The penal system is one of the main instruments for installing and sustaining such a society and administration. In this article I will confine myself to four different aspects of the Islamic Penal Codes known as qesas, ta’zirat, hodoud, and diyat, which I will define as we come to them. The main ideas developed in the article consist of three points:
1. The theoretical foundation of the Islamic Penal Codes is a social model based on sexual apartheid. The chief elements of this model are first: a belief that women are deficient in their natural and “innate” potentials and abilities, including their psychological-makeup and intellectual capacity. Second, a belief in a social and family order where men must be guardians over women, and women must submit. Third, a belief in an unequal system of rights and consequently, wherever the question of the reproduction of such an order is concerned, of a system of punishment that is also unequal.
2. The Islamic Penal Codes are based on violence in its most primitive forms. These not only authorise organised state violence, but encourage male violence against women within the family and in society.
3. While the Islamic Penal Codes have born down a tremendous injustice on the women of our country, they have also been an area where women have stood up against the regime in every possible shape, with some victories to their credit. It is no exaggeration to claim that women have inflicted the greatest defeats on the regime in the realm of culture and “public morality and chastity” and its symbol: the Islamic dress code (hejab). By their persistent and fierce resistance women have in fact made the complete execution of the law of Islamic ta’zirat impossible.
What are these codes which give legal shelter to sexual apartheid? Through these laws women are not just second class citizens, half a man, but at times their very existence is disregarded. Someone pointed out that our women have managed to achieve equality in one field only: equal right to imprisonment, exile, torture, being killed, and now being slaughtered [1]. In fact in the Islamic Penal Codes, Iranian women have the unenviable distinction of having a greater share of punishment.
This was written by Ms Arshadi, a practising lawyer in Iran prior to her forced exile to Europe. She is currently an advocate in France and is active in human rights and especially of the rights of women. She has been especially active in defence of the rights of women in Iran.
