This article was downloaded by: [Universite De Paris 1]On: 04 September 2013, At: 09:07Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Journal of Muslim Minority AffairsPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjmm20

In the language of the Islamic sacredtexts: the tripartite struggle foradvocating women's rights in the Iranof the 1990sMirjam KünklerPublished online: 07 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Mirjam Künkler (2004) In the language of the Islamic sacred texts: thetripartite struggle for advocating women's rights in the Iran of the 1990s, Journal of Muslim MinorityAffairs, 24:2, 375-392, DOI: 10.1080/1360200042000296726

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1360200042000296726

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 24, No. 2, October 2004

In the Language of the Islamic Sacred Texts: TheTripartite Struggle for Advocating Women’s Rights inthe Iran of the 1990s

MIRJAM KUNKLER

Abstract

The article focuses on the campaign for women’s rights in the Iran of the 1990s on the basisof the reinterpretation of Islamic sacred texts. Reflecting on the discursive limits on legaldiscourse imposed by the current theocratic regime, secular and religious women in Iran havejoined to frame arguments in favor of women’s rights in Islamic terms rather than withreference to liberal human rights discourses. As women are excluded from reaching clericalpositions that would endow them with the authority to engage in theologically recognizedreinterpretation of the Islamic sacred texts, this encounter has hinged, it will be argued, on acollaboration with male reform-minded clerics, whose arguments the women’s movement haslearned to appropriate and advance for its own purposes and interests. The campaign forwomen’s rights in Iran has thus necessitated a rare symbiosis not only between secular andreligious women, but also between women and male reformist clerics—a symbiosis which haslargely been neglected by scholarly accounts of the women’s rights movement and whoseimplications for the greater reformist project in Iran have yet to be examined more carefully.

Introduction

The Islamic Republic of Iran, established in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution,dramatically reversed significant advances towards women’s rights gained in the lastyears of the Shah regime. In the republic’s early days, public activism of women wasbranded ‘un-Islamic’ and their role in public matters largely eliminated throughparalyzing provisions that removed them from public offices, enforced a restrictivepublic dress code and curtailed privileges and enforced protective clauses for women inthe private sphere.

However, despite the attempted restriction on women’s public appearances and thegenerally unfavorable laws concerning forms of association and expression, womenhave mobilized again since the earlier part of the 1990s and have continued theiremancipative struggle originally launched during the grand years of social mobilizationin Iran, the late 1960s and 1970s.1 This development was an effect, not the least, of theurgency of women’s issues that emerged during the Iran–Iraq war. The apparent‘incapability’ of shariah-based Islamic law, as applied in Iran, in tackling the socialproblems of Iran’s society has constantly motivated women to initiate debate on theappropriate application and the legitimacy of official interpretations of Islamic coretexts by the Shi’i clergy.2 Perhaps learning the lessons of contention in a theocraticregime, women activists have pursued a recourse to theological reasoning since theearly 1990s, attempting to use and advance reinterpretations of Islam in order to pleadfor more egalitarian provisions in both the civil and criminal code and the institutionalsetting.

ISSN 1360-2004 print/ISSN 1469-9591 online/04/020375-18 © 2004 Institute of Muslim Minority AffairsDOI: 10.1080/1360200042000296726

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ite D

e Pa

ris

1] a

t 09:

07 0

4 Se

ptem

ber

2013

376 Mirjam Kunkler

Since women are excluded from reaching clerical positions that would endow themwith the authority to engage in recognized reinterpretation of the sacred texts, thisencounter has to a great extent been dependent upon male reformist clerics, whosearguments the movement has learned to use for its purposes and interests. Thepredominant medium in this endeavor has been the women’s press, providing theforum for the publication, distribution and advocacy of such arguments.

In the context of integrating specific reformist approaches into its body of claims anddemands, the women’s movement has hence made use of the wider reformist religiousdiscourse and specific gender-related arguments comprised therein to advance theimprovement of the woman’s status in the Islamic republic. The women’s press, so Iargue, has contributed considerably in bringing the debate of Islamic reinterpretationinto the open, thus eliciting it of its secluded academic and clerical environment intothe wider public sphere.

The focus of this article will be placed on the increasing trend in the women’smovement to advance more egalitarian notions on the basis of Islamic reinterpretationin the women’s press, drawing on clerical discussions that usually take place in specificclerical media largely unnoticed by the general public. In bringing together religiouswomen, secular activists and reformist clerics, the journals have brokered previouslyunconnected actors. Moreover, the staging of the reformist debate in the women’s presshas enabled women of both secular and religious background to engage in it from theirindividual professional backgrounds, thereby enriching it with arguments emanatingfrom approaches other than Islamic theology.

First I will look at the women’s situation before and after the revolution and brieflydescribe how the social developments in the 1980s and 1990s have exposed theinadequacy of applied shariah law. I will then discuss the development of women’smobilization despite disciplining policies and the increasing cooperation between secu-lar and religious activists. Later I will expose the major arguments tackled in thewomen’s press, review the sources of Islamic law and discuss how their legitimacy ispartly contested in the debate. Finally, I will look at the role of the women’s press asa vehicle for change in the recent context of reform in the country.

The Curtailment of Women’s Rights

Women’s rights had become part of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s explicit projectof the ‘modernization’ of Iranian society.3 While the veil had been outlawed in theperiod of 1936–1941 under Shah Reza Pahlavi, his son Mohammad pursued a lessdisruptive but more thorough policy towards the realization of women’s rights as partof his ‘White revolution’, including the institution of suffrage for women in 1962 andof the family protection law in 1967, which was modified in favor of women in 1975.4

Under this law strict limits were put on polygamy, husbands could no longer divorcethrough only a thrice-repeated statement, and the grounds for divorce were madesimilar for women and men. Child custody, which under Shi’i law usually goes to thehusband, was now awarded to either parent. Most important, the main provisions ofthe Family Protection Law were now written into every marriage contract as a way torender the marriage ‘Islamically legitimate’.5

While legal reform before the 1979 Islamic revolution had thus strengthenedwomen’s rights in marriage, divorce and child custody, the rise of political Islam in the1970s, moreover, helped to create an arena in which Muslim women could reconciletheir faith with their new gender awareness. The grand participation of women in the

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ite D

e Pa

ris

1] a

t 09:

07 0

4 Se

ptem

ber

2013

Women’s Rights and Islamic Sacred Texts 377

revolution endowed them with a sense of power and political weight.6 But althoughwomen had been a major force during the revolution, women’s rights were dramaticallycurtailed in the early 1980s.7 Thus, women were discouraged from high governmentposts in the early Islamic republic and female judges were removed, educationalinstitutions segregated, divorce was eased for men, while made more difficult forwomen and the theoretical minimum marriage age for girls lowered from 18 to nineyears.8 Now women needed their husband’s permission if they wanted to pursue aprofession.9 Coeducation was outlawed. The Family Protection Law was annulled, anunreformed Islamic law instated; temporary marriage and polygamy were encouragedduring the Iran–Iraq war and an Islamic dress code for women enforced in public thatwas to cover everything except for the face and the hands, and made it very difficult forwomen to engage in all kinds of physical activities.10

But the 1979 constitution of the Islamic Republic also specified that all Iranians, menand women, were equal under the law.11 In the course of growing mobilization againstthe unreformed application of Islamic law, women learned to use this as an opening,which allowed them in the later 1980s to contest unequal treatment. Until today,women have thus slowly succeeded in regaining some of the rights and privilegesgranted under the Shah regime, although they have arguably not been able to targetbeyond those.12

Early feminist writing that would challenge the women’s role in the Islamic Republicarticulated itself predominantly in secularist terms and was produced by women whohad left Iran after the revolution and who wrote from outside the country. Within Iranthe feminist movement, grown through the 1960s and 1970s, was largely paralyzed (likeother social movements which had been instrumental in the success of the revolution)and left in shock and disbelief over its own marginalization from public politics in thepost-revolutionary period.13 Women’s assertive activism became branded as un-Islamic.Those women who were left in influential public positions (mostly parliamentariansand municipal politicians) were largely regime-conforming.

