Main Edition
US
FR
Is this really it? (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Is this it? Could this, finally, be the end of the Islamic Republic of Iran? As huge crowds of women and men surge through the Iranian streets, burning hijabs and calling for “Death to Khamenei!”, is an impossible dream finally about to come true?
The prospects certainly look better than in 2009, when the country’s protestors were primarily middle-class and more narrowly focused on the issue of Ahmadinejad’s election victory, rather than on dismantling the oppressive system in its entirety. Today, men and women, rural and urban, affluent and poor are all marching to bring down the Islamic Republic. Khamenei is also reported to be in very poor health, so the chants might just come true.
Yet senior US officials I have spoken to have cautioned against blind optimism. As they explained, we’ve seen many moments in recent Iranian history where the tide seemed about to turn, only to be disappointed. The same officials also warned that America is trying not to become too involved: the Biden administration isn’t supporting the protestors, but it isn’t explicitly discouraging them, either.
This isn’t an example of craven politics: I also fear that the end of the regime might not herald a brave new world, but rather a bloody mess, where Khamenei’s death is followed by internecine fighting for power between various Iranian factions. Would the overthrow of the regime lead to civil war, a military coup, or liberal democracy? Nobody knows.
None of this is to say that, faced with a possible uprising in Iran, America should avert its gaze. Perhaps more than anything, the wave of protests now sweeping the country is a perfect moment to remind ourselves of the shameful stupidity of US policy in the region in recent years. Take the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal, which gave the regime time and space and money to strengthen its morality police and security infrastructure, as well as extend its regional influence. If no deal had been signed, perhaps the regime’s current crisis would have come sooner.
Nor should we forget the fact that Iran has recently tried to abduct and kill several American citizens on American soil; or that a number of senior US officials believe Iran is to blame for the attempted assassination of Salman Rushdie last month. It’s a national disgrace that America’s politicians saw fit to break bread with the butchers of Tehran in the first place. And still too many think we can politely sit down with them again to re-negotiate the nuclear deal. I wouldn’t blame the brave men and women of Iran if they never forgave us for such short-sighted idiocy.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeAyaan has shown by her own example the courage that Muslim women need to be able to express themselves freely, but her point about those in Iran having agency through the support of their menfolk is telling.
Just what is it that the majority of Muslim men are so afraid of, that they cannot allow their womenfolk to live their best lives? This fear of female agency is shameful in itself, never mind pretending to act as guardians of their “honour”. Only when Muslim males are able to accept females as their equals will they truly be able to live their own best lives, instead of constantly searching for reasons to keep half the population subdued. What a waste.
“Just what is it that the majority of Muslim men are so afraid of, that they cannot allow their womenfolk to live their best lives?”
Now that would be interesting. Religion alone doesn’t explain but only justifies it. So what’s behind it?
The answer to your question is in the Bible, as you should jolly well know.
Easy answer, for you and them.
Well as you obviously haven’t read it, the Old Testament is a coercive social code designed to facilitate the lifestyle of a Semitic people in a harsh desert environment. (the real menace being the sand, closely followed by the flies.)
Hence various prohibitions on foreskins, sodomy, copulation during menstruation, what not to eat etc. Deeply imbedded is the notion that God created man and women was an afterthought and inferior, hence the Adam and Eve nonsense.
Urban rumour has it that the first thing an Orthodox Jew says in the morning on leaping out of bed is :”Thank God I wasn’t made a woman”.
Islam unsurprisingly has similar views, as off course do some Christian sects.
“Well as you obviously haven’t read it, the Old Testament is coercive social code “
Youre so tiresome. But if you’d like to try and address the question Steve asked: why do Muslims treat women in this way, when many, many Christians in the West do not, I’d still be interested. But if you can’t address the question because you’re so fixated on the Old Testament and can’t look at things from a deeper understanding of the psychology of many Muslim men, then fine, just let it go.
Dear me what a facetious reply.
However the reason the West performs better in these ‘games’ is that they have (albeit mostly unconsciously) the inestimable benefit of Classical Civilisation behind them.
Unfortunately the benighted Semites were deprived of such a benefit and thus perform poorly as a result.
See, that wasn’t so hard, was it? It’s a start at least.
Don’t be bashful, let’s hear you view on this vexed subject.
