Women’s Day faces Islam
The International Women’s Day (IWD) on March 8 was celebrated with the Clara Zetkin’s idea declared by the International Socialist in a conference of Copenhagen in 1910. Clara Zetkin was a German female activist of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
The claim of gender equality is indeed above any ideology because communist regimes attempting classless societies with appropriate socio-economic structures had no equal chances for women in holding public offices under the Eastern Bloc.
Struggle for equal rights of women to hold public offices, their right to vocational training, and an end to inequity in many spheres was the initial goal. Therefore as a justified wish, Women’s Day is since commemorated and even has been a national holiday in some countries. It symbolises an age-old struggle of women of all ethnic, cultural and social backgrounds against the long existing gender discriminations.
Despite the consequences of many achievements around the world, gender discrimination has left roots in the societies affected by the Abrahamic religions from which Islam blatantly emanates the most misogynistic heritage. Gender equality does not match Islam because the teachings and credo of Islam in consider women in all levels less worthy than men.
No wonder that with the rise of political Islam Women’s Day becomes an imminent élan in its clash with Islam. If this day is rooted in the struggles against the Dark Ages of European Church and in the demand for “liberty, equality, fraternity” during the French Revolution, today it has tangibly turned to be against misogynistic Islam.
International Women’s Day has originally assumed a new global dimension for the establishment of women’s rights in the developed and developing countries alike. Nevertheless, the growing international political Islam, strengthened by the Islamic regime of Iran, since its advent in 1979, is a serious barrier on the way of achieving of women’s rights. Despite many globally coordinated efforts, the international community, including the United Nations, ignore the fate of hundreds of millions of Muslim women who happen to be born in the Islamic world and are the victims of their Islamic states.
Today, the horrendous shadow of a monster called political Islam has spread its wings over a great sphere of the world, where hundreds of millions of women have fallen into its clutches. The nest of this bird of prey is the Mullahs-occupied territory of Iran. The bird of prey is the Islamic regime composed of criminal cliques under various factions and colours, with 35 years of crime against humanity. Their clutches are today new swords of Islam over the conquered people of Iran.
The Islamic regime with all characters of early occupiers of Islam in Iran and also upon the Prophet’s patterns, kill, torture, rape “infidel” Iranian men and women and loot all Iranian national wealth as the Prophet Muhammad and his direct successors did. Sexual torture is another tool to crush the political prisoners in Iran, men women are victims alike. Based on the Islamic justification, “infidel” female prisoners are raped by torturers, guards, authorities before execution as the rape was allowed with the females of a conquered “infidel” tribe, as spoils of war, at the time of Muhammad himself.
Stoning or in French “Lapidation” is another code of Sharia practised in Iran. The Penal code of the Islamic regime details how stoning punishments are to be carried out for adultery.
Inspired from one of the Prophet Muhammad’s marriages with the wife of his adopted son, in September 2013 Parliamentarians in Iran have passed a bill to protect the rights of children which includes a clause that allows a man to marry his adopted daughter and while she is as young as 13 years.
In many Islamic countries, women who are victims of rape are even killed by their Muslim families to preserve family honour. This misogynistic crime is called Honour Killing and is as a legacy of misogynistic traditions upheld in many Islamised countries. Honour Killings have been reported in Jordan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, the Persian Gulf countries, and even Muslim communities of western countries.– the victim of rape is killed because is a means of humiliation for the family.
Female genital mutilation is still vastly practised. It is another old ritual that is considered by the World Health Organisation (WHO) a non-medical procedure. Despite some efforts of the UN, woman genital mutilation is practised in most Islamic countries.
Since the advent of the Islamic regime in 1979, physical assaults, arbitrary arrests, acid-throwing, harassment and psychological pressure have become the part and parcel of woman’s life in Iran. Besides these arbitrary acts committed by the regime’s thugs, the nationwide organised Police Morality warn, harass, arrest and punish the so-called “bad-hijab” women, bad- veiled women.
Mr. Moussavi, the hard-line PM under Khomeini and now one of the so-called reformists, by imposing Islamic hijab in his administrations, had clearly specified during his PM that for women no other sort of dress is acceptable except Islamic hijab. Hijab, as an Islamic code of female dress, was imposed under Mr. Moussavi’s government before its bill being passed in the Islamic parliament and becoming obligatory.
