Joumana Haddad (Photo: Joumana Haddad/Wiki Commons)

She’s the founder of a print and online magazine called Jasad (“Body”).

It’s the first erotic magazine published in Arabic for women in the Islamic world.

Haddad now has a new book out with a very provocative title.

It’s called I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman.

The book is part autobiography, part political diatribe.

Haddad says it’s a call to Arab women – and the entire Eastern and Western worlds – to rethink their idea of what an Arab woman is.

Anchor Lisa Mullins talks with Haddad.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. Lebanese poet and writer, Joumana Haddad is used to controversy. She’s the founder of a print and online magazine called “Jasad” or “The Body”. It’s the first erotic magazine published in Arabic for women in the Islamic world. Haddad has now written a new book out with a very provocative title. It’s called “I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman”. The book is part autobiography, part political diatribe. Haddad says it’s a call to Arab women and the entire Eastern and Western worlds to rethink their idea of what an Arab woman is.

Joumana Haddad: The first motivation behind this book has been an interview that a Western journalist was doing with me. You know, two years ago I started doing a cultural magazine called “Body” which is an erotic, quite controversial magazine and this particular journalist asked me a question which made me feel frustrated. She said, “I didn’t imagine that there were women like you in the Arab world,” and so I…

Mullins: Do you know how common that that thought would be?

Haddad: I know. I know. Whenever you say “Arab woman” what’s the first image that pops in to mind? You know, veil, subdued, oppressed, etc, and I’m not saying that’s not true. The cliche is always true, unfortunately, and they do represent the majority. This is one of our biggest problems, but what I wanted to say here is that it is incomplete and that there is a difference Arab woman and that she deserves to be heard and seen especially in the West, but also in the Arab world, because, in my opinion, she represents hope just by being there, just by staying there.

Mullins: What about when you make the distinction between yourself and the other women who, for instance, wear the veil? Just to put it very basically, inherent in that argument is the idea that they are trapped, that they cannot think for themselves, that they don’t think for themselves, that they don’t choose to wear the veil when you know that there are women who do.

Haddad: I’m quite convinced and I can say it in a very extreme way that I know they don’t because either it’s the result of a brainwashing that makes them think it is their choice or they have so much, you know, dignity that they don’t want to admit that it has been forced on them, but you can only talk about choice and freedom of choice when you have alternatives. You cannot talk about freedom of choice when, if you don’t wear the veil, you’re going to be either harassed or beaten up or killed or whatever.

Mullins: Although, you know, there are young people even, who have grown up when they have not had the veil imposed on them and, again, we’re just using this as one example, who have chosen now to wear if for whatever reason. I mean you’ve, you know these people. I’ve met some of them myself.

Haddad: I know.

Mullins: They’ve had the freedom to not do it and they choose to.

Haddad: I know and this, many of these cases are, in a way, a reaction to what they perceive as an invasion of the West, of Western values on their lives and they do it as a self punishment I think without realizing it and when I talk about patriarchal societies, I’m talking also about women, because many women have patriarchal values. I know many women until now even in the West where they are pregnant are happier when they have boys than girls. I know many women who still raise their girls to dream ultimately of the rich guy or the husband that the, the good husband that will save them. So this is where it has to change at first.

Mullins: I want to ask you about something that you were also identified with because of your writings, because of your writings, because of your influences, and certainly because of the website. How has sexuality and eroticism become part of what defines you and your mission?

Haddad: It was a very spontaneous rebirth for me because ever since I started reading on my own, and I mean by that not reading the books that my father used to bring me because my father was an intellectual and he used to read a lot and bring me books.

Mullins: Like what?

Haddad: And then I started, book from my age, you know, books for kids like, especially from the French and Arabic literature, but then at the age of eleven, twelve I started searching in his library for the books he had hidden and this is how I read [xx], Miller, Nabokov, [xx] etc, etc.

Mullins: Were they in the back of the shelf?

Haddad: Exactly. They were hidden. I always see myself up on a chair trying to reach…

Mullins: Such a troublemaker.

Haddad: …trying to reach for the hidden books. So I think it’s not something you choose. I think it’s something that chooses you. I mean I don’t know why I’m interested in erotica and sexuality, but I know I am and I know that when I write, I feel like I’m writing with my body. I feel like I’m writing with my fingernails, with my flesh, with my blood. It’s a very sensual and a very physical act for me.

Mullins: But this is political as well?

Haddad: It’s very political, especially in a country like mine. Like, for example, when I started writing, my first book was in French and I thought, “Well, it’s because French is our mother tongue in Lebanon and it’s fine. This is why I chose French.” But then I realized in my twenties that no, that it was because of cowardice. I was afraid to confront the Arabic language and to say the things that I say in that language and this is how I switched. I started writing my poetry in Arabic and my first poem in that are like scenes of war. You could see even the dead and the wounded on the floor.

Mullins: One of the things you say in the book is, “I’m not the Hugh Hefner of the Arab world,” but I wonder, but you definitely, I can vouch for that because you’re sitting across for me, but I’m still curious as to how writing about it and writing about in such a provocative way or even talking about ancient Arab writers who have written about sexuality, why that is an useful tool?

