Jewels of Allah: The Untold Story of Women in Iran Read online

  Praise for

  Jewels of Allah

  “A well-documented and persuasively written examination of the change in Iranian women’s status under the country’s secular and religious governments…maintains an engaging tone that makes it easy for casual readers to follow the arguments.”

  – KIRKUS REVIEWS

  “Knowing our history is knowing ourselves. Nina Ansary expertly reveals largely untold stories of the multifaceted women of Iran and their perseverance to overcome considerable obstacles.”

  – ALISA MILLER, CEO, PUBLIC RADIO INTERNATIONAL (PRI)

  “I am a big fan of women speaking out, telling their stories, using their voices—and author Nina Ansary has used hers in an astonishing, important way. Her Jewels of Allah is brave, authentic and riveting. What a compelling example of why women NEED to tell their stories. Read this.”

  – KATHY NAJIMY, ACTRESS/ACTIVIST

  “This must be included within the Essential Reading lists of all schools—it is a vital historical account, a necessary and refreshed analysis particularly for our 21st Century culture of fear climate.”

  – MARCELLA KARAMAT, CURATOR/FREELANCE WRITER, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

  “Nina Ansary’s book is a must-read for anyone hoping for a fuller understanding of the role of women and the women’s rights movement in Iran. It is a much needed antidote to Western misconceptions.”

  – SAN FRANCISCO BOOK REVIEW

  “The women of Iran have no greater champion than Nina Ansary, nor does anyone equal her in explaining the seemingly paradoxical expansion of women’s education since the Iranian Revolution.”

  – RICHARD W. BULLIET, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

  “Nina Ansary, with clear and precise language, laser-like focus and deep knowledge, lifts the veil of news media neglect and ignorance hiding the experiences of women and girls in Iran. Women’s eNews is delighted she regularly shares her insights and inside knowledge with its readers.”

  – RITA HENLEY JENSEN, EDITOR IN CHIEF WOMEN’S ENEWS, NEW YORK

  “This is essential reading on Iran, and feminism, human rights, and social movements. The book turns itself into a archive of all the relevant figures, publications, and eras related to the history of women in Iran, and as a researcher and writer, I know I will refer back to it in the future.”

  – MAHSA ALIMARDANI, INTERNET RESEARCHER AND IRAN EDITOR, GLOBAL VOICES.COM

  “This is a remarkable book. Nina Ansary explodes some of the myths and prejudices held about Iranian women across the centuries. This volume is an invaluable addition to the existing literature on the subject and a must read for all those who are interested in understanding Islam and feminisms and in the celebration of differences and diversities within the feminist movements.”

  – BARONESS AFSHAR OF HESLINGTON, PROFESSOR, ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF YORK

  “Jewels of Allah: The Untold Story of Women in Iran is an important journey through time, amplifying the powerful voices behind the Iranian women’s movement. Author Nina Ansary highlights the courageous women and their progressive steps forward throughout history. The book is an eye opener, from a misunderstood story to how women’s empowerment really advanced. It’s an enlightening and fearless journey that’s important for women around the world to learn.”

  – DEIRDRE BREACKENRIDGE, AUTHOR, SPEAKER AND CEO, PURE PERFORMANCE COMMUNICATIONS

  “Nina Ansary takes a fresh look at the women’s movement in modern Iran; a century-long struggle for equality in a historic civilization, and one of the most vibrant feminist movements in the Middle East.”

  – NEGAR MORTAZAVI, IRANIAN AMERICAN JOURNALIST AND ANALYST

  “An elegant and enlightening experience—Jewels of Allah contains critical talking points, facts, and research that will empower its readers to more effectively understand the winds of change that are contributing to the empowerment movement of Iranian women.”

  – YASAMIN BEITOLLAHI, DIGITAL MEDIA PROFESSIONAL & HUFFINGTON POST CONTRIBUTOR

  “You can wrap them up in cloths not of their choosing but their powerful spirit still shines through. The Iranian women have always found a way to express themselves, make their presence felt and impact the society. This all comes through Dr. Ansary’s book which expertly highlights the challenges and the opportunities facing Iranian women during the secular Pahlavi dynasty and during the various presidencies of the current theocracy.”

  – DR. FIROUZ NADERI, DIRECTOR FOR SOLAR SYSTEM EXPLORATION AT NASA’S JPL

  Jewels

  of Allah

  THE UNTOLD STORY

  OF WOMEN IN IRAN

  Nina Ansary, Ph.D.

  Revela Press

  Los Angeles, California

  Copyright © 2015 by Nina Ansary

  All rights reserved.

  The images contained in this book are provided for commentary, example and reference as to the content herein. Every reasonable effort has been made to assess the identification and source of those images displayed throughout this book, and they are included for the reader’s reference and information where the same has been ascertained. In many cases the images are out of copyright or otherwise in the Public Domain. In all cases identification of the source or rights holder is attributed wherever possible, or unless the source was otherwise unable to be determined. Any information pertaining to the identification of those images which otherwise may have been unavailable by the author is welcomed, and every effort will be made to include the same where verified.