Only toward the end of the 1980s would male and female lawyers, professors, artistsand journalists venture into a public space where they would allow themselves to openlyquestion the regime’s policy towards social and family issues. This was pressing themore the regime’s inadequate social policies during the Iran–Iraq war became apparent.

While the Pahlavi regime had advocated the two-children family, the Islamic republicabandoned any kind of birth control and—in light of the war—encouraged childbirth.Iran’s population grew by 70% to 60 million during the 1980s, with half of thepopulation being under 20 years of age. This presented immense challenges to the statein providing adequate educational and social infrastructure. At the same time, therestrictive laws on women’s professions did not allow many women widowed during theIraq–Iran war to support themselves, and many were forced to turn to prostitution orother illegal sources of income. While official shariah-based law demanded that childcustody return to the husband’s family in the case of his passing, many families werenot willing or able to afford the custody of those children, and not infrequently somewere abandoned. Overall, both the social disruptions caused by the war and socialpolicies that tended to exacerbate the situation rather than alleviate it resulted in risingcrime rates, growing drug abuse, illegal abortions, and a dramatic deterioration of thehealth situation.

The more the regime’s failure in social policy became apparent, the harder it was torepress openly articulated challenges to shariah-based legislation. Religious scholars hadto concern themselves more intensively with the woman’s role in a changing society and

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ite D

e Pa

ris

1] a

t 09:

07 0

4 Se

ptem

ber

2013

378 Mirjam Kunkler

make adjustments to the implementation of the shariah in gender and family-relatedrealms. The process of modification and the debates accompanying it have increased inthe 1990s not least as a result of the death of Khomeini in 1989.14

When the regime was forced in the 1990s to change its laws towards more non-shariah-based legislation it cleverly did so under the rubric of ‘protecting women’. Birthcontrol became mandatory and regulations on child custody were slightly modified.Scholars writing on behalf of the women’s movement admit today that despite thegovernment’s portrayal of its more egalitarian measures as an accommodation ofwomen’s demands, these advances mostly resulted from a dramatically deterioratingsocial situation rather than a moderation of the government’s take on women’s issuescaused by gender-egalitarian advocacy.15

Women’s Mobilization

What contributed to the paralysis of the women’s movement in the 1980s was aninternal division over the self-perception of its constituents. Many women, shocked bythe government’s dogmatic implementation of what it considered Islamic law, feltcompelled to adopt secular positions if they wanted to uphold the demand for genderequality. Others, to whom the pre-revolutionary rise of political Islam had revealed thepossibility of a reconciliation of their faith with the assertion of gender equality,16 feltthat Islamic feminism, i.e. the struggle for women’s rights within an Islamic framework,was the only legitimate approach.

Thus during the 1980s, secularist discourse and discourse of activists who engagedin the women’s question from within the system occurred very much in isolation fromone another. A reform of the Islamic framework from within was an impossibleenterprise, so advocates of the secular strand argued, and ‘Islamic feminism’ a contra-diction in terms.17 Those arguing from an Islamic perspective were often accused ofrendering legitimacy to an oppressive regime and paying only lip service to the ‘truewomen’s cause’.18

Since the early 1990s however, there has been a rapprochement between secular andIslamic feminists,19 in that writers who used to develop secular arguments now increas-ingly include Islamic conceptions in their analyses.20 This change in behavior andlanguage may be due not least to the fact that approaches towards gender equality notembedded in Islamic reasoning may not be recognized by the regime, or, if translatedinto policies, are reversible on the grounds that they contradict Islamic principles.Those policies drawing on Islamic reinterpretation, by contrast, cannot easily becurtailed without stirring a new theological debate. Islamic feminists in the meantimelargely acknowledge that a reconsideration of how the woman’s role is discussed inreligious sources is a valid (if not necessary) undertaking.21

The question whether ‘Islamic feminism’ is a legitimate project or not seems to be offof the agenda of the women’s movement today. As Mir-Hosseini contends:

Islam and feminism are not incompatible. Feminist readings of the sharia arenot only possible today but even inevitable when Islam is no longer anoppositional discourse in national politics but the official ideology. This is sobecause once the custodians of the sharia are in power and able to legislate,they have to deal with the contradiction between their political agenda andtheir rhetoric: they must both uphold the family, restoring women to their‘true and high’ status in Islam, and at the same time retain the patriarchal

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ite D

e Pa

ris

1] a

t 09:

07 0

4 Se

ptem

ber

2013

Women’s Rights and Islamic Sacred Texts 379

mandates of sharia legal rules. This tension has always been inherent in thepractice of the sharia, but when the sharia becomes part of the apparatus of amodern nation state, its custodians may have to accommodate, even seek,novel interpretations. This opens room for change on a scale that has noprecedent in Islamic history.22

While the regime tried to encourage women’s work only in certain spheres, manywomen did not accept these limitations. Although few women were elected into theearly parliaments, many women kept their role in the public sphere, responding todismissals from governmental and other jobs by entering private employment inimaginative and novel ways. They increasingly went into other areas open to them suchas small businesses, teaching, writing, medicine and the arts.23 The women’s press,which preceded the revolution by decades, played a key role in the resistance to newrestrictions on women.24

The Women’s Press

The most vocal opposition to the curtailment of women’s rights came from femalejournalists. Some of the women’s press was essentially regime-conform, as, for instance,Neda (The Voice) or like Payame-Hajar (Hajar’s Message). However, the magazineZane-Ruz (Woman Today), which had been launched in 1964, became a platform foropposing the post-revolutionary laws pertaining to family matters on the basis of newIslamic interpretations. Later Zane-Ruz was increasingly joined in this undertaking byPayame-Hajar, with the result that the latter was not published in 1996 due to a seriesof critical articles. Several other journals have since consistently concerned themselvesfrom different viewpoints with the woman’s role in Muslim society and problematizedofficial feminine values that emphasize the woman’s role in the private sphere: amongthem are Zanan (Women), Jens-e Dovvom (The Second Sex) and Farzaneh (The Wise/Cul-tured).25

The magazines bring out stories of women’s suffering in contexts of domesticviolence, depression, suicide risks and loss of children. Among the journals that havebeen publishing a feminist agenda, Zanan is the most widely read. Its monthlysubscription rate is at about 120,000 readers who are mostly urban-educated women.Instituted in 1991 under Khatami’s auspices (then minister of culture) and edited byShahla Sherkat, a former contributor of Zane-Ruz, the most outspoken women’sjournal in the 1980s, it fights against women’s oppression and addresses men as well aswomen.26 In contrast to most other women’s journals in Iran, Zanan is independent inthat it is not tied to the state or to any specific political faction, and the women whopublish it have no family ties to important public figures. The journal raises subjectsconsidered taboo in public discourse and publishes important articles concerning thejudicial system in relation to women’s rights. Both men and women with both secularand Islamic backgrounds publish articles. With arguments that stand out in theiremphasis on reinterpretations of the shariah and other religious texts, Zanan hasbecome a locus of political debate outside and inside the country. Characteristically, itsmost prominent contributors include the female lawyers Mehrangiz Kar and ShirinEbadi, now a Nobel laureate, the female sociology professor Zhahleh Shaditalab, thefemale film director Tahmineh Milani and the male reformist cleric HojatoleslamSaidzadeh.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ite D

e Pa

ris

1] a

t 09:

07 0

4 Se

ptem

ber

2013

380 Mirjam Kunkler

What is new in many of the arguments found in Zanan compared to pre-revolution-ary feminist positions is their stress on reinterpretations of Islam. Articles discuss andhighlight what is presented as the egalitarian spirit of many verses in the Qur’an andoften explain in-egalitarian verses, such as those allowing polygamy, as to be seen inlight of their historical context. The authors present ‘their view as the authentic view ofIslam and in-egalitarian laws and doctrines as deviations caused by various kinds ofmale prejudice and historical circumstances’.27 Hojatoleslam Saidzadeh, the male clericpublishing in Zanan, has accordingly termed his enterprise ‘the Equality Perspective’.