Haddad: I think because the taboos that have been imposed on the Arabic culture and language are insulting for us. It means that we are minors. It means that we can not discuss these things.

Mullins: You mean women or Arabs?

Haddad: Everything that I talk about becomes, the dose of it becomes even higher when we’re talking about women. All the constrictions and the chains, they become even worse, but they are imposed on the Arab human being in general. I’m fed up with the castration of my language and my culture. We, in the Arab world, live in a certain denial of our body and sexualities and it is generating lots of, you know, complexes and unhealthy relationships with ourselves. It’s as if we have to be ashamed of having those bodies and this cannot be a good way to live your life.

Mullins: OK, but again, let me just ask this: Why the body?

Haddad: Why not? Because it’s a total part of who we are. It’s an important part of who we are. I’m not one of those who separate between the body and the spirit and the mind. It’s a whole for me. If I’m not connected with my body, then I’m not connected with my mind and vice versa. So if I’m just deleting that part of who I am, I’m a stranger to myself and I don’t think it’s, this is how I want to live my life at least.

Mullins: Joumana Haddad, Thank you.

Haddad: Thank you so much.

Mullins: Joumana Haddad is a Lebanese writer and poet and the editor of the cultural erotic magazine “Jasad” or “Body”. We have a link to her website at theworld.org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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Lisa Mullins: I am Lisa Mullins and this is The World, co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH in Boston. Military leaders from 6 West African nations convened in Liberia this week. They were there to talk about how to keep violence from marring next month’s Liberian elections. Successive civil wars have rocked Liberia in recent decades, but a fragile peace has held for the past 8 years. Key to rebuilding Liberia now are efforts to heal the country’s psychological wounds. Liberian author and peace activist Leymah Gbowee knows these wounds well. She counsels the victims of terror and its perpetrators including child soldiers.

Leymah Gbowee: I often say to young people and to women as we do the work that being non-violent is not being a coward. It’s one of the most powerful tools because even those who pick up guns are cowards. For, for you to be able to stand in front of the one who raped, abused and murdered some of your family members and speak truth to them, that’s the most powerful tool.

Mullins: Now, when you were dealing with some of the child soldiers… ex-child soldiers…who had fought for Charles Taylor and under Charles Taylor, you explained in some great detail about what it was like, your own struggles, to deal with these young men who took pride in, as they put it, being evil, who would threaten you; who would brag about having raped so many women as they were child soldiers. How did you deal with these young men yourself?

Gbowee: Initially, when I started working with the Lutheran Church Trauma Healing and Reconciliation Program, I was their case worker. As I worked with these boys, the first, second week, third week, I got to know their stories and within a month or two months it dawned on me that, first, these were also victims. Just as I was a 17 year old and had to look after siblings that were 10, 8 and 9 during the conflict, these boys were 8 and 9 like my siblings but unfortunately for them they didn’t have a 17 year old sibling to look after them and they fell in the wrong hands. When I listened to their story, working with my own trauma, coming to understand where they found themselves, there were times when they came from that space of being the top fighters – you saw the child in them. And so, I got to understand that these are vulnerable people. These are a group of individuals who are looking for direction; in most instances, looking for love.

Mullins: So you can see the child in them, but there is still a lot to deal with in them as child soldiers?

Gbowee: Definitely, but also I will just cite an example. There’s this one child soldier that I continue to have a relationship with…I have a relationship with a lot of them, even ’til today, but this one really because we are from the same ethnic group. We were having a conversation about rape and he said to me, he says, “Leymah, why do you people talk about rape, rape, rape. I didn’t rape anyone.” I said, “Did you force anyone to have sex?” He said, “But, it’s not rape. Isn’t that what women were made for?” I said to myself, seriously, this is the child in this boy coming out because he’s being socialized to believe from his earlier stage, living in a village with a mother and a father and seeing his mother having children every year – the first thing that comes to his mind is that women were made to have babies and, regardless, the process of having sex is what they were made to do.

Mullins: Well, where do you go from there? You know, what’s the way out?

Gbowee: I think the way out now is to already start a conversation with young people – young boys, young girls. If you went into a tiny community and asked a little girl if she wanted to be a peace activist, maybe you’d find one person who’d tell you yes. Who wants to be a supermodel or who wants to be the next xyz musician? The answer would be more than 100 young people because the media has portrayed big boobs, small waists, big backsides as the in-thing. So, boys growing up now don’t see brains, all they see is bodies. Girls growing up now, a lot of them, all they think is about beauty. So, I think we who call ourselves activists really need to make a conscious effort to engage with young women. Make them to understand the value of working, the value of using your brain, the value of other things other than beauty. Yes, beauty is good. I woke up this morning and I think I look good. I don’t have to show my boobs and my backside to feel like I look good.

Mullins: I wonder as you look now at what’s been transpiring over almost the past year in Africa, and that is the Arab Spring; I wonder what your feelings are in terms of where Liberia stands these days. I mean, Liberia has been at peace for about 8 years now. The revolution there came in a quite different way from what we are seeing in the Arab Spring countries. What are your feelings about them?

