I began studying the works of Abdolkarim Sorush in autumn 1995, after the second of my debates with Payam-e Zan, and following the disruption his lectures by the Ansar-e Hezbollah, "helpers of Hezbollah."(1) On 11 October, Sorush was invited by the Islamic Students Society to address a meeting in Tehran University; as he began his lecture, he was attacked and injured by about a hundred youths from off campus, members of Ansar. Their leader, in a debut public speech, claimed that Sorush’s ideas were subversive to Islam and undermined the Velayat-e Faqih, vowed that he would no longer be allowed to disseminate them, and demanded a public debate with him. Another meeting at which Sorush was to speak had been disrupted in a similar manner in Isfahan University in June. On both occasions, the authorities had ignored student warnings. Press coverage was polarized: some papers condemned the attacks as blatant violations of constitutional rights to freedom of thought and speech; others applauded the legitimate right of Hezbollah to intervene if necessary.
Abdolkarim Sorush is perhaps the most influential and controversial thinker the Islamic Republic has so far produced. In the early years, his lectures were broadcast regularly on national radio and television; I remember watching him in television debates with secular and leftist intellectuals, using Islamic mystical and philosophical arguments to demolish Marxist dogmas. I was curious to find out for myself what it was in Sorush’s ideas that now, sixteen years into the Islamic Republic, put him the other side of the fence and enabled women like those in Zanan to reconcile their faith with their feminism.
As I made my way through Sorush’s vast corpus of publications - over twenty books - I could see why and how his ideas created such varied passions and reactions. He is a subtle and original thinker, who has found a new language and frame of analysis to re-examine hallowed concepts. He approaches sacred texts by reintroducing the element of rationality that has been part of Shi‘i thought, and enabling his audience to be critical without compromising their faith. He is making it legitimate to pose questions that previously only the ulama could ask.
I could see some interesting parallels and differences between Sorush and Shari‘ati. Both have been immensely popular with the youth, distrusted and opposed by the clerical establishment, and dismissed by secular intellecuals as light-weights. But their visions and conceptions of Islam are fundamentally different. For Shari‘ati, the most important dimension in Islam was political; he sought to turn Islam into and ideology, to galvanize revolutionaries and to change society. For Sorush, on the other hand, Islam is, as he puts it, "sturdier than ideology"; all his thinking and writing are aimed at separating the two.
Abdolkarim Sorush is the pen name of Hosein Dabbagh, born in 1945 in a pious but non-clerical family in southern Tehran.(2) Sorush was among the first graduates of Alavi High School, established by a group of pious bazaaris in the late 1950s with a curriculum integrating modern sciences with traditional religious studies. He then studied pharmacology at Tehran University, and after completing his military service in 1972 he went to England to continue his studies. Obtaining an MSc in Analytical Chemistry from London University, he went on to study History and Philosophy of Science at Chelsea College. While in London, he joined a group of Iranian Muslim students who held meetings in a building in West London,(3) where Shari‘ati’s funeral service was held and where Ayatollah Motahhari spoke when he came to London. Sorush was close to both men, and was a regular speaker there. He returned to Iran just as the Pahlavi regime was about to collapse.
In 1981 Sorush became one of seven members of the Council for Cultural Revolution, appointed by Ayatollah Khomeini when the Universities were closed in order to contain the students and to eliminate leftist groups from the campuses. The Council’s task was to oversee the Islamization of higher education and to prepare the ground for the re-opening of the Universities. This occurred in 1983, after a massive ideological purge of students and teachers; and Sorush started teaching Philosophy of Science in Tehran University. Not longer after, he resigned from the Council, disagreeing with the direction it was going.(4) Since then he has held no official position within the ruling system of the Islamic Republic, although his lectures continued to be broadcast until the late1980s and he remained close to centres of power, acting as adviser to several government bodies until the early 1990s.
In 1984 Sorush began teaching courses in Philosophy of Religion (known as Modern Theology), Comparative Philosophy and Mysticism, to both University students in Tehran and Houzeh students in Qom. In 1988, he started a series of weekly lectures in Imam Sadeq Mosque in north Tehran, on Nahj ol-Balagheh, the collection of Imam Ali’s sermons and hadith. In the early audience were members of the political and religious elite, including some government ministers. By autumn 1994, when the lectures were suspended, the audience was different: younger, largely students. Not only had Sorush acquired a following among students who found his ideas and approach intrinsically appealling, but he was beginning to set the tone for more public debates.
Disruption of his lectures began in April 1995 after the publication in Kiyan of his lecture "Liberty and the Clergy." He argues there that the clergy as group functions as a guild, with religion as their source of livelihood, which limits both their own freedom in interpretation and that of others.(5) This article was denounced as "subversive to Islam", and brought the Hezbollah back to campus.(6) After the attack in Isfahan in June, a letter of protest, signed by 104 writers and university teachers, was sent to the President of the Islamic Republic.(7) With the emergence of the Ansar following the October incident in Tehran University, Sorush was no longer able even to give his regular university lectures. The showdown came in Spring 1996. He wrote an open letter to the President, calling on him to "remove this rot" and to ensure freedom of speech and thought.(8) But to no avail. In mid-May, Ansar members surrounded Amir Kabir University in Tehran where Sorush was due to talk in a meeting to mark the anniversary of Ayatollah Motahhari’s death. Clashes ensued between the students and Ansar, arrests were made on both sides, and Sorush sent a message announcing his withdrawal. Soon after, unable to teach and fearing for his life, he went abroad on a lecture tour, not returning until April 1997.
As with Shari‘ati, most of Sorush’s writings are edited texts of public lectures, delivered in a variety of fora. If read chronologically, these volumes reveal the development of not only his ideas but his relationship with the Islamic Republic. Up to 1983 they mostly constitute a critique of the leftist ideologies espoused by Iranian intellectuals and groups then politically active.(9) After 1983, Sorush’s writings show his concern with themes in philosophy and epistemology. They include translations of English books on Philosophy,(10) a volume of collected essays and lectures on Ethics and Human Sciences,(11) as well as several articles in cultural periodicals.
The breakthrough in his work came with his seminal articles on the historicity and relativity of religious knowledge, "The theoretical expansion and contraction of the shari‘a."(12) These articles - in which Sorush distinguished religion from religious knowledge, arguing that while the first was sacred and immutable, the latter was human and evolved in time as a result of forces external to religion itself - appeared intermittently between 1988 and 1990 in the quarterly Kayhan-e Farhangi, published by the Kayhan Publishing Institute, which had come under the control of the Islamic faction shortly after the Revolution. The heated debate that followed the publication of these articles led to a kind of intellectual coup, and the birth of an independent journal, Kiyan (Foundation) in October 1991.(13) Sorush’s writings form the centrepiece in each issue of Kiyan; they reveal the concerns and thinking of a deeply religious man who is becoming increasingly disillusioned by the domination in the Islamic Republic of what he calls "feqh-based Islam."(14)
This began a new phase in Sorush’s writings, comprising volumes of collected essays, mostly published originally in Kiyan; most are edited texts of lectures and talks delivered in Universities and mosques in which he expands his epistemological arguments to develop a critique of government ideology and policies of the Islamic Republic and to argue for democracy and pluralism on religious grounds. Each volume bears the title of one of the essays, and has gone through several editions and impressions.
In the vast amount of his published work I could find nothing on women, apart from two paragraphs, both merely asides commenting on the incongruity between texts taught in the seminaries and the current state of knowledge and world-views.(15) So I looked for his unpublished work, and acquired recordings of two lectures in which he had addressed the issue of women, both of them in the series on Nahj ol-Balagheh. The first was delivered in Imam Sadeq Mosque in January 1989; Sorush uses the occasion of Women’s Day to comment on Imam Ali’s harsh views on women, contained in a sermon delivered after the Battle of the Camel, led by Ayesha, the Prophet’s widow; it reads:
O people! Women are deficient in Faith, deficient in shares and deficient in intelligence. As regards the deficiency in their Faith, it is their abstention from prayers and fasting during their menstrual periods. As regards deficiency in their intelligence it is because the evidence of two women is equal to that of a man. As for the deficiency in their shares that is because of their share in inheritance being half of men. So beware of the evils of women. Be on your guard even from those of them who are (reportedly) good. Do not obey them even in good things so that they may not attract you to evils.(16)
As Sorush recites and translates the sermon, some women in the audience - as in all mosques, the women’s section was curtained off from the men’s where Sorush was speaking - cry out in protest, to be promptly silenced by a man shouting: "it’s the Imam’s words the Doctor is quoting: do you object even to them?"(17) But the protests continue and only stop when Sorush asks to be allowed to finish his commentary and explain. His commentary, however, betrays his ambivalence on the issue of women in Islam, and also suggests he was not prepared for such a reaction, nor for a man to shout the women down. He intended to confine his discussion of women to one session, but the reaction persuaded him to continue the following week. He repeated and elaborated the content of the discussion in his second lecture, and I shall discuss his views in that context.