  Cover art: Morteza Pourhosseini

  Cover design: Yolanda Zuniga

  Indexer: Under the Oaks Indexing

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ansary, Nina.

  Jewels of Allah : the untold story of women in Iran /Nina Ansary, Ph.D.

  pages cm

  Includes index.

  LCCN 2015932626

  ISBN 978-0-9864064-0-9 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-9864064-1-6 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-0-9864064-2-3 (eBook)

  1. Women--Iran--History. 2. Feminism--Iran--History. 3. Women’s rights--Iran--History. I. Title.

  HQ1735.2.A76 2015 305.420955

  QBI15-600085

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical , photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for insertion in a magazine, newspaper, broadcast, website, blog or other outlet.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Revela Press LLC

  RevelaPress.com

  Los Angeles, California U.S.A.

  This book is dedicated to my family, friends,

  those who worked on and supported this book

  (you know who you are), and every individual

  who has been oppressed by discriminatory ideology.

  100% of all proceeds from the sale of the book will

  go to charitable organizations and institution
s, with

  the primary recipient being the OMID Foundation, a

  501(c)(3) registered organization that has been empowering

  disadvantaged young women in Iran for over ten years.

  For more information on the OMID Foundation, please visit:

  OMIDFoundation.com

  The day we lose our ability to show compassion and tolerance is the day we have effectively lost our humanity.

  —Nina Ansary

  Contents

  INTRODUCTION: Audacious Grandmothers

  CHAPTER ONE: Veil of Half-Truths

  CHAPTER TWO: Clipped Wings

  CHAPTER THREE: Seeds of Change

  CHAPTER FOUR: Khomeini’s Blunders

  CHAPTER FIVE: A Religious/Secular Sisterhood

  CHAPTER SIX: Zanan Magazine

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Can Women in Iran Be Equal?

  EPILOGUE: Exemplary Women from Iran

  NOTES

  THE BOOK COVER ARTIST

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Introduction

  AUDACIOUS GRANDMOTHERS

  I grew up in Iran with two very different grandmothers. As a young girl, I took at face value the fact that one of my grandmothers was a devout woman who never left her home without wearing a head scarf, and the other was a Western-educated progressive-minded woman who didn’t think twice about swimming topless in the family pool. Yet both women were forces to be reckoned with and by no means subservient.

  My maternal great-grandfather believed in the value of education and sent all of his daughters to foreign-language schools, refusing to marry them off before their twentieth birthday at a time when sixteen was thought to be almost too old for a girl on the marriage market. My maternal grandmother was not only fluent in English, but also a very independent, feisty lady who used to walk miles every morning on her own in an era when women were expected to be wary of wandering out alone. She was an inspiration to her daughters, nieces, and granddaughters.

  What was amazing about my paternal grandmother was that she had three sons and one daughter, yet she valued an education for all her children. Despite being a devout woman, she was not only not averse to sending her daughter to school in Iran’s newly westernized climate, but in fact later came to the United States with her daughter so that my aunt could attend university. Unlike my grandmother, my aunt is not a religious woman, nor has she ever worn a head scarf. She is very fortunate to have been raised by a strong-willed, devout woman who was not opposed to having her daughter attend college in the United States. Granted, my grandmother accompanied my aunt to the United States, but this was during an era in Iran when a young woman going abroad to get an education was definitely not standard practice. So this audacious grandmother was also an inspiration to me.

  It was during my scholarly journey into the Iranian women’s movement that I began to reflect on how my grandmothers personified very different lifestyles and beliefs. In the course of my academic research, I came to realize why women from disparate backgrounds in Iran have more in common than is widely assumed. With my audacious grandmothers in mind—as well as generations of Persian women who have longed for equality—my commitment to a woman’s right to determine her own destiny was intensified. It was also these factors that strengthened my belief that attire does not and should not define any woman if it is by choice and not mandatory.

  I left Iran with my family when I was twelve years old and have been living in the United States ever since. I am humbled and grateful to reconnect with the history of the women in my country of origin. It is my hope that I will contribute in some small way to their ongoing struggle for empowerment. In fact, their struggle has become my own passionate cause.

  Why did I choose to entitle this book Jewels of Allah? This book is based on my doctoral thesis on the women’s movement in Iran, written in 2013 for Columbia University. I have rewritten the manuscript solely as an homage to all Iranian women who for centuries have struggled and continue to struggle against a discriminatory gender ideology imposed and justified by hardline conservative factions as the will of “Allah” (God in the Muslim world). The title is meant to convey that women, who have been ordained as inferior, are in fact the jewels of the Creator.