Gbowee: Well, what I am hoping to see as part of the Arab Spring is also the Spring of the women within the Arab Spring, to ensure that their issues are taken. Having said that, I think, in little ways in Liberia now, when it comes to the rights of women, we’re seeing them do some of the same things that they do. Two days ago, some of the women in one of our government ministries were insulted by the minister because they went to seek clarification for something. In the old days, those women would have gone back and sat down, “He’s the boss, whatever.” They disrupted the work and said there’s gonna be no work in that particular government ministry until the minister do a public apology to them for the verbal abuse he uttered against them. So, you see it happening in little spaces especially as it relates to young people.

Mullins: Leymah Gbowee, thank you.

Gbowee: You’re welcomed.

Mullins: Liberian women rights activist, Leymah Gbowee. Her new memoir is called “Mighty Be Our Powers”.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Maha al-Qahtani posted her ticket on yfrog

Women in Saudi Arabia have been openly driving cars in defiance of an official ban on female drivers in the ultra-conservative kingdom. The direct action has been organized on social network sites, where women have been posting images and videos of themselves behind the wheel. Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Maha al-Qahtani, one of the drivers. 

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World. Something extraordinary happened in Saudi Arabia today. A number of women hopped into their cars and drove. As in, they did the driving themselves. And in Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to get behind the wheel. Many of the women also filmed themselves and tweeted their act of defiance.  One of them is Maha Al Qatani. She’s in Riyadh.  Miss Qatani has driven before but this was her first time driving in the Saudi captial.

Maha Al Qatani: I drove in New York. I drove in Bloomington, Indiana, Gloucester, Indiana, but this is my first time in Riyadh. I drive independently.

Werman: Right. What kind of car do you drive:

Al Qatani: Hummer.

Werman: A Humvee?

Al Qatani: Hummer. Hummer.

Werman: A hummer.

Al Qatani: Hummer car H3.

Werman: That’s a lot of car for your first time out in Rehad.

Al Qatani: No I drove a 4×4 truck last summer.

Werman: Ok. Not a totally new experience. Tell me why did you do it?

Al Qatani: I think this is my right and I have to have it. It’s my choice to say I don’t want to drive or not but it’s my right. I have to have it. We have to make the change. So when I went to this evening, I would say give me the ticket and I feel like, now, OK.

Werman: Alright, so back up a second. You said you got a ticket this evening? Tell me what happened:

Al Qatani: Yes, this evening, I drove with my husband and three ladies in the back seat and we drove along Kingside Road, it’s the highway in Riyadh.

Werman: And what was the ticket for that you were given by the police?

Al Qatani: ‘Cause I didn’t have a drivers license.

Werman: Drivers license.

Al Qatani: I showed them my ID, my international driver’s license, and I don’t know they wrote just she doesn’t have driver’s license.

Werman: So the ticket was not for driving while being a woman, I don’t know if that’s the charge, but it was for driving without a Saudi Arabian license?

Al Qatani: Yes. The police man, he stopped my car, and he just asked me for the keys, and asked my husband to get down and go to back.  He sat for ten minutes in his car.

Werman: Were you scared?

Al Qatani: No, no. Actually, when I saw my husband in the car, I said, what they want from my husband? I was like scared about him more than myself.  I had already my extra clothes, my prayer rug, I had also, with me, my toothbrush just in case.  If they put me in jail I had my stuff with me.

Werman: So you were ready with an overnight back just in case they put you in jail?

Al Qatani: Yes, just in case. Just in case.

Werman: You know, women who tried doing this protest in driving twenty years ago were humiliated by authorities, many of them lost their jobs and their husbands were penalized as well.  You’ve been tweeting about this under your own name.  How worried are you about reprisals or what may come next?

Al Qatani: I’m worried about my children, their future.  They ask us, “Why do you do it, Mama? Why? Why?” I looked out to say, No, we have to fight for our rights. I know it’s hard, but you have to do it.  I know we can survive.  We have to do it, we have to.

Werman:  Maha Al Qatani, who for the first time today, drove a car in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and also got a ticket for driving in Riyadh. Thank you very much for joining us.

Al Qatani:  Thank you, thank you very much.

Werman: By the way you can see a picture of Maha’s ticket and follow her twitter stream at theworld.org

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Follow Maha al-Qahtani on Twitter

Read tweets about Women driving in Saudi Arabia

She’s been labeled Saudi Arabia’s Rosa Parks. She’s also been condemned as a sinner who deserves to be flogged. She is Manal al-Sharif and she wants the right to drive.

A few weeks ago, al-Sharif posted a video on Youtube showing her doing just that: driving in the city al-Khobar in the eastern part of the country.
Her friend Wajeha al-Huwaider filmed the journey from the passenger seat.

“It went very well. We drove for about an hour in Al-Khobar streets and people were looking at us surprised but they didn’t really bother us, they didn’t try to follow us or anything,” al-Huwaider said.

Al- Sharif tried again two days later, driving in the company of her brother. The police spotted her, arrested her and released her the same day. But they came back the next day, after her online campaign calling on Saudi women to start driving on June 17th went viral.

Al-Sharif was held for nine days. She no longer speaks publicly about driving. Her friend, Al-Huwaider does though and she says the campaign is about more than being able to drive. “I want things to get better for women. I want life to be easier for us, to feel that we belong to this country,” al-Huwaider said.

Eman al-Nafjan, who writes a blog from Riyadh, agrees that in the ultraconservative kingdom, allowing women behind the wheel is a revolutionary idea.

