There are two reigning discourses plaguing Iranian women today, particularly when considering them in a western lens. These are stated, in Afsaneh Najmabadi’s article "Veiled Discourse-Unveiled Bodies" to be Modernism and Islamism. Modernism is described by Najmabadi as “a loss of chains of female enslavement”, while Islamism is described as a “loss of Islamic virtue”.

 The end result of these linear thought groups is that no matter what a woman is believed to choose or ascribe to, she ‘loses’ a vital part of her life experience.

 

It would be disingenuous to claim that this means that Iranian women are not being oppressed. However, the linear western thought these perspectives create is that their oppression is simply an evolution of a consistent cultural or religious trait, which is at best ignorant and at worst Euro-centric and Islamophobic. A culture or religion is not an oppressing force unless wielded to be so. It is not an immutable fact of nature, it is a manmade creation whose only meaning is to maintain the structure of a society by fostering a deeper sense of community, which is another man-made creation. 

If Modernism held all the answers for freedom and equality for Iranian women, it could be claimed that there was no reason to depose the Shah. The White Revolution, among other things, gave women the right to vote. Before him, his father had passed the “Unveiling” law, banning headscarves with the symbolic gesture of removing his own wife’s hijab. But women were, in fact, becoming more and more in favor of Khomeini, who had even stated before that he saw the expansion of women’s rights as a degradation of Iranian society.

Modernism had become so conflated with the regime and Westoxification that Islamism, a return to a traditional, independent Iran, became the reactionary antistate stance. However, today we again see a new antistate stance, which rejects Islamism to a degree due to the autocratic and repressive controls the Islamic government places on them in the name of Islam.

But just as a Modernist government oppressing the people of Iran does not mean that all aspects of Modernism are bad, an Islamic government oppressing their women should not be seen as the same as Islam as a religion being oppressive to them. As stated in “Fatima is Fatima” by Ali Shariati, Islam is not a religion that believes in the subservient position of women, rather that women and men play different societal roles, which should be treated and seen as equal in the public sphere. And in fact, often these homogenous communities do in fact create spaces for women to freely express themselves.

This is, of course, not without criticism. Some older Islamic feminist writings, like Shariati’s, define a woman’s role by her relation to a man. However, it still serves as a good example of how these problems exist more within a societies weaponization of Islam and culture than the culture or religion itself. So, when considering movements like Woman, Life, Freedom, it is important to remain nuanced in your perspective, and understand the gray area an Iranian woman must live in. Because this gray area, built painstakingly through a pendulum shift of autocracy to autocracy, all weaponized to keep them docile and controlled in some way, is where Iranian women have found their voice. So look in the gray, and listen to them.

- KC