Well, the position of women as inferior beings doesn’t explain the desire to beat women, to disfigure them, or kill them. Old cultural ideas about the position of women as being there to serve their husband doesn’t explain the psychological hatred these men have towards females. We can appreciate different cultural mores about where a woman fit into society, but beating, maiming, disfiguring and killing don’t fit. There’s a deep psychological hatred, or fear, of women in this behaviour. I can’t think of any other reason, though I’d be interested to hear it if there is one.
Actually we do have men like this in Western societies but we call them psychotic.
Your final paragraph says it all, well done.
Thanks guys. Since i posed the question, i think it’s simply a question of fearing the sexual power of women. It brings their manhood into question, thus the need to control, and the fear of their offspring not being their own.
The justification for requiring women to wear the hijab is that it distracts males from their ‘ability to contemplate their god’. This sounds to me like a classic case of sublimation, i.e. using religion as a means to cast a veneer over their deepest fears of emasculation.
How and why things have developed differently in the Christianity-centred West is another matter. Let’s not forget it’s still less than 100 years since universal suffrage came about, and we did burn thousands of witches only three hundred years ago. I find the whole business fascinating, and welcome these articles from Ayaan and also Julie Bindel, Mary Harrington, and others. We’re all, as societies, still grappling with the issue of femininity in one way or another.
“i think it’s simply a question of fearing the sexual power of women.”
If that’s what defines a woman, then yes. Because whatever they may say their reasons are, it’s simply being a women that draws the ire of these men. Ironically, in this 21st century in the West, we have a problem defining a woman. And so it goes.
“This sounds to me like a classic case of sublimation, i.e. using religion as a means to cast a veneer over their deepest fears of emasculation.”
Interesting.
So while the basis of the issue is ‘simply’ a question of fearing the sexual power of women, it’s far from being a simple issue, and multiple layers of veneer have been overlaid upon it through the centuries, much as the layers of laquer on an old painting hide the true colours.
“True colours” – revealed in all their hideous inhumanity by ISIS. The gurning machismo of their “warriors” revealed nothing more a desperate desire to capture and enslave women. I’m sure their god approved.
Similarly, the sex-gangs of Muslim men exploiting vulnerable white teenage girls in the UK, still ongoing. What are their community leaders doing about it? It’s “the girl’s fault”, no doubt.
Interesting conversation you guys have going. However, I think that ever since man was given an overriding urge/requirement to propagate the species by means of the most pleasurable physical act that he can ever perform, mankind has been wrestling with how best to harness that power. From Adam to the 16 year old down the street, it continues. Far be it from me to provide a simplistic answer to solve that ancient conundrum.
The biological basis is fully understood. What’s being discussed is how and why men fail to control that urge, and what means they employ (including the veneer of religion) for justifying their actions in regard to fear of losing control.
All species that propagate via sexual reproduction face similar challenges, and those individuals with greater physical or ‘display’ prowess usually get to propagate the most. Until relatively recently, in evolutionary terms, the advantage lay with brute strength. Once humans started to develop into communities and the ability to organise and enhance the prowess of their community through the use of intellect became more prominent, the intellect of women became a valuable addition to communities, and those communities where women use their intellect to gain agency have a greater chance of success, through sheer additional overall employment of brainpower and feminine skills. Hence the use of the phrase “what a waste” in my original post, with regard to those communities that don’t allow women such agency.
But these developments, still quite recent in evolutionary terms, are still being grappled with. It seems that those societies which arose via Christianity gained an early advantage over those that didn’t (the Enlightenment, Protestant work ethic, industrial revolution) but these developments have led to a mixing of backgrounds (through immigration) and a reaction amongst Muslim and other communities to the clash of their values with modernity.
The principal battleground, as it were, in all of this is female agency, or it’s suppression. Much of the artistic output in the West also deals with these issues.
Christianity is in effect a pygmy standing on the shoulders of the giant of Classical Civilisation.
An important factor here is that islam is the youngest of abrahamic cults. The younger the religion, the more violent it is, not only to women, but to everyone. First centuries of christianity were no less hateful towards women, as witnessed by “fathers of church” such as Tertullian.
Another big factor is inheritance from the Roman Empire. For the time given, it was quite progressive, including the fact that according to August laws, women could unilaterally get a divorce. Christianity actually came as oppressive force, banning divorces and criminalizing homosexuality.
Steve, Western man and woman is too worried about loosing his/her, ‘I’m not a racist halo’ to challenge the Muslim rape gangs. These young girls from the lower classes have been handed over as a sacrificial offering to these entirely Pakistani men to placate them so that they don’t riot as they frightening did during the Satanic verses book burning riots 30myrs ago, This gang raping has been going in for 30 years.
