Low-Income Islamist Women and Social Economy in Iran by Roksana Bahramitash Atena Sadegh & Negin Sattari

Author:Roksana Bahramitash, Atena Sadegh & Negin Sattari
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan US, New York

A Complicated Picture

It is difficult, if not impossible, to create clear categories of religious women who contribute to the social economy based on the differences in their religious perspectives and positions in relation to the Islamic State. But here are three broad categories to provide an analytical view of the types of perspectives we came across. Ultimately, there are distinctions between three broad and overlapping groups: (1) Islamist; (2) Islamic; and (3) Muslim women. This is an attempt to avoid homogenizing women who were part of the research. There will be a broad description of the first group as these women are diametrically opposite to secular women, while the other two groups, especially the third one, blend into the women’s community at large and they views tend to crossed with those of the secular women.

The term “Islamist women” refers to those religious groups who support Islamization of the society. These are women who do not believe in religion as a personal matter; to them, individual Muslims have a religious responsibility to propagate Islam. They refute the ideology of secularism and the separation of religion from the State. They tend to be unquestionably supportive of the Supreme Leader and view it as a religious duty to be so. Islamists, for example, support the compulsory hijab. The issue of the hijab sharply divides women and continues to build a barrier to female solidarity.

The second category of women, found in our fieldwork over a decade or more, can be termed “Islamic women.” These women show more moderate positions in relation to Islamization and view Islam as a more personal matter—a matter between oneself and one’s God—while still rejecting secularism. “There is no compulsion in religion,” said Mehry (interviewed in Tehran in 2014) and continued: “As Shi’a Muslims, we are not on this earth to force people but to show them the right way.” The right way being a practicing Muslim, observing all religious requirements according to the religious leader of one’s choice. (Note here that unlike Catholicism, there are different religious leaders with different interpretations of jurisprudence, even over such matters as compulsory hijab, and one is free to choose one’s own religious reference to follow.)

In another interview with an illiterate woman who could barely speak Persian, while communicating with the principle investigator in Azari she quietly whispered in her ears during a focus group discussion that she disagreed with the organizer of her Husseinieh and the local trustee of her neighborhood,4 who was an Islamist woman, about the issue of the hijab. This older, Azari religious woman quietly said to the investigator that she believes the hijab is a matter of personal choice and should not be something imposed. The vast majority of these women were, in fact, supporters of the regime. One of the supporters of the regime argued that wearing the hijab is not compulsory according to the Quran (and this is an argument made by Islamic feminists as well). Fatemeh, a 25-year-old married women from Isfahan said: There is

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