Among the important articles in Zanan were two from 1992, which Saidzadehpublished under the name of his wife, Mina Azadi, perhaps as a means to guard himselfagainst too much attention from the authorities. In the articles he criticized the decisionmade by revolutionary authorities to exclude women from judgeship, by establishingthat on the basis of hadiths (Islamic traditions) women and men had equal potential,regardless of employment or function, and that there was no Islamic foundation tojustify the discriminatory state policy. As a consequence to the discussion in Zanan, theclerical serial Payame Zan (Woman’s Message), which is run by young (male) clerics inQom and contains the latest theological thinking on women’s equal rights,28 publishednotes that put established interpretations into context. Thus in apparent response toSaidzadeh’s articles on the subject, it included a note by late Ayatollah Motahhari in1992 which stated, ‘among the hadith cited to exclude women from judgeships only twoare authentic and they do not justify in any way the prohibition of women to bejudges’.29 Similarly, in 1993 a posthumously published note of his confirmed ‘if awoman is more knowledgeable than men, we are not only authorized to follow her buthave the duty to do so’.30 Thus the advancement of women’s causes has required thegrowing involvement not only of religious and secular women, but also of clerics of highstatus and education.

Another topic discussed by a Zanan article in 1992 was the competence of women tobecome fully recognized mujtaheds (doctors in Islamic jurisprudence) and to makereligious judgments binding on their followers in all respects.31 Clerics had tried to limitthe judgments of female mujtaheds to the family sphere. Again in response to this claima decree by Ayatollah Motahhari established in Payame-Zan that there was no basis forthe confinement of women’s judgments to family matters only.32

Indicative of Zanan’s capacity to stir debate, it has repeatedly been the case that onceZanan launched a novel theme, the rest of the women’s press would take it up—evenif in less critical ways. During the campaign for the 1997 presidential elections, Zananscrutinized the favorite candidates in their approach to the role of women. As HalehAfshar tells us, when Nateq Nouri (the favorite conservative candidate who ultimatelylost against Khatami) refused to be interviewed, the journal published its unansweredquestions—indicative also of the degree to which freedom of speech in certain contextscould be exercised at that time—among them the following: ‘Is it true that in thepresence of outsiders you call your wife by your eldest son’s name?—Have you everpunished your wife? If so, how?’ and finally: ‘We were told that asking such questionswould mean that were you to be elected you’d close our journal. Is this true?’33

Going further, the women’s journal Zane-ruz reported a statement by a cleric,establishing that the constitution’s use of the term ‘man’ in describing the president ofIran was generic rather than a limitation to the male gender.34 The latter theme becameacute in 1997, when for the first time, a woman ran for presidency. Azam Taleqani, thedaughter of late Grand Ayatollah Taleqani, a religious scholar herself and the editor ofthe women’s journal Payam-e Hajar, had nominated herself along with seven otherwomen, arguing that the 1979 constitution did not explicitly exclude women from

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ite D

e Pa

ris

1] a

t 09:

07 0

4 Se

ptem

ber

2013

Women’s Rights and Islamic Sacred Texts 381

contending for the office, that, moreover, there had been female caliphs in the historyof Muslim civilization and that Qur’anic provisions did suggest the equality of womanand man.35

Reinterpreting the Sacred Texts

The Texts

To understand what is at stake in demands for a reinterpretation of the religious texts,we need to review the sources of Islamic law.

One central problem for women in their struggle for a gender-egalitarian reading ofthe Qur’an in Iran is that women are institutionally excluded from higher training inIslamic jurisprudence (fiqh—the study of shariah). They may become lawyers, but theattainment of mujtahed (similar to a doctorate in jurisprudence) had until recently beenruled out.36 Still, female mujtaheds are not allowed to gather a religious following liketheir male counterparts, nor may they serve as authoritative source of emulation or takeon political positions available to men with comparable theological degrees, such asmembership in the Council of Experts.37 Their degrees, therefore, have less socialrelevance. For the most part, women in Iran keep relying on scholarly men and theirinterpretation of the religious legal aspects.

The core texts of Shi’i Islam consist of the Qur’an, the hadith (the prophet’s sayings,actions and decisions) and the teachings of the 12 Shi’i Imams.38 The Qur’an,considered literally the word of God, is the undisputed and primary source of law.39 Ofits 6,000 verses 500 contain explicit or implicit divine commandments and a further 80verses may be read as articles of a code. Beyond the Qur’an, Islamic legal reasoningrelies chiefly on the hadith as recorded during or shortly after the prophet’s time andtransmitted until today.40

While the Qur’an is considered immutable and excluded from scientific scrutiny,reformist Muslim scholars have engaged in a critical examination of the hadith litera-ture.41 In Iran such scholars still draw greatly on the methodology developed byAl-Ghazzali and Abu Shaqqa by which to verify the authenticity of the hadith.42 In afirst step the chain of transmitters and their biographies are verified. Many hadithpreviously regarded as sahih (sound) are deemed by the two scholars as only good(hasan), weak (daif) or forged. In a second step, if the common interpretation of thehadith is not compatible with the Qur’an, the hadith, if authentic, is reinterpreted.Crucially, Abu Shaqqa concluded that many widespread hadith that put women onunequal legal footing are forged.43

In a similar vein, Riffat Hassan, along with Wadud-Muhsin a prominent femalecontemporary Arab scholar, emphasizes that while equality of the sexes can be read intothe story of the creation in the Qur’an, an entirely opposite view on gender relationsprevails in the hadith literature.44

The principal sources for shariah-based legislation in Iran are the Qur’an, the hadith,analogy (qiyas) and reason (aql). Analogy (qiyas) presents jurisprudence by recourse toa similar case dealt with in the Qur’an or the hadith, while aql45 (reason) is a particularlyShi’i element in interpretation which suggests that ‘all that is reasonable is legitimate’.This qualification to Shi’i interpretation of the core texts has allowed for the inferenceof some of the most theologically remote judgments. At the same time, it may very wellpresent the ‘Shi’i opening’ for a feminist reformulation of Islam-based legislation andjurisprudence with its implicit use of reason instead of dogma.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ite D

e Pa

ris

1] a

t 09:

07 0

4 Se

ptem

ber

2013

382 Mirjam Kunkler

Reinterpretation of Texts

Although the framework of legal sources is thus precisely circumscribed, we find a coreof Islamic principles that has developed with different weights and different conse-quences in the diverse cultural contexts of the Shi’i and the greater Islamic community.Existing cultural norms and practices have been incorporated into the religious codeaccommodating the idiosyncrasy of each society to which Islam spread. As HalehAfshar argues:

… in the process of developing and constructing an Islamic jurisprudence,interpretation of the texts, initially of the Qur’an and subsequently of fiqh, hasbeen of the essence. The adjustments and adaptations over time have givenIslamic laws a flexibility which has allowed their integration into diversesocieties in different continents without much difficulty.46

It is this adaptability that leads scholars such as al-Azmeh to suggest that the conceptof a single Islam is an illusion in itself: ‘There are as many Islams as there are situationsthat sustain it’.47

This may well indicate that despite its solid core of commandments, Islamic law ismore adaptable to changing contexts of space and time than is often suggested in theIslamic Republic and elsewhere.

The chief reformist intellectual of Iran, philosopher Abdulkarim Soroush, has pro-vided the reform-minded Shi’i scholarly community with a crucial means to embark onchallenges of texts such as fiqh and shariah by insisting on a differentiation betweenreligion and religious knowledge, i.e. Islamic theology.48 While the former is expressedin the core texts (the Qur’an, the hadith and the teaching of the Imams in his view),49

religious knowledge represents the study of the core texts and comprises the literaturesof shariah and fiqh. The recognition that religion and religious knowledge are notcongruent has had the crucial effect that issues about the reform of Islam can beaddressed without compromising the sacredness of religion itself.