To Quote Brett, “ironically in this 21st century we have a problem defining a woman.”. I fear there is much envy in Western men now that their women are more liberated and there is a desire to turn back the clock. The East obliterates woman with the Burqa/ chador. The West is busy now obliterating woman with language using the pronoun.
If you see someone as inferior being, logical conclusion is that you allow yourself authority over this being. The consequences are being able to use physical force as a form of punishment and demand sexual service, which is viewed as wife’s duty and therefore can be insisted on.
There are men like this in Western societies, yes, but they are viewed different because most of these societies are secular.
Other factor is that if women are not allowed to work and have their income, they have no means of defense. Those who cannot defend themselves are easy targets no matter their sex.
Well said Brett, We do have such men in the West and as I suggest of the men from these cultures with heinous violent attitudes to women, they have a clinically psychotic fear of women.
I am learning to skip CS.
“Nunc est bibendum!”
Brett, let’s not get too proud of Western men, they have made progress but women in the West are still not equal, BUT, one has to point out when old white men are being trashed by BLM that old black man and old brown man has much further to go, because mistreatment of women is conspicuously worse.
Brett, This is what’s behind it actually. In fact it’s very much blatantly, observably in front of everyone’s very eyes. It is a clinically psychotic fear of the perceived power of women. It all began with an apple.
When you live in a totalitarian state everyone is made to conform—men and women. If you look at what is happening in many colleges around our country you will find professors who privately support their falsely accused colleagues but, won’t speak out for fear of reprisal.
need needed
It appears I can reply.
Steve, I agree with you. It’s all very well having nice, cosy, benign fathers and brothers, ( and they are appreciated) but how will they stand up to real equality? I’m not sure they will cope. Somehow, and for reasons I remain puzzled over, the East, and especially Islam disintegrated into a serious pathology that it can’t seem to shake off. Men from these cultures; ( please let’s not be interrupted by the ‘NOT ALL’ argument, and thank gawd or someone for the fact that we don’t have to wait until ‘all men do’ before we can complain about this problem) have not been able to countenance that females are equal to males. This amounts to a clinically psychotic fear of women and their perceived power over men. If this huge protest goes anywhere it will need a leader. I can assure you, and I’m not using a crystal ball for this prediction, I’m simply relying on history, the leader will be male. And so, these brave women and girls will be put ‘back in their place’, that is where patriarchy feels comfortable with them, in the kitchen and the bedroom. Only the overthrow of patriarchy will give women their liberty, and there’s no sign of that happening andywhere in the world, yet!
I wonder if Iran is different because, unlike most of the Middle East, the people are Indo-European.
Unlike the arabs, the Iranians have a history which they are proud of, going back millennia to ancient Persia. History for the arabs only began with the emergence of the pedophile prophet.
However Sassanian Persia was completely overthrown by the Arabs in the 7th century, whilst the Romans managed to beat them off, albeit at very considerable cost.
Well, Aishah was 17 years old when she got married to the prophet. I don’t think it’s right to consider this situation with today’s point of view and call him a pedophile. In these times people who are 17-18 considered suitable for marriage because people were dying actually at the age of 40-50.
Aisha bint Abi Bakr[a] (c. 613/614 – July 678) was Islamic prophet Muhammad‘s third and youngest wife.[7][8]
Little is known about her childhood. A preponderance of classical sources converge on Aisha being 6 or 7 years old at the time of her marriage, and 9 at the consummation; her age has been a source of ideological friction.
Aishah was at the age of 17 when she was married to the prophet. That was normal in those times to get married at the age of 17-18 when people where actually can live a maximum of 50 years. I don’t think we can call him a pedophile.
I.e. not Arabic.
I saw a comment from Dom Joly (of all people) I think, he said most countries in the Middle East have a fairly sensible government attempting to shepherd a mad populace, whereas Iran has a sensible populace run by a mad government
The original Aryans in fact.
Nice piece Ayaan. These men and women are brave beyond belief.
great article. Thank you
I concur that the historical anti-male grievance of the feminist movement since its surge in the 1970s has been its Achilles heel. For the best possible of worlds, we need to lift each other up.
Yes! Thank you (and of course Ayaan) for raising that essential point.
Western feminism was born from righteous anger, but degenerated into navel gazing neuroticism a long time ago. Everything becomes so incredibly fraught when absolutely everything is considered misogyny. Truly, the more passionately feminist a woman is, the less happy she seems to be.
