It is indeed a pleasure to see all of you, the honorable members of parliament, academics, writers and activists of the equality movement.
NCRI – In a meeting of women activists, political personalities and members of the Norwegian Parliament in Oslo, on November 7, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi spoke on the dreadful plight of women in Iran and the accomplishments of the Iranian Resistance regarding gender equality . The following is the full text of her speech:
It is indeed a pleasure to see all of you, the honorable members of parliament, academics, writers and activists of the equality movement.
I am particularly delighted to be among you because you have had impressive achievements as far as women’s participation in many political, social, economic and scholarly spheres are concerned.
Securing 38 percents of seats in the parliaments and 22 percent of managerial positions in companies signifies great progress, each of which attest to the qualifications and merits of women.
You have personally experienced in your own country that any improvement in society is directly related to advancements in the position of women and particularly their participation in managing the affairs of society.
In Iran, we have had the same experience, but in an opposite direction. Suppressing women and depriving them of their rights and freedoms have taken society backward. This is caused by the rule of Islamic fundamentalists in Iran. This phenomenon emerged with the advent of the clerical regime in Iran and is now running unbridled in all other Muslim countries, especially Iraq. It has seriously threatened peace, democracy and human achievements, including the accomplishments of the equality movement.
The extremely dire status of girls and women in Iran, where even 16-year-olds are hanged by the mullahs, as well as the bleak plight fundamentalism imposes on Muslim countries cannot be ignored by the equality movement across the globe.
How to confront Islamic fundamentalism is an issue for all advocates of peace and human rights, and in particular activists of the equality movement. This is particularly so because this danger is not unique to the Middle East and Islamic countries. The specter of Islamic fundamentalism is passing through all of Europe.
What can be done with Islamic fundamentalism? In truth, setting the policy vis-ÃÂ -vis Islamic fundamentalism around the world depends precisely on the policy vis-ÃÂ -vis the clerical regime in Iran as the epicenter of fundamentalism export.
The Iranian Resistance movement has rejected both the appeasement of the mullahs and foreign military intervention. It views the correct solution to be democratic change by the Iranian people and Resistance. From our point of view, this is the realistic option to confront the fundamentalists.
But how and on whose shoulders will this option succeed? We say the definitive defeat of Islamic fundamentalists is possible when women lead the struggle. For this reason, we stress the need for the active and equal participation of women in political leadership in Iran or elsewhere around the world.
The premise that women’s participation in political leadership is the antithesis of Islamic fundamentalism is derived from the Iranian experience and from the experience of a resistance that has been waged at the cost many lives and great suffering.
The experience of the Iranian people’s Resistance against fundamentalism is important because Iran is the first country where the fundamentalists have usurped power and imposed their reactionary ideas as laws and policy in all social, cultural and political spheres.
We focus on women’s participation in political leadership because it was affirmed in Iran both from a practical and a theoretical perspective that women are in every respect anti-fundamentalist. The reason has simply to do with the nature of fundamentalism, which rests on gender distinction and misogyny. In reality, women’s determinative role in fighting fundamentalism emanates from the nature of the struggle against fundamentalism.
But when we speak of fundamentalism, we are neither dealing with the reality of Islam nor even with a reactionary interpretation of Islam. Fundamentalism is a medieval force with suppressive, monopolistic, backward and misogynous attributes, which is hell-bent on exporting terrorism and spreading the rule of the velayat-e faqih (absolute clerical rule) to the rest of the world.
While we are making progress toward emancipation and freedom contingent upon women’s active and equal participation in political leadership, the fundamentalists shackle women to steer society backward and engage in society-wide crackdown.
To clarify this issue, we must deal with two questions: Why do the fundamentalists need to be hostile to women? And why does the struggle for the liberation of society inevitably passes through rejecting misogyny?
When the mullahs assumed power in Iran, a tremendous energy had been released after the 1979 Revolution and there was a powerful impetus to change the archaic set of relationships. The mullahs used gender discrimination and misogyny to stifle this incredible energy and potential. They spread their sinister desires through gender distinctions, ownership of women and turning them into the force for suppression in society.
