On Solidarity

Sometimes, the easiest way to offend people is to invite them on a holiday to Iran. It's bad enough to say you're going there yourself - they get very quiet, narrow their eyes, and say something like, "you DO know that, in Iran, -" or "I THOUGHT you were a feminist". But the fun really starts if you actually invite them over, for a road trip to Isfahan, or sightseeing in Shiraz. That's when you get that look saying, "I who have sipped the sweet nectar of emancipation, and bathed in the ambrosia of equal opportunity, you expect me to do such a thing", and so forth.

It's the topography of evil that's striking. I don't think the problem is that of having to give up certain legal rights for the duration of a trip. Ironically, given the significance of class in most "third-world" countries, in many ways, a western tourist - male or female - enjoys more privileges than most Iranians tout court.

It's a more intricate issue, arguably a matter of contamination: step off the plane, and you're in the Land of festering machismo. Mother Theresa in a leper colony.

The point I usually try to make, is that, in this sense, Iran is actually one of the lesser evils in the region. If you won't touch Iran for fear of being sullied, there's a number of places whose name you should never utter again, not without washing your mouth out with Body Shop soap.

The worst are the Human Rights people. I used to think cynicism regarding human rights associations only came from government officials covering their backs, or academics a little zealous about their postcolonial credentials.

It so happens that, just a few weeks ago, the International Association for Human Rights in Bremen (Internationaler Menschenrechtverein Bremen), launched a campaign in the defense of three Iranian women extradited from Germany. The latter were forced by the German police to wear headscarves for photographs upon being extradited - this as a gesture of goodwill, in the overall context of politicoeconomic rapprochement with Iran. It's hard to discern, however, whether the Association is more concerned by the behaviour of the German government, or by the Islamic Republic.

The women in question had "risked their lives in leaving Iran" (?), where women were "enslaved womb-machines" (?), who "existed only for the pleasure and satisfaction of the men" (?). "May no more women be extradited to a country where they are held as slaves", etc., etc. What is striking here isn't the customary foaming at the mouth, but that, according to this campaign, even the violence perpetrated by the German police is a mere effect of Islam, Iran, and suchlike: "the brutality of women's oppression in Iran becomes apparent when we witness that, to extradite women, the German authorities must meet the standards set by the Islamic Republic of Iran, by forcing them to veil" (my translations; cf. http://www.humanrights.de). More contamination, from what we all thought was a safe distance.

The welfare of women in Iran is furthest from the kinky minds of our birkenstocked samaritians. They have an agenda of their own. Indeed, with every time they garble on about the degradations and depravations of being an Iranian woman, they make them look a little more like semi-idiotic, submissive subhumans - in dire need of help from abroad.

As Fatima Mernissi has pointed out: there are two types of people who say that feminism cannot possibly be home-grown in Islamic countries, but is an import from Western capitals: Conservative Islamic Male Leaders, and Provincial Western Feminists.

All of which is to say: more often than not, gestures of outrage and solidarity are endearing at best. Noone needs pity, revulsion, or flags a-waving. A little respect would do nicely.

TZ