Iran's Women

Growing up after Sept. 11, 2001, the American media antagonized the Middle East and characterized it as a place were terrorists freely roamed and women were treated worse than animals.  I honestly don't know how the media depicts the Middle East these days because I refuse to even listen to them.  My class on Middle Eastern Study with Dr. Ferdowsi last year helped me distinguish how the media brainwashed me (even indirectly) about the Middle East and shed light on what it's like there.  I like knowing that people are people and every country has problem even if they differ.

Although there are some places in the Middle East that women are treated incredibly poorly, Iran isn't one of them.  According to Al Arabiya News, "Iran’s President Hassan Rowhani admitted Sunday that women in his country still face discrimination and cultural barriers but he insisted they are not universally treated as second-class citizens."  The report says that his speech is consistent about his ideals of social freedoms, which was one of his cornerstones in his election campaign last year.  I don't understand Islamic law fully, but Rowhani said, "Based on the Islamic criteria, we neither consider men as the first sex nor the women as the second sex ... they both have the same human dignity and none is superior," however, the author of the article points out:
And under the Islamic sharia law practiced in Iran, a woman’s evidence is considered to have only half the value of a man’s, which Amnesty International says leads to discrimination in divorce proceedings, child custody disputes and inheritance.

Even in the US, we still have issues over women's rights, so it'd be completely unfair for me to say we live in a completely progressive society, but we are not completely burned by religion like Islamic Law.  Islamic Law seems to be a fickle thing.

Side note: Up until last year, I had no idea that Farsi was synonymous with Persian.  Thank you, Dr. Ferdowsi, for teaching me such a simple thing.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/2014/04/20/Rowhani-says-Iran-s-women-not-second-class-citizens-.html