A State of of Femicide

Abdee Kalantari

The slogan of the current Iranian movement is “Woman, Life, Freedom.” The word “life” is often interpreted to mean an “ordinary life,” small, simple joys of life that are stolen from Iranian women. This notion is expressed in the famous song that became the soundtrack of the revolution, where Shervin Hajipour sings, “For the longing of an ordinary life.” («برای حسرت یک زندگی معمولی») The interpretation is correct, but there is a risk of reducing it to “lifestyle.” Like reducing the meaning of “hijab” to just a dress code when we know that hijab is an ideology to reproduce patriarchy and consolidate the ownership of men or the state over women’s bodies.

Here I want to contrast the word “life” with its opposite, i.e., “death,” and argue that the Islamic state in Iran is, among other things, a state of femicide.

Arguing that “femicide” in Iran’s Islamic system is structural requires addressing it on several levels: the discursive level, the legal/judicial level, and the institutional level.

Discursive Level

Early on, during the 1979 revolution, those who listened to Ayatollah Khomeini’s speeches can remember that he mentioned several times that the Shah’s regime was promoting “prostitution.” (فحشا) On numerous occasions, Khomeini said that the former regime wanted women naked and corrupt in the Western way. At that time, we students and intellectuals only considered this a sign of his being pious.

But after the revolution’s victory, this theme of “prostitution” (فحشا) was constantly repeated in the speeches of Khomeini and other religious leaders in power. I was no more than twenty-two or three, and it became a serious question for me, ‘What do they mean by prostitution’? There was no prostitute anywhere to be seen. And very soon, I concluded that this is a code name for the presence of women without hijab in public spaces. They set up a special ministry for the moral guidance of the citizens, and they sent a special police force to cleanse the street of “prostitution.”

Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the most influential revolutionary leaders after Khomeini, once said that women’s non-observance of hijab is a “dangerous disease.” It is “corruption, insubordination, immorality, and vice.” In the interpretation of verses 30 and 31 of the Qur’an, he said, “bright colored garments that attract the attention of men is a form of bad-hijabi.” Rafsanjani used the jurisprudential term “reiba” which means the thought of communicating with or touching a “non-mahram” person (that’s a woman who isn’t your legal wife, for example), thoughts such as brushing against, hugging, a desire to kiss, and what have you. Mind you, just the thought, not the act itself! Women not properly veiled were the source of these sinful thoughts. They pollute public spaces.

So, from the beginning, women were divided into good and bad, pure and impure. Impure or corrupt women were those whose bodies became the source of dirty thoughts in men. The body of these women, those who didn’t have proper hijab, spread corruption on earth.

But why was this the business of the state?

Overlap of the Religious with the Political, and the Government's Perception of "Prostitution"

The government of the Islamic Republic came out of a populist revolution, which we should classify as “right-wing or conservative populism.” This type of populism has much in common with classical fascism, including its anti-liberalism, anti-communism, anti-Semitism, and deadly hostility towards the Bahai faith. I have called this regime a version of “clerical fascism,” which could also be called a Shi’ite theocracy, as the rulers form a clerical/military oligarchy.

As you know, fascism is hostile to individualism, secularism, women’s freedom, what they call relativistic or loose morality, and feminism. So is the Islamic Republic.

In the political theology of the Islamic Republic, concepts such as awrat, effat, and essmat, (roughly nakedness, chastity, and purity) are not only moral concepts but also political concepts (same as alhaad, kofr, and zandagha). These concepts are interpreted under the cover of religious ethics to maintain power. When we get to the “Gasht Irshad” (Morality Police), which killed Jina Amini, we see that it is just one link in a big chain of misogyny and policies that facilitate femicide.

Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, in his book “Islamic Government,” defines prostitution as the activities of young people having fun, drinking, just mingling and having a good time. In the same treatise, he strongly advocates the punishment of 100 lashes and stoning to death in public for adultery.

First, they went after sex workers. People like the famous Ms. Zaboli in Kerman and the women who worked for her were stoned to death. Many prostitutes were executed in Tehran and other cities, and their names mentioned on the front page of the newspapers for public awareness. In the same early days, the homes of prostitutes in Tehran’s red-light district (called ‘shahr-e-no’) were set on fire by Hizbollahi fanatics with the support of the mullahs who gained power a few days later.