The second lecture was delivered in Isa Vazir Mosque in Central Tehran in 1992, as part of an extended commentary on Imam Ali’s letter to his son, known as the Will, the closing sentences of which contain the Imam’s advice to his son about women. Again Sorush had intended to devote only one session to the theme of women and gender relations, but at his audience’s request he continued for four more sessions. Although he is more explicit in his views, and expands on what he said in 1989, his position on gender, and the thrust of his arguments, remain the same. In 1995, Zanan gave me an abridged transcript of the 1992 sessions, prepared earlier for publication as "The perspective of the past on women"; but they never carried the article, and so far, neither lecture has appeared in print.(18)
The main part of this chapter consists of selected passages from the 1992 sessions, which touch directly on gender and reveal Sorush’s perspective. I conclude with extracts from an interview with him in London in October 1996, when I was able to discuss the 1992 sessions with him, to ask about the audience and raise my objections to his gender perspective.
The 1992 lecture was spread over five weekly sessions from 8 October to 5 November, each lasting nearly two hours. The audience of about 1000, including many University students, was both more numerous and younger than that which attended his 1989 lecture. The sessions have an informal but uniform structure. On the tapes, as Sorush is speaking, one can hear children’s voices, greetings by new arrivals, and so on. He begins each session with a short Arabic prayer, the same as in 1989 before his commentary on the Nahj ol-Balagheh, then summarizes the main points covered in the previous session, before reviewing and developing them further. When he has finished, there is a break, during which those who have questions submit them anonymously and in writing; the session ends with Sorush reading out and answering a selection of these questions.
Sorush is a gifted orator; his voice is calm and mesmerising. He talks without a script, and often without notes. I present a summary of each session, retaining the order in which he introduces his points and using his words as much as possible. There is a clear structure and purpose to each lecture, during which he takes his audience through layers of religious concepts and philosophical arguments, interjecting Koranic verses, hadith and mystical poems. He does this knowledgeably, clearly and honestly. His style and language are as important as what he has to say. His command of literature and his memory are formidable; he appears to know by heart the Koran, the Nahj ol-Balagheh, Rumi’s Mathnavi and Hafez’s Divan.(19)
Sorush lectures on women
From the opening summary, we gather that the previous session’s theme was ethics and religion. Sorush repeats two points: that political ethics are separate from religious ethics, and that although religious ethics are primarily personal in nature, they can be a source for a sound political ethics. Imam Ali’s letter to his son is one such source. Addressed to a future leader, it contains the Imam’s advice on several political and social matters. Sorush recites and translates the closing sentences:
"Do not consult women because their view is weak and their determination is unstable. Cover their eyes by keeping them under veil because strictness of veiling keeps them [good]. Their coming out is not worse than your allowing an unreliable man to visit them. If you can manage that they should not know anyone other than [you,] do so. Do not allow a woman matters other than those about herself because a woman is a flower, not an administrator. Do not pay her regard beyond herself. Do not encourage her to intercede for others. Do not show suspicion out of place because this leads a correct woman to evil and a chaste woman to deflection."(20)
In an earlier discussion on Nahj ol-Balagheh, we said it contains words that are uncongenial to women, and infringe cultural notions and democratic values that have come to fill human societies in the past two centuries. For this reason, words that were once acceptable - that no commentator found forbidding to interpret or to justify - are now problematic. They demand a new interpretation or a new defence. Our forebears had no qualms in either interpreting or defending such words ... As such a position for women wasn’t contested, no one doubted these words. ..But today women - even men - don’t accept or believe in such a position.
Nahj ol-Balagheh contains two kinds of statements on women: those based on reasoning and those not. Taken at face value, both are offensive to women. Among the latter, for instance, is the Imam’s address to the people of Basra after the Battle of the Camel. He says: "You were the army of a woman and in the command of a quadruped. When it grumbled you responded and when it was wounded you fled away."(21) Or: "As regards such and such woman, she is in the grip of womanly views while malice is boiling in her bosom like the furnace of the blacksmith."(22) Or: "Women is evil, all in all; and the worst of it is that one cannot do without her."(23) These statements contain no reasoning. But in other statements the Imam has reasoned; they include those famous ones, that women are deficient in belief, in reason and in worldly gain, because they do not pray or fast during menses, the testimony of two women equals that of one man, and their share of inheritance is half a man’s. In this part of the letter that we have recited, the Imam also advises his son not to consult women because their views are weak.
Put together, these statements suggest that seeking women’s advice and involving them in affairs of society should be avoided; that is, it’s Muslim men’s duty to keep their women secluded, to control them and not to allow them a say. If we add feqh rulings, the picture that emerges is even more devastating for women. There’s no denying that in an Islamic society women are granted less rights and fewer opportunities than men.
If one of the ulama of a century ago could be reborn and see the conditions of our society and the women, undoubtedly he’d have a fright. Such a level of women’s [public] presence - which isn’t by any means ideal - would be unthinkable for him. The very fact that it’s now accepted that a woman’s presence in society doesn’t violate her womanhood and Muslimhood is due to the immense changes that have occurred in the realms of thought and practice; these have also found their way into our religious consciousness and our society. Women’s presence in society is now as natural and logical as their absence once was. This tells us the extent to which, in our understanding and practice of religion, we act unconsciously and involuntarily; this isn’t to be taken negatively but in the sense that we’re guided by elements that aren’t in our control. They do their work, shape our lives, our minds, our language....
You know, and I have already said, that there have been several reactions to these hadith of the Imam and similar ones. These reactions are instructive too. Specific justifications have been made; for instance, some of our clerics say that the Imam’s comment on women’s deficiencies was made after the Battle of the Camel, and was due to the insidious role that Ayesha played in it. Such hadith, they argue, refer only to Ayesha or women like her. Some say the Imam uttered such words about women because he was upset and angry . Neither argument works. We must remember that reason derives its validity and universality from its own logic, not from what its user wishes to impose on it. That is, once we contend that a certain hadith of the Imam was influenced by anger or an event, then we have to admit the probability that other emotions and events influenced other hadith. In that case, no hadith can ever again be used in the sense that they have been so far. Likewise, we can’t say this hadith referred only to Aye sha. Its logic and content convey universality: it’s not only Ayesha but all Muslim women who inherit half a man’s share, and so on ...
But the explanation we gave [in 1989] about those hadith of the Imam that are based on reasoning, was that once a hadith is based on reasoning then it must be approached through its own reasoning. In fact, the credibility of such a hadith is contingent on the force and validity of its reasoning, not on the authority of its utterer. This has been our method in dealing with all sacred texts. For instance, we read in the Koran: "If there had been in them any gods but Allah, they would both have certainly been in a state of disorder" [Sura Anbia, 22]. This is a reasoning whose acceptance doesn’t rest on its being the word of God but on its force and soundness, so that it can become a backbone for our thinking ...
One can take issue with the Imam’s reasoning and say that, if women don’t pray or don’t fast at certain times [during menses], this isn’t a token of deficiency in their faith. It’s in fact the very proof of their faith, as His prophet tells them not to pray at such times. Obeying His prohibitions is like obeying His commands. In God’s eyes what matters is the spirit of an act, not its form ... As to women’s deficiency in material gain, it’s true that their share in inheritance is less, but this isn’t proof that they’re less than men and we can’t conclude from it that women shouldn’t be consulted, or assigned certain social and political status. No logical connection can be made here. If they inherit less, it’s because they are told so.
Such an approach might work, of course, with hadith based on reasoning. But what about the others that aren’t? Our solution here is to say that these hadith are "pseudo-universal propositions" (as logicians have it); that is, they reveal the conditions of women of their time. In addition, since what an Imam or a sage says is in line with the society in which he lives, we need a reason to extend it to other epochs. ... Here we’re faced with two jurisprudential principles and positions: one holds that shari‘a idioms - whether legal or ethical in nature - speak of societies of their time and thus we need a reason for extending them to other societies or times; and the other argues the opposite, that we need a reason not to apply such hadith and Rulings to all other societies and times. These two positions can’t be reached from the words [of sacred texts] but only when we examine them from outside and apply our own reasoning to them.
Contrary to the Imam’s advice, today in the Islamic Republic women are consulted. As for women’s entry into Parliament, the problem is theoretically resolved: women don’t directly decide for Islamic society. Although it seems to me the ulama’s thinking on the issue hasn’t changed, since the argument put forward then against women’s entry into Parliament was that the Prophet said that a society ruled by a woman is doomed.(24) Both Shi‘i and Sunni ulama have argued that if women are in Parliament, their votes will be counted among the rest and thus they can influence the passing of a bill, which is a kind of velayat for women, although it isn’t personal. At present, as you know, in our country the Majles is [only] the adviser of the Vali-ye Faqih. The notion of legislation as understood in other parts of the world doesn’t exist in our country; that is, the Majles doesn’t have an independent view, and the Vali-ye Faqih can alter its decisions or act counter to them. So you could argue that women’s pres ence in Parliament doesn’t contradict the Prophet’s hadith. It bans women from velayat, which at present only the Vali-ye Faqih exercises. But what about the ban on consulting women? As far as I remember, before the Revolution when the Houzeh opposed women’s entry to the Parliament, they made no reference to such arguments or hadith, either because they didn’t find them acceptable or suitable to invoke them.
