Those Wicked Men

Editorial

      This past summer I was delighted to watch the U.S. Open tennis matches. The women’s final was between two Belgians. They were agile and strong, hitting their serves at almost 120 mph, not as fast as some of the men, but faster than some. The skinny little lady won the match and a million dollars.

      The biggest news on the golf circuit was Michelle Wie, a thirteen-year-old girl who can hit the ball 300 yards. She did not win any of the tournaments in which she played with the men, coming in nearer the bottom than the top, but her drives averaged 280 yards. Sadly, some her drives were not accurate so she hit out of the rough too often, and her putter failed her. If she had putted decently she would have been more competitive. Her swing is perfection. In addition to her enormous talent, she was pretty to see and pleasant in her speech.

      Women’s volley ball and basketball are also a delight to watch. The women are tall, strong, agile, and fast.

*****

      By contrast with the rest of the world, women in Iran, in public, must not show a tuft of hair, a little skin, or even pink socks, lest the lust of men be aroused!

      These absurd and cruel men are described in Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. The author, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, was born in Iran, and, in that country, taught English literature at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University, and Allameh Tabatabai University. She was expelled from the University of Tehran for refusing to wear the veil and left for America in 1997.

      Her loathing for the revolution was not only for what she and all women had to endure but because of the punishment of her father, who was the youngest mayor in Tehran’s history. Paris Match, a French magazine, had a large, colored photograph of her father standing with General de Gaulle. There was no other Islamic dignitary, just her father. The General had taken a liking to her father when he gave a welcoming speech, delivered in French and full of allusions to French writers such as Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo. His commendation by General de Gaulle did not please the bureaucrats in Iran who had criticized him for his independence as he was outspoken and on good terms with journalists. He was jailed four years, kept in a small library adjacent to the morgue. When people inquired about him the reply was either he was going to be killed or made free at any time. He was alive when his daughter went to the United States.

      For two years after her expulsion from the University, Azar met every Thursday morning in her home in Tehran with six women who had been her students. They studied literature: Lolita by Nabokov, Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James and Jane Austen. I could not find the particular books by the last two authors, but it does not matter because the content of the writing of her favorite authors was irrelevant. The purpose of the book was to describe the ladies when they took off their scarves and robes and discussed among themselves their attitudes, and problems—when they were not subject to the moral police. Nabokov’s Lolita was particularly relevant because it was a study of pedophilia. The central character of the novel kidnapped and ravaged a young girl, Lolita, and destroyed her innocence. She drifted from one motel to another with her guardian-lover, a twelve-year-old girl becoming a mistress, while her master paraded himself as a normal husband, normal stepfather, and normal human being.

      In her American home Azar has two photographs of her students. In the first picture they were dressed in black robes and head scarves, showing only the oval of their faces and their hands. This by demand of the law. The second picture shows them when they had taken off their covering, with bright, cheerful clothes, showing the color and length of their hair, wanting to be beautiful as do all women. In defiance of the law, they wore jewelry. One of the girls wore under her robe an orange shirt with her jeans, and she used thin, icy black gloves to cover her nail polish. Her scarf covered huge, gold earrings. When she went out into the street, she bent her head so she would not be noticed and to avoid the Blood of God men who patrol the streets in white Toyotas with four gun-carrying men and women, sometimes followed by a minivan. The Blood of God men patrol the streets to make sure women wear their veils properly, do not wear makeup, do not walk in public with men who are not their fathers, brothers, or husbands.

      The study of literature by Nafisi’s students was an attempt to escape and deny the world in which they lived. They preferred another world, a truer, decent world where men and women could be free and friendly, where they could laugh in public and fall in love with a decent man. The goal was to imagine what the world would be like without the wicked men who dominated the country in the name of their religion. The chief censor of theater in 1994 was blind! He would sit in the theater with an assistant who would tell him what was happening and dictate what had to be cut. When he became head of the new television channel, script writers provided him with audiotapes. No attractive or dramatic programs were permitted, and all had to be in a politically correct context.

      When the 1979 revolution was complete, the marriage age of girls was reduced from eighteen to nine and stoning was the punishment for adultery and prostitution. There was no punishment for males, of course, for their part in adultery and prostitution because it was understood that men had strong needs which had to be satisfied. A rule in Iran permitted men to have four wives and as many temporary wives as they wished. One of the girls spoke of her uncle, a very religious man, who sexually abused her when she was eleven years old. He had to do that to keep himself chaste and pure for his future wife! He was her tutor three times a week for a year where he helped with Arabic and mathematics, sitting by her side with his hands wandering over her legs, her whole body.

      Female students had to pass through a gate if they were to visit the university, and then enter a small room for inspection. Said one of the girls,

      I would first be checked to see if I had the right clothes: the color of my coat, the length of my uniform, the thickness of my scarf, the form of my shoes, the objects in my bag, the visible traces of even the mildest makeup, the size of my rings and their level of attractiveness, all would be checked before I could enter the campus of the university.

