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Chapter 2

The Aesthetics of Authority

A prisoner’s meekness is a prison’s pride.

—Vladimir Nabokov

Strange times, my dear!

And they chop smiles off lips

songs off the mouth.

We should hide joy in the larder.

—Ahmad Shamloo

In order to understand the criminalization of youth culture, we have to explore the aesthetics of authority, which have produced the notion of bidard youth. A crucial aspect of the post-revolutionary social order is the hegemonic discourse of self-abasement. An overwhelmingly religious Revolution has sought to sacrifice the self for a “higher value.” Its mobilizing ideology (as I shall show in this chapter) is grounded in an “aesthetic of the modest self” and a “culture of sadness,” both profoundly rooted in the Iranian/Shiite tradition. The order of things is designed to be sustained by the Iranian self through mechanisms of normative modesty and politics of emotion.

In Shiite Iranian culture the self is understood in terms of the dichotomies of ’oumq/sæth (depth/surface) and sanggin/sæbouk (weighty/light). An ’amiq (profound) and sanggin (weighty) person is quiet, gentle, serious, and thoughtful. A sæthi (shallow) and sæbouk (light) person is playful, unserious, childish, and joyful. The personal character most valued in Iran is quiet and gentle, demonstrating nejabat (modesty) by conspicuous self-abasement. The immense value of the “modest self” is also reflected in the Persian language.

In his study of language and power in Iran, William Beeman indicates how Persian pronouns and verbs correspond with basic orientations in social relations. He argues that Persian interpersonal discourse is based on relationships of inequality and a process of “other-raising” versus “self-lowering.” Basically, in interpersonal interaction “one uses terms that serve to place oneself in an inferior status and the other person in a superior one. . . . Thus self-reference may use the expression bandeh (slave) in place of the neutral pronoun man (I)” (Beeman 1986: 16). Similarly, there are two versions of the verb “to say” (goftan): farmoudan (to command) is used for others and ‘arz kardan (the self-lowering version of the verb) for oneself. In Persian, it is “you mifarmaeid” and “I ‘arz mikonam.” This principle of “self-lowering” is the core of ta‘arof, a major code of communication among Iranians.¹ The accomplished use of ta‘arof is taken as a sign of social sophistication, while an inability to observe the rules of ta‘arof in interaction is indicative of social ineptness. “Ta‘arof is valued because it is viewed as an expression of selflessness and humility” (Beeman 2001: 47). This favored self-abasement is also expressed by many Iranians in their choice of modest names for children; for example, a not unusual name for men is Gholam (slave), which is often combined with the names of Imams, like Gholam-Hossein (Hossein’s slave) or Gholam-Ali (Ali’s slave).

The norm of modesty is well expressed in veiling as a form of highly valued self-effacement. The highly regarded personal quality of being mahjoub means to be both veiled and modest. Another feature of this social ethic is to value grief. A person’s capacity to experience and express grief is an indication of his/her “deep” and “weighty” character. The verbs gham khordan or ghosseh khordan (to eat sorrow, to grieve) also mean “to care” and “to be concerned.” The hegemonic ideal of noble suffering and normatively desired dysphoria is best expressed in Persian as sokhtan va sakhtan (burning and enduring). The ideal self is well acquainted with sorrow.

The experience of sadness, loss, melancholy, and depression is rooted in two primary meaning contexts in Iranian culture: one associated with an understanding of the person or self, the other with a deep Iranian vision of the tragic, expressed in religion, romance and passion, and in interpretation of history and social reality. (Good et al. 1985: 385)

An emulation of sorrow is based on pre-Islamic mythology, in classical Persian poetry, and Iranian interpretations of history. Primarily, however, it relates to the central Iranian religious traditions and the tragedy of Karbala (Good et al. 1985: 387).

What follows is a discussion of how the new regime in Iran has used these symbolic resources to implant the desired social order in its subjects. Articulated as resistance to the consumer culture (farhang-e masrafi) and “Weststruckness” that characterized the pre-Revolutionary, West-oriented Shah era, the contemporary Islamic order builds on an aestheticization of modesty manipulated through three mechanisms: a Revolutionary romanticization of poverty; veiling practices; and the emotionalization of politics.

