Women, Nationalism and Islamism in Iran

Haideh Moghissi

Nationalist movements characteristically, encourage women to subordinate their interests as women to their interests as members of an economic class in the course of their participation in revolutionary movements. This is how women's activism and revolutionary energy are used during the struggle for national liberation and gender relations are reinforced and reconstructed in the interests of gender traditional order.

Focusing on the gender character of secular and religious nationalism in modern history of the Middle East, I use the case of Iran to discuss the differing understanding of women and men of notions of nationalism, citizenship and culture. Special attention is given to gender politics of Islamists in post-revolutionary Iran, within the context of the political culture that is dominated by nationalist patriarchal, masculine values. The argument is that the Iranian political culture, that is embraced both by secular and religious political activists, under the hegemonic influence of Shiite/Iranian concepts and perceptions of female sexuality, shape the consciousness of men and women. This political culture helps to explain why, at different historical junctures, women have been highly praised for their unflagging contributions to the goals of national liberation and, at the same time, resented and ignored when they raised issues of women's autonomy and individual rights. I would particularly focus on women’s remarkable resistance to Islamization policies in the last two decades, to demonstrate that women’s newly-found confidence in their own power to push back the Islamists’ offensives, help them not to take at face value, the rhetoric of religious intellectuals (Roushanfekran-e Dini) about the possibility of change for women even under a more moderate Islamic project.