Iran’s War on Women: What is going on in Iran?

by Tom Kando

Simple: The male regime is waging war on women. My friend Abram de Swaan, Head of the Sociology department at the University of Amsterdam, has made it clear (See his 'De Botsing der Beschavingen en de Strijd der Geslachten'- The clash of civilizations and the battle of the sexes) that much of the conflict emanating from the Muslim world today is basically a male reaction against the world-wide modernization of women.

For the past few decades, we have grown accustomed to news about terrorism, about Muslim criticism of the West, and Western criticism of Muslims. There has been violence - 9/11, at least two wars raging for seven years already. There has been talk of a “clash of civilizations” (see Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Oder). Let’s leave aside the question as to what proportion of the Muslim population consists of anti-Western zealots, and accept the politically correct cliche that most Muslims do not want to be terrorists, but want the same sorts of wholesome things as everyone else, namely a reasonably comfortable and happy life on earth.

So then, what do we make of such theocratic movements as Mullah Mohammed Omar’s Taliban in Afghanistan, or the violent repression of freedom in Iran by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s Supreme Spiritual Leader?

When the Taliban takes over a district, one of the first things it outlaws is schooling for women. In the streets of Teheran recently, the protesters and the victims of the paramilitary Basij forces were more often women than men. Once in a while we read about the “honor killing” of a woman by some father, brother or husband in Pakistan, or in a Muslim suburb of Paris.

But historically, Muslims have no monopoly on the repression of women. Yes, today, the epicenter of that repression seems to be located in that culture - although widespread female genital mutilation in Africa makes life for women there equally unenviable.
The West had its turn before. We had our witch burnings, in Europe and in America. At one time, we too, used this great formula which combines religion and the repression of women.
In Ancient Rome, honor killings were cool, as long as they were perpetrated by the patriarch.

Now don’t misunderstand me - I am not one of those lame-brains trying to relativize everything, and to argue that we are just as bad, because we did these things hundreds of years ago ourselves. Obviously what matters is the evil that is perpetrated today.

Why, then, do some men, Muslim men as well other men, hate women? Because women are getting jobs. Women are earning money. Women are getting an education. Women are gaining power. Women are catching up with men. Women are becoming more equal. It is becoming more difficult for men to feel superior to women.

We, in the West, got used to it. Elsewhere, they have yet to do so. Today, hatred of women and the war on women occur primarily in countries such as Iran. That is the meaning of the current turmoil in that country and the repression of freedom at the hands of men like Supreme Spiritual Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and their Basij thugs.leave comment here