Acid Attacks

Regarding the state policies encouraging femicide, we should mention acid throwing in public spaces. Many times, acid was splashed on the faces of women without hijab in the streets. The authorities took no serious action to root out acid-splashers’ networks, some of which were linked to Friday imams.

The Islamic parliament also supported these vigilantes with plans such as “the Bill to Support Those Who Command Right and Forbid Wrong” (namely the fanatic vigilante) or the bill to “protect the privacy of hijab and chastity.”

The most famous episode was Isfahan’s acid attacks in September and October 2014. During those acid attacks, at least four young women were disfigured, and one eventually died. The number of acid attack victims in Isfahan was estimated to be 15, all young women. The acid attacks were carried out with the explicit encouragement of Isfahan’s Friday imam and during congregational prayers and were carried out systematically.

Honor Killings

The theocratic state in Iran facilitates honor killings and provides legal frameworks in support of those killings. The problem is not only the prominent role of “honor and chastity” in traditional communities. More importantly, the problem lies in a complex sharia-based legal structure that constantly reminds us that women’s lives are of little value. They could easily be murdered for infidelity and disobeying. A father, grandfather, and husband have the right to kill them and get away with it by paying off ‘dia’ or blood money. The same with exacting injuries, blinding, breaking the limbs and skull, paralyzing, etc. And the blood money for women is half that of men.

Articles 220, 300, 301, 302, and 630 of the Islamic penal code in Iran are permissive when men commit honor killings. They require minimum punishment if the men deem their wives or daughters corrupt, including husbands who consider their wives adulterous or fathers whose daughters have got a boyfriend against their will.

In one case, Romina Ashrafi’s father had consulted a lawyer and weighed the criminal consequences of his action, and then, knowing that he would not be punished severely, killed his 14-year-old daughter with a machete.

“Prostitution” is the Code Word for the Presence of Women without Hijab in Public Spaces

So, from the first year, we saw that the Shi’ite theocracy in Iran defined the fight against “prostitution” as an essential part of its identity. “Prostitution” was a code name for the presence of modern non-hijabi women in the public space. They started lynching those whose sexual behavior did not conform to Islamic standards formalized in criminal law.

Control of women’s sexuality became the business of the clerical state and was codified in the legal system, including laws regarding stoning and retribution for honor killings, and hijab. In the law and the imagination of the system, any violation of the boundaries of male ownership of women’s bodies was called “prostitution.”

Women’s freedom of sexual choice, or “prostitution” in a theocratic society, is not just a crime like theft or murder. It is a crime that corrupts and stinks the body of the community, and its punishment should be like purification rituals such as the collective bath for believers. Stoning is a cleansing ritual a bloody, violent, cleansing ritual.

They bury the accused in the ground up to their chest. Then, shouting ‘Allah-o-Akbar,’ the pious men throw stones at the victim’s face for hours from a few steps away. According to Sharia law, “Stones should not be so big that they quickly knock the person unconscious, and not so small that they only cause minor injuries.”

The crime of “adultery”(زنای محصنه) is considered a part of God’s law. Even when a private plaintiff refuses to pursue the case, “God’s Verdicts” (‘hodud-e-Allah’) must be implemented.

There are no exact statistics on the number of those who were stoned to death in Iran. This policy was implemented for two and a half decades until 2003. That year, under the pressure of European governments, the IRI paused the practice of stoning, but it was not stopped completely. In 2007, they carried them again on several occasions in Mashhad.

Hijab, therefore, was not a dress code. It was an external sign of a femicidal system. State jurisprudential murders were consistent with classical fascism. It was to defend the sanctity of home and family as the backbone of society. The state system that emerged from the revolution saw the Islamic community as members of one single family (امّت) under the guardianship of the holy father.

From the beginning, the Islamic Republic paved the way for femicidal policies by dividing women into two groups: chaste women and corrupt women. The current revolutionary movement in Iran wants to end this. And to end it, it must overthrow it, to finish off the Islamic republic of femicide in the name of woman, life, and freedom!

Penal at Northwestern University (Chicago)November 15, 2022