“If women drive it’s the point of no return,” said al-Nafjan. “Once women are allowed to drive we are no longer the society we once were.; that women finally have a voice, that they’re not dominated by men, they are not controled by men.”

If the newly passionate debate about driving is being fuelled by uprisings in other Arab and north African nations, it only underscores the dramatic differences between Saudi Arabia and its neighbors. Madawi al-Rasheed has studied Saudi society for years. Saudi herself, she lives in London and teaches at King’s College.

“In a way, when Arabs are discussing their political rights the future of their constitutions like what is happening in Egypt and Tunisia we find that Saudi debate is so backward.

When Arab women have participated in revolutions, in real change they have been very active, Saudi women are marginalized,” al-Rasheed said.

Al-Rasheed admires the courage of the small number of women activists in Saudi Arabia and she understands why they want to drive., but she says what’s really needed are fundamental political reforms that would limit the king’s absolute power. Al-Rasheed believes that won’t happen unless women gather together in larger numbers.

“If you have a women’s movement that calls for rights beyond driving, beyond selling lingerie in shops, then women are going to have rights that are not going to be reversed. And this is the only say I can see to move forward.,” she said.

Inside the country though, Eman al-Nafjan says progress has to happen step by step.

“If it’s recognized that I can drive then I can ask for other things as well and I can speak up about other issues,” al-Nafjan said.

Some women have taken up the cause in recent days. Six women were arrested in Riyadh last week for driving on an empty street. But neither al-Nafjan or Wajeha al-Huwaider believe many other women will take to their cars in Saudi cities tomorrow, possibly out of fear of arrest and punishment.

Still, they both expect the king will end the driving ban soon. Professor al-Rasheed thinks they are far too optimistic to expect royal largesse soon.

“If the Saudi population is going to continue to wait for “makroma” – that is a royal gift – they’re going to wait for a very long time,” al-Rasheed said.

Al-Rasheed may have a point. It’s been 20 years since a group of women lost their jobs and were ostracized for driving their cars in protest against the ban.
This time around, emboldened by the change they see in nearby nations, some women are hoping this just might be the Saudi women’s spring.

By Laura Lynch

Downtown Riyadh is routinely choked with traffic and that is not a surprise in a city with no public transport system. Still, a close look at who is behind the wheel reveals one thing that sets Saudi Arabia apart:

All the drivers are men.

Three years ago, Wajeha al-Huwaider became something of a YouTube sensation in Saudi Arabia when she was videotaped driving a car. Al-Huwaider wanted to make a point.

“As you can see, I am now driving a car in a rural area,” Al Huwaider said as she drove along. “Women here are allowed to drive in rural areas. Unfortunately, where we need to drive in cities, it remains banned.”

In fact, women driving in rural areas is only tolerated. It is still officially forbidden. Al-Huwaider’s protest wasn’t the first. 20 years ago, Fawzia al-Bakr did something even bolder. It was just after Iraq invaded Kuwait, when Saudi Arabia was readying for war.

Most of the drivers who worked as chauffeurs left Saudi Arabia, according to al-Bakr. So she and a group of women formed a convoy and got behind the wheel in downtown Riyadh. Al-Bakr smiles at the memory.

“It’s so funny you because when I drove from the parking lot onto the street, a guy in his car said, ‘Saudi women don’t drive,’ and he said ‘Oh my God’… so I just drove away with my car,” al-Bakr said.

Paying the price

She laughs now, but Al-Bakr, pregnant with her first child at the time, paid a price. She received death threats; she and the others were denounced in mosques across the country. They and their husbands were barred from foreign travel for a year. Some working in government lost their jobs.

Gen. Mansour al-Turki of the Interior Ministry says Saudi women have more freedom now than they did two decades ago, but there are limits.

“Driving a car is another subject,” al-Turki said. “The public is not interested in that. Of course there are the minority who would like to have this but you cannot provide the minority with such rights, which will be challenged by the majority. So you have to be careful here, you have to be wise on how to provide people with changes.”

Al-Turki says the government’s task is to steer a middle course. There are those who push for greater freedom, he said, and those who pull in the opposite direction.

“They think there should be no freedom at all, that women should stay home, women should not go to school women should not work. Well, the government wants to be able to change according to the people’s needs.”

Reshaping attitudes

There are many Saudi women who see change as a threat to family unity and their culture. Despite that, women’s lives, and Saudi society, are changing. Dr. Maha al-Muneef is the woman behind reshaping attitudes toward domestic violence. She started the National Family Safety program with approval from King Abdullah in 2005.

“As a pediatrician working in the hospital and seeing abused children, I couldn’t really accept it, and I couldn’t really let it go without really addressing the problems from the beginning from all aspects,” al-Muneef said.

Al-Muneef has slowly pushed ahead, training social workers, law enforcement officials and judges about the need to put an end to violence in the home. There are still numerous cases of courts letting abusers off lightly. But Al-Muneef said awareness is growing, and she cited the growing number of women who are willing to file reports.

“I think Saudi Arabia is going to see more and more cases and more and more problems reported,” al-Mumeef said. “Then we are going to start seeing some improvement and some decline in the number of cases.”

