Friday morning, courtesy of Senator Rick Santorum, I attended a private screening of a new Iranian movie produced and directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh entitled “The Stoning of Sorayah M.” It’s a very fine movie–which will premiere in Toronto next week–but a very unpleasant way to start the day. As the title tell you, it’s about a woman (falsely) accused of adultery by her scheming husband, and, in keeping with Shari’a practice, she is stoned to death by her friends, relatives, and neighbors. Not nice. But very powerful. It shows the worst, most misogynistic side of Iran, and by extension all those other Islamic countries where men hold life and death power over the women, and are rarely called to account themselves.
It is therefore even more impressive to see Iranian women fighting back against the male chauvinist pigs who rule their country. They know their vulnerabilities full well, as they know the horrors the mullahs have prepared for them, but they are fighting nonetheless. Have a look at this recent report from the BBC, an organization that bends over backwards to avoid publishing incendiary accounts of life in Iran. It’s pretty tough language from the Beeb:
Women in Iran have severely restricted freedom of choice, and no equality with men.
A married woman must obtain her husband’s permission before taking a job outside their home.
A man may have up to four wives. A woman may not have up to four husbands.
Women must observe the Islamic dress code – showing as little hair as possible, and their arms, their legs and their feet must be covered.
There is no protection against so-called honour killings or women who are raped; a husband – or a father – who kills the rape victim cannot be prosecuted and sent to jail for murder.
“This is inhuman,” a law professor at Tehran University, Rosa Gharachorloo, told me.
Yes it is, as was the stoning of Sorayah M., brutally murdered because her husband coveted another woman, and couldn’t afford two wives.
We celebrate strong women, but men throughout the Middle East fear them, and oppress them in ways the West has not seen for a long time. I am no expert on the treatment of black female slaves in the West, but I rather suspect that contemporary oppression of Middle Eastern women is even worse than it was on the plantations, which was plenty horrible.
If you read the BBC story to its conclusion, you will find that the Iranian women are making a bit of headway; they have recently received some limited support from the speaker of Parliament and a leading ayatollah. Good news, you will say, and so do I. But six of the leading Iranian suffragettes have been sent to the torture chambers, which is business as usual, and is greeted with the usual shamefaced silence in our corridors of power. It is beyond my ability to tolerate the failure of Condoleezza Rice to condemn these outrages with her considerable energy. It’s bad enough that the men don’t do anything.
Rice turned out to be one of the most incompetent persons in the Bush team–they supposedly sent her there to take back the rebellious State Department but, alas, it appears she was a sympathizer of their cause all along. I think State doesn’t realize they are the instrument of conveying the President’s policy to the world–they think their job is to convey the world’s positions to the President and everyone who went in there got corrupted (except Bolton who was a great pick for the U.N. while it lasted).
Senator Santorum has always been a leader on the issue of Iran and, one day, the American people will recognize him as a champion.
When you say there are some gains made on behalf of women in Iran, we all know that the system of govenance there is a charade. If there is indeed any legitimate movement towards a grain of liberalization for those women, it is above all to serve the purpose of the regime, not the women who’s minute gain of freedom is merely a side-effect. Every once in a while, they dangle a little bit of hope in front of a select group to make them think the system can be reformed or liberalized, they entice those people to expend time and energy into that case, but in the end the hardliners who hold every string crush it, sometimes after the change has been implmented for some short period of time and other times even before the measure is implemented. The goal of the regime on every single front–be it nuclear or this women liberalization r anything else–is delay to buy another day. They are only trying to buy time, and if a phoney “societal debate” keeps the people busy for 6 months or a year, then they have survived that much longer and they view themselves as winners for it. In their hearts, those mullahs have no confidence in their ability to survive perpetually without a nuclear bomb. They don’t count on a tomorrow.
That’s why in our nuclear negotiations, they are running the show while the democrats keep us busy with carrots/sticks. Every day that goes by, they get exactly what they wanted–that day. The regime survives day-by-day, and so to do the mullahs’ themselves live, day-by-day.
Also, Ahmadinejad himself overturned many of the “liberalizations” of Khatami’s time. These new liberlizations can be overturned on a whim just as easily.
I’m not holding my breath…
Give the women training, guns, money and communications. And if they don’t deliver, forget them. Talk is just that.
You do realize that the moral high ground/human rights angle is nonsense compared to force and the will to use it? Which exists in sufficient force in that country and that region to maintain and expand. This is Islam (and the culture of Asia) not the Soviets in the 70′s.
The British Raj didn’t end suttee by symposiums. They ended it at bayonet point and centuries of occupation. Education came after conquest.