Anyway, these words exist in Nahj ol-Balagheh, and solutions must be sought for them, and the search for solutions, as I said already, is decisive and can’t be confined to words. If we challenge their authenticity, then our entire [corpus of] sacred sources will come into question. If we say they’re pseudo-universal propositions, then not only women but men and many other rulings based on them will be affected. If we accept them as they are, then we must resolve the consequences of their incongruity with our present society. What we can say is that there’s a kind of absolute neglect regarding such hadith. They aren’t addressed seriously, so no serious soultions are found for them. This is because the hold of democratic values and notions of human rights is so strong that men and women don’t allow themselves to think of contradicting them and prefer to keep silent in the face of incongruities. This isn’t limited to our time, nor to religious knowledge, but [it’s true of] all times and all branches of knowledge. It’s also the case in science. A cultural view, a theory, sometimes takes such hold and captures minds and imaginations to such an extent that no one dares think otherwise. So, in every era, part of religious thought, views or hadith is overshadowed and ignored, and another part is highlighted and welcomed.
All we can say is that such issues must be left for history to resolve, in time. When our minds tell us not to think about this issue [women in sacred texts] then we can’t hope to find a suitable solution. In the past, this and many other issues were so much in line with popular culture that there was no need for thinking. In our time such hadith have been dealt such devastating blows that no one finds it expedient to tackle them or to confront such a formidable torrent. The most we can do is to become familiar with the problem and its cause and leave the solution to time and later thinkers.
On this note, Sorush brings the session to an end. He has repeated essentially what he said in 1989 about the Imam’s famous words on women’s deficiencies, applying his theory of "Expansion and Contraction of the shari‘a": descriptive, explanatory and normative, all at once. He argues both that understanding of sacred texts is time-bound, and that the ulama’s Rulings are influenced by what he calls "extra-religious knowledge." Changes in knowledge render natural and Islamic matters that were once considered "unthinkable" and "non-Islamic." He despairs at the ulama’s unwillingness to admit this at a theoretical level and to take consciously planned steps to revise their understanding in the light of current realities. He also implicitly criticizes the institution of Velayat-e Faqih, by pointing to the contradiction in having a Parliament yet subordinating it to the rule of Vali-ye Faqih.
Despite this heady stuff, and Sorush’s fresh approach, listening to him I could not help thinking that he too, as a religious intellectual, was avoiding the issue by skirting around any discussion of women’s legal rights in Islam - the domain of feqh. This may have been a concern voiced by his audience,(25) since, even though he had declared the theme of women closed, he returns to it at the next session, a week later (15 October), because "some friends, especially sisters, asked for more." But once again he skirts around feqh and moves instead into religious literature to shed light on the sources from which jurists derive their conceptions of women’s rights. This time he frames his discussion in the context of changing conceptions of the human role and place in the universe, and asks why there is such a focus on women’s rights in Muslim societies. He demonstrates that there is nothing sacred in our understanding of the shari‘a, which is human and evolves in time and is filtered through our own cognitive universe.
The recording begins with the usual prayer and summary of key points from the previous discussion, before Sorush continues:
Friends know that in our time certain views have emerged about mankind, women included. In our society in recent decades these views have centred on women’s legal rights. The problem facing our thinkers has been to explain to believing Muslim women why certain differences in rights between women and men exist in Islamic thought. Confronted with the notion of gender equality, they try either to explain these differences away or to argue that Islam upholds sexual equality but rejects similarity in rights. Some have argued for differences not in rights but in the duties of each sex, stemming from the differing abilities of each sex and the natural division of labour. Others have tried to explain by connecting differences in rights to physical, psychological and spiritual differences between the sexes ...
The nub of the matter is that it’s assumed that equality between men and women - which women demand in our time in various parts of the world - means equality in legal rights. Here I want to explain the exact meaning of this [notion of] equality between men and women - in the sense that some are now seeking - and then see whether the common understanding of women’s rights and duties in Islam admits such a notion of equality; and how most of our ulama, thinkers and jurists have conceptualised women and their status and the basis for their views. I stress, it’s not for me to judge but only to offer a historical report of understandings that have so far existed. Nor do I claim that the door of understanding is closed, that no other understanding will emerge on this issue. Nevertheless, what has existed so far must be recognized and known.
We can have two views, both of which are rooted in our conception of women’s purpose in creation ... In a nutshell, one holds that woman is created for man: her whole being, disposition, personality and perfection depend on union with man. The other view denies such a relationship and holds that a woman has her own purpose in creation, her own route to perfection. ... The first view - that woman is created of and for - sums up past perspectives, including those of Muslims. Both qualifiers [of and for] are important.
In poetic and mystical language, Sorush discusses at some length what these qualifiers entail, how they create asymmetry in rights and shape relations between the sexes. A woman is created to mediate man’s perfection, to prepare him to fulfill his duty, to enable him to manifest his manhood, to make him worthy of God’s call. This is the essence of womanhood, and that is why she attains perfection through union with a man. But for a man, union with a woman is not the end but only the beginning of his path to perfection. Sorush opens two caveats: to say that woman is created of and for man does not mean she is created for, or to be at the mercy of, man’s whim; and to say that woman’s perfection rests on union with man does not necessarily imply marriage, although formation of a family is one manifestation of such connection and an arena for complementarity and mutual perfection.
On the second view, which he says has captured the hearts and minds of Muslim women of our time, Sorush is less eloquent or forthcoming:
[The] second view, demanding equality between the sexes, says nothing more than that woman is not created of and for man. This philosophical and existentialist conception, of course, defines the scope of women’s legal rights, shapes their status and relations between the sexes, and so on. Here I don’t want to discuss the implications of such a conception for women in the sphere of gender relations, nor shall I enter philosophical and legal discussions. These are to be found in the works of the late Motahhari and other thinkers such as Allameh Tabataba’i. Perhaps what can be said in defence of difference and non-similarity [of gender rights] has been said in these works, and I don’t intend to add anything here. Nevertheless, I will make one point. One of those who judiciously understood yet denied [the implications of the two views] was Ayatollah Motahhari: in his book Women’s Rights in Islam he clearly states that in the Islamic view woman isn’t created for man. But I should say that t his is not the general presumption of our ulama. An understanding of equality between man and woman won’t be possible unless we understand the basis correctly and know contemporary men’s and women’s understanding of it. This is the formulation of the problem, the two claims that confront each other ...
Having identified the core contradiction in the gender discourses of contemporary Muslim thinkers, such as Motahhari, Sorush delves into religious literature to show the kinds of theories and master narratives on which they are based. He observes that, although no Muslim thinker has said, in so many words, "woman is of and for man", they all subscribe to the thesis; he offers three kinds of evidence for this; first, that religious sources are male orientated: whatever their genre, they solely or primarily address men, even when they deal with apparently genderless themes, such as rules for praying or ethical issues such as lying or cheating. In this, Sorush says, scholars have followed the example of the Koran, which most often addresses men. For instance, many of the blessings promised in paradise - such as black-eyed perpetual virgins - appeal only to men.
The second kind of evidence is the way religious literature describes marriage. Here again, men are treated as the main beneficiaries, even though marriage is by definition a joint affair. He examines legal and ethical sources to list the kinds of benefit Muslim scholars identify in marriage, ranging from immunity from Satan’s temptations to achieving the peace of mind which enables men to prepare for greater duties in life, such as gaining knowledge and serving God. He also relates a hadith of the Prophet, that "women are among Satan’s army and one of its greatest aids"; and a story from Rumi’s Mathnavi that when God created woman, Satan rejoiced, saying "now I have the ultimate weapon for tempting mankind" - meaning, of course, men.
Similar is the sort of advice given to men on how to respect women’s rights and pay them their dues. Sorush reads a passage from Feiz Kashani’s al-Mohajjat ol-Beiza (The Bright Way), a book on ethics and morals. Feiz, a 16th-century Shi‘i scholar, defines marriage as a kind of enslavement, and a wife as a kind of slave, advising men: "now you have captured this being, you must have mercy on her, cherish and respect her, etc." Sorush points out that it was in the light of such a conception of marriage and women’s status that scholars read and understood the hadith, and shows the internal flaw in such understandings. He recites hadith attributed to Shi‘i Imams, telling men not to teach women Sura Yusef from the Koran, but Sura Nur instead, and to forbid women to go to upper floors of the house, in case they are tempted to look down at unrelated men passing in the street.