That will probably take years.

************

What angers Fawiza al-Bakr the most, even more than not being able to drive, is the fact that women must have male guardians.

“We still have the guardianship system,” al Bakr said. “You cannot travel on your own. You cannot even produce your own passport. If I travel, I have to have my husband or any guardianship permission, which I think it’s appalling, it’s horrible. I think when you take it within our present time you cannot believe that we still actually have these laws against women.”

For all the things she dislikes, al-Bakr agreed the situation has improved. Her own mother became destitute after her husband left to marry another woman. Al-Bakr said it was a tough, but inspiring upbringing.

“I remember doing cakes and selling them, raising chickens, selling eggs. She was great. And she survived with seven kids.”

Al-Bakr’s mother was illiterate and shut out of an education, so she made certain her daughters finished university before marrying. Now, al-Bakr is a professor with children of her own. She hopes her teenage daughter will see more change in her lifetime.

“I was just passing by my daughter’s room and she was actually listening on her laptop. And I said so strange for 14 years old to actually sit and she said, it’s very impressive and I am learning a lot. And you know I would not do this in my age. So they’re looking to the world in a different way. They are looking to themselves as a global citizen,” al-Bakr said.

That’s not the way many other Saudis see themselves. They prize their culture, their values and their religion. In a country where religious leaders play a powerful role, women’s rights advocates may only see creeping change in the years to come.

Laura’s coverage from Saudi Arabia:
• Saudi government warns against protests
• Protest in Saudi Arabia
• All quiet in Saudi Arabia?
• Laura’s blog post: The Saudi way?
• Follow Laura Lynch on twitter

• Khaira Arby on MySpace
• Global Hit archive
• Global Hit on Facebook

• “Change for Equality” homepage
• “I was Iran’s last woman minister”

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: Iran has been acting provocatively in other ways.  Authorities this month confiscated Shirin Ebadi’s Nobel Peace prize medal.  Activists say the move against the Iranian human rights lawyer exemplifies Teheran’s hostility toward women. Mahnaz Afkhami was the Minister for Women’s Affairs in Iran before the 1979 Revolution.  She now lives in Bethesda, Maryland.  Afhkahmi wrote the forward to a new book called “Iranian Women’s One Million Signatures Campaign for Equality.”  The book describes a drive to overturn Iran’s so-called family laws.

MAHNAZ AFKHAMI: Mainly the rights of women within the family from the right of a woman to marry without anyone’s permission, the right to divorce, the right to guardianship of children, the right to travel freely, the right to hold a job without her husband’s permission, a whole range of law. Actually, you know, it’s called family laws, but in effect this set of legislation controls all aspects of a woman’s life, woman’s worth as a citizen.

WERMAN: So to get a lot of signatures on a petition, you have to convince people that what you’re doing is right, and obviously this movement inside Iran has had to be very innovative. One thing that really caught my eye, and is innovative is this guerilla theater that the campaign has been conducting.  Tell us about that.

AFKHAMI: Yes, actually what they want is not just one million names under a petition, but what they want is really to recruit one million activists. So this involves really convincing people, getting them mobilized. And so since they’re not allowed to gather in large numbers or hold workshops freely and that type of thing, so what they do is improvise. They have street theater for instance. At bus stops they begin a conversation between two of the campaign activists taking the two sides of an argument, and people gather around them and begin to participate in the argument.  And then, before long the major issues of the legislation come under discussion by people who don’t even know they’re being part of the street theater. And it’s been said that in previous times police have come to stop what they consider an argument, and sometimes they have joined in the discussion and then the two people who started it get on the bus and leave. They do it in different places. You know, they do it in taxi cabs, beauty shops, in schools, wherever women gather.

WERMAN: So Ms. Afkhami, I mean, it’s a pretty radical program you’ve got going.  We’re talking not just a simple petition here.  Is that an especially toxic form of activism in Iran, and how have the authorities of the Islamic Revolution reacted to this?

AFKHAMI: Well, they haven’t liked it one bit actually, and what they haven’t liked also is the fact that the movement has grown to include other social justice movements.  And this is something that very important. At least 30% of signatures on the campaign are from men and men are really very active in the campaign, and they take it on as their own aspiration and not just something that they’re supporting the women for. And that worries the authorities a great deal and, of course, you know, almost everyone who was one of the founders or leaders of the movement has been harassed, has been imprisoned, is in prison or has some kind of suspended sentence hanging over their heads.

WERMAN: You live here in the United States but the author of the book, “Campaign for Equality” Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani lives in Iran.  Has she been able to be public about this book and this petition drive?

AFKHAMI: Yes, she has, as others do, a number of websites in constant interaction both in Iran and with the outside world, and she has that website. She has published the book in Persian, although surreptitiously without permission. And she asked to have the book publicized in the United States, and although we were all rather concerned about the backlash, they are very courageous women. They really know what dangers they face and, of course, that’s part of also being very young, and most of them are. Most of them are under the age of 30.

WERMAN: We should add that you’re in the United States because after the 1979 Revolution the Ayatollahs put you on their death list, and charged you with corruption on earth and warring with God.  I supposed you’ve had quite a few years to think about what that actually means.  What does warring with God mean?

