Ayatollah Tugs at Ties Constricting Iran's Women

The New York Times
By Nazila Fathi


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From his simple surroundings, the Grand Ayatollah Youssef Saanei has issued many stunning edicts over the years, the most controversial dealing with women. 

Seated on a folded blanket under a ceiling fan that pants against the desert heat, the 63-year-old cleric has denounced discrimination based on sex, race and religion. 

He has declared a woman should be allowed to hold any job ÷ president, supreme religious leader, even judge ÷ a position from which women have been barred since the 1979 Islamic revolution. 

He has permitted sex-change operations under certain conditions and first-trimester abortion, for the mother's health or if there are fetal abnormalities. 

What has raised perhaps the most debate is his ruling that compensation for loss of life ÷ so-called blood money ÷ should be the same for men and women, even though current religious law considers the life of a woman or a non-Muslim to be worth half that of a Muslim man. 

"Blood money is the price for a human life and the essence of life is driven from the soul," he said. "The soul that God gave women is no less than the soul God gave men." 

Therein lies one of the most vexing questions facing modern Iran. 

The 1979 revolution succeeded in creating a new class of women ÷ educated, money-earning, more independent and politically minded ÷ but now its own conservative system is struggling to meet their needs. 

As Iran's political reformers push to open that system, they are wrapping their efforts at change in the rationale and religious edicts provided by clerics like Ayatollah Saanei, perhaps Iran's most revered liberal cleric.

In fact, women are at the very heart of the struggle between the reformers and Iran's conservative clerics, who hold most power and want to maintain it through a strict interpretation of Islamic law. 

After 1979, with the sense of security provided by an Islamic government, many tradition-minded parents began to send their daughters to schools and universities. 

Now those women have come of age. In the last school year, 57 percent of university students were women, and hundreds of thousands of educated women have joined the work force. 

"Soon women will be in charge of most important and decision-making positions," Ayatollah Saanei said in a recent interview. "We cannot insist that the past laws are universal and for all periods of time." 

Ayatollah Saanei began his religious studies at the age of 9 and attended the classes of the most prominent theologians. He became a confidant and student of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic revolution, at 25, when he also joined the struggle against the old government under the shah. 

The two men developed such a bond that Ayatollah Saanei still talks of it with pride, and even displays a sign on one wall quoting the Ayatollah Khomeini as saying, "I raised Ayatollah Saanei like a son."

Indeed, Ayatollah Saanei was once very much a part of the religious establishment in the early days of the revolution. He was on the 12- member Guardian Council that drafted the Constitution. Later he was appointed chief prosecutor, and he was part of the religious establishment that replaced the secular legal code with Islamic law. 

That law, still in place today, permits men to have up to four wives and to divorce them at will; in addition, it considers a woman's testimony and share of inheritance to be half that of a man's. 

Since the revolution, the government has also enforced obligatory veiling for women and a punishment of 74 lashes for violators. For years, bright colors were considered inappropriate, and women in the government were required to wear a shapeless black head-to-toe cover known as a chador. 

Since withdrawing from the government in 1984, Ayatollah Saanei has devoted his career to clarifying his position that men and women enjoy equal rights in the Koran. He has also moderated some of his views, with his most liberal rulings coming in the last several years, since the rise of the reformist president, Mohammad Khatami. 

"I could not feel the pain of people as much those days," the ayatollah said. "But now, I am among people and feel the pressures." 

Today, his views have become increasingly important to the aspirations of the reform movement. 

"His willingness and courage to say things against the traditional mainstream is what makes him different from other clerics," said one secular feminist.

Fathimeh Rakei, leader of the Women's Commission of Parliament, has met with Ayatollah Saanei and a few other clerics to get their endorsements to change laws that discriminate against women. 

Most laws have their roots in Islamic jurisprudence, and without strong religious justification they cannot be changed. `There are concepts that intimidate women and they need to be replaced according to the needs of the modern times," Ms. Rakei said. "Many laws are not enforced just because they are not appropriate any longer. We do not cut off the hand of a thief in our system." 

But powerful conservative clerics have proved tough when it comes to women's issues.  The reformist Parliament passed three laws in the past year concerning women. 

One bill allows single women to study overseas on state scholarships. But the other two bills ÷ one to raise the marriage age from 9 to 13 for girls, and another that gave more authority to women in divorce ÷ were blocked by the Guardian Council, a conservative religious body that vets bills to confirm whether they comply with the Islamic law. 

Ms. Rakei said the reformers managed to get the bill on study abroad approved after pointing to religious edicts and legal rationale like those provided by Ayatollah Saanei. The other two bills are still being revised. 

In general, change regarding women's issues has been slow and has been permitted only up to a certain point.  A vivid example is women's hejab, the obligatory veiling. Last year, three reformist legislators altered the status quo after they appeared in Parliament in bright tight-fitting head scarves instead of all-encompassing chadors. A few male members of Parliament threatened to reject their credentials, but the women prevailed. A few months later, under pressure from the women, the Ministry of Education announced that girls in primary school could wear bright colors like yellow and pink. 

Yet restrictions remain. And even Ayatollah Saanei does not compromise on hejab, which he firmly pronounced a duty when pressed to specify where in the Koran the Iranian form of covering women had been described. 

He also believes in strict segregation of the sexes and, as Islamic law prescribes, the absolute obedience of a wife to her husband. "Even a working woman must receive her husband's consent to work," he writes in one of his books that addresses women's issues.

While Ayatollah Saanei does not endorse secular feminism or much for women outside Islamic jurisprudence, it is his and similar views that have kept reforms alive. 

"How can we say Islam is a religion of justice if its laws consider women and non-Muslims unequal to Muslim men?" he said. 

"Indeed, a man and woman are both humans, and Islam considers all humans of an equal value."

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