"The Place of Women Rights in Thought of Abolhassan Banisadr" (Persian)
http://edoc.mpg.de/301515
Edit: The bellow is something I copied and pasted and I apologize for spreading misinformation. For example what the bellow says about the first president of Iran Abolhassan Banisadr is wrong (he is very pro women's rights). This can be an example of how prevalent misinformation is but all the same more research needs to be done on these topics
From The Wall Street Journal "The Freedom to Go Topless By AMIR TAHERI"
http://www.fullermoney.com/content0/TheFreedomToGoTopless.pdf
"Perhaps it is worth recalling at this point that radical Islam's obsession with women's hair is a new phenomenon. Mussa Sadr, an Iranian mullah who won the leadership of the Shiite community in Lebanon, invented this form of hijab in the early 1970s. The first neo-hijabs appeared in Iran in 1977 as a symbol of Islamist opposition to the Shah. By 1979 when the mullahs seized power the number of women wearing it had multiplied
by the thousands, recalling sequences from Hitchcock's thriller "The Birds."
In 1981, Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, the first president of the Islamic Republic, announced that scientific research had shown that women's hair emitted rays that drove men insane. To protect the public, the new regime passed special legislation in 1982 making the new form of hijab mandatory for all females aged above six, regardless of religious faith.
Violating the hijab code is punishable by 100 lashes of the cane and six months imprisonment.
So by the mid-1980s a form of hijab never seen in Islam before the 1970s had become standard headgear for millions of Muslim women all over the world, including Europe and North America. Many younger Muslims women, especially Western converts, were duped into believing that the neo-hijab was an essential part of the Islamic faith.
Muslim women, like women in all societies, had covered their head with a variety of gears over the centuries. These had such names as rusari, ruband, chaqchur, maqne'a,
and picheh among others. All had tribal, ethnic and generally folkloric origins and were never specifically associated with religion. In Senegal, Muslim women wore a colorful headgear but went topless.
Muslim women anywhere in the world could easily check the fraudulent nature of the neo-Islamist hijab by leafing through their own family albums.They will not find the
picture of a single female ancestor of theirs who wore the cursed headgear now imposed upon them as an absolute "must" of Islam.
This fake Islamic hijab is thus nothing but a political prop, a weapon of visual terrorism. It is the symbol of a totalitarian ideology inspired more by Nazism and Communism than
by Islam.
The garb, moreover, is designed to promote gender Apartheid. It covers the woman's ears so that she does not hear things properly. Styled like a hood, it prevents the woman from having full vision of her surroundings.
But the harm that Islamism is doing to Muslim women is not limited to the evil headgear. In every Muslim country the number of women out of work is at least twice that of men.
Women wages are less than a quarter of what men get. The Pakistani fundamentalist coalition that won almost a quarter of the seats in last month's parliamentary elections
campaigned for "kicking women out of offices and giving the jobs they have stolen to men."
Perry Noble
"The Negro may be inferior in intellectual power to the Chinaman and the aboriginal American, yet the more the darkness lifts from African barbarism the less inclined are we to rate Negro culture below Beouin and Berber civilizations"
http://books.google.com/books?pg=RA1-PA10&id=GIkAAAAAMAAJ#PRA1-PA10
"Before the appearance of Arabs or Europeans, these Negroes had originated empires and republics possessing complex governmental arrangements. Some at least were not without the elements of true civilization. Whatever Islam may have done for the Negro was in being, not the initial impulse for his advance, but the reinforcement of his native faculties. Even in Sudan it has merely aided, not created, his capacity for progress. But "Islam is a reform which has stifled all other reforms. It has chained every people which has accepted it to a certain stage of moral and political growth". The sterility and unprogressiveness of Negro civilizations, Negro states, are as much due to the paralyzing death=grip of Islam as to nature's foreclosure of his intellectual powers when she mortgages the growth of his brain after puberty."
http://books.google.com/books?id=vdxBAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA71
The modern Hijab is not a symbol of totalitarianism or anything of the like. It is just a piece of cloth and a style for God's sake!! It does not dictate what is in the mind. Muslim women of old (in many countries) when in the presence of other women often went topless for some reason. Usually washing clothes on the river or the like was an excuse. Sometimes it was just plain old NOMINAL Islam. They could really care less about their religion. This counts for alot of modern Christians today.
Quranite 2 years ago
About the hijab can it also be used as a tool of oppression. I've read some arguments that say it can be be a positive and negative thing
markellion 2 years ago
Anything, if forced on someone, can be used as a tool of oppression. But some women choose to wear Hijab with pride as a symbol of their right to impenetrable privacy as Muslim women. For those who choose it, it says 'I am a Muslim woman and you must respect me as such.' There are also different levels of Hijab. Some women cover all (literally). Some just cover their hair. But in some countries you will find fully covered women fully involved in political life with no questions asked.
Quranite 2 years ago 2
I changed the descriptions box.
markellion 2 years ago
''In 1981, Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, the first president of the Islamic Republic, announced that scientific research had shown that women's hair emitted rays that drove men insane.''
thats not true
a woman had answer that to Mr.Banisadr,and he says he dont khow about that...that is a lies about him,he's wife had no hijab and he has writing many books of human rights and woman in Islam and qoran..
SiavashIrooni 2 years ago 2
Thanks for the info!
markellion 2 years ago