The point is not what the real meaning of these hadith is, nor whether or not they are authentic. The point is, what meanings have been attributed to them [by] our religious scholars [who] have taken them seriously. My point is phenomenological, not theological. I don’t judge, I simply say that in Islamic culture and history they’ve been taken seriously, and religious scholars have based their views on them ...
Sorush’s final argument to show the absolute hold of the "woman is for man" thesis, is from mystical and philosophical literature. He cites two contrasting passages, one from the celebrated Sufi Ibn Arabi (d. 1240), the other from the philosopher Molla Hadi "Hakim" Sabzevari (d. 1878), and argues that they reveal the same conception of women, although expressed in two different idioms. Inspired by a hadith about the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib, Ibn Arabi says that, like a rib, woman has the inborn ability to bend in her love without breaking: she is the symbol of divine love and mercy, created from "affection", and love towards man is implanted in her essence. Thus woman’s role and destiny is to bend in love; in so doing she joins man and makes him whole again. Man’s love for woman, on the other hand, is like the love of the whole for a part; looked at this way, man’s love for woman does not infringe his love for God. Compare this, Sorush tells his audience, with Hakim Sabzevari’s view that women are i n essence animals; God gave them human faces so that men will be inclined to marry.
I apologize to the sisters present here for the insult implied in these words, but it’s important to know them. Today in our society there’s an unacceptable cover-up, even by our Muslim thinkers, who hide what’s been said ... There’s no reason, no point in hiding it, it’ll be clear to those who care to think and search. It’s important to face it with an open mind, to know better the dark tunnel we’ve come through, and how to contemplate our future.
His excursion into religious literature ended, Sorush concludes his talk with three further points.
First, in the sphere of women’s rights we cannot think and talk only in feqh categories, of forbidden and permitted acts; we must also think in terms of interpreting religion texts, of man’s and woman’s purposes in creation, of traditions and social customs. Secondly, if Muslim scholars defined women’s status in a way we find unacceptable today, it is not because they wanted to humiliate women or undermine their status, but because that is how they understood and interpreted the religious texts. Women in the past accepted their status not because they were stupid or oppressed but because they had no problems with such understanding and interpretation. In the past two centuries, however, the myths and theories that made such understandings acceptable to men and women have been challenged by scientific theories, including evolution. Changes in our worldview have also made women’s legal rights an issue in Islam. Finally, the problem cannot be resolved by providing new justifications to defend an outmoded worl dview, hoping women will be lured back into accepting them; after all, acceptance is a matter of belief rather than reasoning. What we can do is try to understand the basis for, and implications of, old and new views on women. Only then can women clarify for themselves where they stand in relation to each view, and where they want to be.
Sorush invites his audience, in particular the women, to do this. The session continues with Sorush answering four questions. Two invoke a Koranic verse and a hadith to negate the "woman is for man" thesis, to which Sorush replies: "true, there are also many others, but so far the other side is stronger, in the sense that their reasonings and evidences dominate." A third question asks for comment on women’s status in present society; he answers that this can best be dealt with by a sociologist. After a lengthy pause, Sorush reads out what must be part of the final question: "In our history, women have said nothing about themselves." He responds with a critique of feminism:
... Yes, it has been the case, and even if [women] said [something] their voices haven’t reached us. There are several theories here. The argument of feminist movements - that now exist in the world as so-called supporters of women, demanding equal rights between men and women on all fronts - is that differences between men and women, which their rights are based on, result from socialization. That is, boys and girls are socialized differently: boys are taught they are superior to girls, sexes are assigned different roles, they are valued differently, this sets a pattern and men and women have come to accept their roles; this has been the case in most societies from the start, and so on. I once witnessed a debate abroad between one of these feminists and an opponent, who argued that you must explain why this pattern was set in the first place, why men and women accepted it, and why it continues today; perhaps there’s a reason for it, perhaps there [really] is a difference between the sexes - not [necessari ly] that one is better than the other - but why do you want to deny difference?
This leads into a digression on the philosophy of history; Sorush affirms his own view, that "the history of mankind has been natural", and asks whether the fact of women’s oppression at certain periods can be taken as contrary evidence. While admitting that his theory cannot be falsified, he seems to imply that history will show men’s domination to be natural too.
That last question seems to me to haunt the three sessions on gender relations that follow. They are more discursive in style and full of incomplete statements and arguments. Unlike in the first two sessions, Sorush pursues neither a central argument nor a sustained critique of old readings of the sacred texts, but tries instead to make sense of the Imam’s words, to provide the basis for debate and a new positioning. This he makes clear at the outset. In his summary of the previous discussion, he repeats his criticism of current understandings of the sacred texts, voices his scepticism of the new view, which he sees as seeking to "put women in men’s place", then continues:
The old view has passed its test, and religious societies which lived by its rules have revealed what they entail for men, women and the family. On the other hand, societies which have opted for the new view, putting women in men’s place, have also shown their hand. In both camps, many now feel the need for revision. But since these views aren’t philosophically neutral, revision is always slow and painful. They’re tied up with a mass of baggage, and it’s impossible to remain impartial when dealing with them ... Until very recently - in the West too - men have been the main theorists on women’s nature and role in creation and society. This must make us cautious. When women replace them, they too are tied to their own baggage, however different. This is one of those rare cases where the door of judgment is closed to us, as both science and reason can be influenced by our emotions. You can’t apply cold reason to an issue in which your entire being is immersed. There can be no guarantee that mistakes made in p revious centuries won’t be repeated ...
I say all this to affirm that we must rely here on Revelation and seek guidance in the words of religious leaders and those pious ones who are free of such baggage; the path of human reason here passes through the path of divine Revelation; if we explore and invest in this path, perhaps we’ll obtain worthwhile results.
Having set the tone and the theme, Sorush returns to the closing sentences of Imam Ali’s letter to his son, quoted earlier. He relates them to the concepts of hejab, sexual honour and jealousy (gheirat), and worth (keramat). On hejab he is brief, confining himself to two points: that its form and limits have always been bound up with culture and politics; and that what God permits, man should not forbid. To drive both home, he relates what Ayatollah Motahhari told him about how he began research for his book on hejab. Motahhari said he was afraid to enter a minefield of divergent opinions, but as his research progressed he found an astonishing degree of consensus among Shi‘i and Sunni jurists: all - bar one Sunni - held that women’s hands and faces need not be covered. He also found that all fatwas recommending stricter covering were issued after Reza Shah’s unveiling campaign. Sorush leaves his audience to draw the moral from the anecdote: that advocating chador as the "superior form of heja b" has more to do with culture and politics than sacred texts.
We all know that chador is not "Islamic hejab", but it’s rare to find a cleric who allows his womenfolk to venture out without wearing one. What Motahhari said on hejab - which was what he found in feqh texts - shocked the ulama of his time, who interpreted it as a licence for promiscuity.
On the second concept, jealousy (gheirat), Sorush is more explicit. He first defines jealousy as "preventing another sharing what one has", and distinguishes it from envy (hesadat), which he defines as "wanting what belongs to another." The first is a positive ethical value that is extra-religious and should be encouraged, he argues, but the second is negative and should be controlled. He refers to another hadith of Imam Ali: "the jealousy of a woman is heresy (kofr), while the jealousy of a man is part of belief,"(26) and tries to shed light on what heresy can mean in this context. It has an ethical rather than religious connotation, arising from the asymmetry inherent in the way the sexes relate to each other. Women are entrusted to men, they become not only part of men but part of their honour. Men can take more than one woman as spouse at the same time, while the opposite cannot happen. Without asking whether such asymmetry is defined by laws of nature or culture, Sorush ends the s ession by saying there is another jealousy, manifested in creation, but he will leave it for next week.
In the next session (28 October), Sorush continues with the theme of jealousy, but on a mystical level. He starts with Rumi’s interpretation of a hadith about divine jealousy and relates it to Love, devoting the entire session to this. Here he is in his element, weaving his own narrative into a rich body of mystical concepts and poems to make a case for Love, which he argues must be treated with jealousy, that is, protected from those who do not have it.
I find this session the most engaging and important, and yet the most difficult to assess. I am taken by Sorush’s eloquence, his perception and his courage in tackling such a delicate issue in a mosque. He makes a strong case for Love, keeping it out of the feqh domain - yet I am puzzled by the clear male bias in his narrative. I can’t decide whether he is telling his audience the whole story or is talking in innuendo. He begins by pointing to a duality, a paradox, in Persian literature, which reflects a cultural ambivalence towards the subject of love and women. Love is the main theme in Persian literature, yet one is never sure whether the writer is talking about divine or earthly love.
