Yasaman Mansoori

ISLA 383
Professory Ahmed Fekhry Ibrahim
October 28, 2015

Veiled Resistance: The Legal Status of Women in Post-Revolutionary Iran

    Gendered oppression enacted under the guise of Islamic law in post-Revolution Iran

left women to face an uncertain future regarding their rights and opportunities. In 1979,

the newly-minted Islamic Republic of Iran replaced the monarchy ruled by the Shah and

instituted Islamic law (shari’a) as the foundation of its legal system. The introduction of

Islamic law derailed the monarchy’s Family Protection Laws (FPL) of 1975 that ratified

gender-egalitarian rights for women. The Islamic Republic repealed the FPL and instead

defined women in the regime’s constitution within the framework of their familial duties

and status as sovereign beings according to shari'a. This catalysed Iranian women’s

embattled social justice campaign for gender equality through their attempts to procure

and reclaim their lost social and political rights. The Iranian Republic’s ostensibly

weaponised shari'a to rationalise and justify gendered oppression by encoding Muslim

clerics’ distorted interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) into laws. The most signif-

icant changes to women’s legal status were: increased severity of punishment for so-

called criminal violations, and for decreased agency within family networks and the law.

As a result, Iranian women strategised their path to legal reform by utilising the shari’a

to challenge the Republic’s laws. As described by Azadeh Kian, Iranian women’s utilisa-

tion of Islamic feminist theology mobilised "Islam’s symbolic capital” to make their case

for reinterpretations of the Quran that promoted gender equality (Kian, 46). Despite for-

midable obstacles, Iranian women were able to successfully negotiate for rights that
rectified some, but certainly not all, of the judiciary’s initial (mis-)interpretations of

shari’a which subjugated Iranian women’s agency so severely. In this essay I will ana-

lyse and assess the three most significant legal changes to women’s status and the re-

sultant impact on women — as well as the respective theological reasoning used by Ira-

nian women to challenge these very policies, though with varying degrees of success.

The three themes of this study are: mandatory veiling and the Islamic dress code, crimi-

nal law and the changes to Iran’s penal codes, and the traditionalist shari’a-based judi-

cial revisions to family law and women’s rights, writ large. Second, I will outline the

changes to the criminal code and evaluate how the then newly-introduced shari’a judi-

cial framework affected women in the eyes of the law. Lastly, I will discuss the changes

to divorce law and the ways in which it broke with shari'a.

A mandatory Islamic dress code:

     The mandatory dress code was a visible and central symbol of the Islamic Republic's

'Islamisation' efforts. Its imposition affected Iranian women in several unforeseen ways

and was a major battleground in the fight they waged against the governing clerical

elites in their effort to achieve gender equality. Iranian women are required to adhere to

the dress code in all public spaces. The uniform is pertained to the headscarf (hijab)

and compulsory “modest dress” exemplified by a loose outermost layer which covers

the arms and reaches down to the knees.

It is essential to first understand the theological basis for the mandatory veiling of

women in Islam. Islamic jurists and scholars (mujtahid) qualified to perform interpreta-
tions (ijtihad) of the Qur’an rely on two main passages (24.31 and 33.59) to justify the

existence of the hijab. However, the highly ambiguous language of these two verses

has made any definitive stance on the issue subject to extensive (and compelling) argu-

mentation. In such cases, mujtahid also look to accounts of the Prophet Muhammad

(hadith) to further analyse and clarify their positions on a matter. Unfortunately, the ex-

isting hadith on the subject of veiling is also highly contentious due to concerns regard-

ing the veracity of the hadith, the socio-historical context of early Islam, and similar to

the Quran, enigmatic language (Barazangi, 55). The all-male ruling clerics of the early

Islamic Republic capitalised on the inconclusiveness of this centuries-old debate and

the public’s lack of expertise in Islamic jurisprudence to justify their deeply restrictive

and prohibitive official stance on the subject. The patriarchal enforcement of the dress

code became a constant visual and consequently psychosocial reminder of women’s

special status as secondary-citizens who both required and were subjected to the con-

trol of their comparatively sovereign male counterparts.