Hojatoleslam Saidzadeh, the modernist cleric who became prominent through hisprogressive writing in Zanan, echoes Soroush’s differentiation when he contends:

Islam is what the Prophet brought people from God. This is all I recognize asIslam; we don’t have any other Islam. What Companions of the Prophet saidis not Islam, nor are the interpretations. For 1,400 years, discriminatoryinterpretations of women have been produced; these aren’t religion, butinterpretations of religion. I defend my position against those who say I amquestioning religion, I do not question religion, only erroneous religiousthoughts.50

Religious interpretation, following Soroush, shall be subject to scrutiny like any otherscientific discipline:

Since the interpretation of the text is social by nature and depends on thecommunity of experts, like all learned activities it will be an independentdynamic entity, abstracting from individual interpreters; containing right and

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ite D

e Pa

ris

1] a

t 09:

07 0

4 Se

ptem

ber

2013

Women’s Rights and Islamic Sacred Texts 383

wrong, certain and dubious ideas—the wrong being as important as the rightones from an evolutionary point of view. It is a branch of knowledge no less,no more.51

He goes on to argue that since it is contextual no interpretation can claim ‘truth’.Rather, it is the task of the scholarly community to deliberate on the validity ofproposed interpretations.52

In contrast to Soroush, Saidzadeh believes that only the Qur’an should be excludedfrom scientific inquiry, while all other religious writing, including hadith and theteaching of the Imams, should be considered interpretations and henceforth challenge-able. Here he is supported by conclusions of the late Grand Ayatollah Motahhari whosimilarly considered the hadith to be of human source. Some religious scholars haveargued that even the Qur’an has to be studied with an interpretive approach.

It is a consequence of Soroush’s arguments that interpretation can now publicly bedepicted as time-bound and relative in the Islamic Republic. Mir-Hosseini goes so faras to argue that ‘clerics had to admit that their understanding of the sharia is subject tochange and that they must find new arguments, or else they must abandon the claimto rule [!] in the name of sharia. Soroush’s ideas undermined the very basis of theirexclusive rights to religious authority’.53 Although Soroush himself has not developed anovel approach to gender equality, he has achieved a twofold approach to sacred textswhich feminists can and do make use of. On the one hand, the differentiation betweenreligion and religious knowledge has enabled women to emphasize the possibility ofchange in Islamic interpretation, while on the other hand it has also encouraged clericslike Mohsen Kadivar, for whom gender has become a theme, to address it from withina legal framework.

The journal Zanan, in turn, has given activists who do not posses the qualification ofmujtahed the space and justification to voice their claims legitimately, while at the sametime introducing gender-egalitarian arguments within the clerical discourse to a wider,partly secular, audience. Most notably, it is in Zanan that Hojatoleslam Saidzadeh hasdeveloped and advanced his Equality Perspective. He sees gender inequality in theshariah not as a manifestation of divine justice, but as a mistaken construction by malejurists that is contrary to the very essence of divine will as revealed in the Qur’an.Arguing that a substantial number of hadith and fiqh theories obstruct the way toestablish equality between the sexes, he accuses a majority of jurists and hadithspecialists to have sacrificed the Principle of Equality in Islam in order to endorse a setof theories resting on assumptions that are no longer valid. Discussing the unequaltreatment of women and men in inheritance as put forth by the Qur’an, he states:

we must understand why Islam made [fixed] inheritance [according to whichwomen’s share is half that of men] an exception; and once we understand thereason for this, we’ll see that Islam has based everything on equality. I wonderwhy some [Jurists] leave the Principle aside and focus on exceptions. […]Equality is such an unequivocal Principle in the Qur’an that we can’t leave itaside for the sake of a set of fiqh theories.54

As becomes clear, these debates aim not only at the reformulation of gender in Islamicinterpretation, but also at a reform of the very method of Islamic interpretation itself.The critique of the woman’s role has developed into something (even) more fundamen-tal: a challenge of the contemporary pillars of Islamic theology.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ite D

e Pa

ris

1] a

t 09:

07 0

4 Se

ptem

ber

2013

384 Mirjam Kunkler

Islamic Feminism as a Vehicle for Change

The gender-egalitarian movement has achieved many concrete improvementsin the way women’s issues are dealt with in the public sphere.55 Partly as a resultof a campaign led by Zane-Ruz in 1984/1985 the government proposed that 12conditions be printed into all marriage contracts as grounds for women to getdivorced—provided husbands signed them all. They were the same clauses as annulledin the Family Protection Law, but, in contrast to the era of the latter, this timethey were not jurisdictionally enforceable. Moreover, in the same process thecourts were allowed to allocate up to half the property acquired during marriageto the wife if she was divorced against her will. Crucially, women have achievedthe institution of exclusive family courts in which decisions have to reflect the recom-mendation of obligatory female legal advisors. Against the official tolerance of polygamywomen have produced Islam-based arguments to strictly limit the practice, positingthat court permission should be required as had been the case in the Family ProtectionLaw. In the context of a campaign against honor killings, a law has been changed todistinguish between adultery and rape. In the course of these struggles male judges havebecome more sensitive to women’s rights and since 1998—not least due to thepersevering commitment of Shirin Ebadi—women may become judges again.56

In the realm of politics, approximately 60 women organizations have joined in the‘National Muslim Women’s League’ to lobby for women’s rights in political institutionsunder the leadership of Mahbube Abbas-Gholizade, the editor of Farzaneh.57 At thesame time, the meager results for female candidates in the 2000 parliamentary elec-tions—of more than 200 female candidates 14 were elected to the 290 seat parlia-ment—attest to the obstacles women still face in the political arena. In education,women have regained equal access to all subjects and sciences, and at the universitylevel they are well represented in business, technical and science majors.58 Sixty-twopercent of the young people who pass the university admissions exam are women59 andone third of all doctoral degrees are conferred upon women. Campaigns have alsosuccessfully initiated parliamentary bills that produce limits on a father’s or husband’sright to prevent his daughter or wife from exercising a profession. About a third of thelabor force today is female. In the realm of sports, women have slowly fought their waytowards the right of participating in certain public physical activities like cycling androller-skating.60 A medical bill against which Zanan had campaigned fervently duringpresident Khatami’s first term in office and which aimed at a segregation of thehealthcare system was ultimately approved, but no enforcement mechanism was estab-lished, partly also due to widespread opposition from doctors. Finally, the women’spress’ advocacy for women’s legal standing has resulted in the launch of the firstmagazine entirely devoted to women’s legal matters in 1998: Hoquqe Zanan (Women’sRights), and the award of the Nobel peace prize to lawyer, activist and author ShirinEbadi in 2003 attests to the strength and perseverance of the women’s struggle forwomen and human rights in Iran.61

Regarding reforms that were checked by the conservative legislative process, thegovernment tried to mitigate some gross injustices by providing instructions to thecourts. Keddie notes that ‘these developments, involving the acceptance of some legalprovisions castigated as un-Islamic under the Shah, show the flexibility under pressureof what is termed “Islamic” and also show that earlier reforms had more impact thanwas sometimes admitted’.62

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ite D

e Pa

ris

1] a

t 09:

07 0

4 Se

ptem

ber

2013

Women’s Rights and Islamic Sacred Texts 385

Perhaps the most significant achievement with respect to Islamic reinterpretation hasbeen the provision of the women’s press for a space where it can unfold and reach outto the greater public. Its activism has, in a sense, resulted in the enlargement of thepublic sphere.

As Moghadam holds, the women’s movement in Iran has achieved reconcilingfeminism with Islam. Zanan’s contribution, and the contribution of other women’sjournals, to the bridging of these two discourses has become substantial in providing theforum where these debates can take place. In bringing together secular women activists,religious women activists and reformist clerics, the journal has brokered previouslyunconnected actors.

