On the execution of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani:

8/8/2019 On the execution of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani:

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economic and ideological spheres of the inferior status of women and the denial of their rights. The weakening of any of the links in this chain would weaken the whole. This is whydespite widespread international protests for more than three decades the Islamic regimeofficials are not prepared to abolish these medieval rules.

On the other hand the suppression of women has to do with more than the consolidation of theexisting power relations and the protection of the Islamic system in Iran. From the beginning,the regime made no secret of its ambition to form an Islam Omats (Islamic People) and exportthe Islamic revolution. The influence of the Islamic Republic on other fundamentalistmovements in the Middle East has not only political, financial and military significance, butideological significance as well. For these movements Iran is a model of Islamic rule. Its very

banner is that of women's Hejab .

So the suppression of women is not just for internal consumption. It also plays an importantrole in the Islamic Republic's relations with other Islamic fundamentalists in the region. Thesupport of these groups is an important advantage for the Islamic regime in their negotiationswith the Western powers whose aggression and intervention is currently focused in theMiddle East. As we can see, from the beginning women's bodies have been at the centre of the clergy's battle to establish and consolidate power in Iran, and also a means through whichthe fundamentalists can adjust their relations with the dominant global capitalist-imperialistsystem.

The crisis in the relationship between the Islamic regime and the Western powers isintensifying once again now that Iran refused to stop its uranium enrichment. The Western

powers have decided to step up economic and political sanctions, and have tended to side withthe Green opposition movement in Iran. The Iranian regime has made hostages of three U.S.citizens [the young "hikers" who crossed into Iran]. All this has made the crisis even morecomplicated. The Western powers, from the U.S. to the European countries, seek a regime inIran that would be acceptable to them, because their aggression and intervention (and theconcrete plans they are pursuing) in the region are not possible without the full cooperation of Iran. It seems that these states have now decided to replace radical Islam, as they call it, with a"moderate" Islam in the Middle-East.

For its part, the reactionary Islamic Republic knows full well that the Western powers' realconcern is not Sakineh's life but other issues. Only a few months ago, the Iranian regimeexecuted five well-known political prisoners and Western officials remained silent.

The emancipation of women is a criteria by which the freedom of a society can be judged, andof course the sincerity of those who claim to be freedom fighters is revealed by the way theyapproach the forms of women's oppression and denial of their rights. The sentencing of Sakineh to death by stoning provoked protests by conscious people, freedom lovers,

progressives, left and communists forces and also women activists and organisations. All of them are working hard not only to prevent the stoning of Sakineh but also to free her from thewomen's prison in Tabriz (Northwest Iran) as soon as possible. The media, whether dependenton one of the big powers or pursuing their own political objectives, regularly report onSakineh's situation.


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The views of the religious intellectuals and "Green reformists" on stoning

A week before Sakineh's so-called confession was shown on television, the Green movementheld a conference of the "Green women's movement convergence" where Zahra Rahnavard[Green leader and ex-Prime Minister Mir Hussein Mousavi's wife] figured prominently. They

expressed their concern for the men political prisoners on hunger strike and sent them asolidarity message. But not a word was said about Sakineh and her stoning. Zahra Rahnavardlikes to talk about a "democratic interpretation of Islamic laws", but she has not yet talkedabout the practice of subjecting women to criminal charges of adultery and sentencing them todeath by stoning, two of the most widely discussed questions in the country and burningissues internationally.

Overall, the Green movement is trying to put the stoning issue in the framework of what theycall new interpretations of Gods decrees and Iranian traditions. For instance, the Islamicscholar Jila Shariat Panahi has sought to use citations of verses from the Koran to prove thatthe proper Islamic punishment for adultery ( Zena ) is not stoning but at most a hundred lasheswith a whip.

The viewpoint of these Islamic reformists is that they have no problem with making adultery acrime, they simply have differences on the kind of punishment it deserves. Most seem to think that a hundred lashes is a pretty good replacement for stoning given the present situation.

Some of the Grand Ayatollahs whose fatwa ]religious pronouncements] are looked to for legitimacy by some women's movement activists (such as "the campaign for a millionsignatures" and today's "Green convergence") oppose stoning women for their own reasons.Ayatollahs Montazeri, Saneai and others consider adultery immoral, shameful and a disgracethat deserves punishment. But because of the conflict between Islamic law and the country'stradition [ Zena is an Islamic but not a traditional Iranian concept], they believe that thecarrying out of stoning executions should be temporarily suspended until [a messianic eventcalled] "the emergence of the 12 th Imam", or until it is possible to convince people on thisissue, or until an appropriate and more up to date punishment is found.