Nevertheless, the regime’s unpopular effort to veil Iranian women after the Revolution

persisted, was enforced, and remains largely intact to this day. It may be argued that

the mandatory dress code allowed all Iranian women, particularly those from traditional

or conservative families who were previously prohibited from participating in certain ac-

tivities, to enter the public sphere (Kian, 50). Since its imposition, the hijab and overall

covering up of women’s bodies has allowed working class Iranian women to enter the

public sphere in unprecedented ways. The Iranian government's Constitution estab-

lished the equality between women and men in political, cultural, economic, and cultural

arenas (Moghissi, 304). Previously disenfranchised women from conservative families

were thus able to enter the political arena now that the regime encouraged their partici-

pation in the political proceedings of the nation. The regime greatly encouraged Ortho-

dox Iranian women to champion the primacy of the hijab to Iranian women's life and the

success of the Iranian Islamic nation and granted these women access to formal institu-

tions to express these beliefs. The First International Congress of Women and Islamic

Revolution in 1987 outlined hijab and chastity as the two central components to the "de-

velopment of Islamic society" as it relates to women (Moallem, 172). There have also

been many women whose families or husbands would "not have allowed them to pur-

sue education and employment without the chador [...] or hijab" who have served in par-

liament and even campaigned for the Iranian presidency (Zahedi, 92). For example,

Azam Taleghani was able to be socially active with the protective space that the chador

provides for women as she served in Iranian Parliament, or Majlis, as she headed

the Society of Islamic Revolution Women of Iran, and also ran the women's Islamic jour-

nal Payam e Hajar Weekly (Zahedi, 92).

The rise in female participation in political spheres further encouraged women to

unite for common causes despite social or cultural differences. As Keddie, a scholar of

women and the Iranian Revolution, as well as the author of “Women in Iran since 1979”,

has argued: "A novel ideological trend for Iran, of women interpreting Islam in more gen-

der-egalitarian ways, soon became important, encouraged by the entry of more religious

women into the public sphere, the spread of religious education up to the highest levels

for women, and the limitations of public discourse to Islamic parameters" (Keddie, 417).

These developments allowed divisions between groups that traditionally held political

and culturally opposing views to unite on various issues since the overt differences in
class and religiosity reflected in a woman's appearance prior to the Revolution were no

longer obvious. Keddie writes: "Some say that chador and hijab was favoured in this

unifying tendency, as there is no longer such a gap in the public appearance of women

from different classes" (Keddie, 411). 

Keddie also asserts that "the veil and 'proper veiling' have become definitional symbols

of a woman's faith and loyalty. Although, in traditional Islamic discourse the the veil is

related to modesty and morality, its transformation into a central symbolism of power

has imbued it with a total religio-political significance as well” (Keddie, 410).

The controversy of the dress code has thus made the hijab a central symbol of women’s

resistance and made it a touchstone issue for women’s political activism as it encour-

aged women's organisational efforts and increased legal participation.

  The central symbolism of the veil to the Islamic Republic as a representation of the

regime itself also meant women who took liberties with their compliance to the dress

code, whether through colours or by degree of coveredness, to openly defy and under-

mine the regime without seriously endangering themselves. After all, a woman’s hair

flowing beyond her veil does not an open street demonstration make. Minoo Moallem,

author of Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister: Islamic Fundamentalism and The