In the course, what has started to unfold resonates a self-fulfilling prophecy utteredby Keddie: ‘The overthrow of the Pahlavi state by an antithetical politics and cultureforced people into the newly-dominant clerical theocratic mode, which, however, couldsolve neither economic nor cultural problems and increasingly alienate many, especiallywomen, young people and professionals. Out of this may emerge a new synthesis thatis developing a more indigenously-based culture, a culture that finds more local rootsfor practices of gender egalitarianism and human rights’ in Iranian Islamic as well asnon-Islamic traditions.63

The advancement of women’s causes, while primarily due to the cooperation be-tween secular and Islamic female activists, has required the growing involvement ofreformist clerics of high status and education. The latter are still a minority among thehigh clergy and often must choose their words carefully in order to operate in a clericalcontext still dominated by conservatism in the sphere of gender and the family. Butcrucially, as Esfandiari notes, all of these current allies have changed their immediatepost-revolutionary positions in order to be able to work together.

A quote from the lawyer Mehrangiz Kar, a frequent contributor to Zanan, shedssome light on the relation between feminist activists and religious scholars and therelevance of their dialogue:

We cannot speak of an agreement between [women and reformist clergymen],but rather of a moderation of positions on both sides. Our meetings are in noway official or political; we discuss women’s problems. There are still manyreservations on both sides, but underneath an apparent silence one may seealready an adjustment of the different modes of thought and a culturalmaturity beginning to emerge. It may be via women that this divided societymay find its social and cultural cohesion again … The revolution gave womenconfidence in themselves. With all the sacrifices they made, Iranian womenknow how much their current and future rulers owe them and that egalitarianrights are part of what is due to them. This demand is no longer that of agroup of women; it is a nationwide one. The Islamic government cannotescape it without risking a brutal separation of the state and religion.64

Significantly as well the debates in the women’s press have started to tear down theinstrumentalization of Islam in the dichotomy between tradition and modernity, asGheytanchi argues. The representation of a diversity of voices of women and men inZanan, so she holds, has gradually ended the state’s authorship on modernity. ‘It wasprecisely the dichotomization of West versus East, modernity versus tradition, mani-fested in Pahlavi’s statist policies to modernize women, that led to the unboundedpower of clergies to claim the “sacred” truth of Islamic sources on preservation ofwomen as the last bastion against Western cultural penetration’.65 Now for the first time

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ite D

e Pa

ris

1] a

t 09:

07 0

4 Se

ptem

ber

2013

386 Mirjam Kunkler

in the history of the Iranian women’s movement, so she argues, the dichotomy isabolished through the implantation of feminist claims into Islam.

The publications have become the linkage between reformist intellectuals and clergy-men who seek to build a new polity on a reinterpretation of Islam, and women who seeka reinterpretation for gender-egalitarian provisions. The Islamic feminist movementrepresented by the women’s press has broadened the public sphere by constitutingwomen as autonomous individuals and citizens. That women have positioned them-selves as public ‘commentators’ of the religious texts promises that a future process ofdemocratization of politics may not remain an exclusively masculine occupation.66

Conclusion

There is a significance of this reformist development for other countries in the region.Reformist interpretations to the advantage of women are by far not new, but they havenot used such theologically sophisticated arguments, or been adopted by so manytraditionally-educated clerics or by so many women from a variety of social back-grounds.

The development of the gender-egalitarian movement to advance its objectives onthe basis of Islamic reinterpretation (a reform from within the system) parallels thearguments made by Iran’s most prominent and influential thinkers on Islamic democ-racy, Abdulkarim Soroush, Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari and Mohsen Kadivar,who seek an integration of democratic values with government in a Muslim country andan integration of human rights with religiously informed law.67 What contribution couldthis intra-Iranian struggle based on reinterpretations of Shi’i Islam play for the widerMuslim world and for women’s rights in Sunni Muslim countries?

A sustainable democratic regime in Iran as in any other Muslim country can onlyevolve if dissimilar notions of rights are integrated into the transitional discourse thataddresses their real or perceived incompatibilities and ideally them, that is, arrives at anaccommodation of Islamic norms into the legal framework of a secular state. Thereinterpretation of Shi’i Islam, or as Saidzadeh would put it, its theological renewal, isa prerequisite for democratization, and a reformulation of the woman’s role in Shi’iIslam an integral part of this process.

NOTES

1. Consequently, women played a decisive role in the 1997 Iranian presidential elections, when themoderate candidate Mohammad Khatami secured victory against the institutionally favoredconservative candidate Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, then Parliamentary (Majles) speaker and preferredcandidate of the conservative wing of government. Here for the first time gender issues weredebated in the election campaign and an agenda of gender equality became part of Khatami’sprogram. Ultimately, it was the women’s ballot that largely contributed to Khatami’s win. Thestruggle for gender equality has been carried out in the broader framework for democratic change,and indeed, the women’s movement has been juxtaposed to the liberal press and the students’movement as one of the three principal motors in the fight for a transition to democracy. Forexaminations of the role of women in settings of political contention, see Lisa Baldez, ‘Women’sMovements and Democratic Transition in Chile, Brazil, East Germany, and Poland’, as well asJanine Astrid Clark and Jillian Schwedler, ‘Who Opened the Window? Women’s Activism inIslamist Parties’, Comparative Politics, Vol. 35, No. 3, 2003. Compare also Georgina Waylen,‘Women and Democratization: Conceptualizing Gender Relations in Transition Politics’, WorldPolitics, Vol. 46, No. 3, 1994, pp. 327–254.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ite D

e Pa

ris

1] a

t 09:

07 0

4 Se

ptem

ber

2013

Women’s Rights and Islamic Sacred Texts 387

2. ‘Clergy’ is a term associated with Christianity, but to some extent applicable to Shi’ism, because(unlike in Sunnism) all Shi’i believers must follow a religious leader. See Nikki Keddie, ‘Womenin Iran since 1979’, Social Research, Vol. 67, No. 2, 2000, p. 406.

3. The women’s movement goes back to the late nineteenth century, but was an occupation almostexclusively of the wealthier class, and particularly strong in the cities as women were excluded frompublic life in the cities more than in the countryside until the end of the Qajar dynasty. Womenplayed a key role during the Tobacco Revolt in 1891 and the constitutional revolution in 1906.All-girls schools were first opened by Presbyterian missionaries in 1838 in Orumiye and in 1875in Tehran, but their visit was forbidden by the state for Muslim girls until 1896. First organizationswere founded in the early twentieth century and concentrated their efforts towards having a billpassed in parliament that facilitated women’s education. By 1913 there were nine women’ssocieties and 63 girls’ schools in Tehran with close to 2,500 students. In 1919 the first public girls’school was opened. The first women’s journal was founded in 1910 (Danesh), followed by morepublications in 1912 (Jahan-e Zanan), 1913 (Shikufah), 1918 (Zaban-e Zanan) and 1919 (Zanan-eIran), amounting to a total of 14 women’s journals in 1930. In 1962 women were granted activeand passive suffrage. See, for instance, ‘A Brief History of Women’s Movements in Iran’, availableonline at: � http://www.payvand.com/women � .

4. To give an indication of the women’s role in public life in the late 1970s, by 1978 33% ofuniversity students were female with two million in the workforce. A total of 190,000 wereprofessionals with university degrees; 333 women were elected to the local councils, 22 to theMajlis (national parliament) and two to the Senate. See ‘A Brief History of Women’s Movementsin Iran’, op. cit.

5. Khomeini, who in French exile continued to attack what he considered un-Islamic laws andpractices in Iran during this time, deemed couples who were married or divorced under the FamilyProtection Law not ‘truly’ married or divorced in an Islamic sense.

