The Veil and Violence against Women in Islamist Societies

international | gender and sexuality | other press

Tuesday August 21, 2007 18:25

by Maryam Namazie - Worker-communist Party of Iran

This article is taken from the website of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. The article is written by Maryam Namazie, a leading member of the Worker-communist Party of Iran.

Recent reports on the Islamic regime of Iran’s crackdown on women who are ‘badly’ veiled (bad-hejab) and their resistance to the regime’s campaign of arrest and harassment has been reported quite extensively in comparison to other similar events over the years. This is partly due to amateur video footage taken via mobile phones by passers-by uploaded on YouTube for the world to see.

There are two pieces of footage that everyone should take a look at. One is of an unveiled woman shouting ‘we don’t want the veil; we want freedom’. The other is of a young girl who is being questioned by security agents for being ‘badly veiled’; she pulls off her veil in front of them and is kicked into a waiting car to be driven away. Given that veiling is compulsory in Iran, these acts of defiance are all the more heroic.

The veil is a tool for the suppression and oppression of women. It is meant to segregate. It is representative of how women are viewed in Islam: sub-human, ‘deficient’, ‘inferior’, without rights, and despised. Trapped in a mobile prison not to be heard from or seen.

In many instances it is a matter of life and death. In Iran just recently paramedics were denied access to two sisters who needed emergency assistance because their brother deemed it sinful for the paramedics to touch them. They died as a result. And we have all heard of the example of Saudi Arabia where girls’ schools are locked as usual practice to ensure the segregation of the sexes. In 2002 when a fire broke out at a school in Mecca, the guards would not unlock the gates and religious police prevented girls from escaping – to the point of even beating them back into the school – because they were not properly veiled; moreover they stopped men who tried to help, warning the men that it was sinful to touch the girls. Fifteen girls died as a result and more than fifty were wounded.

As I said – a matter of life and death.

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The Veil and Violence against Women in Islamist Societies