Haleh Afshar admits that the revival of Islam after the...
Haleh Afshar admits that the revival of Islam after the victory of the Islamic Revolution has been "almost literally a God-send" in the context of which Iranian women have fought "against their political, legal and economic marginalization....
Throughout, their arguments have been anchored in the teachings of Islam, the Koranic laws and the traditions and practices of the Prophet of Islam."34 Afshar's attitude appears to be that if Islamic rhetoric can be used to win feminist objectives, this can justify compromises with Islam.
Ziba Mir-Hosseini seems to agree: I argue that, contrary to what the early literature contends, and what remains implicit in the later wave, the impact of the revolution on women has been emancipator, in the sense that it has paved the way for the emergence of a popular feminist consciousncss.35 Mir-Hosseini, like Afshar, seems to think that it may be worthwhile making compromises with Islam in order to achieve feminist objectives.
She refers to all women's movements as feminist, regardless of whether they are based on feminist ideology or Islam, although she offers the following conclusion about the indigenous 'feminism* she sees emerging in Iran: This process has inadvertently been nurturing an indigenous 'feminism' which is as much rooted in Iranian family structures as it is in the interaction of Islamic and Western ideals of womanhood.
It could emerge only after challenging and rejecting the state-sponsored and Western- inspired 'feminism' of the Pahlavis, as well as the liberal- leftist feminism of 1970's women's liberation, and yet in the process assimilating some of the features of both.36 We can only pray that Muslim women's movements comprising both Muslim women and Muslim men will continue to advance in their struggle against injustice and will continue to provide an alternative to feminism, in which the family is strengthened rather than undermined in loving obedience to the Most Merciful of the Merciful Previous…