TEHRAN, Iran – Iran’s supreme leader has signaled a willingness to reinterpret Islamic law more favorably to women’s rights – but not by following Western conventions, state media and his official Web site reported Thursday.
“Some issues about women, which exist in religious jurisprudence, are not the final say. It is possible to interpret new points through research by a skillful jurist,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Web site quoted him as saying Wednesday during a speech to commemorate national women’s day.
The comments by the Shiite cleric, who has final say over all state matters, came amid international rights groups’ criticism of Iran for giving prison sentences to several women’s rights activists.
Iran’s interpretation of Islamic law imposes tight restrictions on women, such as requiring them to have a male guardian’s permission to work or travel. Women are not allowed to become judges, and a man’s court testimony is considered twice as important as a woman’s.
Yet Iranian women have more rights than their counterparts in Saudi Arabia and some other conservative Muslim countries. They can drive, vote and run for most public offices.
Khamenei criticized activists who have pushed for a foreign concept of women’s rights, according to video of his speech shown on state-run television Thursday.
“In our country … some activist women, and some men, have been trying to play with Islamic rules in order to match international conventions related to women,” he said. “This is wrong.”
Human Rights Watch recently criticized Iran for sentencing several women activists to prison for participating in a rally in June 2006 to protest the country’s laws dealing with women.
The women were part of “Change for Equality,” a group campaigning for specific reforms, including making women’s testimony in court carry the same weight as that of men, equality of inheritance rights between men and women and the elimination of polygamy.
Khamenei praised the role of women in Iran and said the emphasis on their maternal role in Islam “does not mean opposition to the presence of women in various aspects of social life at all,” the Web site reported.
He also said Westerners had “discredited” women by using them to fulfill “illegitimate” sexual desires, apparently referring to prostitution and premarital sex, which are banned by Islamic law.
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