The Politics of Women's Rights in Iran

Preface

Preface I would like to propose, in the name of the Islamic Republic of Iran, that the United Nations, as a first step, designate the year 2001 as the “Year of Dialogue among Civilizations.” —President Khatami, addressing the United Nations General Assembly, September 21, 1998 IN HIS SPEECH before the United Nations in 1998, President Khatami announced his initiative to institute a Dialogue among Civilizations. The newly elected president’s initiative was meant as a response to Huntington ’s “clash of civilizations” (1996), aimed at fostering cooperation and averting the ultimate clash. The UN endorsed this call by declaring 2001 the “Year of the Dialogue among Civilizations.” That year, Muslim extremists, mostly of Saudi Arabian descent, attacked the United States by hijacking planes and rerouting them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In view of this tragedy, Iran’s president and other heads of Muslim-majority nation-states expressed condolences to the United States and condemned the attacks. But the opportunity for dialogue was lost in the U.S. administration’s renewed conviction to remake the Middle East. At the onset of the U.S. war on terror, lameduck President Khatami expressed an entirely different approach to the United States on the twenty-sixth anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. Speaking before tens of thousands, Khatami responded to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s threats to use force in Iran: Will this nation allow the feet of an aggressor to touch this land? If, God forbid, it happens, Iran will turn into a scorching hell for the aggressors. . . . The Iranian nation is not looking for war, violence and confrontation. . . . But the world should know that the Iranian nation won’t tolerate any aggression and will stand united against aggression despite differences. (Associated Press, February 11, 2005) In some ways, these two statements serve as bookends to this project, tracing a trajectory of hope as it increasingly shifts to despair. While many critics of the Iranian system of government have decried Khatami’s “reform period” (1997–2005) as a failure, as having accomplished nothing, this period allowed Iranians and Iran observers to better understand how the postrevolutionary state operates: that it not only presents possibilities but is constantly changing. Khatami’s presidential campaigns, moreover, x • Preface raised political awareness among women, who had overwhelmingly voted for him. This book explores some of the lasting effects of his administration ’s attention to the rule of law and the discourse of Islamic modernity through a focus on women’s discourses of rights. WRITING “RIGHTS-CULTURE” The difficulties become most acute when culture shifts from something to be described, interpreted, even perhaps explained, and is treated instead as a source of explanation in itself. —Adam Kuper, Culture: The Anthropologist’s Account, 1999 Tehran, Iran, February 1999. In the moonlit sky, I could make out the shape of the outlying mountains that encompass and gather in the giant sprawling city like a child outgrowing its mother’s lap. The taxi driver proudly reminded me that Tehran is not a “Third World” city but is “modern” and “civilized.” Peering out on the urban cityscape, I got a feeling that the dilapidated nature of the city was less like a beautiful woman whose looks fade as she ages; it was rather more like an old man whose life has fallen into disarray once his caretaker wife has passed. Iran’s population has more than doubled in the years since the revolution , to just over seventy million. Since the 1960s, land reform and industrialization have pushed many villagers into the capital, now home to one- fifth of the country’s population. Thus Tehran, the country’s largest city and its capital, faces the problems of many large cities: overpopulation, traffic congestion, pollution, urban sprawl, and scarce affordable housing . Although Iran’s population growth slowed from over 2.3 percent per year in the 1980s to approximately 1.7 percent, the country has a very youthful population, with over one-third under the age of fourteen. Consequently , well over half the population has little or no memory of the revolution or the prerevolutionary government. In early 1999 I moved to Tehran to begin research for a project on women’s rights. I lived in the city for a year and have returned for followup trips each year since. This book represents the culmination of this project in which I sought to understand the meaning that some urban Iranian women give to “rights.” It is...