Our poets have perfected the art of ambiguity. In our culture, the same ambivalence can be seen when women are concerned ... It’s enough to look at our own current society. I suppose there are few societies in the modern era for which sex and women are such a problem, yet we pretend the issue is resolved, that no problem exists. It’s enough just to see the places which come under certain people’s control; the kinds of separation and segregation [imposed] speak of the obsession, of the state of minds, and show the size of the problem and the distance that must be crossed for it to be resolved naturally.
He talks about the role of earthly love in the lives of those such as Ibn Arabi and Hafez, and recites poems in which they talk of their love. He relates the story of Ibn Arabi’s falling in love with a learned and beautiful Isfahani woman in Mecca, and her influence on his mystical development.(27) He also tells two stories from the Koran which speak of women’s love for men: those of Zoleikha for Yusef (Sura 12) and the daughter of Sho‘eib for Musa (Sura 28). He relates both stories in detail, seeing their message as endorsing the naturalness of attraction and love between men and women.(28) Unlike others he emphasizes, not Zoleikha’s cunning and her attempts to seduce Yusef, but his beauty and ability to resist temptations. God put love for him in her heart; he is so beautiful and desirable that other women, having at first blamed Zoleikha, when they see him, sympathize with her and plead with him to respond to her love. The two stories, he says, must be taken in conjuction with Sura Nur; he recites verse 31 which deals with women’s covering and chastity. He asks, can love between men and women be recommended on ethical and religious grounds, or must it be condemned? In either case, what are the consequences, and how should a religious society deal with it?
In the rest of the session, Sorush presents a broad review of love in the history of Islamic thought. On the one hand are the moralists, who denounce love and tolerate no mention of it; on the other are those who recognize its blessing and power and resist denouncing it in the name of religion. Mystics argue that earthly love is a passage to divine love, a metaphor leading us to the Truth; but this is also an attempt to theorize a successful experience. The force of their argument is such that even philosophers have to contemplate love, although some reduce it to sex drive.(29) Those who readily issue fatwas, dividing love into halal and haram, not only mistake lust for love, and also forget that love, as Sufis argue, is involuntary; it is in its nature to undermine the will, thus it is not a matter on which there can be a feqh ruling. Instead of condemning it, our thinkers should contemplate love - whether earthly or divine - and propagate it. We must not let love to be treated as a disease, something which defiles. It is healing and purifying, and can cure both individuals and societies of many afflictions and excesses. Fiqh, more oriented to piety than love, must approach mysticism, which is more inclined to love than piety. Then they can overcome the duality, the rupture, in our cultural history and moderate the excesses of both.
Concluding his review, Sorush returns to jealousy. What he says here, it seems to me, not only reveals his male bias but undermines the case he has made for love.
Thus man’s jealousy towards women isn’t only about honour but also about love. It’s said that women are the repository for love and men the repository for wisdom; we can put this better, and say that women are objects of love, and men are not. If we accept that great loves have led to great acts in history, then we must admit that women have played a great role, and it’s unwise for women to try to be men; they can’t, they can only forfeit their womanhood. This is to negate one’s blessing. It does [neither sex] any good, if someone, or a group, doesn’t appreciate their worth and their place and also if others try to dislodge them from their place.
Sorush seems to have forgotten that, only a moment before, he told his audience two Koranic love stories in which, as he himself pointed out, men (Joseph and Moses) not women were the objects of love. Or does the lapse betray his own ambivalence?
Also puzzling, I find, is Sorush’s final observation on love in contemporary Iranian poetry. He says he will only touch on it briefly, inviting his audience to do their own research and draw their own conclusions. Love still dominates our poetry and occupies our poets’ minds, he says, but its manifestations are no longer pure and spiritual. In the past the poet was part of a closed world defined by religious values: "even if the poet chose to fix his gaze on the earth, the sky above him cast its shadow on his world." This is no longer the case; he makes the point by reciting a poem by Forugh Farrokhzad, where she says she never wanted to be a star in the sky or to be the companion of angels, she never separated herself from the earth.(30) This identity - never wanting to be part of a celestial world - Sorush argues, is evident in her approach to love and somehow degrades it. Adding, "some of her poems, if you don’t know they’re hers, you’d think they’re by a mystic", he recites one of her love poems, but s tops as he reaches lines in which she expresses yearning for her lover, saying that a mosque is not the place for it.(31) He ends his defence of love by returning to the mystical realm where earthly love is a metaphor for, and a means of experiencing, a greater truth.(32)
In the final session, Sorush concludes his commentary on Imam Ali’s words on women with a discussion of keramat, which he glosses as "the limit, the purpose, the proper place of each being". He approaches the concept from a philosophical angle, placing it in the context of the two competing worldviews discussed earlier. The first, to which the Imam’s words belong, accepts the world and its order as designed by the Creator, and has no dispute with the place assigned to His creation. The second, which makes the Imam’s words difficult to digest, sees the world and its order as accidental, and wants to define the role of creation. The first view (that of Islamic thinkers) sees women as created for men and the roles of the sexes as non-interchangeable. In the second (that of modern times) women aspire to men’s place in the order of things. Sorush embarks on a long discussion, examining the pros and cons of each of these world-views. Critical of both, but not totally rejecting either, he resorts to the Ko ran to shed light on women’s place in the divine order of life. As he continues, it becomes clear that his own understanding of the Koranic position is in line with that of Islamic thinkers whose texts he earlier analysed critically. He recites and elaborates on a Koranic verse: "And one of His signs is that He created mates for you from yourselves that you may find rest in them, and He put between you love and compassion; most surely there are signs in this for a people who reflect" (al-Rum, 21). Earlier, when speaking of love, he found a kind of symmetry in the ways men and women relate to each other; now he finds asymmetry and complementarity:
The most important role for women, as understood from this verse, and as recognized by most of our ulama, is to restore to man the peace he has lost, to correct the imbalance that prevents him from fulfilling his role. This is the role assigned to woman; this is the status bestowed on her by creation. You can, of course, disagree and believe that woman is malleable and can assume whatever role she is given, and man likewise; who says woman should be confined to this role? she can have better roles in society ... Fine, this is a theory that some maintain today. But as I said, what we find at the root of Islamic thought is that men’s and women’s roles are assigned, defined and not interchangeable; in this view, woman fulfills her role in society through man, that is, she restores to men, the main actors in society, their lost balance and peace.
If we accept this as a proper understanding of religious texts, then, when the Imam says: "don’t allow a woman matters other than those about herself, because a woman is a flower, not an administrator," he means that [gender] roles in society are not changeable. Those who say otherwise are those who say we [are the ones who] define roles, that people can be prepared for roles through socialization, education, etc.
Typical to his style, Sorush now poses a question and a counter-argument which subvert the claims of conventional understandings.
But if we accept the view that [gender] roles are defined and their limits set, we face the question: what are these limits? Who says these limits have been correctly defined? How do we know the roles men and women have played so far are the male and female roles they should have played? This is an important question. In theory, we might accept that man should remain man, and woman should remain woman, but who has defined what men should do, and what women should do? We have three sources to consult: religion, science and history.
To find the answer, Sorush invites his audience to consult each of these sources, telling them to focus on history, which he sees as natural, as reflecting the human nature in which men and women have shown their characteristics. He expands his response to a question a few weeks earlier about the philosophy of history.
I know you’ll object that women weren’t allowed to find their own status. But this objection isn’t valid, whether in this case or in others. We must ask why and how men succeeded ... We can look at history from an ethical angle and reach certain conclusions; but if we suspend ethical judgment and look at history in terms of possibilities, we’ll reach different ones. I suggest that, if women occupied a position we now see as oppressed, then they saw this as their proper place in life; they didn’t see themselves as oppressed and didn’t ask for more, as they saw their keramat, their worth, as being women, not as being like men. We can’t impose our own values on the past, and assume that what we now consider to be injustice, or essential rights, were valid then - that’s the worst kind of historiography. I suppose we’re at the start of a new epoch; in fact it began almost two centuries ago, with the rise of protesters, who see themselves as making and designing their own world. It remains to be seen how.
Although science, the second source, Sorush argues, can tell us more about the characteristics of each sex, it cannot give us the final answer. Religion, whose answer he has been exploring in these lectures, is no longer consulted, since:
Men and women of this age - whether religious or not - now inhabit a world where they give an absolute value to expressing dissatisfaction and protesting at their lot. They’re not prepared to hear the clear answer of religion, nor does any one tell them. So we must only wait for the third source - history - to make our places clear to us. It’s only then that humans can hear and understand the delight of surrender to God’s will.
So Sorush concludes his discussion of women and gender roles. He talks for another half an hour, dealing with questions, but makes no further points.
Sorush in London
In October 1995, when I first listened to recordings of these lectures in Tehran, I did not know what to make of them. I was taken by Sorush’s rational approach to sacred texts, by his eloquence, by his willingess to see different sides to an argument, by his courage in opening up and speaking of taboo subjects (such as Farrokhzad’s love poetry) in a mosque, to an audience for whom women like her have been demonized in the past seventeen years. On the other hand, I found his own position on gender problematic, and was frustrated and annoyed by what I saw as skilled evasion of any kind of serious debate over women’s legal rights. I could also see that his position, and to an extent his approach to women’s issues, was very close to that of Shari‘ati. They both criticize not just old understandings of women’s status in Islam but the advocates of equal rights, both refuse to enter the realm of feqh.
