Iran: the veil, still a symbol of feminism?

The death on September 16 of Mahsa Amini, 22, in the jails of the Iranian morality police, sparked a real revolt. Something to create a historic moment… and to question in the West the place of the choice to wear the veil in the public space as a feminist action. We take stock.

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• Read also: Thousands of Iranians take to the streets to defend the wearing of the veil

We thus see flourishing in the French-speaking press analyzes seeking to know if this revolt would call into question this association. Three panelists will also look into this question.

For political scientist Sami Aoun, director of the Observatory on the Middle East and North Africa of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair in Strategic and Diplomatic Studies and retired professor of the School of Applied Politics at the University of Sherbrooke, Above all, you have to put yourself back into the local context.

“This uprising is a much stronger repeat of previous uprisings of the last 10-15 years,” he begins.

He explains that the place of the obligation to wear the veil in the public space also comes from his starting point.

“This sequence starts from Iranian Kurdistan. The Kurdish people have always been more liberal on these matters of the veil and the application of religious dogma. It was then that the blaze was picked up by young people and university circles in big cities like Tehran, ”he comments.

Continuing on this particular question of the wearing of the veil in Iranian society, he puts forward the question of free choice.

“The history of Iran since the beginning of the 20^e century concerning the place of the veil is a story of obligation for women. Either the latter is almost forbidden to wear it, or the latter has an absolute obligation to cover up.

“The Iranian woman was then carried around as a tool for political instrumentalization when she only wants to have a choice,” he concludes.

Free choice: Iranian vision c. western view

Despite this analysis, the idea of ​​not dealing with these uprisings in a vacuum is strong in the West.

David Santarossa, a columnist at Qub radio, wants to reflect on how this struggle of Iranian women can have an influence on how veil and feminism can be associated here.

“You have to take into consideration what is happening in Iran when discussing the veil in Quebec. Obviously, these are two different contexts and the nuances are essential, but we do not live in a vacuum. There is a symbolic charge to the Islamic veil, regardless of the reasons for which a woman will wear it. This symbolic charge is clearly influenced by what is happening in Iran at the moment,” he explains.

The question of this symbolic charge is also what Jeannette Bougrab, doctor of public law, French academic and former Secretary of State, was able to explain in a tribune at Le Figaro.

“We must not be mistaken about the meaning of the veil. It is neither a social phenomenon nor a fashion artifact. It serves a deliberate gender policy that aims to enslave the female mind and body,” she explains.

As explained by Francine Descarries, associate professor member of the Department of Sociology and of the Institute for Research in Feminist Studies at the University of Quebec at Montreal, it is this point which makes it difficult to apply or modify feminist visions of the Iranian question to our Western approach.

If for her, on a personal level, the veil is patriarchal and represents a sign of female submission, she does not want to get in the way of what it can represent politically and culturally for people from this region of the world, as for people affiliating with their culture.

“For these struggles, it is necessary to situate oneself in a position of exteriority. We have to be sympathetic, but not recover. We must avoid cultural appropriation of the issue of the Iranian uprising,” she explains.

She adds that “these uprisings cannot and should not then challenge feminism as it is thought of or as it is currently evolving, because the latter is above all a struggle for equality and free access to life. public space”.

She concludes by explaining that “what is fantastic here is to see that women have enough strength to organize themselves to have more freedoms”.

Several dozen people have died since the protests began in Iran, and many movements have organized in the country in support of Iranian women in recent days.

A demonstration even took place this Saturday afternoon in Montreal.