By Elham Kiamanesh

Women form half of the world’s population but they only possess 15% of its wealth! Only 5-10% of the world’s leaders are women! There has hardly ever been any cultural development on women in the past years! And we are in the 21st century, claiming to be in our ultimate level of technology and democracy!

To measure the level of democracy in one country, it is judged by its treatment of women in that country!

Does any nation claim to have achieved this level of democracy?!

There is only one movement, one organization and one group that has achieved this rank.

The fundamentalist ideology differentiates humans based on their gender. A woman is a second-class citizen. The basis of Hitler’s ideology was racism and now the basis of the fundamentalist ideology founded by Khomeini leans on gender discrimination.

Today, the fundamentalist ideology expands itself in ISIS trying to find its sovereignty, mainly by increasing suppression on women.

Iran executes Raihaneh Jabbari for attempting to defend herself against the vicious act of rape. Neda Agha Sultan was killed in Tehran’s 1999 uprising and her parents forbidden to make it public. During this uprising in Iran in the notorious Kahrizak Prison, 40 women were kept in enclosed trailers in mid-summer, where they all suffocated and died. Its mercenaries in Iraq abduct six PMOI female members after the September 1 attack on Ashraf and have not released their whereabouts even almost after 2 years.

Apparently, fundamentalism with its base in Iran survives through the suppression of women; this is due to its fear of women, but why? Why does the Iranian regime fear women?

  1. The fundamentalist and gender discriminative nature of the Iranian regime has created great potential in women to resist and fight back against this regime.
  2. More than 150 years of women’s struggle in Iran, from the constitutional revolution to Mussadiq’s Oil Nationalist Movement, the 1979 revolution and women’s antagonism against Khomeini’s regime from day one.
  3. The presence of a very organized movement, the PMOI with its emphasis on women’s equality and hegemony, its participation in political, social, judicial and managerial affairs.

Yes, the Iranian regime and its fundamentalist ideology could not bear women’s existence, resistance and persistence because they weaken its pillars of leadership and power.

As much as women and their oppression is an essential factor for the growth of fundamentalism, their self-reliance and freedom is as much a weapon against fundamentalism.

This article was written by Elham Kiamanesh, a US born citizen with an AA degree in law.