I decided there was no way I could include Sorush among the supporters of gender equality in Islam. Clearly he subscribed to the view that, in the divine order of things, women are for men, as they are men’s "calm", their anchor. I shared my misgivings about Sorush’s gender position with Shahla Sherkat, editor of Zanan. She conceded that she had pressed him to let her publish a transcript of his lectures, but when the text was prepared Sorush delayed approving it for publication. Finally, she herself abandoned the project. She gave me a copy of the transcripts.
I could not understand how and why Sorush’s ideas had inspired women in Zanan, who like me objected to his gender position.(33) Only later, when I was well into writing this book, did I understand that I must shift my focus. It was not his position on gender, but his conception of Islam and his approach to sacred texts that empowered women in Zanan to argue for gender equality. They also, I realized, made possible my debate with the Payam-e Zan clerics, even though they did not agree with his approach to the texts any more than I agreed with his gender position. The tension in the last session of our debate - I now realized - had partly to do with my increasing self-confidence in locating my objections within an Islamic framework, which I had internalized by listening to Sorush’s tapes and reading his work in the intervening months.
Between May and December 1996 Sorush gave a number of talks in London, mostly in Persian and to audiences largely of Iranian students, including a series of eleven lectures on Rumi and mysticism. I attended most of these talks, and whenever I had a chance asked questions and tried to draw attention to gender issues. The opportunity to hear Sorush in person helped me place his 1992 talks on women in the context of his wider analytical method and his later thinking. By now I could see how his approach to Islam could open space for a radical rethinking of gender relations, among other issues. Yet whenever I or other women in the audience asked him pertinent questions, he was evasive. For example, at a Middle East Forum meeting in SOAS in June, I asked him why he had not addressed women’s questions in print. He replied that it was not easy, they cannot be addressed without discussing human rights, and anyway women do it themselves. In September, at a seminar in London on "Obstacles to Development in Iran", org anized by the Islamic Society of Iranian Students, with Sorush one of four panellists, all male, I asked why none of the speakers had said a single word about women’s rights or gender issues. Again Sorush’s answer was vague, in line with his 1992 talks.
After listening to the 1992 tapes again, I still could not decide what he was actually saying. There were different layers. Although I agreed with some points, I could not accept others. Sometimes he seemed to be arguing in line with the traditionalists. I agreed with his identification of the main contradiction in the Islamic Republic’s discourse on women, but his own arguments seemed to me just as problematic. What Sorush was arguing, and urging Muslim women, was to resolve the contradiction by accepting the role they were given in creation, their "position". He called this "the step that must be taken." To me, this was the voice of a conservative philosopher, not a reformer and thinker trying to reconcile democracy and Islam. Didn’t he consider gender equality too to be part of democratic and human rights?
Then in October I had a private meeting with him, in which I raised my objections to the gender position he took on the tapes, and tried to draw him into a more specific discussion. I started by summarizing his arguments and the issues he raised in the 1992 talks, interjecting comments of my own. Dealing with the Imam’s views on women, he says we find them difficult to accept because they reflect an old world-view. He criticizes the two ways they are now dealt with (casting doubt on their authenticity; interpreting them as only concerning Ayesha), saying that neither will solve the problem. He suggests dealing with them by reasoning; but this, I said, is not enough.
AKS: Enough for what? That depends what conclusions you want to draw. In that talk I laid an important foundation whose implications for religious literature, in my view, can’t be appreciated now. I said that unquestioning obedience to the words of a religious leader when he reasons isn’t obligatory. In certain situations we follow and submit unconditionally: we’re Muslims and pray as the Prophet says; here there’s no room for questioning. But this isn’t the case when there’s reasoning in the words of a religious leader.
ZMH: That is, we can refute it?
AKS: Of course we can. If not, what is reasoning for in the first place? not just to persuade, but also to evaluate. If Imam Ali reasons with us, he invites us to reason back, to use our critical faculties. There I tried to present a counter-argument, and pointed out that we can’t deduce from the Imam’s words the Ruling that women are defective in faith [because they don’t pray or fast at certain times]. If we say that, then we must also say that those who can’t afford to go on Hajj pilgrimage are also defective in faith; but we say that it’s not obligatory for them.
Such a foundation can be a torch for you when entering the religious literature, to put aside fear and clarify matters for yourself. You can say that such reasonings satisfied the logic of people of that age, or that since the reasoning is false it’s impossible that the Imam would deduce such a Ruling from it. What conclusion you draw from these arguments depends on your own perspective and intentions. That’s the essence of what I said there; it can have many applications if we use it consistently and methodically.
I continued with my summary, and pointed out that, despite the many insights he provides into the old view, there is a kind of fallacy in his arguments, particularly as regards what he calls "the new view".
ZMH: When it comes to discussing the new view, that "woman is not for man", you oversimplify a complex debate and reduce women’s demands for equal rights to "wanting to take man’s place", which in your discourse becomes not valuing God’s design for humanity. It’s in this context that you introduce the concept of keramat, to define the true place and boundaries of created beings, and you examine it in the context of two competing world-views: the old and the new. You criticize the ulama’s understanding of women’s role, but as you go on, it becomes evident that yours isn’t that different. You too hold that, in the divine order of things, women are for men, as they are men’s "calm", their anchor. What do you mean by this?
At this point, I quoted a passage from Ayatollah Javadi-Amoli’s book, where he, like Sorush, by-passes feqh Rulings and tries to place the whole gender debate on a spiritual plane - even invoking the same Koranic verse.(34) Unaware that Javadi-Amoli was Sorush’s most articulate and powerful clerical adversary, I pointed out how Sorush’s position and understanding of gender in sacred texts, even some of his arguments, resemble those of Javadi, whose approach is theological. As I blundered on, Sorush kept repeating (probably in disbelief): "‘ajab! ‘ajab!" (how odd!). I went on:
You close your discussion of women and gender roles by inviting your audience to look for the answer in history. That is, you tell them implicitly that women’s roles in society will be the same as before, since there is a reason why they have played such roles so far. There are several problems with this argument. History has many narratives: the one you are talking of is written by men; the history of mankind might be natural, as you say, but that doesn’t mean it’s just; there’s no reason to say that the Law-Giver wanted it to be this way, or that it will always remain such; slavery was with us for much of our history, and other examples abound. Gender equality is a Principle, a prevailing value of our age; whether it’s here to stay, or a passing fashion, is another matter. The question then is why you, a religious intellecual, also choose to ignore it. What does Revelation have to say on this? What is your own understanding?
Incidentally, you employ a rhetorical device - like the ulama when they talk of pre-Islamic views and practices. You criticize past thinkers’ outlandish views on women, which somehow diverts attention from a discussion of current views. For instance, you quote views such as those of Feiz Kashani [woman is an animal created so that man will be inclined to mate] ...
AKS: He takes it from Ghazzali.
ZMH: And Feiz develops it. That is, you give the men in your audience a false sense of generosity and pride that they don’t think like that, and women a sense of gratitude that they aren’t thought of that way. I don’t know whether or not you do this deliberately, but it sets the tone and the course of the debate. You also do the same when dealing with feminism: focusing on excesses and pre-empting a debate.
AKS: [laughing] you’re rather angry!
ZMH: I do find what you say infuriating! I can’t accept the basis of what you say there.
AKS: And what is that basis?
ZMH: Perhaps if there’s an anger, it’s because of the ambivalence in what you say. You say there’s a status for women, there’s a purpose, but you never say clearly what they are. You reduce this purpose for woman to being man’s calm, his anchor in life. But the same could be said of men. And there’s more to feminism, to women’s demand for equality, than what you told your audience; there are many debates and positions within feminism; no one says that women are identical to men, difference is now brought into the picture, some even argue that, apart from their bodies, women differ from men in psychology and the way they relate to the world.
AKS: Look, there’s a need for these debates, they’ve mellowed feminists, earlier they went too far and these [religious] counter-arguments gradually made them aware that woman should demand status by keeping her womanhood. I’ll give some general explanations and hope they address your questions.
First, we must make a distinction. The majority of our ulama - even men of politics - when talking about women, their guide is feqh, that is their ideas, their images come from a set of Rulings they have in mind, then they create an image of women to reflect it.
ZMH: But behind these Rulings lie world-views, value systems....
