Relativity of Rights and Revolutions

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All too often we talk about the inviolability and near absoluteness of human rights, the universality of shared principles that stem from basic human dignity. But consider the following. Hereunder Alavi Tabar, a reformist Iranian writer who often bumped heads with the conservative old guard, discusses some achievements of the Revolution that he sought to reform:

'Before the Revolution, you had traditional towns where parents wouldn't allow their daughters to go to school; they didn't want them being taught by men, in places where there was no hejab.' He was referring to the Islamic head covering for women, which Khomeini had eventually succeeded in making compulsory. 'After the Revolution, they brought in the hejab, and women teachers, and suddenly all these traditional families started sending their children - with great enthusiasm - to school.

...Those who say the Revolution rejected modernity are quite wrong. Before the Revolution, modernity was an exotic foreign tree, whose fruit we were importing. Some of it tasted good and some not so good, but the essential fact remained; we knew nothing about the tree, just the fruit...What you have now, after the Revolution, is a movement towards a kind of modernity that's not imposed by someone else, but something that comes up of itself. It's stronger, more authentic.'

C de Bellaigue, In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs. A memoir of Iran (HarperCollins, UK 2004) 68-69

Comments

Anonymous said…
Well...this seems to be one of many examples for Western ignorance and indicates how easily cultural misunderstandings occur.
What lesson to draw from this?!
5 February 2008 at 23:34
Anonymous said…
I agree with the previous comment. The badly written post would seem to indicate that under the Shah, things were much worse than they are today, a stunningly ignorant statement. Did the poster even read the book?

If books are too difficult, might I suggest the graphic novel Persepolis give another vue? It has pictures.

What about Fariba Davoodi Mohajer, and other Iranian women who are imprisoned and on trial today for protesting female stonings, custody rules, and divorce and inheritance inequalities?
7 February 2008 at 15:12
Justin Borg Barthet said…
The poster did read the book. He also enjoys graphic novels so thanks for the suggestion.

If I understood correctly, the ignorance that Paula was referring to is the western assumption that societies are just itching to be liberated by the wholesale importation of western values. That is also what I was getting at through my post.

I do not wish to trivialise the ongoing abuses of human rights, particularly women's rights, in Iran. I simply would point out that symbols that are perceived as repressive may have liberating facets too. I could have added, from those same pages in the book, that educated women are less likely to accept arranged marriages and the like. This perspective is not appreciated in the international media and I do think that it is valid to highlight that which is not popularly known. Having not read Persepolis, however, I'm not sure if this point of view is also represented in the graphic novel that the anonymous comment cites.
7 February 2008 at 15:39
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