By Amir Taheri
IN one of his last sermons before his death, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini warned of "three threats" to his vision of Islam: the US, the Jews and women.
Two decades later, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thinks he has the United States and the Jews in hand - and is moving on the third "enemy."
Women were the first to demonstrate against Khomeini's regime with a mass rally in Tehran on March 8, 1979 - less than a month after the mullahs had seized power. Over the next decade, the authorities imprisoned hundreds of thousands of women for varying lengths of time, and executed thousands.
But women continued to fight a regime that deemed them subhuman. Their resistance prevented the mullahs from abrogating pre-revolutionary laws limiting gender discrimination. Thus, women succeeded in keeping their right to vote and win public office.
They also retained a veto, granted by the shah, on their husbands' Islamic right to take up to four permanent wives and countless temporary concubines.
Last June, Ahmadinejad sought to remove that veto, launching a campaign with quotations from the Prophet and the 12 Imams of Shiite Islam to prove that men who took many wives would have a fast track to paradise.
To make polygamy practically impossible, a law predating the revolution required men seeking added wives to prove that they're financially capable of running more than one household. Since few can meet that condition, the number of Iranian men with more than one wife had fallen to a few hundred before the mullahs seized power. Read more ...
IN one of his last sermons before his death, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini warned of "three threats" to his vision of Islam: the US, the Jews and women.
Two decades later, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thinks he has the United States and the Jews in hand - and is moving on the third "enemy."
Women were the first to demonstrate against Khomeini's regime with a mass rally in Tehran on March 8, 1979 - less than a month after the mullahs had seized power. Over the next decade, the authorities imprisoned hundreds of thousands of women for varying lengths of time, and executed thousands.
But women continued to fight a regime that deemed them subhuman. Their resistance prevented the mullahs from abrogating pre-revolutionary laws limiting gender discrimination. Thus, women succeeded in keeping their right to vote and win public office.
They also retained a veto, granted by the shah, on their husbands' Islamic right to take up to four permanent wives and countless temporary concubines.
Last June, Ahmadinejad sought to remove that veto, launching a campaign with quotations from the Prophet and the 12 Imams of Shiite Islam to prove that men who took many wives would have a fast track to paradise.
To make polygamy practically impossible, a law predating the revolution required men seeking added wives to prove that they're financially capable of running more than one household. Since few can meet that condition, the number of Iranian men with more than one wife had fallen to a few hundred before the mullahs seized power. Read more ...
Source: New York Post
H/T: Shariah Finance Watch
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