Consumption and Purity

As will be shown below, both Islamist and secular intellectuals in Iran have regarded consumption as a primary cause of corruption, self-alienation, and dependence on neocolonial capitalism. They argue that in a consumer society there is no place for native identity, authentic culture, or morality. Throughout his book Gharbzadegi (especially chapter 9), Al-e Ahmad attempts to persuade the reader that the most conspicuous syndrome of Weststruckness (gharbzadegi) is the consumption of Western goods. The Weststruck man is described as an unauthentic (biessallat) “prissy” (qerti), who superficially mimics the West.

He is always primping; always making sure of his appearance. He has even been known to pluck his eyebrow. He places great importance on his shoes, his clothes, and his home. You would think he had just emerged from golden wrapping paper or just come from some European maison. . . . The [Weststruck] man is the most faithful consumer of Western manufactured products. (Al-e Ahmad 1982: 70–71)

Later on the author condemns the “Weststruck man” because “It is on account of him that we have such unauthentic and unindigenous [urban] architecture . . . under the ugly glare of the neon and fluorescent lights” (Al-e Ahmad 1982: 71).

Shariati too declares that “worldliness” has tainted Iranian culture. He defines “worldliness” as the nihilism of Western culture, which promotes individual hedonism (Shariati 1979: 79), stripping nations of their authenticity and transforming human beings into “consumer animals” (see Mirsepassi 2000: 122). In Shariati’s view, the main consequences of consumerism are “self-alienation” (az khod biganegi) and uprootedness from authentic Iranian/Islamic culture. Shariati’s and Ale Ahmad’s occidentophobia and attack on consumerism are presented in a patriarchal way. Throughout his speeches and publications Shariati expresses anguish that consumerism has converted Iranian women into “European dolls” (arousak-e farangi) who can only consume and consume. Al-e Ahmad’s “Weststruck” person is, in contrast, always a male, whom he labels “effeminate” (zan sefat) to belittle him. Women cannot themselves be Weststruck, but, on the other hand, they are used as means to deceive men.² Ali Shariati, influenced by Frantz Fanon, also uses postcolonial discourse to condemn consumerism. Shariati developed a populist version of Islam, combining Fanon’s views, Marx’s criticisms of capitalism, and Shiite traditions. He believes that the “West,” in order to enslave the “East,” first turns it into a consumer of its products. Consequently the “East” becomes alienated from its own native culture, turning into an eternal identity-less consumer and slave of the West. Shariati believed that modernized meant modernized in consumption. “One who becomes modernized is one whose tastes now desire . . . European new forms of living and modern products.” Non-Europeans are modernized for the sake of consumption. Therefore, the Europeans had to make non-Europeans equate “modernization” with civilization” to impose the new consumption pattern upon them, since everyone has a desire for civilization.”³ Such fears affect secular intellectuals, too. Obsessed by concerns with authenticity but also influenced by neo-Marxist intellectuals such as Marcuse, Iranian intellectuals have targeted consumerism as a crucial feature of the Shah’s cultural policy.

A fear of consumerism has been the main theme in literature and films since the 1970s, most visibly in the book Tars va Larz and the film Keshti-ye Yonani. Tars va Larz (Fear and Tremble), written by the celebrated psychiatrist and novelist Gholam Hossein Sa‘edi (1380/2001), tells stories about coastal people along the Persian Gulf. The arrival of a foreign (European) ship changes the life of the coastal people. The foreigners are beautiful and offer the local people a large amount of food and commodities. Overconsumption metamorphoses the people from human beings into a kind of parasites waiting for the arrival of other boats.

CINEMATIC VIGNETTE

Keshti-ye Yonani (The Greek Ship, 1999, by Nasser Taghvai)