Politics of Patriarchy in Iran, argues that Iranian women's fashion-forward hair exposure

is a subversive act against the regime's discursive rejection of modernity and 'Western

culture': "While Islamic culture represents any incorporation of bourgeois culture as a

transgression of law and a deep form of self-violation, oppositional modernism gains

strength from the construction of a secular subject who feels profoundly connected to

modernist lifestyle and fashion, which are opposed to Islamic values” (Moallem, 172).
The rationalisation for the defiance is only amplified by the fact the actual religious texts

on which these restrictions rely barely hold up to actual scrutiny. As a result of the

regime’s obsession with the veil’s enforcement, the hijab has become a paradoxical tool

of state resistance for women. While the veil has marginalised massive numbers of

women it has also given them, as Mir-Hosseini describes,

the means for making a mockery of one of its most explicit platforms
[...] These women have resisted the rule of compulsory hijab in ways
similar to those described by James Scott in his Weapons of the Weak
(1985), which lack any kind of organisation and indeed need no co-ordi-
nation or planning. Such resistance, which can be nothing more than in-
dividual acts of footdragging and evasion, may in the end make an utter
shambles of the policies dreamed up by the powerful" (Mir-Hosseini,
"Politics in the Third World, 159) 

There are many women professors who bend the strict hijab rules imposed by universi-

ties because they know their expertise is needed and they cannot be replaced. In

Haleh Esfandiari’s Reconstructived Lives: Women and Iran’s Islamic Revolution, she

tells the story of one university professor who resigned from her first teaching post be-

cause she refused to wear the hijab but later returned and though “she has been repri-

manded many times for showing some hair […] and threatened to resign,” the school’s

authorities withheld their criticism because “they need her and want her to stay”

(Esfandiari, 134).

In the early years of the Islamic Republic, women and their allies argued for alter-

native interpretations of the Qur'an in the press to question the validity of the mandatory

dress code. Reformists vied for re-interpretations of the relevant verses and hadith.

They argued that the whole issue of Islamic dress comes under the realm of belief;

nowhere does the Qur’an speak of it as an injunction. Liberal clerics like Farhad Be-

hbani released numerous editorials in the women’s magazine Neshat after the 1980-
1988 Iraq war arguing that “Not observing hijab merely constitutes a “sin”, answerable

only to God, and is different from a “crime”, which is a social matter and can be dealt

with by those in charge in society” (Mir-Hosseini, 42). There was also women's maga-

zine like Zan-e Ruz which argued for a progressive ijtihad, they write, "On veiling, the

Qur'an tells women cover their breasts and hide their ornaments, and only interpretation

said that all except women's face and hands were ornaments to be hidden" (Keddie,

415). 

The regime's power over women’s appearance is what spurred a desire for a

stronger grasp and understanding of Islamic law. Arzoo Osanloo spotlights women

whose experiences with the moral police inspired them to verse themselves with the

regime's laws as a means of protection: "Three years earlier, the morality police

(pasdaran) had arrested her for wearing excessive makeup in public. 'When they took

me to the police station, they had fees associated with every offense and it was all writ-

ten down. This much for mascara, this much for lipstick, and so on. I couldn't believe it. I

had no idea that the laws contain penalties like these. This is not in the Qur'an. It was

from this experience that I learned I need to educate myself and others about the coun-

try's laws. If you are not aware of the laws, how can you defend yourself?” (Osanloo,

198). This woman’s experience and the subsequent decision to familiarise herself with

shari'a became a common trend among women and empowered them to become active

participants and students of the legal framework that so heavily tempered their daily ex-

periences as members of Iranian society. In fact, since the regime was so adamant that

women participate in the political and social proceedings of the Islamic Republic, it en-

couraged women to “master technical forms of Islamic argumentation, partly because of

the government's opening of more kinds of religious education to women" (Keddie,

416).  

The women’s magazines enabled the growing support for Islamic modernism and

reformism once grievances against the limitations of the hijab had intensified. Azadeh

Kian-Thiebaut summarises the primary political role played by women’s publications,

adding: "Women's magazines [...] are playing a critical role in this transformation [...]

The editors of these publications unanimously maintain that the inequality between men

and women springs not from the Qur'an, but from religious authorities' misinterpretation

of divine laws" (Keddie, 424).