AKS: Exactly. I mean, we have two points of departure: if your guide is feqh then you define women as such to conform with its Rulings. I claim to be the greatest critic of such thinking. Among the objections I have raised is that feqh, as the lowest-ranking religious science, shouldn’t become the centre of religious thought. I took the basis of this argument from Ghazzali, and expanded it in a lecture I gave at Harvard last year, entitled "The place of feqh in Islamic teachings" ... One of the main differences I see between pre- and post-revolutionary Islam is that our present Islam is feqh-based, whereas before it was spiritual. That Islam was appealing; Islam since the Revolution no longer appeals, it displays a stern legalism. In my last article in Kiyan, based on a talk I gave in UNESCO, when I reach feqh I say it’s a kind of stern legalism that brings alienation.(35) ... Of course, it isn’t easy to talk of feqh in these terms ... [but I continue to do so] since I see it as one of the ills of c urrent religious thinking, precisely because of what you mentioned: feqh holds within itself a worldview, but some ignore this, take its Rulings as immutable, then go on to define women accordingly. In a recent article, I argue that a religious Ruling is not the same as a feqh Ruling; I discuss [the ulama’s] understanding of religious Rulings as like feqh Rulings.(36) This fallacy must be eradicated.
I want you to know how I think on such issues. Fiqh is not my point of departure, and the question of women ...
ZMH: But you can’t totally ignore or by-pass feqh.
AKS: No, I’ll get there in the end. The question is where feqh should be placed, at our point of departure or at our destination. To enter a debate on the women’s question via the path of women’s rights is incorrect, and I consciously don’t pursue it. Not because I don’t believe in them or want to ignore them, but because I believe that this isn’t a starting point and will lead us astray. I start from your question: what’s the status of women? Women’s status mustn’t be reduced to law; it’s much broader. In the past, women’s status wasn’t what we say. Look at the religious literature. When I first quoted what Hakim Sabzevari said on women, some [ulama] got angry, and denied the authenticity of my quotation. In the text Molla Sadra wrote that several types of animals are created, one of which, woman, is created for men to mate with. Then Hakim Sabzevari comments on the text, saying the great man made a just point; he relies on it too in his interpretations of the religious texts: men are guardians of women b ecause women are animals whom God gave human faces ... Someone even wrote that I made this up. I had quoted it from memory, but when I checked, it was correct; I have given the reference in an article which came out in Sturdier than Ideology.(37) It’s important that someone like Molla Sadra had such views, I tell you our jurists thought the same.
ZMH: Some still do.
AKS: I’d be surprised if it were otherwise. What school teaches them otherwise? These texts are still taught in the Houzeh, there isn’t one on human rights. They base their logic, the Principles of jurisprudence, on these philosophers’ views. Unless a people’s understanding of the women’s question is changed, there’ll be no basic change; women will remain less than second-class citizens; if they’re given rights, it’s from charity or necessity. Look, this is the milieu in which I’m talking, as a person; this is where the status of women must be corrected; in my opinion, we’ll get nowhere by haggling about women’s legal rights.
ZMH: Mr Motahhari, and today others, didn’t think like this.
AKS: I accept that. I’m talking about the dominant rule; they’re exceptions, all influenced by outside [the Houzeh]. I don’t believe one can enter a legal debate with these gentlemen [ulama]; they can produce a hadith to silence you, but not if we start with broader concepts. We must first establish whether women is human or, as Hakim Sabzevari says, animal; how God conceives of them, regardless of their place in relation to men. Is association with women defiling or enhancing to men? We must say that men can attain spiritual growth through love and friendship with women. This is a path I’ve been following in recent years in my teachings on Hafez. Hafez believes that humans aren’t brought into the world to be ashamed; they’ve a right to exist and must honour this right. Someone like Moulavi or Ghazzali didn’t think this way. If we can correct such ideas then we can easily take the next step. That’s why I see legal debates as secondary, and favour theoretical and philosophical debates. At present in our soc iety, among our students, we have a problem: how to look at women with religious eyes. Once ideas and views change, laws will change ... In the West too, ideas on these matters changed first, then women’s place in life, in work and family changed accordingly. Zanan, or anyone who works on women, should devote 70 percent to these broader debates and 30 percent to legal ones.
ZMH: Do you know that so far Zanan has had no article on [philosophical rather than legal views on women]?
AKS: Yes, that’s a failing. Not many dare to write on this. It’s also a difficult matter.
ZMH: It’s a problem. There aren’t many women competent to deal with theoretical debates on Islamic grounds. Women in the Houzeh seem to have no qualms about its views on women; some are even worse than men. To some degree this is to be expected: women who enter a patriarchal institution must accept its values in the first place, otherwise there’s no place for them. Perhaps this is a stage; women in the Houzeh can’t enter such debates at present. Some [religious] women, such as those in Zanan, haven’t the expertise and others [non-religious] refuse to frame their discussions in Islamic terms. Male religious intellectuals, such as yourself, won’t enter gender debates at all; for instance, there isn’t a single reference to women’s questions in Kiyan, which considers them outside the realm of concern for religious intellectuals.
AKS: No ... but they’re involved in other debates; perhaps one day they will; perhaps they think there’s no need, since there’s Zanan. But I accept that in the realm of religious intellectuals, the women’s question is neglected.
ZMH: Why do you think it’s neglected?
AKS: Women are always seen through the eyes of feqh ... Women themselves - including socially active intellectuals - tend to define themselves through a series of feqh duties. This is an important point.
ZMH: Of course, only some - that is, they’ve accepted ...
AKS: ... I don’t mean they shouldn’t accept feqh; after all, a Muslim man or women has a set of duties they must fulfill. What I mean is that they don’t know their own "existence", as existentialists would say. I see the difference between old and new men, old and new women, as lying in self-knowledge. That is, in recognizing what it is to love as a woman, to be anxious as a woman, to demand rights as a woman. These they [old women?] lack; they think it’s a sin to think about men, and don’t see themselves as having the right to know. This is the problem: we must first make women aware of themselves. It’s extremely difficult. It’s like swimming in acid, which is heavy and burns your limbs. It takes a long time to explain to these women that there are some issues that have nothing to do with religion; these are meaningless taboos which are not imposed by God and His Messenger, you have imposed them on yourself and have distorted human relations. What is a woman with this image of herself to do with equal rig hts? That’s why I say: debates on rights should come later. In our society, delicate theoretical work is needed, and when women know themselves, then you can say: now define your relationship with men, define your status, and yet remain Muslim and live according to the shari‘a. These relations [defined in feqh] aren’t sacrosanct, they come from minds with distorted worldviews; many arose in situations when women didn’t undertake social responsibilities. In our society, women work and are present, but some still want to enforce outmoded ethics. No one says where they came from, what era they belong to. The only thing that’s done is to tell girls not to wear this or that ...
ZMH: It’s after all a transitional stage ...
AKS: Of course, but this transitional stage must be paved with awareness, for us to reach more fundamental issues ... we must change the image humans have of themselves ... In my talk on Houzeh and University,(38) I said [to the ulama]: if you have a Women’s Day in this country, then you must also declare that you reject what Hakim Sabzevari says; you publish it in your books, yet without criticizing it, and if you don’t, someone like me will - and then you’ll protest ...
If you ask the same question about men - what’s the purpose in their creation? - I would say: I don’t know; certainly there’s a purpose, but we don’t know.
ZMH: Then why do you raise it [when it comes to women]?
AKS: Permit me. I mean that one level of the story goes to God, but at the other level, if you ask the question in broader terms - that is, what’s the purpose in creation of mankind, which is divided into two sexes? - my answer is: what men, what women are we talking about? men or women of yesterday or today? The answers differ. In my opinion, men and women should know each other and define their relationships. The only thing I can say is that we think women can be this or that and assume this or that role. Now whether [what we think] really is their purpose, I don’t know. One thing is that, in religious thought, the greatest status a creature can be accorded is to be on the road to his or her spiritual perfection, not to be a director or a prime minster. In my talks I made it clear that, contrary to Ghazzali’s view - that women are among Satan’s army and their very essence is to prevent men from reaching God - I say that it’s to help men. It’s important for women for such a status to be recognized; on tha t basis their rights will be regulated. Looked at from a religious viewpoint, I think this is the story, and it’s worth saying it, since when it’s accepted that women bring men closer to God, then we must ask, what women? A woman who doesn’t know herself and has no place in society? or a woman who’s found herself and has social rights? ...
ZMH: These things must be debated; they haven’t yet been. When our religious intellectuals don’t bring them up, then the field is left to the ulama and those who address them outside the realm of religion.
AKS: If there’s moderate thinking in the realm of religion, then I think women have a very good position. I know some women who have good places and use them properly, depending on their tact and knowledge.
ZMH: Look, what you say implies inequality; the very fact that you think women must have a place ...
AKS: No; why do you call it inequality? Obviously, if it isn’t there you must talk about it for a long time in order to establish it. Don’t you accept this? Secondly, women are different from men, this difference is undeniable, so their roles are different.
ZMH: Certainly. But when we say that women’s purpose in creation is to restore peace to men and enable them to get closer to God, then it follows that they should stay at home to care for the children, to cater for his needs and enable him to fulfill his role and duties, and so on.