Those who have lived in Iran or follow the news about that country are aware fully that the fundamentalists have treated Iran as an occupied country. They look at women as war booty, as their own slaves, and crave for a carte blanche in launching assaults or aggression against them.
At first glance, one comes across the mullahs’ pretenses of religiosity, chastity and piety. Beyond this demagogic veneer, however, there is a sinister spirit, which exhibits the will to suppress and the desire to possess and assault women. This phenomenon has victimized women and dehumanized the regime’s forces. This is why we call this regime an inhuman regime. This fundamentally misogynous interaction, practiced under the cloak of the fundamentalists’ religious laws and edicts, has become law and the official modus operandi of the regime’s agents, around which repressive institutions have evolved.
If you look at the mullahs’ suppressive agencies and forces from this angle, you will see that their mandate is in essence assaulting and waging aggression against women.
One important attribute that qualitatively distinguishes the fundamentalists’ suppression from other dictatorships is their interference in the minutest details of people’s lives. In other words, they have thrust repression into the depths of society. Their pretexts are the Sharia and fiqh (Jurisprudence) which regulate the most private aspects of women’s behavior. Under such pretexts, the Revolutionary Guards and the para-military Bassij raid private parties and stage street inquisitions. The mullahs justify these oppressive actions by claiming that they intend to regulate women and their interaction with men according to the so-called Sharia laws.
Obviously, if misogyny is rejected, the religious superstructures justifying it lose their raison d’etre and as a result the rule of the mullahs and the fundamentalists would be lacking any theoretical underpinning.
On the surface, the mullahs’ warp their enmity toward women with the veneer of morality and chastity. Practically however, their actions have resulted in brutality violence and increased moral corruption.
In reality, misogyny serves as the source of the fundamentalists’ positions, and what they accept or reject. For example, when they show hostility to Western democracies and engage in anti-colonialist rhetoric, it is because they blame the West for allowing women to leave the household.
The mullahs have completely perverted the idea of Taqva, or restraint from committing sin. By promoting Taqva, Islam seeks to raise the stature and promote human dignity of women and men as well as their emancipation and freedom. The mullahs, however, have an inhuman interpretation of this issue and see women as the source of sin and seduction. With such an inhuman mindset, they eliminate, smother and denigrate women. They use misogyny and humiliation as the main source of suppressing society at large. This is why we say that misogyny is the mullahs’ raison d’etre and they cannot abandon it.
Discrimination against and humiliation of women shapes the regime’s social relationships and its laws. Moreover, what actually happens to women in courts, police centers, in the work place and in the household is far more antagonistic than the laws themselves.
After visiting Iran in early 2005, Mrs. Yakin Erturk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, said women are sentenced to death based on insufficient evidence. She added that in many cases women who filed complaints had been punished. Even women who had been raped faced great obstacles to get a fair hearing, Erturk said.
I want to reiterate that none of the mullahs’ misogynous policies and laws is compatible with true Islam. They are only the consequence of the fundamentalists’ perverted interpretation and manipulation of Islam.
Equal participation in political leadership
Women’s active and equal participation in political leadership is necessary because it dispels the pivotal and determining pillar of fundamentalist mindset. This reality has been confirmed in the 27-year experience of our Resistance movement against the mullahs’ regime.
If I wanted to share with you the unique experience of the Resistance, I must say that confronting fundamentalism entails a mindset that believes in the need for women’s equal and active participation in this struggle and could realize this conviction in the political arena.
For more than two decades, we resisted against a fundamentalist regime. Inside Iran, we have endured a barbaric suppression unprecedented in contemporary history. The execution of 120,000 people who resisted against the Iranian regime, the massacre of political prisoners and the torture and imprisonment of half-a-million combatants represent part of the mullahs’ record in Iran. During this period, Western countries’ appeasement of and their assistance to the ruling fundamentalists has imposed many pressures on the Iranian Resistance.
Nevertheless, our Resistance succeeded in overcoming these obstacles, the adverse conditions, the heavy pressures and repression because it did not believe in appeasing the ruling mullahs.