AFKHAMI: Well, at first it was very frightening because at the beginning of the Revolution there was a lot of also state executions being conducted outside.  The only other woman who was a minister was actually executed on these charges in Iran. At first, it was very frightening, but actually as time goes by I feel in such  august company.  All of my wonderful colleagues, democrats, freedom fighters, strugglers for human rights, all of them have something of that sort of a label attached to them. So I feel very proud to be in that company.

WERMAN: Mahnaz Afkhami was in charge of Women’s Affairs for the Iranian government before the Revolution.  She’s now a proponent of women’s rights in the Islamic world.  She spoke with us from the BBC studios in Washington.

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• Jeb Sharp on Clinton’s demand for an end of the sexual abuse
• Jeb Sharp’s award-winning series on rape in Congo (2008)
• UNIFEM homepage

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JEB SHARP: Wars are not just what happens between armies.  Civilians get caught up in the fighting.  We’re going to focus now on a particularly disturbing tactic of war that is aimed at civilians.  That’s the use of rape as a weapon.  The United Nations Security Council is scheduled to tackle this issue tomorrow.  Perhaps the worst recent cases have been in places like eastern Congo where armed groups have used rape to terrorize communities.  I visited eastern Congo last year and spoke with rape victims at a place called Panzi Hospital. Here are some of their voices and I should warn you their stories are disturbing.  Here’s one girl I met, a tiny ten year old in blue jeans named Marie.

MARIE:  I’ve been raped by a Hutu soldier who came in my house.  They first of all killed my parents and then they raped me, there were three.

SHARP:  Another young patient at the hospital, also called Marie, was traveling to the local market with six other women when their vehicle was ambushed by armed men.  She says the attackers dragged the women into the bush.

MARIE:  So they took off all our dresses and we were naked.  They killed one woman among us; one man raped me and another one make sex with me, put his sex in my mouth.

SHARP:  Those are the kinds of stories you hear all too often in war zones like eastern Congo.  Joining me now is Anne-Marie Goetz.  She’s the chief advisor for Governance, Peace and Security at UNIFEM, the UN Development Fund for Women.  Anne-Marie Goetz, first just let me ask you what strikes you about those women’s voices and their stories.

ANNE-MARIE GOETZ:  These are awful experiences and what’s horrifying is that if anything, rape in war seems to be increasing.  Particularly in this context, in eastern Congo where in spite of the signing a peace agreement earlier this year and the effort to round up remaining militia, rape has if anything been on the increase and in parts of eastern Congo, for example in North Kivu, three out of four women have been raped by men in uniform.  This is an emergency on a phenomenal scale and that’s exactly what’s so important about the Security Council resolution which will be discussed tomorrow on Rape in Conflict.

SHARP:  Now tell us about that.  The U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to chair the session.  The council is expected to pass a fresh resolution on preventing and punishing rape as a weapon of war but what’s in the resolution–and I don’t mean the flowery UN language–I mean what are the two or three tangible things in there that are actually going to make a difference?

GOETZ:  What’s going to happen tomorrow is that the Security Council is going to recommend the Secretary-General appoint a senior Special Representative of the Secretary-General on sexual violence, whose sole job will be to address this horrifying feature of fighting.  In addition, there’s going to be a task force of technical advisers on judicial systems who, at the initiation of governments in the post-conflict phase, will be able to come in and strengthen judicial response.  This is exceptionally important for addressing the problem of impunity, de facto impunity enjoyed by perpetrators of this violence.

SHARP:  One of the problems in eastern Congo is a huge number of rapes are reported and a tiny percentage makes it into the court.  How does this change the judicial picture?

GOETZ:  The idea is to go into a place where the judicial system is in dissarray, the corrections system is virtually non-existent and to quickly support the country, to set priorities for fast tracking investigations and prosecutions of these crimes.

SHARP:  Anne-Marie Goetz, this sounds really, really good.  How can you persuade us though that we should not be really skeptical, given the nature of the UN bureaucracy?

GOETZ:  I think we are seeing a sea change in the way that this issue is being approached by the United Nations.  There is no question that there’s an uphill battle, that a great deal of peacekeeping troops need to be trained in a different way.  The challenges are huge.

SHARP:  The former UN Under-Secretary-General (for Humanitarian Affairs), Jan Egeland, had a good way of explaining the way rape as a weapon of war had been viewed at the UN, really right up until now.  Let’s hear that tape.

JAN EGLAND:  I think it may be one of the biggest conspiracies of silence of history, this. And we treat it at best as a humanitarian problem.  So you’ve been gang-raped, have a blanket.  You’ve been gang-raped again, have another blanket.  Whereas it should be a political and a security and a justice problem.

SHARP:  Anne-Marie Goetz, it sounds as if you would agree with that but do you see the mentality, the emphasis shifting to the degree it needs to?

GOETZ:  Have mentalities changed?  Within the humanitarian sector, as Jan Egeland rightly points out, there has been much more willingness to detect and to do something about sexual violence but very much in the sense of responding to the needs of its survivors.  Within the uniformed personnel of the UN and certainly within for example, even the peacemakers, the mediators, yes, lots of work has to be done to raise awareness.  That this is a way of fighting, it is a prescribed method of war, just as landmines and cluster bombs are and therefore this must be addressed and attacked.