So much of this has to do with women getting exactly what they asked for, and discovering that life is still hard.
”Iranian women were turned into second-class citizens.”
After the revolution of 79 Ayatollah Khomeini did allow the women to hold professional jobs, attend mixed university, drive cars. He was devoted to his mother, respected her greatly, and was greatly influenced by her. This is an Iranian thing.
He did not force the Chador as so many feared ‘‘On Dress Codes. Ruhollah Khomeini: Dec. 28, 1978: “Women, like men, are free in all these things, women are in no way different from men. Yes, in Islam, women must dress modestly and wear a veil (hijab), but that does not necessarily mean she has to wear a full-body cover (chador).Women can choose any kind of attire they like so long as it covers them properly and they have hijab.”
(Hijab being not a face veil like the Arabs and Pashtu, but hair covering)
It is a Shia thing, I think. The Sunni – Salifists, hard Deobandi, Whabbi of Arabia and Afghanistan and Pakistan (and some central Asia) have a different thing going with their woman.
Thanks for clearing that up…..:/
I wonder where in the world Aaron found all this false information about Ayatollah Khomeini. Hijab, since early years of post-revolution in Iran was forced on women and the rules regarding women’s dress code were strictly enforced. One of Khomeini’s major complaints about the Shah was that he was promoting NUDITY in the society and he repeatedly said it in his speeches. (Go review his speeches Aaron before spreading wrong historical information on social media).
Under Khomeini’s reign, there a was a police called ‘Efaf Police’, an earlier version of the so-called morality police which was much more violent. They were there to strictly observe women whose clothes did not comply with the Islamic rules.
Western feminist women are interested solely in their own power. They didn’t care when we pulled out of Afghanistan – if they had raised a ruckus then Biden would have stayed. So now 15 year old girls are parcelled off as slaves to Taliban fighters. They don’t care about Iranian women either. They won’t pressure Biden to stop the Iran nuclear deal, they won’t do anything. Because they don’t care about ‘women’ – they care about themselves.
First, Afghanistan was hopeless from the very beginning. There were the British in there, there were the Soviets in there, there were progressive monarchs of their own trying to improve the country. It had failed in all the cases – once the plug is pulled, things return back to what they were before. Tribal societies are hard to advance, especially if they are heavily religious and loyal to the militants. It’s a little sad to blame Western women for this. I guess, it’s a responsibility of India that there are some tribes around it still living like pre-historic people according to this logic.
There is a lot of men participating in recent protests related to overturning Roe v Wade, on the side of keeping abortion rights. Even according to surveys, there is much bigger party line or religion identity difference towards the question then sex.
The author states that a lot of her achieved women friends from Iran heavily rely on the men supporting them. That’s not unique, a lot of achieving Western women rely on family and friends, too. I suspect, in Iran they might simply need permission of men to do certain things, or financial support which they might not be able to obtain themselves.
As America’s feminist movement collapses under the weight of it its own divisiveness.
Were that this was the case. I see no evidence of that here in Canada. If anything, the feminist movement and its attendant religiosity is stronger than ever. Toxic masculinity anyone?
Toxic femininity for me…
In the US, the overall focus on identity politics is what is causing the divisiveness among feminists. Organizations born of the post-Trump inaugural “Women’s March,” for instance, dissolved into endless disputes over percentages of non-white vs. white, whether to include trans women, and all sorts of charges and counter-charges around “intersectional issues.”
Feminism IS identity politics, the original, because it pits one identity against another as oppressor and oppressed, a cardinal error because men and women throughout history have been bound together biologically, not politically, each with their own nexus of need and contribution to the species enterprise. That is not the case with any other ‘identity’ group. If power were the only dynamic, not reciprocity and cooperation, the sexes would have separated and died off millions of years ago.
Some of the divisiveness comes from old school feminists, vs whatever you’d call the nutters today who scream TERF and call mothers chest feeders.
What do these different symbols at the side of name represent
What do these different symbols at the side of name represent
From Wikipedia:
— In September 2012, women made up more than 60% of all universities’ student body in Iran.
— As of 2016 Iran had the 5th highest number of STEM graduates worldwide with 335,000 annual graduates.
— Iran produces the third highest number of engineers in the world. Around 70% of engineering graduates are women.”
Indeed, there are many male Iranians supporting these brave women. In the meantime, the West keep funding charities that promote the veiling of women, even child girls, and the self-identification of men as women, thus giving a hand to molesters aiming to violate the sacred spaces of women and the women therein.