This short film is one of six episodes making up the film Tales of Kish (Qeseha-ye Kish). Kish, a little free trade zone island in the Persian Gulf with its pleasing coasts, has become a popular tourist attraction in Iran. As in Dubai, life on the island is organized around shopping. One of the attractions of the island is an old ship stranded on the southwestern shore. It is said that, a long time ago, a Greek cargo vessel reached this part of the sea for unknown reasons, but was stranded for ever. The natives say that the owners of the ship set it on fire before leaving it: and indeed nothing is left of the ship but a steel structure. Taghvai’s film tells the story of two workers who collect cardboard containers—marked by Kodak, Dauoo, Toshiba, Konica, and Aiwa brand marks—washed up on the beach from passing ships. The men dry out the boxes to build their huts. The wife of one of the men, who gathers some objects left by a passing Greek ship, is afflicted by a strange illness. The village medicine man claims it comes from the boxes. After a zar ritual, the woman is cured and the men throw the boxes in the sea. The film graphically shows how the local culture, health, and authenticity are endangered by consumerism and foreign culture. When a journalist asked Taghvai why he had chosen the Greek ship as a metaphor, the director answered: “Why not. Was Greece not the cradle of Western culture?”

* * *

Condemning the immorality of society prior to the Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini often used commodities and consumption as examples. The Revolutionary agenda was to save the virtue and purity of the ummat from consumerism, by promoting self-restraint (qena‘at) and idealizing poverty. Excessive consumption (esraf) and an ostentatious lifestyle (tajamulgarai) became synonymous with “bourgeois aesthetics” and were automatically defined as signs of adopting an anti-revolutionary position. People preferred to conceal their wealth, in order not to be stamped as anti-revolutionary. For instance, many hid their luxury cars in their garages for several years.⁴

The Noble Dispossessed

At the end of the 1970s, the slum dwellers in Tehran numbered as many as a million (Bayat 1997: 29). Ayatollah Khomeini, as the opposition leader, found potential power among them for revolting against the Shah. Claiming that Islam stands on the side of the disenfranchised (mahroumin) and the “dispossessed” (mostaz‘afin), Khomeini characterized the Revolution as a movement against the “oppressors” (mostakberin). Its goal was to induce more social justice for the poor. The “dispossessed” were praised and deprivation was glorified. While the “oppressors” were depicted as venal, decadent, and corrupt, the “dispossessed” were “portrayed as the repository of innocence possessing genuine human values. If unbridled pursuit of material wealth had rendered the elite heartless lackeys of capital, the suffering of the dispossessed had humanized them” (Dorraj 1992: 221). Thus, pain (dard) and suffering (ranj) had become hallmarks of “high human values.”

Ayatollah Khomeini frequently attested his commitment to the disenfranchised in his speeches: “I kiss the hands of the simple grocer” (Khomeini 1981: 184); or “Islam belongs to the dispossessed” (quoted in Abrahamian 1989: 22). The clerics and officials of the Islamic regime were zealous in presenting themselves as belonging to the lower classes, and the gradual romanticization of poverty became a salient feature of the theocrats’ political populism (see Abrahamian 1993; Dorraj 1992). The ideological romanticization of poverty pursued by the Iranian authorities draws nourishment from Sufi traditions and literature. Poverty and a working-class lifestyle are celebrated in Iranian popular movies and soap operas. Following the famous phrase of Imam Ali, “The best wealth is self-restraint (qena‘at),” the Iranian media glorify poverty and self-abasement by an endless restaging of the martyrs’ testaments and life stories.

Even primary school textbooks are used to promote ideas of poverty and modesty. The most illustrative example of poor-is-beautiful-assessment may be in the textbook for the first grade. In the pre-Revolutionary first grade textbooks there is an illustration of a middle-class family sitting around the breakfast table.⁵ The father wears a suit and tie and is shaved. The mother has short hair and is unveiled. The teenage girl is dressed in red and has her arm on the table. She is the image of self-confidence. Her brother, dressed in yellow, is talking. The parents are looking at him. On the table are coffee cups, a milk jug, a sugar bowl, plates, and knives. After the Revolution this picture was replaced with a more humble one, where the family is clearly less affluent. The family members are eating dinner sitting on a rug. On a damask cloth there is traditional Iranian food, rice, vegetables, and bread. The mother is veiled and wears a simple overall. The father is modestly dressed and wears a beard. The daughter, barely a teenager, is veiled in an overall and a scarf. Like her mother, she looks down shyly. The children are sitting on their heels (du zanou), a position showing respect to their parents. An interesting aspect of the illustrations is their body language, which indicates the modesty expected from the young people. Sitting on one’s heels (du zanou neshastan) is a gesture whereby one lowers oneself and acknowledges a superior other. The common Iranian expression “kneeling out of politeness” (zanou-ye adab zadan) demonstrates a relationship between “sitting on one’s heels,” “good manners,” and modesty. In front of Allah, this gesture is part of daily prayers.