6. Dr. Shahin Tabataba’i may be portrayed as one of the earliest women arguing from a perspectiveof Islamic feminism. Shortly after the revolution she emerged as the official representative ofIranian women at international conferences and wrote articles concerning the role of women inwhich she argued for a new interpretation of Qur’anic verses concerning women. See KatajunAmirpur, ‘Islamic Feminism in the Islamic Republic of Iran’, available online at: � http://www.qantara.de/webcom/show article.php/ c-307/ nr-9/ p-1/i.html?PHPSESSID� f535f30454bebbaa6ccabc84e12ad141,25.02.2003 � .

7. For a review, see Keddie, ‘Women in Iran’, op. cit.; Haleh Esfandiari, ‘The Politics of the Women’sQuestion in the Islamic Republic’, in eds John L. Esposito and Rouholla K. Ramazani, Iran at theCrossroads, New York: Palgrave, 2001, pp. 75–92; Farhad Kazemi, ‘Gender, Islam and Politics’,Social Research, Vol. 67, No. 2, 2000, pp. 453–474; Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Gender: TheReligious Debate in Contemporary Iran, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.

8. However, in practice it is not possible for girls to get married until they are 15 years old. This isdue to a provision in the civil code which states that state identity cards must be presented on thewedding day. These are issued for holders 15 years and older only. According to Haleh Afshar theaverage women’s marriage age in 1996 was 22 as compared to 20 a decade earlier. Haleh Afshar,Islam and Feminisms: An Iranian Case-Study, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998, p. 148.

9. This was later stipulated in Article 1117. Article 1105 furthermore laid down that the man is thehead of the family.

10. The Islamic dress code is binding for girls at the age of nine and older. Violations against it canbe punished with 74 slashes according to Article 102 of the criminal code.

11. The constitution also includes all civil liberties and political freedoms listed by Robert Dahl andother political scientists, but significantly, they may be qualified by decree of the Supreme SpiritualLeader and superior interpretation of shariah-based clauses in the constitution. The struggle ofpower between reformists and conservatives moved along these lines: the reformists used thedemocratic principles embodied in the constitution, emphasizing the rule of law, while theconservatives superceded parliamentary decisions by decree or veto through the council ofguardians. As to freedom of speech, the Iranian people have witnessed a seesaw struggle ineveryday politics in recent years where the ministry of culture headed by a reformist constantlyissued new licenses for newspapers while the head of the judiciary shut them down.

12. On the situation of human rights in Iran, see Ann Elizabeth Mayer, ‘The Universality of HumanRights: Lessons from the Islamic Republic of Iran’, Social Research, Vol. 67, No. 2, 2000,

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ite D

e Pa

ris

1] a

t 09:

07 0

4 Se

ptem

ber

2013

388 Mirjam Kunkler

pp. 519–536. See also Youssef Aliabadi, ‘The Idea of Civil Liberties and the Problem ofInstitutional Government in Iran’, Social Research, Vol. 67, No. 2, 2000.

13. Nikki Keddie reminds us that the ‘highjacking’ of the revolution, as undertaken by Khomeini andother members of the Islamic clergy when marginalizing, suppressing and eliminating secular,leftist and liberal forces that had been instrumental for the success of the revolution, is not anexperience confined to Iran. Instead, she proposes, the elimination of erstwhile allies and themonopolization of power on the part of the strongest group is a phenomenon equally observablein the French, Russian and Chinese cases. See Keddie, ‘Women in Iran’, op. cit., p. 409.

14. On how the custodians of the shariah have attempted variously to ‘perpetuate, modify, deconstructand reconstruct’ the notions of gender, see Mir-Hosseini, ‘Debating Gender with Ulema in Qom’,2000, available online at: � www.isim.nl/newletter/5/regional/5.html � .

15. See Keddie, ‘Women in Iran’, op. cit.; Haleh Esfandiari, Reconstructed Lives. Women and Iran’sIslamic Revolution, Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 1997.

16. Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Gender, op. cit., pp. 5f. Some women who I subsume here under the rubricof (Islamic) feminism do not identify themselves with this terminology; perhaps because theybelieve it carries a Western connotation, or because they believe it to be an exclusionaryphenomenon.

17. For a review of the debate, see Moghadam. Reflecting on reservations of the secular camp, sheasks, ‘Is it correct to describe as feminist or even as “Islamic Feminist” those publishers, activistsand scholars, including veiled women, whose work towards women’s advancement and genderequality are carried out within an Islamic discursive framework?’ Val Moghadam, ‘IslamicFeminism and its Discontents: Notes on a debate’, 2000, available online at: � www.iran-bull-etin.org/islamic feminism.htm � , p. 1.

18. What is perhaps most problematic about ‘Islamic Feminism’ as a concept is that it was applied toany approach that would discuss the woman’s role in an Islamic setting. Certainly there are women(mostly members of the conservative parliamentary faction, and those holding governmentalpositions) who legitimized the Islamic Republic and did not address the root causes of the limitedwomen’s role even though they claimed or suggested to do so. Nevertheless, Moghadam contendsthat more women who identified themselves as strong Muslim believers and advocates of genderequality have attempted to synthesize these two convictions rather than to legitimize the currentregime and its policies. See Moghadam, ibid.

19. One symbol that attests to this new symbiosis is, for instance, the joint campaign between thesecular lawyer Shirin Ebadi and the religious activist Azam Taleqani who protested togetheragainst the ban on women judges.

20. This may not least be an effect also of the increased fieldwork exiled secular feminist scholars haveundertaken in Iran during the 1990s. See Mir-Hosseini, ‘Debating Gender’, op. cit.

21. This trend is certainly not confined to Iran. Mir-Hosseini notes the shift in the writings of feministMuslim women, who used to locate themselves opposite an Islamist shariah-based discourse.Fatima Mernissi’s work, so Mir-Hosseini holds, exemplifies this shift well. While her ‘Le harempolitique’ (1987) sought to expose the patriarchal inner logic of Islamic texts, her more recent work‘Beyond the Veil: Male–Female Dynamics in Muslim Society’ seeks new meanings within thesacred texts. See Mir-Hosseini, ‘Debating Gender’, op. cit.

22. Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Gender, op. cit., p. 7.23. See Haleh Esfandiari, Reconstructed Lives. Women and Iran’s Islamic Revolution, op. cit. Indicative of

women’s strong role in the arts, for instance, is that most art galleries in Iran today are owned orrun by women. See Keddie, ‘Women in Iran’, op. cit., p. 240.

24. The first women’s journal Danesh was founded in 1910 in Tehran. With Zabane Zanan Esfahanreceived its first journal eight years later. See note 3.

25. Farzaneh is published by the environment minister of Iran who is a close collaborator of PresidentKhatami. The journal’s main editor is Mahbube Abas-Gholizadeh, who also leads the ‘NationalMuslim Women’s League’, an umbrella organization of 60 women’s associations.

26. Shahla Sherkat is a 42-year-old psychologist who worked for the partly state-funded journal Zan-eRuz from 1980 until 1990, when she was dismissed due to differences with the editors of thatpublication. According to Katajun Amirpur, they could not agree on how to address gender-specific topics. With Zanan Sherkat founded her own journal which was to address women’s issuesexclusively and was to become a state-independent platform where women like herself could voicenew approaches to social affairs. See Katajun Amirpur, Islamic Feminism in the Islamic Republic ofIran, op. cit., p. 1.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ite D

e Pa

ris

1] a

t 09:

07 0

4 Se

ptem

ber

2013

Women’s Rights and Islamic Sacred Texts 389

27. Keddie, ‘Women in Iran’, op. cit., p. 420.28. It was launched in 1992 by the Propagation Office of the Qom Seminaries. Similarly, the office of

Ayatollah Yazdi, the head of the Iranian judiciary in the 1990s, has made many public responsesto the articles published in Zanan.