It seems that Islamic women intellectuals and their religious authorities are prisoners of religious fundamentalism. The so-called "radical Islam" they first began proclaiming in the1980s cannot abandon even this single Islamic principle. But the whole concept of adultery or

judging any relationship to be wrong because it is against religious rules is a backward andoutmoded idea that has no place in today's world. There is no way to "update" or "reread" or

otherwise seek to make Zena fashionable because the whole concept of adultery should bethrown into the garbage heap of history.

We cannot agree that there is any progress in replacing stoning with a hundred lashes, asclaimed by these women who in the 1980s were sisters in the Hezbullah [in Iran, the "Party of God", the Islamic regime's militia] and then in the '90s sought to prove that Islam is aliberating religion for women. Their highest understanding of gender equality was to demandequality in stoning (when men are stoned, their feet are stuck in a pit dug into the ground sothat they cannot escape, while women are buried up to their shoulders so they can not evenmove their hands). This should be a lesson to academic women in Western universities whowere so shamefully enthusiastic about what they called "Islamic feminism" in their keenness

to find local (native) solutions for women's rights and equality (according to their local"culture").


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Iranians inside and outside the country and much of world public opinion opposes stoningSakineh. Of course it is right to oppose such a brutal act, but this is not the end of thequestion. There is a difference between opposing stoning and opposing the whole backwardand outmoded concept of considering that women should even be accused of adultery.

Sakineh lawyers are appropriately trying to have lifted the specific accusation of Zenamohsene ["unlawful" sex while married, in contrast to the subcategory of Zena as "unlawful"sex before or after marriage] and to emphasize that this accusation cannot be proven in her case. However there is a difference between lawyers' activities within the framework of acountry's laws and the general protests against this accusation and punishment.

We must continue our effort to save Sakineh's life and launch broad campaigns against theIslamic regime's "justice" system and the stoning sentence. But the struggles against any kindof particular manifestation of women's oppression can and must be a ground for struggling toabolish these laws and the system these laws reflect and enforce. They can and must be aground to heighten the consciousness of women and the whole population. They can and must

be an opportunity to challenge backward values and beliefs that are common among the people who often share the Islamic Republic's values and ideology.

Our struggles against the denial of rights and injustice can pave the way for the realisation of a society that the majority of oppressed women would look forward to. The struggle andsacrifice of every single woman should contribute towards building a society where nowoman is forced into an unwanted marriage, and no woman is forced to put up with the hellof an unsuccessful marriage with no right to divorce or to the custody of her children after divorce. A society where weddings are not an agreement in which a women sells her body andsoul, where no woman is punished for annulling such agreement. Women must have the kindof economic, political, cultural and social security that allows them to chose their life partner voluntarily, and so that in case of an unsuccessful marriage they can freely, equally andwithout any difficulty annul it.

While we are struggling for the life of Sakineh, we should think of millions of Sakinehs allover the world. One is Ayesha (a young Afghani woman whose ears and nose were cut off

because she left her abusive husband and returned to her parents). Another is Atefa (a teenagegirl in northern Iran who was abused by an adult man who was an ex-Pasdar [the regime's" Revolutionary Guards] after she was arrested for this, supposedly for having a relationship

before marriage, the judge and his team gangraped her and then forged a false birth certificateto show she was over 18 so that they could quickly hang her). And there are so many others

We should cry out: No more, that's enough! The world can not allow such barbarity anylonger.

That future can be created because the people have experienced such relations during thesocialist revolutions of the 20 th century. For more than three decades when the Soviet Unionwas a socialist state, women there experienced laws far more advanced than most Westerncountries at that time. In China, where before the socialist revolution many women wereliterally slaves, their feet bound in early childhood and often permanently crippled so thattheir bodies would move in a way that men would find graceful and attractive, they dared to

break the chains of oppression and in a short time lawfully achieved equal rights. For thenearly three decades until 1976 when the revolution was defeated, they experienced advanced

social relations that remain an example of real emancipation and equality between women andmen. In these cases there was still a long way to go before the complete liberation of women,and as the first experiences with a socialist state they of course suffered weaknesses and


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shortcomings, but the path to women's liberation can be paved only by relying on the lessonsof those experiences.

We women can and must be vanguards in building socialism, a society defined not only bythe abolition of gender oppression but even more, a society moving to overthrow all class and

social distinctions and the ideas and traditions that go with them, and that have been the basisof thousands of years of oppression and exploitation all over the world.

Documents

On the execution of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani: