Protests have erupted all over Iran. It’s not the first time this has happened, but this one does feel very significant. It started with the death of 22 year old Mahsa Amini in police custody. She had been arrested for apparently wearing her compulsory head covering (hijab) incorrectly. This is not uncommon in this society run under Islamic rules.
The press coverage here in the West is as can be expected. Western sanctions causing economic strife are being blamed. Journalists may go as far as stating that the Islamic regime is tyrannical and severely limits the freedoms of its people, especially its women, but as usual, they don’t explain why.
Iran is not the only tyrannical state run under the horrific constricts of Islam and it isn’t the only Islamic country where women are treated as lower than second class citizens. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia … they’re all just as horrifying, but you won’t hear from mainstream politicians, pundits, or press just why this is. We’re expected to believe it’s all about poverty – usually somehow the fault of the West. It isn’t poverty, it’s Islam.
Women are frequently arrested and tortured in these countries, and have no rights worth the name. The press won’t tell you why, but I will.
It’s the religion.
Looking at debates around the treatment of women in Islam is a visit to obfuscation and lies. So many people, including women, argue that the terrible treatment of women in Islamic countries is a cultural phenomenon. Islam gives equal rights to women, it’s just a misinterpretation by male clerics that is the problem, they’ll say. To be charitable, these people are in denial about the true demands of the religion, or they simply don’t know. To be less charitable, they are lying to protect their religion from criticism by outsiders.
So lets settle the matter. What do the scriptures of Islam actually say about women?
Here are just a few examples from the Koran:
Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other.
Your women are a tilth for you to cultivate so go to your tilth as ye will.
Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her. [This is the source of the sharia rule that a woman’s testimony is worth half of a man’s].
Allah thus directs you as regards your children’s inheritance; to the male, a portion equal to that of two females. [The source of the sharia rule that women inherit half of men].
Good women are obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. [The source of the sharia rule that men may beat their wives].
That’s not all. Women have no right to divorce unless with the permission of her husband or a sharia court, even if she subjected to violence or rape. Women have no rights over their children after they reach the age of 7. It goes on and on.
Aisha, who was married to Mohammed at the age of 6 and “had sex” with him at age 9 (justifying child marriage in Islam), was quite explicit. She said “O womenfolk, if you knew the rights your husbands have over you, every one of you would wipe the dust from her husband’s feet with your face”.
It’s pretty clear.
Now on to the compulsory veil. The Koran directs that women must “lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what must ordinarily appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers….”
This is the source of veiling, and it is the source of compulsory veiling. When Islamic regimes take over countries, as one did in Iran in 1979, the veiling of women is one of the first things to occur.
It doesn’t come out of thin air, it comes from the Koran.
Therefore, Iran is Koranically justified in applying this restriction on women. That’s the truth. That’s why this happened. That’s why this is happening all over the Muslim world.
I’m glad the people of Iran are rising up. I hope they succeed, and I hope they overthrow this rotten government.
But even if they do, the world still has to wake up and it has to stop lying; Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The true source of these problems is Islam, always has been and always will be.
Anne Marie Waters
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September 26, 2022
