Time for European Parliament to Support Gender Equality:      De-List Iranian Resistance PMOI

      by Professor Daniel M. Zucker

Global Politician, April 14, 2007

The recent statement by the European Parliament calling on the European Commission to give practical effect to “its roadmap for equality between women and men” rings very hollow as long as the EUP allows its Council of Ministers to defy the decision of the European Communities' Court of First Instance to de-list the Iranian resistance organization Mojahedin-e Khalq (PMOI) (which is a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran) from its terror list. The Foreign Ministers’ continued effort to mollify the misogynist government of the Islamic Republic of Iran defies all logic except for maintaining underhanded business deals. Led by pro-regime elements in London’s Whitehall, the EU Foreign Ministers have knuckled under to the demands of Tehran to place and keep the Iranian resistance on the EU’s terrorist list. The irony of the EUP’s recent call for gender equality while it maintains this legitimate Iranian resistance group on its terrorist list could not be more palpable. The PMOI and NCRI are both fully egalitarian. Both organizations, which have forsworn the use of violence for over half a decade, are led by women and have a preponderance of women in their leadership and general membership.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, on the other hand, led by the misogynist Supreme Leader—the Faqih--Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his equally misogynist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a bastion of gender inequality. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a place where women are valued at 50% of the value of their male counterparts. Iran is a place where women must receive the signed approval of a father or husband in order to travel, where the testimony of a woman counts only as half of that of a man, where women are not permitted to own their own business without a male partner. Iran is the place where the genders are separated on all public transportation, in all educational facilities, in all prayer assemblies, and in all medical treatment. Iran is also a country where women must wear the chador (burqa) in public, covering all from head to ankle with only the face and hands appearing. Iran is a place where women showing hair in public or wearing cosmetics can face arrest and prosecution for immoral behavior. And Iran is a place where girls as young as nine years of age are permitted to be wed to men who are often considerably older.

Now, while Iranian Moslem men are permitted four wives at as time, and as many temporary marriages (mutaah, sigheh) as they wish, women are permitted only one husband at a time. Iran is a nation where adultery is punished by stoning—two cases of such female execution being carried out last year—and where three additional women presently await this form of execution.

I could go on and on about how women are mistreated in the misogynist Islamic Republic of Iran; I believe, however, that I have made my point that the EUP statement on Gender Equality is meaningless as long as the EU supports misogynist tyrannical regimes like the Islamic Republic of Iran by proscribing an egalitarian, democratic, moderate resistance group such as the PMOI. It is past due time to stop appeasing the mullahs of Iran and instead to support the vast majority of Iranians who seek to bring a secular democratic government to Iran. If the EUP really does believe in gender equality, working to end the rule of the misogynist cabal that currently reigns in Tehran is a great place to start demonstrating that commitment to equality of the sexes. Supporting the PMOI and NCRI is the quickest way to end the existence of the Islamic Republic of Iran and to bring about the birth of a free, secular democratic Republic of Iran. That indeed would be sterling proof of the EUP’s commitment to gender equality.

Professor Daniel M. Zucker is Chairman of Americans for Democracy in the Middle-East.