SHARP:  Anne-Marie Goetz is the Chief Advisor for Governance Peace, and Security at UNIFEM, the UN’s development agency for women.  She joined us from the UN.  Thank you.

GOETZ:  Thank you.

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LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston. Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, appears to be facing a rebellion in his parliament. There are objections to his choices for cabinet ministers and he has delayed formally nominating anybody. Ahmadinejad has announced that he wants two women among his ministers. If they are approved it would mark the first time since the Islamic Revolution, 30 years ago, that women have been chosen to be part of the government. As The World’s Laura Lynch reports, not all Iranians see the move as a step forward for women.

LAURA LYNCH: In every protest against the government that followed June’s disputed elections women were there in their thousands spilling onto sidewalks, venting their anger, calling for change. For so many of them change meant more freedom, freedom to express themselves, to pursue careers, and to choose what kind of clothes to wear including the headscarf. Now a breakthrough with word that at least two women may make it into the president’s cabinet. But take a closer look says Massoumeh Tormeh. She specializes in Iranian politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

MASSOUMEH TORMEH: If you look at this as two women being proposed for ministerial posts, we should be celebrating that because it’s women’s status in Iran and we would think that perhaps this would help women’s rights in Iran. But in fact the two women who have been chosen are hardline conservative Islamic thinkers and in that way no different to any of the men ministerial proposals.

LYNCH: Tormeh points out that both women, Fatemeh Ajorlou and Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, want laws to make it even more difficult for women to get divorced, get custody of their children, or have an abortion. Ajorlou also advocates punishing women who ignore the Islamic dress code. Given all that it’s likely their views clash with the woman who galvanized much of the opposition in the election.

ZARAH RAHNAVARD: [SPEAKING FARSI]

LYNCH: Zarah Rahnavard, wife of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, made it clear to me in this interview in Tehran during the campaign, while she wasn’t interested in serving in government; she believed it was critical to fight for women’s rights. Rahnavard’s criticism of the government was pivotal. She herself was a revolutionary working to overthrow the Shah three decades ago. One of her targets back them was the country’s last woman minister, Mahnaz Afkhami.  Afkhami was the minister of women’s affairs under the Shah. She now lives in exile in Maryland.

MAHNAZ AFKHAMI: I believe that the women who participated in the revolution, and they did in large numbers, many of them actually were pushing for more rights. They were pushing for more freedoms. They were pushing for more equality and not less and that’s why the disappointment was so great when the revolution ended up in taking away the rights that they had already gained.

LYNCH: Afkhami acknowledges the Shah’s regime was seen as corrupt. She also felt the anger of the revolutionaries. She escaped but her other former female cabinet colleague was executed, convicted of what the revolutionary government called prostitution.

AFKHAMI: Prostitution is a code word for activism – at least it was during the early part of the revolution. And for instance the fatwa that Ayatollah Khomeini issued when women gained franchise was that political participation for women is tantamount to prostitution.

LYNCH: But over the years women in Iran have become increasingly politically active even when it’s meant risking jail. Massoumeh Tormeh believes that may be why Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has signaled his willingness to give women a seat at the cabinet table.

TORMEH: I think the reason why he’s doing this is because over the past four years of his presidency he has been seen to have been antagonistic towards women. The number of women who have been arrested, taken to prison – women’s rights activists I mean – has increased tremendously during the past four years. And women have had a very adverse opinion of Ahmadinejad.

LYNCH: Still there’s no guarantee even these conservative, hardline women will make it to the inner circle. The nominees still have to be approved by parliament and the Islamic establishment has never allowed a woman to be a leader even of cabinet department. For The World I’m Laura Lynch in London.

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More information:
http://www.madre.org

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KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston.  Journalist Anna Badkhen recently came back from Iraq.  While there, she witnessed all the chaos and destruction of a country at war.  She also visited a shelter for abused women in Baghdad.  The shelter is part of an underground secret network known as the “underground railroad”.  It serves women who are victims of sexual violence and domestic abuse.  In Iraqi society, abused women are often shunned by their own families, or worse.  The shelters also protect the women from the threat of so-called “honor killings”.  Anna Badkhen writes about all this in “Baghdad Underground”, an article in the August issue of Ms. Magazine.  She and a photojournalist were allowed to visit one of the shelters.

ANNA BADKHEN:  We covered up.  We were wearing our black abaya cloaks.  We were wearing our scarves.  We were put in a car.  We got out of the car in this really back alley with an auto repair shop and some candy stalls.  It’s like a typical decrepit Baghdad neighborhood.  And up two flights of stairs and through a unmarked plywood door, and there’s this shelter with rats and a lot of women – some of them with children.  I think there were 6 adult women and maybe 4 children.

CLARK:  Tell us about Samir, one of the women you met.

