“Woman, life, freedom” has been ringing for more than seven months and has raised awareness in the free world, filled with admiration for Iranian youth leading a universal fight. Iranians in the interior of the country, tirelessly supported by the diaspora, have sparked a revolution to overthrow the Islamic regime and replace it with a secular democracy.
However, secularism is not a new concept in Iran. Iran’s history is not limited to the 44 years of the Islamic regime founded by Ayatollah Khomeini. Rather, it is illustrated by a fascinating thousand-year-old history. The Persian Empire is an example of governance and administration thanks to its founder, King Cyrus the Great. Cyrus was a “liberal” monarch who produced the first declaration of human rights, the “Edict of Cyrus”, a replica of which is on display at the United Nations headquarters. He was a source of inspiration for the founding fathers of the United States, such as Thomas Jefferson. In his writings, this king of Persia evokes the first indicators of secularism: neutrality, equality before the law and protection and freedom.
However, after the Arab-Muslim conquest of Persia, the Iranian people struggled to preserve their pre-Islamic language and culture, as well as to assert their individuality. Iran passes successively through dark and glorious periods, but always remains misunderstood and ill-defined.
Under the Qadjar dynasty (1796-1925), Iran suffered a period of neglect and dominant religious power. The condition of women there is then deplorable, women find themselves isolated and their rights dominated by Sharia.
Subsequently, the secular reforms introduced by Reza Shah (1925-1941), first king of the Pahlavi dynasty, changed the situation and saved Iran. In particular, the law on the abolition of the veil and the chador in public places which was reinforced from 1936 to 1941, and arouses controversy today among opponents of the Pahlavi monarchy. Yet Reza Shah’s decision was a show of goodwill towards his people.
When Reza Shah Pahlavi became king, Iran in the early 19e century is underdeveloped with a high rate of illiteracy, ravaged by disease, possessing no infrastructure; but above all, an ultra-religious society fallen under the yoke of patriarchy and misogyny. In this situation, only the obligatory withdrawal of the chador from obscurantism allowed the liberation of Iranian women. For Reza Shah, religious domination was Iran’s main enemy, the harbinger of a catastrophe: the future domination of the clergy.
In a surge of modernization, Reza Shah then bet on the education and emancipation of women, as well as secularist reforms, to align society with his vision of a new Iran. In his own words, “Iran could not be free until women were free”, and that until then the country had acted “as if women were different people and were not part of the Iranian population. Thus, the freedom of Iran must go through the emancipation of women.
By this fact, he saw the hijab as an obstacle to modernity and progress; a tangible and visible tool of inferiority, and a symbol of inequality. Reza Shah saw the removal of the hijab as the only way for women to enter society. He saw it as a way of empowering women.
His son and successor, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, pursued modernization goals in the same vein. Educated in Switzerland in a secular and French-speaking school, the Le Rosey Institute, he developed progressive and Western ideas. Thus, in 1941, the new Shah of Iran repealed the ban on the veil and left women the choice to wear it or not. Iran is therefore trying to move forward with the times. The Shah leaves it up to education, modern society and time to inform women of their rights and freedoms.
In 1963, eligibility and voting rights were granted to women – eight years before Switzerland. Then, women were elected deputies and senators in 1963, and the first woman Minister of Education entered politics in 1968. A series of reforms and laws followed during the famous “white revolution”, and the condition female evolves considerably in a few years.
Unfortunately, society was still torn between modernity, communist ideology and religious obscurantism. Today, young Iranians demand a future without ideologies and open to the world. A return to the unfinished project of modernizing Iran.
For the third time in history, another Pahlavi, worthy of the name, can guide the country towards the future that these young people deserve: Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, exiled in the United States since the Islamic revolution, and fervent defender of a secular democracy in Iran. As the saying goes, never two without three?