Female modesty is confirmed by veiling, but normative modesty defines its own fashion for men as well; khaki pants, military overcoat, boots, a Palestinian shawl, and an unshaven two- to three-day beard, testify to one’s neglect of the worldly life. This dress code gives one a “hezbollahi look” (qiyafeh hezbollahi). Paradoxically, however, the Revolutionary aesthetic has also favored American and German military overcoats.⁶ The Revolutionary morale has forged a kind of cultural capital, based on a working-class lifestyle, a simple appearance, and unpretentiousness. To present oneself as simple and indigent is seen as a measure of one’s commitment to the Revolution. Such an aestheticization of poverty can also be traced among secular leftist movements in Iran.⁷ In encounters with representatives of the authorities, “hezbollahi style” and use of Arabic/Islamic phrases play a significant role. Many times I asked my informants why they did not shave, and they answered that they were going to visit certain authorities. Dara said that when he was going to visit an authority he wore the oldest and most ragged clothes he had, adding half-jokingly, “When I attend a meeting at university I wear the dirtiest socks I have. The more they stink, the more I look like a revolutionary.” The “hezbollahi style” evokes the “proletarian style” promoted in the communist states.⁸ The Islamic Republic, however, has fashioned its own distinct “judgment of taste.”

BASIJI

The government’s ideal model for Iranian youth is the basiji, a modest, self-restrained (qanne), self-possessed (mattin) young man. He is “profound” (‘amiq), “weighty” (sangin), serious, and ready to sacrifice himself for Islam and the Revolution. The archetype of the basiji is Hossein Fahmideh, a thirteen-year-old basiji who at an early stage of the war destroyed an Iraqi tank by a suicide attack. Books retell his life story, and his picture is paraded on posters and stamps. Ayatollah Khomeini called him “the real leader.” After the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war in 1988 basijis somehow lost their significance. These men had left their school benches or jobs when they were still teenagers. They were seen as national heroes as long as the war lasted. They had sacrificed their careers, youth, friends, and frequently their health or parts of their body. Returning from the front, many basijis who came from poor backgrounds were disappointed to see that the original revolutionary ideas they had sacrificed themselves for were gone. An ideal basiji is modest in attitude and thereby spiritually rich but materially poor. “A rich basiji” is a contradiction in terms.

Nevertheless, sometimes the ideal necessitates a reforging of identity. Merhdad, a young basiji, comes close to pretending to be deprived. Merhdad is thirty years old and the only child of the family. He lives with his parents in the same alley where I resided during my fieldwork, in a wealthy neighborhood in North Tehran. His father is a well-off physician. Merhdad neither has nor needs an ordinary job. However, he has been active in the basij since the mid-1980s. While his father goes to his clinic in a suit and tie and his mother goes to meet her friends “not properly veiled,” Merhdad is always dressed as a hezbollahi. He goes to the mosque he belongs to unshaven and dressed in a white shirt hanging over his military pants.

In his case, this is not a matter of any generational revolt. I can see clearly that he likes his parents and respects them. Yet he is ashamed of belonging to a wealthy family. He never invites his basiji friends home. He told me how he had tried to hide his bourgeois background from other basijis:

The first month I joined the basij we went for a military training in the mountains. When we opened our lunch boxes I was embarrassed. All had simple cheese sandwiches except me. My mother had put rice and chicken in my box. The group leader said “We have a rich kid here.” It was embarrassing.

Merhdad told me that he sold the Peugeot his father had given him as a birthday present the previous year, to buy a second-hand Iranian-made Peykan. Merhdad wants to keep his family distant from his basiji comrades, because he knows that his family’s ostentatious lifestyle is seen by other basijis as “superficial bourgeois aesthetics,” which is in stark contrast to the ideology of the basij.