BADKHEN:  She was a young woman.  She had just married her sweetheart.  He was a police officer and she was pregnant with her first child in Baklava, the capital of Dialla province, which at that point was so dangerous in 2006 because of the violence between Sunni and Shiia militias that local residents had dubbed it “The city of death”.  In a span of a month, gunmen had killed all of the men in her family – all three of her brothers and her husband.  And all of a sudden, this woman finds herself alone and without the protection of a male and also without a job. She miscarried after her husband was killed.  She said that she was grieving, and as is the custom, she beat herself during the grieving.  She thinks that caused the miscarriage, or maybe it was the stress.  And she found herself homeless.  She was a Sunni woman, found herself in a house of fairly wealthy Shiite family in Baghdad, which took her in in exchange for cooking and cleaning the house.  But also, whenever the woman of the house was out of the house, the husband and the woman’s brother would rape her.  And so Samir endured three months of rape, until one day the husband, the brother, and there was another brother – all three of them gang-raped her.

CLARK:  When was this?

BADKHEN:  That was several months prior to [INDISCERNIBLE].  And she then went from the family – she went to a mosque.

CLARK:  And how many of these shelters are there – and you’re describing it as a network around the city.

BADKHEN:  The number varies, so between four and six, from what I understand.  And I think most of them were – I think there were four in Baghdad and one someplace else.   But again, that’s not a number set in stone.  And they will close shelters if they don’t have money, and they will open shelters if they find themselves flush with money.

CLARK:  Where are they getting money?

BADKHEN:  It’s all grants – international grants.  Nothing comes from the US government, I can say, but a lot of it comes from Madre, the international women’s organization that’s based in New York.

CLARK:  Have they asked the US government for it?  Is that an important distinction?

BADKHEN:  Well, I mean, definitely.  The woman who runs the shelters, Yannar Mohamed, she’s an Iraqi comedian.  She definitely holds the US responsible for this.  I mean, had there not been a war, there would not have been this dire situation of 72,000 at least, widows, and who knows how many young women who are left without protection of their males and therefore become free-for-all.  Every war comes with rape, but the women who are raped usually are the more protected women.

CLARK:  Is there any kind of record prior to the US invasion in 2003 with regard to violence?

BADKHEN:  I’m sure there was violence against women, like in any country, and I’m sure there was rape like in any country.  But also, from what I understand, the proportions were comparable to what happens in any country.  Probably there will be more domestic violence but probably less, you know, a woman walking home gets raped by somebody on the street because it’s a different culture.

CLARK:  What do these shelters do for women?  Is it a temporary stopping place?

BADKHEN:  Some stay a couple weeks.  Some stay months.  They obviously want them to not stay there forever.  What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to not just provide them with a safe place to stay, but they’re trying to teach them something.  Because you have to remember, these women are there because they are alone, because they have no man to support them.  So they need to get them out of the system and be able to function on their own.  So they’re trying to teach them basic skills, like computer literacy or statistics so they can use so they can become a secretary or a teacher, or even – you know, some of them are so young.  There was one woman, she was 16 years old.  She was forcibly married when she was 12.  So she had 4 ½ years of school – that’s all.  So she has no future in any country unless she marries somebody.  So she’s going to go back to school.  So that’s what Yannar is doing. She’s trying to teach them something. You know, sometimes it helps them get jobs after they’re out, after they feel like they can live on their own.  Sometimes they work there once they’re out of this network or this railroad.  They get out of the train and they sort of stay in this station.  They don’t venture very far.

CLARK:  I would imagine all the problems that Iraqis are facing, this is something they couldn’t shove aside for other priorities.  I’m curious about the kids that are in the shelter, staying there with their mothers.  How did they seem?

BADKHEN:  the shelter had 3 rooms.  Two bedrooms, one small, one moderately small, and the third one was a living room where 2 or 3 sets of women slept.  And one of the children at the shelter was a 14-year-old girl whose mother had been accused – falsely accused of killing her husband, spent 2 ½ years in jail where she was repeatedly raped by her investigator and jailers.  During which time, the 14 year old, she was living with her grandparents, who decided they needed to marry her off.  So they tried to marry her off to a much older man who she didn’t know and she obviously couldn’t have loved – very young girl.  And when her mother returned having been acquitted, the adult woman’s parents basically said, “No, you’re not our daughter.  We don’t believe that you didn’t kill your husband.  Get out.”  So she took her daughter.  She had another daughter, a much younger daughter – I think the other girl was 6 or 7 years old.  And so this woman and her two daughters were at the shelter.

CLARK:  I’m curious if what you saw there was better or worse than what you were expecting?

BADKHEN:   The conditions were horrendous.  The rats – every night, the rats came out.  The rats were in our bed – because we stayed – spent the night at the shelter.

CLARK:  Oh, you did.

BADKHEN:  At the shelter, and the rats were in our bed.  They have a shower that’s basically a hose.  They have a one burner or two-burner stove.  Instead of glass, they have plywood and cardboard windows.  And they have to constantly be very quiet, because they can’t let the neighbors know there are women and children there.  But at the same time, there was this moment when there was this bad TV on, and the TV was blaring Arabic pop music.  And the women were dancing and they were laughing.  And there’s even a photograph in the magazine of them dancing, these two young women dancing.  And they were all dancing.  They were all laughing and emulating and whistling and talking to each other.  And we were thinking, ‘How little does a person need to feel happy for even a moment?”  So that was heartwarming because you could tell that not everything has been lost.

CLARK:  Journalist Anna Badkhen is just back from Baghdad.  Her story about the underground railroad there appears in the summer issue of News Magazine in August.  Thanks, Anna.

BADKHEN:  Thank you.

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