The Victims that the Western Feminists Ignore

This girl's name is Mazieh, a native of Iran.  Six years ago she was driving in her car when two men on a motorcycle came by and threw acid in her face.  Her assailants were never caught by the police, despite the fact that the street was surveyed by video cameras.  Sadly, this kind of attack is not at all uncommon in Iran.  Many Iranians believe that these kinds of attacks are carried out in conjunction with local police in order to discourage women from adopting a more liberal way of dressing and seeking to pursue advancement in a society that greatly represses women and seeks to block all push for female liberation and equality.  According to the 2020 Global Gender Gap Report by the World Economic Forum, Iran currently ranks at Number 148 out of 153 nations in terms of Gender equality.  When Ayatollah Khomeini, seized power in Iran, he took the entire Iranian society was taken back 1400 years.  Iran’s secular laws were swiftly replaced by Islamic theocracy laws the mandated complete control over all aspects of women’s lives.  These laws dictated an inferior status for women in every aspect of life: the job market, education, the courts, even in the private home.  Iran became a society in which men have complete control over women who have no say in the matter.  In short, women lost all rights.

The Ayatollah immediately overturned the secular 1967 Family Protection Law and replaced it with Sharia Law.  Sharia dictates that a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man.  In addition, the Ayatollah dictated that the murder of a woman was worth half that as the murder of a man, and her made the honor killing of women legal.  It was not until 1998 that the regime outlawed honor killings, though those who engage in the practice are seldom punished.  Additional legislation was also passed.  Article 1133 permits a husband to divorce his wife at will while Article 1130 states that a woman must receive special permission from an Islamic judge in order to obtain a divorce.  Article 1169 states that in a divorce a mother only gets custody of her child until the age of seven, after which the child goes to the father regardless of the circumstances.  However, if the mother remarries during her time of custody, then her child is immediately given to her biological father.  These repressive measures passed by Ayatollah Khomeini gave the men of Iran complete authority over women’s lives. 

This "Male domination" society promoted by Iranian leaders ultimately let to the establishment of a horrific "Rape culture."  In the West, so-called "Feminists" constantly promote the false narrative that a "Rape Culture Exists in our society."  However, in Iran, there is an actual "Rape Culture" that goes on completely unchecked.  Women in Iran have no protection from rape.  In the nation of Iran, the victim of rape is often blamed for the crime instead of the perpetrator.  In one rape incident in 2002, the Iranian police told a woman who was gang raped that she deserved it because her coat was too tight and she wore too much makeup (the same reason why Mazieh and so many other Iranian women have acid thrown in their faces).

Rape in Iran is punishable by death, but the death sentence is passed on the victim of the rape, not the perpetrator.  In 2004, a 16-year-old Iranian girl by the name of Atefeh Rajabi was hanged for “adultery” when in fact she was raped.  Female prisoners who are sentenced to death are often raped before execution to ensure their damnation (Islamic tradition held that virgin women go directly to heaven).  Women have no protection from the state if their husbands or male relatives abuse them.  Husbands can rape their wives without punishment (Testimony of Anni Cyrus), and if another man rapes her, he is punished only because the regime deemed that the rapist had desecrated another man’s property.  For many women, the only way out of an abusive marriage is suicide.

Under the laws of the Ayatollah, gender repression and segregation is strictly enforced.  Women cannot sing in any way she chooses, she cannot be in a physical relationship with another woman, nor can publicly socialize with men.  Women cannot leave the country without permission from their husband or other male relative.  They are forbidden to go to stadiums and are not permitted to watch men play sports.  Men and women must ride on different buses, and a woman will be lashed if she appears in public with a man who is not her husband or relative.  In hospitals, men and women must be treated by medical personnel who are of the same sex.  In Iran, authorities can arrest any woman who looks un-Islamic.  Women who wear too much makeup or shows too much hair or skin can be imprisoned, fined, or lashed.  Women are forbidden to show their heads, which means that wearing the hijab in Iran is mandatory, there is no choice in it.  Morality police are everywhere and they strictly enforce these repressive policies.  Women who are found not to be wearing the hijab properly can be arrested and sentenced to 74 lashes.  Women are forbidden to openly express opposition to the government (countless women face prison, torture, or death for this), nor can they have unsanctioned interviews with foreign governments.  Simply put, women are denied even the simplest rights that women in the West take for granted. 

Code Pink with Iranian Leaders

How do Western Feminists respond to the plight of these women?  With indifference & at times, outright collaboration.  The most glaring example is that of Code Pink, who not only supports Iran's weapons programs, but even had representatives travel to Tehran to express solidarity with Iranian leaders.  To express solidarity Iran, a brutal theocracy that promotes international terrorism, assassinates dissidents, & harshly repress women & religious minorities, is absolutely disgusting.  Code Pink may as well spit in the face of Mazieh & countless other women who have been imprisoned, tortured, even executed simply for fighting for their rights.  Western Feminists like Code Pink have turned a blind eye to their suffering.  

Sources:

Afshari, Reza.  Human Rights in Iran: The Abuse of Cultural Relativism.  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.

Bahari, Maziar and Aimee Molloy.  Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival.  New York: Random House, 2011.

Bakhshizadeh, Marziyeh. "Women’s Rights in Iran and CEDAW: A Comparison." In Changing Gender Norms in Islam Between Reason and Revelation, 61-100. Opladen; Berlin; Toronto: Verlag Barbara Budrich, 2018.

Ebadi, Shirin.  Iran Awakening.  From Prison to Peace Prize: One Woman’s Struggle at the Crossroads of History.  Toronto: Random House, 2006. 

“Global Gender Gap Report 2020.”  World Economic Forum.  2019.  Accessed from  http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2020.pdf.  

Moinipour, Shabnam.  “UN treaty-based bodies and the Islamic Republic of Iran: Human rights dialogue (1990–2016).”  Ed. Mark Bendall.   Cogent Social Sciences, 4:1, 2018.  Accessed from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311886.2018.1440910?scroll=top&needAccess=true on December 10, 2019.

Yousafzai, Malala and Christina Lamb.  I Am Malala.   New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2013.