29. Payame Zan, No. 5, 1992, p. 10. However, generally, Motahhari dismissed gender equality as aWestern concept. Instead he emphasized ‘complementarity’ between man and woman. SeeMir-Hosseini, ‘Women’s Rights and Clerical Discourse’, in ed. Negin Nabavi, Intellectual Trends inTwentieth Century Iran. A Critical Survey, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003, pp. 193–217.

30. Quoted in Keddie, ‘Women in Iran’, op. cit., p. 421.31. The same male who had questioned the religious grounds for the republic’s policies towards female

judges, again using the female pseudonym of ‘Mina Azadi’, launched this discussion. It soonbecame clear to informed readers that these articles were written by the same cleric who hadformerly published in Payame-Zan, the conservative women’s journal run by male clerics in Qom(Hojatoleslam Saidzadeh, Zanan, No. 8, 1992, pp. 24–32). See Keddie, ‘Women in Iran’, op. cit.,p. 421, and Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Gender, op. cit., p. 248.

32. Lately, according to Mir-Hosseini, laws have reversed decisions made early in revolution andre-granted women the right to become judges (Islam and Gender, op. cit.). Thus in 1992 the firstfemale advisory judges were re-instituted and full judges in 1998. Gheytanchi, on the other hand,states that of 2,661 registered lawyers in 1993 only 185 were women, and indicates that formerfemale judges could work again only as inspectors in 1997 in the equivalent of a district attorney’soffice, but never in positions of their original status. See Elham Gheytanchi, ‘Post RevolutionaryIran: Islamic Feminism and the Crisis of Civil Society’, 1998, available online at:� www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/groups/ccsa/gheytanchi.htm � , p. 8. Keddie also notes that somewomen lawyers continued to practice in the name of male family members shortly after therevolution. Others turned to work as legal advisers for private companies (‘Women in Iran’, op.cit.).

33. Zanan, No. 43, May 1997 cited in Afshar, Islam and Feminism, op. cit., pp. 30f.34. Zane-Ruz, No. 1440, 1993, pp. 14–17.35. Azam Taleqani directs the Alliance of Muslim Women in Iran (Mo’assase-Ye zanan-e eslami-ye

Iran), where she teaches women from poor backgrounds to read and write so that they can makea living independent from their husbands. She also lectures on the exegesis of the Qur’an,including the tafsir of her father Ayatollah Mahmud Taleqani, to promote her father’s morewomen-friendly Qur’an interpretations.

36. The term mujtahed denotes a qualified Shi’i jurist who has reached the level of competencenecessary to arrive at independent judgment on points of religious law using reason (aql) andprinciples of jurisprudence (fiqh). There were not only female mujtaheds before the Islamicrevolution, but also many male mujtaheds had been awarded their qualification through their femalemujtahed teachers, the most prominent being Nosrat Amin (1896–1983). Women who had becomemujtaheds during the Shah regime were deprived of their qualification after the revolution.

37. This is Iran’s 86-member clerical council entrusted with the election of the Supreme Leader andhis removal, if he becomes unable to fulfill his duties (articles 107 and 111 of the 1979constitution). Members are popularly elected for eight-year terms. Until today, only men aregranted passive suffrage to the council, in contrast to the parliamentary and presidential electionsin which women are also permitted to run.

38. The leading Iranian reformist intellectual Abdolkarim Soroush considers these texts untouchableand part of religion itself, as opposed to religious knowledge, which in his view is subject toreinterpretation and comprises inter alia, fiqh and shariah (see below). Aziz Al-Azmeh, a SunniMuslim scholar, by contrast, goes so far as to contend ‘Islamic law has a tangential connection onlywith ethical or dogmatic consideration and the divine origins of the text of the Qur’an aretechnically irrelevant to their legal aspects’. Aziz Al-Azmeh, Islam and Modernity, New York: Verso,1993, p. 11.

39. See Haleh Afshar, ‘Introduction’, in Islam and Feminisms, op. cit. Contrary to the way many Iranianclerics like to portray Islamic theology, there has never been a uniform exegesis. Rather, asreformist scholars repeatedly point out, the possibility of interpreting the Book in the most diverseways seems to be a strong proof of its supernatural origin. See also Haleh Afshar, ‘Islam andFeminism: An Analysis of Political Strategies’, in ed. Mai Yamani, Feminism and Islam: Literary andLegal Perspectives, New York: New York University Press, 1996.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ite D

e Pa

ris

1] a

t 09:

07 0

4 Se

ptem

ber

2013

390 Mirjam Kunkler

40. The hadith is a body of traditions relating to the Prophet Muhammad and informs believers of thewords and activities of the Prophet, especially his explicit or tacit wisdom about human conductand social affairs.

41. Annemarie Schimmel, Islam—An Introduction, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992,p. 53.

42. On the method of verification, see Anne Sofie Roald, ‘Feminist Reinterpretation of IslamicSources: Muslim Feminist Theology in the Light of the Christian of Feminist Thought’, in edsKarin Ask and Marit Tjomsland, Women and Islamization: Contemporary Dimensions of Discourse onGender Relations, New York: Berg, 1998. Bukhari (d. 870) was the first to collect and classify themore reliable hadith of the tens of thousands in circulation in the ninth century. His comprehensivecollection comprises more than 7,300 hadith. His contemporary, Abu Muslim (d. 875), produceda similar compilation and their collections are mostly considered sahih (sound). Further collectionsstem from Abu Daud, Nasai, Tirmidhi and Ibn Maja in the tenth and eleventh century.

43. See Roald, ‘Feminist Reinterpretation of Islamic Sources’, ibid. It is interesting to note thatHojatoleslam Saidzadeh employs precisely this method in the articles where he criticizes the earlydecision by state authorities to exclude women from judgeship. ‘Among other arguments, theauthor interprets a Quranic passage usually taken to mean that males are naturally superior. As isoften done by Islamic reformists, the author then rejects some Islamic traditions (hadith) asinauthentic and reinterprets others, concluding with a formula of the type found in Islamicreligious decrees: “We affirm that the potential of women is the same as that of men whatever theemployment and function; this goes equally for the function of judge or jurisconsult (faqih)” ’.Zanan, No. 5, 1992, p. 23 quoted in Keddie, ‘Women in Iran’, op. cit., p. 421.

44. See Roald, ‘Feminist Reinterpretation of Islamic Sources’, op. cit.45. The term aql relates not so much to the wisdom of individuals, as rather to a consensual

understanding of what, when quoted in a judgment, the general public could find reasonable.46. Afshar, Islam and Feminisms, op. cit., p. 5.47. Al-Azmeh, Islam and Modernity, op. cit., p. 1.48. Abdolkarim Soroush, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam, New York: Oxford University

Press, 2000; ‘Islam and Pluralism’, lecture held at SOAS, University of London, 14 January 2001,and ‘The Evolution and Devolution of Religious Knowledge’, in ed. Charles Kurzman, LiberalIslam, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 245. See also Valla Vakili, ‘Abdolkarim Soroushand Critical Discourse in Iran’, in eds John Esposito and John Voll, The Makers of ContemporaryIslam, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001; and ‘Debating Religion and Politics in Iran: ThePolitical Thought of Abdolkarim Soroush’, The Council on Foreign Relations, 1997, availableonline at: � http://www.cfr.org/public/pubs/vakili.html � .

49. As hinted at before, the question of what exactly, beside the Qur’an, constitutes the core religioustexts, is disputed. Al-Azmeh, for instance, contends that the hadith do not constitute core texts andthat they are irrelevant to law making. Al-Azmeh, Islam and Modenity, op. cit., p. 11.

50. Quoted in Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Gender, op. cit., p. 253.51. Abdolkarim Soroush, ‘The Evolution and Devolution of Religious Knowledge’, op. cit., p. 245.52. Soroush does not engage in a further elaboration on which criteria should serve to establish that

validity. These, he holds, have to be established by each respective community within theconcerned field of science, and these also underlie the effects of time.