AKS: This is one job woman can have, and it’s an important one. If a woman can only do this, she shouldn’t feel ashamed; it’s a valuable job and men should be grateful. But it’s not right to make it an imperative [woman should only do this, or never do it]. These days it’s thought that a woman should feel ashamed to be a housewife, when her husband is doing well in society. In my view, it’s no less important than any other [role]. Many of our mothers lived like this, burned like a candle and gave light to others. One characteristic of our society is that it doesn’t allow exclusive roles for women; they can work and perform roles, which bring changes in defining their rights in relations with men, etc. We see that these things have happened, and changes are coming about naturally. But a proper basis for them must be established, it mustn’t be allowed to take a pragmatic and unconscious course. We must start from a basis that’s acceptable to people themselves, that is, from what Moulavi and Ibn Arabi said. T rue, they were people of their time, but their insights can come to our aid. Moulavi says: "love belongs to the world of humans and doesn’t define relations between males and females of other species." We must start from here, or what Ibn Arabi says, or some of the hadith of the Prophet; then you can open the way and proceed step by step. But I admit that the issue hasn’t been tackled from this angle; or if it has, little work has been done; or it took a legal turn, or certain considerations intervened, or they wanted to introduce something in line with feqh Rulings, which to me is a misguided approach. I accept what you say, that the debate is in the hands of those who didn’t know how to approach [the ulama] or the non-religious ones.
Now let’s see what secularists have done in recent years. What they did at the time of the Constitutional Revolution [1906-09] was very positive and achieved things without which women would have little place in our society ... They yielded their fruit at the time of the Islamic Revolution; nobody then imagined women demonstrating in the streets. But now the secularist slogan is faded; they’ve nothing new to say. Unless we go to the roots, nothing will change ... What we want from secularist thinkers is to contribute to debates at root level, for instance what elements of feminism they accept.
We talked for a while about the recent work and ideas of those dealing with women’s issues in Iran and outside, and about gender developments since the Revolution. I said that, judging from my own work in Qom and following the debates there, I felt that we were on the threshold of a major shift in discourses and perspectives on women. Sorush reiterated the necessity to go to roots and fundamentals, and develop theoretical grounds, but saw little prospect of this: "our society - both men and women - is now too ideological ... even intellectuals still take their models from feqh, they haven’t severed that umbilical cord." He admitted that some important changes have taken place in large towns, but was not optimistic that they would lead to a fundamental shift in perspective, since "they need theoretical backing," and this was missing.
To me, Sorush’s ambivalence on gender comes from the very framework and agenda he set himself. Like Shari‘ati, his refusal to address the issue of women through feqh leaves him little choice but to talk in abstractions. This brings his views and position on gender close to those of Javadi Amoli, despite vast differences in their visions and approaches to Islam. Both men by-pass feqh: Amoli taking a theological turn and Sorush, as he puts it, a "phenomenological" one, and they end up with similar readings and understandings of sacred texts when it comes to gender.
 

Notes
 

1. A group of religious and political zealots who emerged in Spring 1995, becoming prominent through their violent disruptions of Sorush’s lectures. The group is small in numbers but reportedly enjoys the support of Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati (member of the Council of Guardians) and has links with the Revolutionary Guards and the Ministry of Information (Intelligence).
2. For details and dates, I have relied on "A biography of Dr Abdol Karim Soroush" dated July 1996, available at "Seraj Homepage", a Website "dedicated to coverage and analysis of his ideas": www.seraj.org.
3. After the Revolution the Iranian government bought the building (imam-bareh); it is now called Kanun-e Touhid (Centre of Unity) and run by students closely linked to the Iranian ruling establishment.
4. In April 1997, in an interview with the Seraj website, Sorush responds to criticism about his role in the cultural revolution, which is a sore point and a major reason why he is rejected by secular intellectuals.
5. Sorush 1995b.
6. Another spur to the disruption was probably Robin Wright’s article calling Sorush the "Luther of Islam"; "An Iranian Luther Shakes the Foundations of Islam," The Guardian, 1 February 1995 [Reproduced from Los Angeles Times].
7. Kiyan 25 (1995), 61.
8. For the English text, see "Seraj Homepage".
9. For a list, see ibid., "Publications of Dr Soroush"; in the References I have given the date of the first edition (when available). Some were written in England, including a book, The Dynamic Nature of the World, in which he expands on Molla Sadra’s idea of "quintessential motion" to develop a philosophical approach to two fundamental tenets of Islam: Unity and Resurrection. Ayatollah Khomeini read this book on Ayatollah Motahhari’s advice, praising it when he saw Sorush in Paris before taking power in Iran (Sorush 1994f, preface, p. 29).
10. Such as Alan Ryan’s The Philosophy of the Social Sciences; E. A. Burt’s Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Sciences, D. Little’s Varieties of Explanation in Social Sciences.
11. Sorush 1994a; the volume also contains the texts of lectures delivered on two successive anniversaries of the formation of the Cultural Revolution Commitee, June 1981 and 1982.
12. Published in book form as Sorush 1991, which by 1994 had gone through four editions, selling over 20,000 copies; Sorush 1994d.
13. For the emergence of the independent press, see Yavari 1995. In 1995, Zanan shared premises with Kiyan, in both senses: office space and intellectual orientation. In 1997 Zanan moved to new premises, and its gender position came to be viewed critically by Kiyan. See Mir-Hosseini 1996c.
14. For his political thought, see Vakili 1996, Wright 1996; for his contribution to modern Islamic discourse, see Boroujerdi 1994 and 1996, Matin-asgari 1997, Cooper 1998.
15. Sorush 1994d, 81-83; 1994e, 39.
16. Nahj ol-Balagheh, Sermon 78, pp. 150-52; for the event, see footnote comments by editor; see also Abbott 1942a, and Spellberg 1991.
17. I later asked Sorush who the man had been. He said he was sitting close by but he thought it was the first time he had come to the mosque. He had asked Sorush to talk to his son, who had a number of questions to ask, but he never came again.
18. Earlier parts of his commentary on the Imam’s Will have appeared in Sorush 1995c and 1997a. Perhaps later volumes will include the texts of his lectures on women.
19. The first time I heard Sorush in person, in Imperial College London in May 1996, the large Iranian audience was electrified; later I attended his lectures on Rumi’s Mathnavi, which he clearly knew by heart, talking without notes.
20. Nahj ol-Balagheh, pp. 434-5, Letter 31 (Will).
21. Nahj ol-Balagheh, p. 81, Sermon 13.
22. Nahj ol-Balagheh, p. 257, Sermon 154.
23. Nahj ol-Balagheh, p. 539, Saying 235.
24. The hadith reads "the people who elect a woman to leadership, or entrust the running (velayat) of their affairs to a woman, will never be victorious or saved." Mernissi based a whole book (1991) on it; for Sa‘idzadeh’s discussion, see Mir-Hosseini 1996b.
25. The recording of the first session ends with Sorush’s talk, a reading and recitation of a mystical story from the Mathnavi. If there was a question/answer follow-up, as in other sessions, it was not recorded.
26. Nahj ol-Balagheh, p. 515, Saying 123.
27. On his return from Mecca (1214), Ibn Arabi wrote a small collection of love-poems, celebrating their mutual friendship, her beauty and learning, but a year later he found it advisable to write a commentary on these poems, explaining them in a mystical sense. See Nicholson 1911, 8, for an edition of the poems and a commentary.
28. For both stories and their treatment by Muslim exegetes, both traditional and modern, see Stowasser 1994, 50-61.
29. He refers to Molla Sadra’s Asfar, which has a chapter on love, and Molla Hadi Sabzevari, who defines love as sexual gratification.
30. The poem is "Ruye Khak" (On the earth), in Farrokhzad 1991, 24. For her life and poetry, see Milani 1992, 127-52.
31. "‘Asheqaneh" (In love), in Farrokhzad 1991, 55.
32. The audience questions ask for clarifications, and elicit no new points. For instance, one asks why the Prophet and Imams were polygamous, and why Ghazzali reached such high status without love.
33. I found it liberating and promising that, despite its devotion to Sorush’s ideas, Zanan validated Forugh Farrokhzad, whose poetry Sorush had described as "too worldly"; see Zanan 16 (Winter 1993), 20 (Autumn, 1994) and 25 (Summer 1995) - the issue discussed in Chapter 6. Interestingly, in early 1998 Sorush gave a series of thirty-five talks on Hafez and his philosophy, in which one of the main themes was the importance of earthly love.
34. Javadi-Amoli 1993a, 38-9.
35. Sorush 1996a.
36. Sorush 1996b.
37. Sorush 1994e, 39-40. The passage is reproduced in a footnote.
38. Lecture delivered in May 1992 in Isfahan University; see Sorush 1994e, 21-43.