  In researching the feminist movement in the West, I came across a quote by American suffragist and women’s rights activist Alice Stokes Paul (1885-1977). She believed in the importance of women joining together collectively in order to advance the cause of women’s equality. In 1923, she described the women’s movement in this way:

  I always feel that the movement is sort of a mosaic—each one of us puts in a little stone, and then you get a great mosaic at the end.1

  Inspired by the mosaic image, I recognized that it also reflected what is occurring in Iran. Like my two grandmothers, Iranian women have different perspectives and attitudes, yet they are united in the desire to be free to follow their own path. Every woman is a unique gemstone, and I have faith that together they will change the course of history in their homeland.

  Chapter One

  VEIL OF HALF-TRUTHS

  It is difficult to find many bright spots in the lives of Persian women.… Their liberty of movement, of action, and of speech is curtailed.… In the prevailing social condition … they could not do anything unless [they were] helped by men.… But some of the women maintain, and I agree with them, that their wisest plan is to go ahead and show what they can do. The day will come when the men will ask for their help.1

  Clara Colliver Rice, American missionary, 1923

  Here is the inconvenient truth: a flourishing, unwavering feminist movement is an unanticipated consequence of the Islamic Revolution.

  Nina Ansary

  So much of this was unknown to me.…

  Reader’s comment on Nina Ansary’s Facebook page

  The historical narrative of the “woman question” in Iran is an intricate labyrinth. It is not a story that can be accurately recounted by portraying women as “oppressed” or “liberated” during a particular historical period. The audacious history of women in Iran is a maze, with unexpected twists and turns, gains and losses, triumphs and defeats.

  When assessing Iranian women’s history, the inconvenient truths that arise are striking: The Islamic Revolution that was explicitly antagonistic to the modernizing initiatives of the Pahlavi monarchy gave rise to a flourishing of powerful female voices. At the same time, the spirit of the progressive Pahlavi era influenced popular-class women (religious conservative women of the middle class who constitute the majority of women in Iran), despite the eradication of numerous “liberating” laws and institutions.

  The women of Iran have been struggling for centuries to achieve equality; however, there have been periods throughout history when they were relatively free to determine their own lives. In this opening chapter, my intention is to enumerate the key misconceptions or half-truths concerning Persian women—from ancient history to the present—and to briefly explain why these statements fail to represent their authentic narrative.

  Let me begin by submitting what I believe to be the popular narrative about women’s lives in Iran over the last forty years. It goes something like this:

  During the Pahlavi Monarchy, women were on an upward trajectory. In a nation on the cusp of modernity, women actively participated. They were given the right to vote and were free to be in public without veils; they wore miniskirts on university campuses. Then came the Islamic Revolution in 1979, with Ayatollah Khomeini at the helm. The burgeoning freedoms for women were extinguished. The veil was required and institutions were segregated by gender. The Islamic Republic had thus achieved its goal of resurrecting the image of the traditional Muslim woman.

  The problem with popular narratives of historical events is that despite their seemingly convincing half-truths, the real story is usually much more complicated, nuanced, and less tidy. The dramatic and surprising story of the women’s movement in Iran certainly is.

  As a historian born in Iran, I
was surprised to come upon certain essential facts about women’s history in my native country that starkly contradicted my previous assumptions. For example, when I first began to conduct my research on the history of the women’s movement in Iran, I was struck by this fact: a majority of traditional, religious women, and even some educated women who had benefitted from changes under the Shah, supported Ayatollah Khomeini and were a contributing factor in the 1979 collapse of the Pahlavi monarchy. I found this piece of information not only counterintuitive but also deeply puzzling and difficult to reconcile, given the fact that the Pahlavi regime was solely responsible for emancipating the Iranian woman.

  Everything in my background had led me to adhere to the commonly understood view of women in Iran: they were emancipated under Reza-Shah Pahlavi and his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi; then their rights were revoked with the dawn of the Islamic Revolution. But my years of research and study have resulted in the discovery of a number of unanticipated truths that will be explored throughout this book.

  The following are popular misconceptions about women in Iran that fail to accurately portray the real, often audacious, story.

  Misconception 1: Before the Pahlavi monarchy, Persian women were always suppressed by the religious and political establishment.

  In the story accepted by many, Persian women are depicted as unceasingly under the power of male authority. Because this narrative leaves out the dramatic roles played by female leaders, as well as the fact that women were perceived to be equal to men centuries ago in ancient Persia, many assume that prior to the Pahlavi monarchy, women were confined solely to the domestic sphere. If they figured into public life at all, they were merely in the shadows.

  Granted, ancient history is not a subject that everyone has studied in depth. College curricula at even the most prestigious institutions probably don’t require courses in Etruscan civilization, the Zhou Dynasty, Vedic India, or ancient Persia unless one is majoring in a particular branch of history. If one is not a history major or a history buff, he or she may never discover how various early civilizations held beliefs and adhered to practices that would be deemed progressive even by twenty-first-century standards.