53. Newsletter, 3. An ideologization of Islam, according to Soroush, has not only occurred in Iran, butin many parts of the Muslim world, and has furthered a particular, politically buttressedunderstanding of religion, which suggests a final and absolute interpretation. The effects of themonopolization of religious knowledge to narrow interpretations, he holds, have made religion aninstrument in attaining goals. It has promoted a dogmatic understanding of religion concernedwith exoteric, accidental aspects and, with its false emphasis on fiqh, has resulted in intellectualrigidity and exclusivism. In Iran it has raised the Islamic clergy to an exceptional position with apriori privileges—an elitist development, which runs counter to essential Qur’anic teachings aboutthe community of faith. He designates the rigid and politically supported interpretation of Islaman ‘Islam of identity’—a comprehensible ideology that may help to overcome a modernity-inspired‘crisis of identity’, but is far removed from a deeper understanding of religion. As an ‘Islam ofidentity’, religion is transformed into an all-encompassing body of knowledge that prescribessolutions even for the most particular and singular occurrences. To arrive at a deeper understand-ing of it—an ‘Islam of truth’—Soroush believes one would have to engage in a deliberation about

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ite D

e Pa

ris

1] a

t 09:

07 0

4 Se

ptem

ber

2013

Women’s Rights and Islamic Sacred Texts 391

interpretations arrived at through epistemological pluralism. The absence of such pluralism leadsto religious hypocrisy.

54. Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Gender, op. cit., pp. 251 f.55. Zanan attends to the topic of ‘What have we accomplished this year?’ in an annual report.56. There are currently two female judges in the Appeal Courts. See ‘Interview with Nobel Laureate

Shirin Ebadi’, available online at: � http://www.sweb.cz/teoma2 � . About a third of the labor forcetoday is female. According to private communication with Professor Azam Ravadrad at theUniversity of Tehran, 18% of the women are in the workforce, comparable to the situation in thelate 1970s. Shortly after the revolution the percentage dropped down to 8. As Professor Ravadradpoints out, however, although the percentage of women working today is similar to the one shortlybefore the revolution, women are much more politically active today and aware of their potentialimpact on social developments compared to the 1970s.

57. Other prominent political leaders include Zahra Mostafavi, the daughter of Ayatollah Khomeini,who is the director of the Society for Women of the Islamic Republic. She is active particularly insecuring equal opportunities for women in education. Fatimah Hashemi, the daughter of theformer Iranian president Rafsanjani, is the director of a women’s organization tied to the ForeignMinistry (and a high-tech clinic for kidney patients). Apparently, among the women who arefighting to improve women’s rights in Iran some are the daughters of prominent clergymen. AsKatajun Amirpur points out, these women can make themselves heard precisely because of theirbackground in conservative circles. See Katajun Amirpur, Islamic Feminism in the Islamic Republicof Iran, op. cit., p. 2.

58. Interestingly, girls have recently been allowed to take off the headscarf or chador in all-girls schoolsin Tehran.

59. Martine Gozlan, ‘Iran: The Liberation Won’t Come from America, but from Women’, Marianne(weekly newsmagazine), Paris, France, 10–16 November 2003. See online at: � http://www.worldpress.org/Europe/1685.cfm � .

60. Faezeh Hashemi, another daughter of the former Iranian president Rafsanjani, is director of theIranian Organization for Women’s Sports and deputy chair of the National Olympics Committee.She brought female athletes from the Developing World together in 1993 for the first IslamicWomen’s Olympics. In a landslide victory, she was elected to the 5th Majlis with the highestnumber of votes in Tehran.

61. Shirin Ebadi was her country’s first female judge until women were banned from judgeship in thecourse of the Islamic Revolution. As a lawyer, she has been engaged in a number of controversialpolitical cases, including the serial murders in 1999 where she served as attorney for the Foruharfamily and others. Pertaining to the devastating attack against students in their dormitories atTehran University in 1999 she has worked successfully to reveal responsible actors and their tiesto governmental officials. Ebadi is the founder and leader of the Association for Support ofChildren’s Rights in Iran launched in 1993 and has written a number of academic books andarticles focused on refugee’s rights, children’s rights, medical law and women’s rights. Among herbooks translated into English are The Rights of the Child: A Study of Legal Aspects of Children’s Rightsin Iran, Tehran: UNICEF, 1994, and History and Documentation of Human Rights in Iran, NewYork: Bibliotheca Persica Press, 2000. After the decision of the Nobel peace prize committee hadbecome known, Ebadi was reportedly greeted at Tehran Airport by as many as 100,000 womenand men carrying slogans such as ‘This is Iran, I am a woman, I am Shirin Ebadi’, ‘This is Iran,I am a woman, I am Parvaneh Foruhar’, ‘This is Iran, I am a woman, I am Mehrangiz Kar’, etc.,and ‘We are against death penalty’, ‘Women’s awareness, women’s freedom’. Reportedly, manywomen wore white headscarves at this welcoming as signs of hope and/or expressions of theirnonconforming attitude vis-a-vis official instructions for women’s clothing that advise women weardark colors in public. President Mohammad Khatami, meanwhile, was quoted in Tehraninewspapers stating that Ebadi’s award was ‘not very important’. When asked why he had notissued a congratulatory statement, Khatami wondered, ‘Must I always send a message foreverything?’ See online at: � http://www.muslimwakeup.com/archives/000249.php � . In her No-bel prize acceptance speech Ebadi stated, ‘… The discriminatory plight of women in Islamic states,too, whether in the sphere of civil law or in the realm of social, political and cultural justice, hasits roots in the patriarchal and male-dominated culture prevailing in these societies, not in Islam.This culture does not tolerate freedom and democracy, just as it does not believe in the equal rightsof men and women, and the liberation of women from male domination (fathers, husbands,brothers …), because it would threaten the historical and traditional position of the rulers and

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ite D

e Pa

ris

1] a

t 09:

07 0

4 Se

ptem

ber

2013

392 Mirjam Kunkler

guardians of that culture’. See online at: � http://www.nobel.se/peace/laureates/2003/ebadi-lec-ture.html � .

62. See Keddie, ‘Women in Iran’, op. cit., p. 415.63. Ibid., p. 412.64. Quoted in ibid., p. 419.65. See Gheytanchi, ‘Post Revolutionary Iran’, op. cit., p. 8.66. See Afsaneh Najmabadi, ‘Feminism in an Islamic Republic—Years of Hardship, Years of Growth’,

in eds John Esposito and Yvonne Haddad, Islam, Gender and Sociopolitical Change in the MuslimWorld, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

67. In a country that has lived under ‘theocratic’ rule for more than 25 years and claims to be the onlytruly Islamic Republic in the world, political and social contention towards change tends to engagein one major argument: whether reform should be aimed at the creation of an Islamic democraticstate, where modes of government prescribed in the core Islamic texts supersede democraticdevices. This would result in the strengthening of current democratic devices in the decision-mak-ing process, but conserve supreme power in the hands of a clerical official or clerical body. Herethe stress in the country’s title ‘Islamic Republic’ will be on the former term. Or, so the debategoes, whether reform should instead be aimed at the creation of a democratic secular state, wherelaw may be informed by Islamic values, but where, if in conflict, democratic values and humanrights reign supreme. For the latter to occur in Iran, it requires a change in the current officialIslamic discourse, to the effect that a separation between political and religious authority can bejustified on the basis of Islamic reasoning and the term ‘Islamic’ in Islamic Republic be omitted.This is what major oppositional actors and even reformist clerics have been targeting. The framingof reformist arguments in Islamic thought has in that sense not been strategic. It has beendedicated at tackling the very future of Iranian Islamic thought and Iranian government where aprospective democratic system will be integrated into the intellectual traditions of the country, andwhere legislation will be informed by the normative constitution of the people (and thus indirectlyby their religious convictions), but not Islamic convictions alone.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ite D

e Pa

ris

1] a

t 09:

07 0

4 Se

ptem

ber

2013