Really, if you want to “liberate” the women, you know what has to happen to a lot of the men first, right?
What kind of pixie dust do they have over at State?
I keep waiting for Condi to come forth with some scorching expose or some “make her bones” tirade about women (or anything) in the Middle East, but I fear it is not to be.
To paraphrase a famous Cuban misogynist (or, at least, lothario), “Wha’happ’n?”
Arif – Well yeah, moral and physical courage are distinct. Iran is hardly culturally monolithic, though. Would a Raj be necessary to accomplish the end of female slavery there? My impression is that Iran is more fractious and more fragile than the Mullahcracy would have us believe.
Strong words, delivered with conviction, from Secretary Rice and backed-up by the President might help or might help little. The “do nothing” scenario has permitted the situation to worsen. Then there’s the psychological fact that an aggressive female is on a ticket here in the US. That fact alone would lend mass to the punch.
If only Rice and Bush had the moral courage to speak up.
RAN — I agree-You want Rice to do WHAT??!
She has been a huge failure in everything she has touched: Russia invades Georgia: FAILURE, North Korea re-assembles its nuclear machinary: FAILURE; Iran continues doing whatever the hell it wants in uclear weaponary and to its own people, unafraid and untouched: BIG FAILURE.
All while Condi “FAILURE” Rice sits down to a soft candle-lit dinner with Moammar Ghaddafi!!
The woman is delusional about the world, PERIOD.
Rice is mullah-Appeaser Number 1, she always was and always will be to the end. President Bush has surrounded himself with soft-bellied Iran-Appeasers like Rice and Robert Gates. VP Cheney has been all but thrown in the basement and locked up, he is in a virtual London Tower.
It’s a pity that the president who coined Iran as part of teh “Axis of Evil” has been rduced to pulp thanks to Rice’s venom.
At least until November 4, 2008. Right?
The mad Mullahs of Iran are hated by every one but there’s a burning passion among the Iranian women to hate these crazy maniacs more than any other social groups. Women, through out the mideast, are the biggest victims of the mad idealogy of Islamism.
In the meanwhile economic relationship among European and Khomeinists never been better. Who cares about human rights in Iran and women right abuses in that country. For European the well being of a bunch of terrorists in GB-Cuba is more important than the fate of a nation. For GB-Cuba, European can bad mouth US. For whatever abuses European commit, there is no one to report. BBC / API, and CNN Int. are the only media that are capable of reporting but they don’t because it is not news against the USA.
According to FT:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d20d0210-7523-11dd-ab30-0000779fd18c,dwp_uuid=be75219e-940a-11da-82ea-0000779e2340.html?nclick_check=1
Small and medium-sized companies are entering Iran’s market to replace big companies that have scaled down their operation to avoid sanctions, western diplomats say.
Partly as a result of this switch EU exports to Iran during the first four months of this year went up by 17.8 per cent after a three-year decline despite international sanctions over the country’s nuclear programme. Exports by Italy rose by 33 per cent, France by 30 per cent and Germany by 17 per cent, while the UK’s went down by about 8 per cent, according to figures from the EU’s statistics office Eurostat.
Great post, Koursh Jaan, all true.
Meanwhile, “one” of the European agenda operators in the US elite(amongst others like Kerry, Charlie Rose in the media, NBC news, all the usual suspects), Mr. Euro-stooge himself, Joseph Biden, is very well positioned to conduct a future ‘grand bargain’ with the Islamic Republic of Terror in Tehran, should he and Hussein O. get into the White House in January.
Thank God for Sarah Palin, just about our only hope and chance is that she Barracuda’s them down like the traitor Islamist sympathizers and Mullah Appeasers that they both are; in short:
“Long needlelike teeth fit into their own holes in the opposing jaw, allowing the great barracuda to close its mouth. This gives its prey little chance of escape. This fish grabs its prey, swallowing small victims whole while larger prey is cut into pieces to be swallowed separately”
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/Descript/greatbarracuda/greatbarracuda.html
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Recently one of my friends started an obsession with the actor Nicholas Cage (mostly because their names are both Nicholas – sounds strange but he is strange and that isn’t the point). After asking around the rest of my friends he seems to be a very controversial figure.
What does the forum think? do you love the all action superhero? Or do you hate the droning voice of the man who does nothing but action shooters?
How many times you eat during a normal … every day life?
are you the type of person who eats a bit and often?
or rarely and too much?
i usually have 3 and i’m the 2nd type of person (though it’s not that healthy)
8 am breakfast
3pm lunch
9pm a snack.