not for conversation. Lo! That would cause annoyance to the Prophet, and he would be shy of (asking) you (to go); but Allah is not shy of the truth. And when ye ask of them (the wives of the Prophet) anything, ask it of them from behind a curtain. That is purer for your hearts and for their hearts" (Mernissi, 1991: 85). 78
A Caliph is a "successor to the Prophet in his role as chief of the Muslim state" (Mernissi, 1999).
97 Hoodfar (1993) states that "according to Moslems, women should cover their hair and body when they are in the presence of adult men who do not belong to the specific category of close relatives; thus when women put on their veil or take off their veil, they are defining who may or may not be considered kin" (7).
28 Joseph Stimpfl (2000) reference Peltz (1996) noting that "a fundamental concept of veiling in dakwa is the principle that women represent passion (nafsu) and men reason (akal). Although men and women have both characteristics women are predisposed to passion and evoke eroticism" (Stimpfl, 2000: 175). We also learn from Stimpfl (2000) that "a man [in Malaysia,] must struggle to maintain reason and control women's eroticism. Women's dress can cause the ascendancy of passion over reason. Because of this, women must dress carefully and de-emphasize their erotic potential" (175). 29 Ironically characteristics associated with the Islamic resurgence, as argued in the literature, (Bernal, 1994; Shaheed, 1999), have their origins in Western Colonialism and Imperialism.
30 This is supported by Nehamas (1993), who stated that, as the "expression of power came to be cloaked in the vocabulary of humanism and humanitarianism, the condition of oppression actually became worse" (18).
31 Fatima was the only sibling of the Prophet to bear children. The late King Hossein of Jordan and the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran are said to be a direct descendents of her - thus are Prophets. Fatima is not presented as a warrior, who is a skillful negotiator, independent, and tough-minded woman, nor is she presented to have historically created the Moslem followers known as "the Fatimide" (Mernissi, 1991).
As Moghadam (1994) notes that the ideology of the Iranian religious theocracy post- 1979 revolution implicated women in gendered categories of "domesticities, differences, and danger" (171).
33 These arguments, as Mir-Housseini (1999) points out, are the result not of reality but of patriarchal beliefs being produced and backed by Islamic religious texts.
34 At this juncture, one must ask, how is it that an action by "A" [men natural sexual interest) necessitate measures toward "B" [the female sex) when the self-identified problem is "A". The idea that men's natural sexual interest toward the female sex, necessitates women's protection argues that, in order for men to protect themselves and their hegemony, they must protect themselves from women.
The stereotypical and heterosexist constructions of Eastern men within Western colonial discourses has been the focus of scholarly analysis in recent years. For example, 79
Franz Fanon in his book "Black Skin, White Masks" (1967) and Jenny Sharpe in "Allegories of Empire" (1993) both touch upon the hypersexualization of African and "Asiatic" men within various colonial contexts. However, there is still perhaps room for a more concerted study of similar discursive construction of Iranian men than I have included here in my study of Iranian women and the veil.
Heterosexual intercourse within the construct of marriage is the only form of sexuality recognized in Islam as a positive fact of life.
37 I will then argue along the lines of Foucault (1978) that Victorian Europe was preoccupied with sex and sexuality in much the same way that the Islamic religio- patriarchal rulers of Iran is today.
38 Particularly in contemporary Western cultures such as the US and Canada, clothing is used by many groups of adolescents as a "language" through which to express or describe their sense of rebelliousness against or conformity to the dominant social order (see for example, the Punk Movement; the cultures of tattooing and piercing).
39 Fifteen young women in Saudi Arabia were burnt to death in March 2002. These women were forced back into a blazing building (where they attended school) because they were not properly wearing their veils. The moral entrepreneurs in charge of the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice were said to have hindered the rescue effort and have wished for the women's death (Jebreili, 2002). The National Post. March 19th A3.
40 Shirazi (2000) cites Farzaneh Milani noting that the "'self appointed moral police, ever obsessed with the dress code for women' ... [and that] 'lipstick in not just lipstick in Iran ... It transmits political messages. It is a weapon. Though women in Iran have to cover themselves with a veil, they have become a vibrant political force.'" (121).
41 According to Shirazi, "in 1979, women were still considered men's subjects, and they were eager to change that, even if it meant supporting the clerics who had a history of opposing legislation that would have given women more rights. [After the formation] of the Islamic Republic of Iran, [they] quickly squashed women's hopes and ambitions for improving their lives. It introduced many new rules and regulations concerning all aspects of women's lives. Now there were rules as to the nature of the jobs women could hold and the subjects they could study. Now a woman had to ask for her husband's permission if she wanted to work. Women were aggressively encouraged to have large families; female sexual abstinence was declared a sufficient reason for divorce. And women were now persuaded, often by force, to veil. Women who appeared unveiled in public were assumed to be opposed to the tenets of the Islamic Revolution and were thus not only religiously but also politically suspect. In the eyes of the revolutionaries, unveiled women represented Western values, which the Islamic regime wished to eradicate from Iranian society" (Shirazi, 2000: 92). Furthermore, Shirazi (2000) notes that "in 1983, an amendment was added to the constitution that states that women who harm public chastity by appearing in public without the religiously sanctioned veil are 80
subject to receiving up to 74 lashes. In 1986, another amendment was added that states that those in public view whose dress and makeup are in violation of religious law and those who cause the spread of corruption or violate public chastity will be arrested, given priority when tried in the proper court, and accordingly sentenced to one of the punishments listed in the addendum" (93).
42 A roupouch is "a long robe resembling a housecoat, buttoned across the front and running from shoulders to ankles, usually worn by women over regular clothes when out in public and as an alternative to the chador " (Esfandiari, 1997: 222).
43 According to Shirazi (2000), the rupush is an "outerwear gown that is used along with the headscarf, is another fashion statement. Color and pattern of the fabric used, the length, as well as variations in cut, and other embellishments such as buttons, pockets, lapel width, gathers and slits are inductions of fashionable trends or keeping up with "European styles," which the Islamic regime tried to eradicate from the Iranian society. It is this flexibility that has provided an opportunity for a large number of women to keep themselves closer to the European fashions while still adhering to the boundaries of the Islamic dress code" (120).
44 We learn however that during the Taliban regime, clandestine schools existed for girls and that agencies such as the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), aided women in the formation of schools, clinics, orphanages, handicraft factories and shops (Mackenzie, 2001; Latif, 2001).
45 A recent article appearing in the Globe and Mail about a group of Iranian women who have been condemned to death for killing their husbands in order to escape spousal abuse and torment ("Troubled Wives Turn to Murder to End Marriage," July 4, 2002) argues that these "killings show stresses in Iranian society" and that the treatment of women in Iran has grown worse instead of better. 81
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