However, the majority of basijis come from the working class, and being basiji empowers them in the daily class conflicts on the Tehran streets. A former basiji from the working neighborhood Javadieh confessed:

It was just to have fun, to tease the rich sousol [effeminate] kids of north Tehran. With some other basiji friends we jumped in a car and drove to Shahrak-e Gharb or Miydan Mohseni. We put a “Stop, Check Point” sign up and annoyed “rich kids” in their khareji [foreign] cars. If one had a beautiful girl in his car we teased him even more. Sometimes if we did not like one, we cut his hair to belittle him before the girls.

For this young man as well for many others, basij has been a means to transgress the social hierarchy, albeit temporarily and symbolically. The state attempts to fit basijis into the educational system and the labor market by quotas and to retain their loyalty by granting them special privileges. They are given priority for subsidies for building houses or the hajj pilgrimage. Almost 40 percent of university places are reserved for basijis, their children, or the families of martyrs (Zahedi 2001: 119–20). This has widened the gap between basijis and other young persons who consider such favoritism to be discrimination.

A Veiled Society

Another side of the aesthetic of modesty has been the politics of veiling. The first stage was a project for the desexualization of society. Modesty and chastity are conflated in the Islamic notion of female virtue. Veiling is its instrument. Religions often regard sexuality as a menace and therefore repress it in order to keep people focused on salvation, and this view of what was necessary for the task of forming modest citizens has been shared by the Iranian clergy. Women are supposed to possess an uncontrollable sexual passion which is regarded as a threat to or calamity (fetneh) for the social order. Thus, sexuality is recognized only within the boundaries of permanent or temporary (mut‘a) marriage.⁹ In an ideal Islamic society the sphere of the family (the site of sexuality) should be separate from society. Such a separation purifies society from social corruption such as adultery and prostitution and takes the form of veiling, a responsibility that falls on women.

A woman’s beauty and sexuality are to be reserved for her husband. A woman is expected to make up and wear attractive clothes only for her husband’s gaze. It is women’s responsibility to ensure that their faces and bodies are not being watched by unrelated (namahram) people. Even sexual relations between spouses are regulated by Islam. Married couples should not have sex during the hajj pilgrimage or fasting, as it is thought to cause impurity, and such activities require prior ritual washing. A married couple may not hug or kiss in public, not even at their own wedding. Any sexual expression in public is discouraged. The preservation of “public chastity” (‘effat-e ‘omoumi) demands the absence of anything that can be associated with (female) sexuality.¹⁰

Desexualizing society has its roots in how sexuality is conceived in Iranian society. In Iranian culture, a beautiful woman can be admiringly described as a “calamity maker” (fetneh angiz) or “one who causes confusion in town” (shahrashob) (cf. Mernissi 1975). Interestingly the “calamity making” of women is inherently linked closely to their pattern of consumption. A “chaos-making” woman is “a super-consumer of imperialist/dependent-capitalist/foreign goods; she [is] a propagator of the corrupt culture of the West. . . . She [wears] too much makeup, too short a skirt, too tight a pair of pants, too low-cut a shirt. [She is] too loose in her relations with men, she laughs too loudly and smokes in public” (Najmabadi 1991: 65). One way to control her is to constrain her sexuality by veiling.¹¹ A woman who has been denied both her sexuality and her individuality is assigned to the single recognized role of motherhood, a role celebrated in soap operas and textbooks.¹²

ETHNOGRAPHIC VIGNETTE

Actress Gohar Kheirandish (in her fifties) kissed the forehead of Ali Zamani (in his twenties) as he received the top director’s prize at a ceremony in the central Iranian city of Yazd in October 2002. The clerical leaders organized protests after the kiss and the pair were accused of harming Islam. Kheirandish and Zamani were charged with immoral behavior and could face a jail sentence or up to 74 lashes for their actions but were more likely to be fined. The pair apologized for the kiss and said that it was a spontaneous, maternal gesture by Kheirandish.

The Science of Sexuality in Iran

In Iran, the suppression of sexuality has likewise extended it. In the Islamic Republic sexuality started to become repressed, that is, condemned to prohibition, nonexistence, and silence. Only one single and utilitarian locus of sexuality was acknowledged, the fertile heart of every household: the parents’ bedroom (cf. Foucault 1990: 3). But turning sexuality into “sin” did not make it disappear. On the contrary, it was reinforced and became something to be observed everywhere. The repressive fascination with sex resulted in an explosion of discourses—in medicine, psychiatry, and education—about sexuality. It has resulted in a pervasive discourse on sex that is a form of power/knowledge. As Foucault points out, the repression of sex in nineteenth-century bourgeois society demanded a science of sexuality, scientia sexualis (Foucault 1990: 58), in order to understand, catalog and identify the very perversion that needed to be controlled or eradicated.