      Young women who disobeyed the rules were “hurled into patrol cars, taken to jail, flogged, fined, forced to wash the toilets and humiliated, and as soon as they leave they go back and do the same thing.” These bold young women kept reminding the dreadful males with their evil religion that they were not converted and never would be. “How about genitally mutilating men,” one girl asked, “so as to curb their sexual appetites. They have the power to kill us or flog us, but all of this only reminds them of their weakness.” 

      The reader can find in the book of Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran, a Memoir in Books, Random House) many illustrations of the evil deeds in Iran: violence, executions, public confessions to crimes that had never been committed, judges who talked about amputating a thief’s hand or legs and killing prisoners because there was not enough room for them in jail. Is there hope? Can the people of Iran, or other Islamic countries, find relief?

*****

      Nafisi now lives in the United States and wonders if Iran will ever be free. The women are more defiant in their dress: the robes shorter, scarves more colorful; they wear makeup and walk freely with men who are not their brothers, fathers, or husbands. Demonstrations supported a student who was condemned to death for suggesting that the clergy need not be blindly followed. She believes people have a dogged desire for life and this will shape the future.

      Perhaps she is correct. Shirin Ebadi was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for championing the rights of women and children. One of Iran’s first female judges before the revolution of 1979, she was dismissed from her post by the ruling of the ayatollas who declared women too emotional to be judges. She turned to writing and campaigning, took cases others wouldn’t, and worked to expose those who master-minded the murder of pro-democracy students at the University of Tehran in 1999. She has been condemned for twenty-four years by the political authorities, but she has not been killed. Because she lives, there is hope for her country.

      Before the revolution of 1979 that brought Ayatolla Khomeini to power, Iran had a prosperous middle class which fought for secularism, the rule of law, the sanctity of privacy, a market economy, protection of the citizenry against the ruthlessness of the state, normal relations with the rest of the world, and particularly with the United States. In spite of the clerics, many people still believe these ideals. Khomeini came to power by promising what the middle class wanted but reversed himself quickly; but the recent student gatherings, protesting the domination of clerics, continue the earlier tradition. Four thousand students were arrested this summer for disobedience, but a time will come when that will be impossible and the evil regime will collapse from within. Iran will become increasingly unstable with the passage of time because theocracies cannot guide a country with rationality. If a secular society evolved in Iran, that would be of great value for the problems in Iraq. Shiites are the majority in both countries. If secularism triumphs in Iran, the same may happen in Iraq. At the moment, some Shiites in Iraq want an Islamic republic, which would negate the progress that has been made and could destabilize the region, undercutting the ideals of President Bush.

*****

      President Bush has said that Islam is a religion of peace. We would do well to take his advice because little is gained by describing it as evil. While the present extremists of Islam are wicked, that is not the case with all Muslims. It takes an unusual man to live by hate and a passion to kill. Also, for five centuries, from 700 to 1200, Islam led the world in good government, manners, standard of living, toleration, literature, scholarship, science, medicine, and philosophy. But there was always another side. The wonderful Alexandrian library was burned. Said the Caliph, “Burn the libraries, for they are contained in one book,”—the Koran.

      From the eighth to the eleventh century life in Moorish Spain was pleasant on the whole. “Never was Andalusia so mildly, justly and wisely governed as by her Arab conquerors,” said a great Christian Orientalist. Christians and Moslems intermarried in freedom and joined in celebrating Christian and Muslim holidays; but Moslem emirs sold Christian bishoprics to the highest bidder, Christian priests were abused in the streets, theologians commented freely on what they considered Christian absurdities while Christians did not dare reply. Flora, a pretty girl, was of a mixed marriage. When her father, a Mohammedan, died she became a Christian and fled to a Christian home. Caught by her guardian and beaten she continued her apostasy and was turned over to the Moslem court. They could have condemned her to death, but relented with only a flogging. 

      Our problem in evaluating Islam today is to learn the nature of the Islam that attacks us, and all civilized values. President Bush recently attended a conference of Muslims where he witnessed not hatred of Muslims but Muslim hatred. Maylasia’s prime minister went on at length about the Jews and how they ruled the world. He had been preaching this theme for thirty or more years. President Bush, bless him, said, “It stands squarely against what I believe.”

      The audience of Prime Minister Mahathir was of presidents, kings, emirs of the nations that make up the Organization of the Islamic Conference. They gave him a standing ovation, as did reputed moderates of Indonesia, Pakistan, and Jordon’s King Abdullah. Of six Islamic organizations in the United States who were asked for their reactions to the Prime Minister’s remarks, three never replied, two had no comment, and one condemned the anti-Semitic comments.

      Why do Muslims hate the West, and modern civilization? One theory is that they have long memories and know their world was supreme a thousand years ago. They were decimated by the Mongols who overran them when success brought sloth and ease; they want to recover their heritage, but they choose to conquer by bloodshed. I suspect, however, that if Islam wants respect and a recovery of its past it will have to relearn the good manners of a thousand years ago, and reject hating those not of their family.   Ω