Individualism in Iran

Driving in Northern Tehran with family one weekend this summer, we passed a former palace of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Pahlavi—who came to power after a 1953 coup orchestrated by the Central Intelligence Agency and British intelligence toppled the democratically-elected Mossadeq government—had dozens of palaces, all throughout Iran. The palaces, situated on large tracts of land, are surrounded by towering walls, which serve as an aggressive delineation of space reserved for one man in a country crowded with the poor.

According to my aunt, this particular palace had become a museum. The leaders of the 1979 Islamic revolution had never lived there. Imam Khomeini, who led the revolution, had lived in a small, mud-brick house after 1979.

“It’s funny that the Americans have chosen to station themselves in the old presidential palaces of Sadaam Hussain,” I remarked, “while Imam Khomeini chose not to live comfortably in any of the shah’s extravagant palaces.”

“Yes,” my aunt told me, “he was a humble man. So respectful of women, too. He used to say that men should always address women in the ‘shoma’ form.”

“Shoma” is the more respectful second-person form.

But the average American has a dramatically different image of Imam Khomeini and the ideologues of the Islamic revolution. The revolution is perceived as a victory of religious extremists over Western ideas, embodied by the very Western shah. Their values are considered dramatically different from American values; their revolution the inevitable historical antithesis of the American one.

In reality, the Americans had a revolution for many of the same reasons. They wanted to overthrow a power who imposed his will upon the people and who had been allowed to rule without their consent. This power allotted to himself a disproportionate amount of the country’s resources and oppressed the common man. And the idea of installing the shah in the first place? Precisely un-American.

Our misunderstanding continues in our perception of independence in Iran. It is easy to cite any number of Iranian laws that can serve as proof for an alleged lack of respect for individual freedoms. Indeed, Iran, like any country, is far from perfect. And like every country in its youth, it is even more so. Remember, twenty-five years after America’s founding, it was legal to keep a human being as a slave.

But some Iranian laws that seem, to us, at odds with the idea of individualism simply are the result of a slightly different understanding of what freedoms of the individual may harm the society. This does not represent a fundamental opposition to the idea of the importance of individual freedom, but a balancing of belief in individual freedom with concern for the common good. Even in America, freedom is not an all-encompassing word—our freedoms are also balanced with a concern for the public good. The very controversial question is what, exactly, that balance should be.

When the Iranian government prohibited dressing in an un-Islamic way—requiring men and women to dress modestly, which, for women, includes wearing a headscarf—it was acting out of a concern for the common good. It believes that immodest dress in human society results in an excessively sexual society. By observing our society today, any skeptical American can understand what an excessively sexual society is, and what the repercussions of creating such a society are.

And even while the Iranian government compels women to wear scarves over their hair, a shirt extending to at least mid-thigh and an article of clothing over the legs, women are allowed to choose exactly how strictly they want to observe the Islamic dress. Many young women, mainly in Tehran, wear scarves that only cover half of their hair, revealing hair in both the front and back. Sometimes, scarves are near-transparent. Their long shirts—called montos—can be tight and decorated with attention-grabbing buttons or zippers. They wear capri pants and high-heels.

On the other hand, many women also choose to wear the chador, a large black piece of cloth draped over the entire body. In dressing so modestly, these women communicate an image of deep religiousness and support of the Islamic government.

Communicating a more moderate message are those who wear loose montos and scarves that completely cover their hair.

In the end, the effect is that what is a symbol of oppression to many Americans—the Islamic dress—has become a tool of individual expression. The government believes that people should subscribe to a basic level of modesty—and in their eyes, this basic level is defined by the Islamic dress—but as long as this basic level is met, an individual is free to express personal beliefs on issues ranging from modesty to politics.

While it may legitimately be argued that forcing women to dress modestly is a breach of individual rights too serious to be excused in the name of creating a more modest society, such an argument should be made with the assumption that the Iranian government does not, like America, value the idea of individual freedom. It was love of the idea of freedom that spurred the Iranians to climb over the shah’s towering walls and force him out of his palaces, installing, in his place, a regime infinitely more supportive of individualism.

Nura A. Hossainzadeh ’07, a Crimson editor, is a government concentrator in Quincy House.