Well, then, why couldn't women be the leaders of transitional systems?
--
Yoshie
There are transitional systems and there are transitional systems.
In the early 1920s, the USSR sent official delegates to the first Gay
Liberation (not the words of the time obviously) conference in
Germany. 10 years later homosexuality was against the law. But in
either period, the USSR was still a "transitional" society. I hope
that would answer your question, but I am afraid that nothing at this
point would convince you that such societies have anywhere near the
kind of panache as the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The beast of Mashhad
Saeed Hanaei believed prostitutes were a 'waste of blood'. So he
murdered 16 - and became a hero for Iran's Islamic militants. Dan De
Luce on a shocking documentary
Dan De Luce
Monday August 18, 2003
Guardian
When the drought ended and the rains came, Saeed Hanaei believed that
it was a sign from God that his killing spree had divine approval. "I
realised God looked favourably on me. That he had taken notice of my
work," Hanaei said. With 12 prostitutes already dead by his hands,
Hanaei carried on his "work" and strangled at least four more women
after luring them to his house in the Iranian city of Mashhad.
And Along Came a Spider, which had its UK premiere at the Edinburgh
festival yesterday, tells the disturbing tale of a murderous
psychopath who found an alarming degree of ideological sympathy among
Islamic militants in Iran. The serial killer and his trial attracted
a media frenzy in Iran and exposed deep divisions in a society where
a conservative-minded minority feels threatened by social change.
The director of the documentary, Maziar Bahari, says he believes
Hanaei was a murderer by nature who was catapulted to folk-hero
status by religious extremists. "Hanaei was living in a very
claustrophobic environment and he could somehow justify his killings
through ideological slogans that are acceptable in that environment,"
Bahari says. "He is basically a terrorist. He's not as
technologically advanced as some, but the result is the same."
Bahari's documentary provides an extraordinary glimpse into the
attitudes of a working-class district in Mashhad and the desperate
world of prostitutes entrapped by drug addiction, poverty and
patriarchal cruelty. Newspapers dubbed the murders the "spider
killings" because of the way victims were drawn into Hanaei's home
and then strangled with a scarf. He then dumped the bodies by the
roadside or in open sewers, wrapping them in their chadors, the long,
flowing black garments that cover a woman from head to toe.
Hanaei confessed to the killings, smiled for news photographers and
proudly told the court that he was fighting a crusade against moral
corruption and vice. He and his lawyer cited an ambiguous provision
in Iranian and Islamic law that refers to sinners as a "waste of
blood", arguing that Hanaei deserved lenient treatment.
The case provoked a debate between reformers who condemned the
authorities for failing to catch him earlier and some conservatives
who shared the killer's disgust with a rise in prostitution.
"Who is to be judged?" wrote the conservative newspaper Jomhuri
Islami. "Those who look to eradicate the sickness or those who stand
at the root of the corruption?" Such sentiments are expressed by the
killer's merchant friends at the Mashhad bazaar, one of whom says
with a laugh: "He did the right thing. He should have continued."
The argument over the spider killings represented a kind of microcosm
of a wider battle still being waged in Iran over the proper role of
Islam in society. Reformists in parliament and government have tried
to push for a relaxation of the country's theocratic system,
advocating what they call a "democratic interpretation of Islam".
Their opponents fear the reformists will only undermine Islam and
open the floodgates to secular, western influences.
The most disturbing defence of Hanaei comes from his own 14-year-old
son, Ali, who says his father was cleansing the Islamic republic of
the "corrupt of the Earth". "If they kill him tomorrow, dozens will
replace him," Ali says. "Since his arrest, 10 or 20 people have asked
me to continue what my Dad was doing. I say, 'Let's wait and see.' "
Those who sympathise with Hanaei remain powerful and vocal, but the
majority of Iranians want to see a more tolerant, less ideological
society, according to Bahari. "I think they are in the minority, and
their numbers are decreasing," he said.
Between the scenes of Hanaei recounting his crimes in a
matter-of-fact tone, we see haunting photos of the victims before and
after they were killed and we meet two children whose mothers were
murdered. Interviews with 10-year-old Sahar and eight-year-old Sara
provide some of the documentary's most powerful moments.
Firoozeh, the 14th victim, went out to buy opium one day at about
5.30pm, says her daughter, Sahar. "We were all waiting for her but
she never came home." We see a drawing in crayon from Sara, with a
bearded Hanaei in handcuffs, her mother lying dead and a little girl
kneeling in despair. Sahar looks away from the camera and says she
hasn't spoken to anyone at school about what has happened. She says
she wants to be a journalist when she grows up because she hopes to
document what happened to her mother.
Hanaei served as a volunteer in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, and
described his murders as a "continuation of the war effort". He first
became obsessed with "street women" after his wife was mistaken for a
prostitute by a taxi driver. We learn from a journalist that Hanaei
went looking for men who were soliciting prostitutes and got beaten
up. "So he turns to the people who don't have the power to fight
back," says the journalist, Roya Karimi.
Hanaei had plenty of opportunities to prey on the powerless in
Mashhad, a city with all the ingredients for a thriving prostitution
trade. While millions of pilgrims visit the city's holy Shia shrine
every year, massive amounts of opium pour over the border from
neighbouring Afghanistan and are transported through the city.
Growing levels of poverty and unemployment, with rural families
migrating to cities, have fed the increase in "street women".
The spider case forced the invisible world of prostitution into the
public arena and government officials can no longer pretend
otherwise. But prostitution remains a sensitive issue and Bahari's
documentary, which has been shown throughout Europe, has yet to be
broadcast in Iran. The criminal code's vague reference to victims
deemed to be a "waste of blood" has come under increasing scrutiny
from lawyers.
Despite Hanaei's confession in prison that he had "improper
relations" with his victims, some ideologues still sympathise with
the spider killer. This month a hardline paramilitary group, Ansar-e
Hizbollah, warned in its weekly publication that declining morality
among women could lead to more such killings: "It is likely that what
happened in Mashhad and Kerman could be repeated in Tehran."
Although Hanaei was sentenced to death, he was shocked and angry when
the moment came for his hanging in April last year. Unlike at his
highly publicised trial, there were no cameras around to record how
he screamed in protest, baffled that his ideological allies never
came to his rescue. "Even until the last second before his execution,
Hanaei thought someone in the government would come to save him," Bahari says.
Hanaei's case had sparked debate and morbid fascination but not much
mourning for the death of the 16 "street women". And Along Came a
Spider commemorates these women and grants them a degree of dignity
they never received while they were alive.
