“Religious based Violence against Women, and Feminist Responses: Iran, Afghanistan, and Algeria”

This (15 page) paper examines three Muslim contexts (Iran, Afghanistan, and Alergia) to show how ‘the woman question’ figured predominantly in Islamist discourses and legal frames, and how these discourses and laws led not only to social and sexual control over women but also to physical violence and death.  Moghadam situates the sources of such violence in the legacy of “heroic masculinity”, the unveiling of women in the context of changes in the gender regime and cultural practices, economic and political difficulties, and international factors. The author concludes that if the growing visibility of unveiled women in the 1970s has been an impetus for the rise of Islamist movements, the violence and misogyny of a generation of Islamism has itself helped feminist ideas – secular, Muslim, and Islamic – to spread and flourish in the Muslim world. However, the success of feminist alternative remains to be seen.