There has only been a total of two female mujtahid in contemporary Iranian his-

tory, of whom only one, Zohreh Safati, has been active after the Revolution. There ex-

ists extraordinary obstacles for women who desire a formal education in Islamic ju-

risprudence. And even these obstacles are dwarfed by the impenetrable barrier posed

by the mujtahid who sit on the Assembly of Experts. Only the Assembly of Experts pos-

sess the power to grant the title of mujtahid to qualifying candidates. This barrier to en-

try makes it veritably impossible for any woman who is an openly reform-minded muj-

tahid-potential to earn the very title which would allow women to formally advocate on

their own behalf through the proper institutional channels and even raise the issue of a

possible reinterpretation of the existing doctrine.

Interestingly, the justification for the hijab is so frail that even Safati has openly

admitted the verbiage of the relevant verses in the Qur’an and hadith requires revisita-

tion. In a 2013 television interview, Safati stated: “…new methods should be adopted to

answer the recent critics of hijab who challenge its imposition through new interpreta-
tions of the Koran [sic] and Hadith” (Mirshahvalad, 103). Nevertheless, she has been

extremely reticent about the overwhelming sentiment from Iranian women to gain

greater agency over their attire in a way that is also rooted in legitimate interpretations

of Islamic law.

For Iranian women, small victories in battle have not extended to a victory in the

war for their personal autonomy as it relates to their appearance in public domains.

Evidently, the regime’s initial support and discursive encouragement for women’s

political participation and the strict imposition of the hijab resulted in the issue becoming

weaponised against them as women utilised their new roles as political actors in Iran’s

parliamentary and judicial institutions.  

Criminal Law and the Penal Code

The Islamisation of Iran’s criminal code to shari'a law transformed the roles of

women in the eyes of the law by eroding previously enjoyed individual rights, and made

religio-cultural targets of them instead. The regime extended the definition of corruption

to include "adultery, homosexuality, drug abuse, alcohol consumption as well as a

whole range of social and cultural activities such as gambling, entertainment, music,

any type of mixing of men and women" (Yeganeh, 16). These new measures were

"novel concepts within twentieth-century Iranian political discourses" and made the pri-

vate or personal lives of women political (Yeganeh, 15). As the family unit became politi-

cised any violations of the sanctity of the family under the all-encompassing umbrella of

corruption required new dimensions of punishment as well. Essentially, any violation of

the sanctity of the family assumed that a political crime had been committed, and re-

quired strict punishment (Yeganeh, 20). For example, women caught mingling with men

or courting without a male chaperone were no longer an issues to be resolved within

families from the safety of the home. The rhetorical and penal changes thus engen-

dered a dangerous atmosphere of state and domestic violence against women

(Yeganeh, 16). Though no official statistics on domestic violence in Iran existed until

2004 when the Women’s Center for Presidential Advisory, The Interior Ministry, and The

Ministry of Higher Education conducted a several-year study, women’s groups and

NGOs have come forward to state the destructive treatment of women in the law is the

catalyst for the rise in domestic violence since the time of the Revolution. The findings

culminated in a 32-volume study concluded that “66% of married women in Iran are

subjected to some kind of domestic violence in the first year of their marriage, either by

their husbands or by their in-laws” and “the chief of police in Iran stated that 40% of all

murders in Iran happen due to domestic violence” (Alhabib, 7). The regime’s silent treat-

ment of domestic violence against women is an indicator for the fact that they favour

the sanctity of the Muslim community over the individual rights of women. Another ex-

ample of women’s diminished stance relative to societal expectations or norms is the is-

sue of adultery. Women who have committed the crime of adultery may be punished by

death since they are deemed threats to the health of Iran's Islamic social fabric, and to

have violated their fundamental role as pure, subservient caregivers (Keddie, 418).

Nevertheless, execution for adultery was lambasted by reformist women and their male

allies in clerical positions and steps were taken by women to pressure legislators to pro-

tect women who became particularly vulnerable to honour killings after the initial pas-
sage of the regime's laws. These pressures resulted in "parliamentary discussions cen-

tred on the need for proof that the women involved were willing participants in the adul-

tery" (Keddie, 419). 

These reformist women and their allies were able to achieve these changes by using

strict Islamic law as the foundation for their arguments, namely in that “proof of adultery

requires several eyewitnesses, who will e punished for slander if they are lying” (Keddie

419).

