Women in nineteenth-century Iran were regarded as being much
inferior to men, both in regard to their intellectual capacity and their
spiritual worth. The religiously devout men looked on them with suspicion and
disdain as a potential cause of the loss of their religious purity; women were regarded
as having been placed on earth to lead men astray. The less religious would
merely think of women as a source of sexual pleasure and domestic management.
They were not much above chattels and slaves, certainly not worthy of being
consulted about family affairs or entrusted with making any decisions for
themselves. Indeed, a woman's temperament was felt to be totally unsuitable for
any serious deliberation or rational thought.
As a result, few women received any education, and there
were almost no opportunities to make any meaningful contribution to society
outside of domestic commitments. A woman's social contacts were limited to her
own husband, her immediate male relatives, and a circle of other women. She was
strictly and jealously guarded from contacts with other men. She might be
killed by her husband with impunity on the mere suspicion of infidelity.
Although Islam granted women certain strictly defined rights, few of them were
able to exercise these rights, since there was no mechanism whereby they could
act in society independently of men. Nor did wealth lead to any improvement in
a woman's lot; the women of the upper classes were caged in the vacuous
monotony of harem life. Thus for most women, the only way to exert any
influence over their own lives was to dominate their husbands by teasing,
cajoling, and intriguing. Many women achieved a degree of power in this way --
but this provoked more distrust and disdain on the part of men and, not
suprisingly, often led to divorce.
Although the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh had elevated the
status of women, therer were severe limitations on the extent that this could
be put into practice in the Bahá'í community of Iran because of the prevailing
social situation. Although the Bahá'í community led the way with regard to
women's emancipation, the majority of Bahá'ís at this time were recent converts
and were still much under the influence of the society around them and of their
former ways of thinking. Moreover, the severe persecutions that occurred frequently
put a brake on the extent to which reforms in the position of women could be
introduced. Nevertheless, the Bahá'í community in Iran made strides in this
direction and was to pioneer, in later generations, the introduction of
education for women; the election of women to their representative bodies, the
Local and National Spiritual Assemblies; and the encouragement of women to lead
more active and fulfilled lives.
- Moojan Momen (Forward to ‘Munirih Khanum,
Memoirs and Letters of Munirih Khanum, translated by Sammireh Anwar Smith )