Its focus [was] not the intensification of pleasure, but the rigorous analysis of every thought and action that related to pleasure. This exhaustive articulation of desire has produced a knowledge which supposedly holds the key to individual mental and physical health and to social well-being. The end of this analytic knowledge is either utility, morality, or truth. (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1983: 176)

Since the Revolution a huge market for manuals, instruction booklets, and educational guidance on sexuality and sex life has emerged. A large part of these publications are published by the state, but individual clerics and religious institutes are also producing them. Publications by the “Parent-Teacher Association” (Anjoman-e Uleá va Murabian) and by the “Cultural Foundation of Islamic Message” (Bounyad-e Farhangi Payam-e Islam) aim to teach young people how to have “proper” (monaseb) and “healthy” (salem) sex. Numerous blogs and websites deal with sexual issues. One example is Weblog of Temporary Marriage,¹³ which, based on religious sources, aims to “configure sexuality in society.” The blog offers “information” on sex and sexual relations, such as “how to stop sickly [sexual] behavior”; “the harms of masturbation”; “ethics of sex”; “advantages of temporary marriage.”

Furthermore, every ayatollah is supposed to have published his own Towzihoule Masael (Practical Treatise), a comprehensive guide to life in general and religious/juridical matters in particular. Sexual life is a major theme in these books. What follows is an excerpt from Ayatollah Mosavi Ardebili’s Towzihoule Masael (1380/2001), which deals with rules of the senses.

ETHNOGRAPHIC VIGNETTE

Rules of Look, Touch, and Voice

Article 3032. It is haraam [unlawful] for man to look at the body of the namahram [unrelated] woman, regardless of whether it is with the intention of pleasure or not. It is also haraam to look at the faces and the arms, up to the wrists, of such women with the intention of pleasure. Similarly, it is haraam for a woman to look at the body of namahram man, without the intention of deriving any pleasure.

Article 3032. It is haraam to look at the private parts of another person, even if it they are seen through glass or reflected in a mirror, or clean water, etc. As an obligatory precaution, it is also haraam to look at the genitals of a child. However, a wife and her husband can look at the entire body of each other.

Article 3039. If a man and woman, who are mahram of each other, do not have the intention of sexual pleasure, they can see the entire body of each other excepting the private parts.

Article 3040. A man should not look at the body of another man with the intention of sexual excitement, and also, it is haraam for a woman to look at the body of another woman with the intention of sexual excitement.

Article 3043. If a man has to look at or touch the body of a namahram woman for the sake of treatment, there is no harm. But, if he can treat her with looking and without touching, he must not touch her, and if he can treat her with touching, he must not look at her.

Article 3044. If one is obliged to look at another person’s private parts for treatment, he must look in a mirror, but if there is no way but looking, then there is no harm.

Article 3045. A woman is allowed to speak loudly before namahram men unless her voice makes the men sexually excited.

Article 3046. Women and men are allowed to hear each other’s voices if they do not have the intention of sexual pleasure.

In 2005 a “Marriage Calendar” (Taqvim-e zanashoui) was published by a religious publisher in Qom. Printed in 100,000 copies, the Calendar contains sex instructions and quotes from religious leaders about sexual issues. Each day is marked as an “appropriate” or “inappropriate” day for sexual intercourse. For instance, according to the Calendar, sexual intercourse in a standing position is improper because it resembles animals’ sexual intercourse. Based on quotes from religious texts, men are recommended to do foreplay before penetration.¹⁴ Another example of expansion of “the science of sexuality” is shown in the aims and plans of the government National Youth Organization.¹⁵

National Youth Policy

Article 36: Hygiene of adolescence

• Being aware of physical and mental health, physical changes and mental developments during the period of maturation and directing sexual instincts toward preserving physical health and reproduction.

•Providing suitable grounds to obtain the youth’s trust in expressing their problems arising from adolescence with parents and teachers.