The Islamic laws of retribution and guardianship also eroded women's legal

rights. The passage of qisas laws were particularly unfavourable for women’s rights as

inheritors, witnesses and custodians of their children in the case of divorce. According

to Article 92 of the qisas laws: if a woman's evidence is not corroborated by a man then

it "is no longer accepted by courts" (Afashar, 211). Further, women who insisted on de-

livering testimonies with uncorroborated evidence are judged to be lying and subject to

punishment for slander" (Afshar, 215). Khomeinei also designated men as legal head of

the household when he came to power. Men had lost the right to automatic custody of

their children under the 1976 Family Provision Laws but were re-granted the right in

1985. The provisions of this law were eventually altered after intense pressures on be-

half of "women's groups, NGOs and parliamentarians" which culminated in the 1992

Amendments to Divorce Regulations that compelled divorcing couples to make prior for-

mal arrangements for "custody and maintenance of their children before divorce could

be granted" (Osanloo, 207). This hybrid civil-Shari'a legal foundation is most evident in

the alternations made in marriage and divorce laws that followed the revolution and the

subsequent reformist pressures that followed their introduction to Iran's legal code. 

The changes made to family and marriage laws once women successfully negoti-

ated for reforms that allowed them to regain access to child custody and rights to di-

vorce broke with the highly orthodox interpretations of shari'a that was initially enforced

by the regime. The Islamic Republic's ideological stance on divorce eliminated the divi-

sion between the personal and the political, and opened the way "to challenge the

hegemony of the orthodox interpretations of the Shari'a" (Mir-Hosseini, 165). The Con-

stitution of the Islamic Republic "claimed that the new Islamic society would value

women as the upholders of the family and the nation and give them the right to fulfill

their natural instincts as well as participate in social life" (Yeganeh, 9). The regime un-

wittingly made itself vulnerable to the demands and social pressures of women when it

decided to highlight the importance of women to the social fabric. Mir-Hosseini: "Khome-

ini and his associates [...] insisted on the legitimacy and even necessity of women's po-

litical mobilization in the public sphere" (Mir-Hosseini, 418). Thus the few elected

women deputies in Parliament (or Majlis) made Islamically-minded arguments against

the new provisions around marriage after the press had criticized a lack of effort made

toward reform.

Women's magazines published stories about women's suffering under "despotic

husbands, including stories of wife-beating, suicides, and loss of children" and led cam-

paigns to (Mir-Hosseini, 415). The circulation of these stories and the primacy of women

in the government’s conversations with civil society caused outrage amongst Iranian
women and men alike. Things came to a head when a 1984-85 campaign spearheaded

by one of the most-widely circulated women's magazines resulted in a legal remedy for

women on the issue of divorce. This remedy came in the form of "twelve conditions

were printed into all marriage contracts as grounds for women to get divorced, provided

husbands sign them all" (Mir-Hosseini, 415). In 1994 after a “long struggle in the press

and in parliament”, a law was instated by the Council of Public Interest that extended a

woman’s right to initiate a divorce with her husband without “prior authorization from her

husband” and gave women the right to “half the wealth and property of a husband who

decides to divorce his wife without good case” as a way to discourage men from initiat-

ing divorce on dubious grounds as many had done in the immediate aftermath and

decade and a half following the Revolution.

As a result of the Islamic Republic’s modifications to their legal standing, women

became intimately familiar with family court laws and their rights within the courtroom as

a means of protecting themselves against the inequities of the Islamic Republic's legal

system.  As Osanloo writes, "because women cannot initiate or execute divorce, the

family court becomes a key area in which [...] they can resist different aspects of patriar-

chal authority [...] and  bargain as rights-bearing entitled subjects" (Osanloo, 200) ). In

the same article, Osanloo cites a woman who asked for her marriage to be rescinded on

the grounds that her husband was impotent and his clinical depression made him un-

able to provide for her. The woman's request was granted after careful and protracted

proceedings with a judge. Osanloo underlines that the woman had already "been ad-

vised of the complex legal permutations" and understood how to strategically respond to

the judge's questions for a favourable ruling (Osanloo, 198). Though women’s height-
ened need for familiarity with the legal system underlines their limited scope for inter-

vention, the space of family law has resulted in discernible achievements in using

"state-sanctioned means, the courts and the civil laws, to access and obtain justice"

(Osanloo, 200). 

