Women’s Day on March 8 was declared by the International Socialists. In a conference in Copenhagen in 1910, it was declared an International Working Women’s Day (IWD). The idea was proposed by Clara Zetkin, a Marxist woman of the then Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
The battle for equal rights of women to hold public offices, their right to vocational training, and an end to inequity in other conditions was the goal. Therefore as a historical day, Women’s Day is since commemorated and is a national holiday in many countries. It symbolises an age-old struggle of women of all ethnic, cultural and social backgrounds against the long existing gender discriminations further expanded by the Abrahamic religions from which Islam blatantly emanates all misogynistic heritage.
Despite many achievements around the world, Women’s Days in the Islamic world remains a thorn in the side of the Islamic establishment, especially Mullahs who spread their clutches over many women in Iran. This is because of an Islamic denial of all forms of gender equity. Gender equality does not match with the credo of Islam which considers women in all levels less worthy than men. 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, it is today at most against Islam in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and North Africa which is a new big haul falling into the clutches of Islamist parties there.
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 in the way of achieving of women’s rights. Despite many globally coordinated efforts, the international community, including the United Nations, practically ignores the fate of hundreds of millions of Muslim women, who are conscious or unconscious victims of the Islamic states or the Muslim communities.
Recent success of the Egyptian Islamists, Muslim Brotherhood, and other Islamist parties in North Africa warns of new waves of misogyny in this region where a great majority of women are still victims of genital mutilation. According to the World Health Organisation, 85 to 115 million girls and women have undergone some form of female genital mutilation in Islamic countries, including 28 African countries, despite the practice is outlawed and condemned by the international community.
While March 8th was historically a secular symbol against the dominance of Catholic Church in the West, it is now rather a worldwide struggle against the misogyny of Islamic regimes and traditions, and the influence of Islamic Mosques all over the world where Muslims live. 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 occupied territory of Iran. The bird of prey is the Islamic regime composed of criminal cliques under various factions and colours. Their bloody clutches are today a new sword of Islam over Iranians. The Islamic regime with a character of early occupiers of Islam, kill, torture to rape “infidel” Iranian men and women and loot all Iranian national wealth as booty.
In many Islamic countries, women who are victims of rape are often killed by their Muslim families to preserve family honour. This misogynistic crime is called Honour Killing and is as a legacy of Islamic traditions in many Islamised countries. Honour Killings have been reported in Jordan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Persian Gulf countries. While a victim of rape is killed by Muslims, for other Muslims rape is as a means of humiliation, confession, and torture allowed toward “enemies of God”. Rape has been used against captured women of “enemies” in the early Islam so that the captured women are enslaved, and shared among the Muslim warriors.
Verse 4:24 of the Koran allows Muslim conquerors to rape “captured” women. Women opposing the Islamic regime were therefore raped before execution. “It is a sin to kill a virgin” because she goes to paradise”. Rape of political prisoners was so frequent that that Mr. Karrubi, an unfortunate candidate of the rigged presidential election of 2009 in which Ahamadiniejad was re-elected, had to finally denounce it.
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. Mr. Moussavi, the hard-line PM under Khomeini and now one of the “reformists“ and one of the two leaders of the Green Movement leaders, by imposing Islamic hijab in his administrations, had clearly specified during his PM that for women no other sort of dress is acceptable except the Islamic hijab. Hijab, as an Islamic code of female dress, was unofficially practised under Mr. Mousavi’s government before its bill being passed in the Islamic parliament and became obligatory.
The first public demonstration of Iranian women after the Iranian revolution was short-lived. On 7 March 1979, 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 thugs, 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. All in all, the possible advent of political was not predicted. It is now time to call for what has not been predicted before and what now happen 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, the global community is affected by political Islam. Consequently, the UN needs to adopt new resolutions to defend the rights of women in Islamic societies. Women in Islamic societies need international support. In the light of many conclusive reports of misogyny in Islamic countries, the UN must react effectively without delay.
The UN, which fairly condemned the Apartheid regime in the past, is now expected to condemn the gender apartheid of Islamic regimes in support of full and equal right for women. It is time for the international community to challenge the misogynistic behaviour of Islam across the globe. Confrontation of the widespread violation of basic rights of women in the Islamic world has been long ignored by the UN.
Unconcerned by any backlash from the UN, the Islamic regime form 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 stand for various forms of Islamic hijab.<br /> In the 21st century, the international community should not accept that women’s rights be crippled by Islamic laws “Shari’a”, a 14-century-old legal code. It is time to outlaw Shari’a internationally, because it reduces women to second-class citizens in a male-dominated society. It is time for the global community to condemn any archaic belief system that is based on gender apartheid by officially reducing women to a subhuman entity.
Thanks to the widespread misogyny of Islam, today female atavists like Egyptian ‘striptivist’ Aliaa al-Mahdy bares all to protest Sharia constitution in Egypt! Iranian female activists close to communists, socialists, democrats, feminists, freedom-loving artists who are affected by the misogyny of Islam follow her struggle. 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 or Mullahs against an oppressive majority in the Islamised countries. These new waves of women’s struggle keeps gaining more political sense than nudism.
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.
Let us as a part of the left, secularists, democrats, feminists and freedom-loving human being line 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 IWD as a focus for anti-war rallies in 1914 and 1915, let us encourage our women movement on toppling of this barbaric regime in spite of efforts at sabotage by all factions of the Islamic regime, including the former leaders who today call themselves “Green Movement” led by some bearded men and veiled women who still attempt to safeguard the apartheid Islamic regime under a new colour.
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. 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 we see in the modern societies, the struggle for democracy, social justice, peace, secularism, and flourishing progress is not separated from the gender equity in any political form of state.