The Resistance’s prowess and uncompromising stance is the direct result of a profound cultural transformation in the ranks of our movement, which has led to the prominent presence of women in the movement’s leadership. This has constituted the dynamism for the Resistance’s perseverance and advances. This has shaped the soul of our struggle in these years and was particularly tested in the confrontation between the Resistance and the mullahs’ regime in the past four years. During this period, the clerical regime had imposed maximum pressures and hatched an assortment of conspiracies to destroy the Resistance movement. It was bent of exploiting Iraq’s post-invasion situation to devour Iraq and spread fundamentalism to the entire region. In this period, Ashraf emerged as the great bastion against fundamentalism and is now being led by vanguard women in the Iranian Resistance.
The Iranian Resistance’s experience
Here, I want to briefly refer to the experience of the Iranian Resistance, namely the leading role of women.
After thousands of hours of discussions, women and men in the Resistance concluded that the struggle against the ruling fundamentalists rested on the belief in the notion of equality and that the gender discrimination had to be fought at all costs. Otherwise, to the extent that any force was tainted with misogynous tendencies, or in other words, was to any degree of the same character as the fundamentalists, it could not confront it effectively. Could have this resistance succeeded in the fight against fundamentalism without shedding the patriarchal mindset? The answer is absolutely not.
Our most essential experience in the struggle against fundamentalism was the need to cleanse ourselves of the male-dominated thinking. Advancing this struggle would have been impossible without removing all elements of gender discrimination at every level of the movement. Similarly, the emancipation of women would be impossible without ridding society of fundamentalism. Our movement’s perseverance foretells of the defeat of the ruling fundamentalists. It shows that the Resistance movement has succeeded in exposing and discarding fundamentalist culture and ideology, a task accomplished in every step of the way with the pain and suffering of selfless women in the Resistance.
The participation of Iranian women in an all-out battle against the fundamentalists and their epic resistance in prisons and torture centers humble all of us. They are a source of pride for the Iranian people and the equality movement.
As far as the accomplishments of the Resistance are concerned, women comprise 52 percent of the 500-plus member Parliament of the Resistance. The entire Leadership Council of the People’s Mojahedin, the Resistance’s pivotal force, is women.
The role women played in the Resistance proved that they are the emergent force of our times. This mobilizes women on a macro level for democratic change in Iran and transforms them as the driving force for the liberation of Iran.
Today’s society requires freedom, peace and justice, which is possible only through setting aside archaic values and relations based on discrimination and violence. This could be realized through the leadership role of women.
We are committed to setting up a republic based on the separation of church and state in place of religious fascism. We want a pluralistic society based on respect for human rights. We are striving to realize a true democracy, which requires the active and equal participation of women in society’s political leadership. We say that social relationships must be based on freedom and the human element. To do this we must cast aside gender discrimination.
Allow me to present you with the views of the Iranian Resistance on the status of women in an Iran free of the mullahs’ oppression.
1. In tomorrow’s Iran, individual rights for women must be recognized, including the freedom to choose their clothing, the freedom of belief, religion, occupation and travel.
2. We believe in complete equality in the social, political, cultural and economic rights of women and men.
3. Women must enjoy equal participation in society’s political leadership.
4. Women must enjoy complete freedom in choosing their spouse and marriage. Any form of imposition on women in family life is prohibited.
5. Women’s equal right to divorce is recognized.
6. Polygamy is banned.
7. Physical and sexual violence against women in the work place, educational centers, family and elsewhere will be considered a crime.
8. There must be legal remedies for women who are subjected to violence.
9. Sexual exploitation of women under any pretext is banned.
10. International conventions on the rights and freedoms of women, specifically the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, will be part and parcel of civil laws.
I ask you to lend a hand to the Iranian Resistance in exposing the violation of human rights in Iran, especially the mullahs’ disastrous crackdown on Iranian women.
Support your brave sisters in Ashraf City. These women are the backbone of the Resistance movement.
Stand with the Resistance in the face of the conspiracies of religious dictatorship which aims to block democratic change in Iran.
Spare no effort in removing the Resistance movement from terrorist lists, which have acted as obstacles to democratic change in Iran.
I am very hopeful and heartened by your solidarity as my sisters and I thank you very much.