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Iran: Girls in black
By Pepe Escobar
June 8, 2002
Tehran - In Qom and Mashhad, the Shi'ite faith's most sacred cities in Iran,
they are enveloped in black from head to toe, any time, any where: it is
unthinkable not to use the all-enveloping chador. In Tehran, while the clothing
is still black, closer scrutiny reveals more: a pair of jeans, sneakers, red
fingernails, a knockoff Prada backpack, lipstick, long eyelashes, flashy
sunglasses, a whiff of French perfume, shiny black hair trying to break free
from a colored scarf. Iranians may not even notice, although the guardians of
Islamic morale flash red alerts. For a foreigner, exhausted of encounters with
packs of black ghosts, it is like a vision of Heaven, like the first time Omar
Khayyam - the poet and mathematician from Nishapur - saw his beloved Jahan.
The historically famed beauty of Persian women may still be a taboo subject in
the Islamic Republic. Same with their brains. The three main forces of reform
in post-Islamist Iran are intellectuals, women and the young population (60
percent of the total of 63 million). If you are a young intellectual woman such
as Noushin Ahmadi Khorassani you are, from the point of view of the
conservatives, a tremendous adversary.
Noushin works as an editor and also as the director of the women? monthly
Djens-e Dovom ("The Second Sex"). She is at the forefront of the struggle for
women's rights in Iran a struggle that has nothing to do with the 1960s and
1070s Western version.
Noushin considers that "Islamic women do not contest the principles of the
revolution. On the contrary: they invoke Islam to denounce the injustice of a
few laws which, according to them, misinterpret religious texts like for
instance the divorce law. They are in favor of a complementarity, not equality
with men. They accept not being mixed in the bus, in marriages, in gym classes.
But they want the right to have access to the same functions and the same
possibilities of leisure. They do not refuse to wear the Islamic veil, which
they consider as a necessary protection to be accepted by men. Its the price to
pay to be recognized as human beings and not as objects of desire."
These are the Islamic feminists. They may not be radicals and they want to
affirm their political participation within the system. There are now 11 women
among the 290 members of parliament ready to fight for women's rights, but
under the banner of Islam.
But especially in Tehran with 12 million people, almost 20 percent of the whole
population, and setting the tone for the whole country what we increasingly see
is another kind of woman. Noushin: "These lay women consider that equality with
men should not be attained by sacrificing other values like the freedom to wear
what you want. Among most of the girls of the new generation, there is an
enormous desire to get rid of the black coat and the scarf. Certainly there is
a limitation. These women know there are more important rights to conquer than
the right to go out in the streets with your head uncovered."
Among the inequalities there is the question of inheritance, or the weight of a
witness in court. "In both cases, the woman is worth only half, compared to a
man." Women in Iran may be increasingly active in their professional life: more
than 50 percent of jobs in the public sector, and more than 40 percent of
teachers. But they cannot get any job they want. They cannot be a judge. And
they cannot even go to a soccer match: the stadia are a male privilege.
The women who lived through the revolution of 1979 carry an undeniably bitter
experience: the regression of their juridical status compared to Iran under the
Shah. The revolution in fact institutionalized total disparity between men and
women in terms of fundamental rights such as divorce, inheritance or the role
of witnesses in court. On the other hand, under the Shah, most women living in
rural areas were illiterate.Today, they go to school just like their brothers,
birth rates have been cut in half and the average age for getting married is 21
years old, compared to the previous 18.
Culturally, they have never been so equal to men. This evolution through a
series of paradoxes has led many women to be fully aware of the injustices they
face. Fatemah (not her real name) says, "I suffered a lot when I was a kid. I
had long hair and could not understand why I had to stuff it under a piece of
black cloth. But then I got used to it. Anyway, we don't have a choice." In the
back seat of a shared taxi, a young sales rep in Tehran agrees, "To force women
to wear the veil is like hiding the sun behind the clouds." But in the same
taxi, a young conservative woman talks for minutes on the necessity of the
hejab (wearing a veil), "In Western countries, where women don't wear the veil,
they are abused by men. This destroys the character and morals of the woman,
and leads society to ruin. While the woman is veiled, she is spared of great
dangers. She can devote her time to study and work instead of wasting her time
with make-up."
Hours are, indeed, wasted or not in Tehran, a certified make-up heaven. In the
famous "private clandestine parties" in northern Tehran the upper middle class
part of town - girls seem to have emerged from a Revlon or Shisheido ad.
When one is young and in love in Iran, the only solution may be to go to the
park. For young girls these are sometimes the only available places to meet
their boyfriends in a society that does not tolerate any relationship before
marriage. But if you live in Tehran, you can always hit the Internet. There's
an astounding proliferation of Iranian chats on the net. Its not about love
though. Its about sex as the first three classic questions in these chats
attest: Are you single, do you live in Tehran, where do we meet?
Young women know exactly what they don't want. At Tehran University, Mila (not
her real name) says, "They have now invented this term of 'Islamic civil
society'. This term does not mean anything in itself. Normally, in a civil
society, there is no limit for individual freedom, while in an Islamic society
freedoms are restricted."
More and more young women are being mobilized by the lively Iranian women's
press. These magazines publish an avalanche of articles specialized not only in
women's rights and work discrimination but in family problems as well, such as
divorce and child education.
The new generation is much more audacious than the women of the revolution,
says Noushin. "They are not afraid to do their make-up in the street, to wear
body-hugging coats, to talk directly to boys. They are not afraid of being
arrested in private parties. They know that this can be arranged at best by a
bribe, at worst by one or two nights in a police station. Those that went
through the worst humiliations, like being beaten or facing a virginity
control, are even more audacious. To face the moral brigade for them is a
provocation, a challenge to the system."
A student in Tehran makes the point, "We don't give a damn to Islamic values.
We grew up in a system full of restrictions, so we learned how to deal with
it." Noushin says that "most of the young girls live what they call a 'double
life'. There's public space and private space. In the street, there is the
hejab. At the house, it is the miniskirt." It is perfectly normal to meet women
in Tehran who during the day hold a government job, fully clad in their
chadors, and who at night can be seen fully made up in a body-hugging
minidresses.
"Until when can this contradictory system can last?", asks Noushin. "There are
more and more women dreaming of freedom, and this does not regard only the
so-called 'Westernized' circles. Today, young women are fighting for their
individuality. They have to oppose themselves to the regime, but also to the
traditional weight of the family. Some extreme forms of behavior emerge from
all this, like running away, or even suicide. There have been a lot more cases
in these last few years."
The Islamic State remains blind to this social convulsion. Why? Says Noushin,
"Because they don't have an answer to these contradictions. Accepting to see
these problems would be accepting that the system of the Islamic Republic has
failed."
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