Short after the foundation of the Islamic regime in Feb.1979, the first public demonstration of Iranian women on 7 March 1979 was short-lived. On the eve of the IWD, Khomeini decreed that all women employed by the government must wear “Chador” (an all-enveloping black veil), an extension of the four walls of home. Thousands of women filled the streets in protest. For three days, they marched and rallied; on the third day, they staged a sit-in protest at the Palace of Justice, demanding a legal guarantee for their right to choose what to wear and where to work at home and in society at large. Khomeini’s adepts, armed with knives, attacked the women; they cursed them, yelling “Wear your head or get your head rapped.” Islamic thugs stood at windows along the parade-route and exposed their genitals, saying, “This is what you want, you whores!”
Before the advent of political Islam, over the decencies, conferences, demonstrations, and commemorations have been held globally to reflect on the progress made in woman’s rights. At the time, the advent of political was not predicted, therefore it is time to call for what has not been predicted before and what now happens under the misogynistic Islamic states. International Women’s Day should now be made a rallying point against the Islamic misogyny, poised to damage the achievements gained in the history of women’s rights. No international law including the Charter of the United Nations adequately reacts against discriminations against women in the Islamic world although the UN proposes gender equality as a fundamental human right. The UN is reluctant to create standards, programmes, and updated goals for advancing the status of women in the Islamised societies. For example, the UN avoids condemning the enforcement of hijab on women in Iran.
As said, the UN Charter, signed in 1945, was the first agreement to affirm the principle of equality between women and men. However, the Charter was prepared before the advent of the international political Islam. Today, hundreds of millions of women are victims of political Islam. Consequently, the UN needs to adopt new resolutions to defend the rights of women in the Islamic societies. Women in such Islamic societies need international support. Regarding many conclusive reports of discrimination and violation to the fundamental rights of women in Islamic countries, the UN must react effectively by punishing Islamic regimes.
Unconcerned by any backlash from the UN, the Islamic regime forms its own women groups. These groups produced a newspaper, “The Muslim Women “run by veiled and bearded Muslims, the main task of the papers was to inculcate misogynistic norms and pseudo scientific arguments into mind of women. Through the twisted sense of freedom and origin of women’s rights, its real role is to justify the regime’s misogynistic policy, especially for imposition of hijab on women.
Hijab is the central concern of political Islam as it symbolises the Islamic power as the Swastika did for Nazism. In this light, all factions of the Islamic regime and even its Islamic opposition People’s Mojahedin of Iran, (MKO) stand for Islamic hijab as the only code of dress.
Thanks to the widespread misogyny of Islam, Iranian female activists close to communists, socialists, democrats, feminists, and all freedom-loving people follow their struggle for equality of women with men. Their core struggles consists of the idea that Islamic hijab is correlated with misogyny and should not be tolerated for a disruptive minority of Islamists against an increasing majority of freedom-loving women in the Islamised countries. These new waves of women’s struggle initiated by Alia from Egypt and the Femen from Ukraine keep gaining more political sense than being labelled by a character of nudism.
Let us as a part of the left, secularists, democrats, feminists and freedom-loving human being lined up behind the struggles of Iranian women against their most reactionary and misogynistic ruling class. Today after the outbreak of the 2009 rigged presidential election, the people of Iran have found a new occasion to continue challenging the whole Islamic regime. As once Rosa Luxemburg used Women’s Day as a focus for anti-war rallies in 1914 and 1915, let us encourage our women movement on toppling of this Islamic barbaric regime.
Promotion of gender equality is not only a responsibility of women, but of all humanity. Not only is it an important factor for participation of women in social and economic development, but also a necessity for a healthy development of the society as a whole. According to psychologists and historically approved, gender discrimination creates frustrations, perversity and aggressiveness with blind obedience, all of which are typical traits of oppressed societies. Daily examples of gender discrimination in Iran show that the regime by imposing lower status for women has reduced the woman’s role to a means of procreation, what in actuality correlates with the repression of the whole society.
No equal right between man and woman has ever been respected under dictatorial regimes, from the right far to the religious and all the way to the recent communist dictators. As seen in the modern societies, the struggle for democracy, social justice, peace, secularism, and flourishing progress is not separated from the gender equity regardless the form of state.
On this International Women’s Day, let us re-dedicate ourselves to the hundreds of millions of women who are conscious or unconscious victims of Islamic misogyny. Much should be accomplished to put into place legal foundations to urge the international community to remember that it is the responsibility of all of us to defend their democratic and secular right to live in dignity, freedom and gender equality.
While March 8th was historically a secular struggle against the patriarchal dominance of Catholic Church in the West, it is now rather a worldwide struggle against the misogyny of Islamic regimes that are propagating the most misogynistic measures. In this perspective the classic struggle against Catholic Church must be now adapted to a persistent struggle against the influence of misogynistic Mosque.
Recent Comments