Moreover, the 1992 'Amendments to Divorce Regulations' broke and violated the

orthodox shari'a framework on divorce. The court placed a monetary value on women's

domestic housework, and to force husbands to pay her ujrat al-mithl (literally, wages in

kind) for the work she had done during marriage, provided that divorce was not initiated

by her or was not caused by any fault of hers (Mir-Hosseini, 147).The introduction of do-

mestic wages broke “new ground in shari'a divorce provisions” and also amounted “to a

complete reversal of an early ruling of the Revolutionary Council dismantling the FML of

1967” (Mir-Hosseini, 147). This demonstrated the willingness of the regime to preserve

its power in the face mounting backlash by compromising its hardline commitment to the

shari'a.

Finally, unfair divorce laws left many women vulnerable to the whims of their phi-

landering husbands and judges' role as custodians of the shari'a left them in an uncom-

fortable, ultimately unsustainable position was the catalyst for change. A 1992 law out-

lawed "the registration of a divorce without a court certificate (Mir-Hosseini, 147).This

signified a break with normal divorce provisions in shari'a that required. Since the Con-

stitution ensured women's protection, equality, and rights to vote, in education, and for

employment  the supreme rule of shari'a reflected in a man's open access to to divorce
(as reflected in Article 133 of the Iranian Civil Code) placed judges in a moral dilemma

that they were able to reconcile with changed laws to the sharia’s divorce provisions.  

Thus, while the Ayatollah Khomeni made strident gains toward limiting women’s

individual rights through the implementation of the shari'a, Iranian women were able to

overcome these obstacles in using Islamic feminist rhetoric ways that often involved

manipulating the boundaries of their new legal circumstances. Iranian women’s determi-

nation to undermine the regime by undermining its dress codes by wearing loose hijabs

or short, tight manteaus (robes) was an ingenious form of passive resistance that has

gained momentum in recent years and has repeatedly caught the attention of the

regime, and drawn countermeasures in the form of fines, public campaigns and punish-

ment for professionals who failed to comply with the outlined provisions.

Moreover, the changes made to women’s rights in Iran’s post-revolution penal code im-

posed unprecedented pressure on women to uphold certain norms that concerned soci-

ety writ-large as opposed to the norms of Shah-era Iran that focused on immediate fam-

ily units. Women upended these standards by taking issue with the inherent inequity of

these developments and challenging the regime’s alleged commitment to upholding

women’s livelihood in Iranian society.

Finally, women’s increased literacy in legal matters pertaining to divorce and marriage

laws demonstrates a concerted effort on their part to defend themselves against the

regime’s measures that intended to inhibit their agency within courtrooms and in exer-

cising their individual right to custody and alimony as outlined by the Shah’s Family Pro-

tection Laws in 1972.

In summary, the plight of Iranian women following the events of the Revolution high-

lights how a misappropriation of the Qur’an’s verses and hadith were used to greatly re-

duce the status of women in society. It also demonstrates how these same frameworks

had to be utilised if women were to make any advancements in regaining some of their

lost power. The popularity of their demands, even when undeniably rational and reason-

able, made no difference to the ruling clerics. The mujtahids would be sufficiently satis-

fied to grant reforms only if and when women could prove their case through Islamic ju-

risprudence. The challenge of being in a position to even challenge the mujtahids on

these terms poses an ever-present threat to any attempts women make to improve their

position. Nevertheless, as Iranian women continue to adjust to the challenges posed by

the ruling regime, they will penetrate further into the formal institutional channels which

enable them to advocate on their own behalf.

May God bless their struggle for justice.

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