•Planning for physical and mental activities to moderate the adolescents’ sex instinct up to their marriage time.

Article 37: Rites of maturity

•Learning the rites of maturity and responsibilities of becoming an adult on the basis of religious laws & understanding the reasons of impermissible premarital affairs between boys and girls.

•Guidance of the youth to acquire restricted useful & necessary sex knowledge and prevention from acquiring unnecessary and perturbing information.

•Immunization of the social environment and removal of probable backgrounds of the adolescents’ sexual abuse in their mutual relations.

•Expansion of the sex hygiene and individual cleanliness among girls and boys.

Article 38: Chastity

•Improvement of the spiritual disposition and moral training of the youth to preserve their health and restrain their sex instinct.

•Preservation of the sanctity and protection of chastity, honour, and family dignity.

* * *

Since sin and crime are seen as equivalent by the authorities, confessing one’s crime (‘eteraf) and repentance (toubeh) are also usually the same. Unlike Catholicism, there is no explicit verbalized confession in Islam, but Muslims are expected to repent (toubeh) alone and in their hearts.¹⁶ Summons to make toubeh became pervasive in various forms, such as in official speeches, religious lectures, graffiti, and in textbooks. In the religious handbook, Javanan Chera? (Youth, Why?), we read “One should see him/herself before the Divine Justice [‘adl-e elahi] and make toubeh for his/her bad deeds” (Zamani 1379/2000: 155). Another instance: “We watch her/him from afar and let her/him take his/her own steps. If we choose these methods, our children will easily tell us their secrets and control themselves. This is what faith means” (Ahmadi 1380/2001: 70).

Confession is a central component in the expanding of “techniques of discipline” and control of bodies and society, especially “telling the truth” about sexuality (Foucault 1990: 59): “in confession after confession to oneself and to others, this mise en discours has placed the individual in a network of relations of power with those who claim to be able to extract the truth of these confessions through their possession of the keys to interpretation” (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1983: 174). In the Iranian context the border between confessing (‘eteraf) one’s crimes and one’s sins (almost always sexual ones) has collapsed.

It has been very common for accused journalists, intellectuals, and political activists to “confess” their sexual sins/crimes alongside what they are actually accused of. Political offenses are linked to sexual misdemeanors. Confessions of the individual’s sexual life have become part of politics in Iran. Every day on the streets people are forced by the moral police to confess to their sexual “sins.” Two unrelated persons of opposite sex found in the company of each other are forced by the moral police to “confess” to what kind of (read sexual) relationship they have. The young couples are interrogated separately and then the girl’s story is compared with the boy’s to check if they are lying or not. Prepared for this, young couples adopt tactics to deceive the system. The boy borrows his sister’s identity and even ID-card for his girlfriend, or they prearrange a story to mislead the police.

Elli’s trouble with the moral police is an illustrative example. She told me she was once stopped by “moral policewomen.” They first ordered her to correct her veil and then began to insult her, saying that she looked like a whore. Elli wore an overall on which there were several lines that made an arrow pointing downward. The policewomen claimed that the pattern “pointed at Elli’s cunt” in order to attract the attention of boys.

Veiling and Modesty

Imposing veiling and unveiling has been seen metaphorically by Iranians as a hallmark of the “tradition/modernity” (sonat/tajadoud) dichotomy. While “modernity” took the concrete form of unveiling, one of the first concerns of the Islamist movements is veiling.¹⁷ Although veiling and modesty in Iran go back in time well beyond the Islamic Republic, it was only after the Revolution that veiling and sex segregation for all were enforced and given a political and juridical dimension. Sex segregation of public spaces was ordered at the very beginning of the Islamic Republic. Rules prescribing the hejab as a proper and modest attire for women were written into the law. One form of “cultural crime” is bad-hejabi (improper veiling). Women had to cover their hair and skin in public, except for the face and hands. In 1983, Parliament made “observance of the veil” compulsory in the Penal Law, on pain of 74 lashes (Kar 1380/2001: 126–27). In 1996, the Penal Law was reformed and the punishment of bad-hejabi was reduced to prison and a fine. Bad-hejabi is only vaguely defined by the law. “Uncovered head, showing of hair, make-up, uncovered arms and legs, thin and see-through clothes and tights, tight clothes such as trousers without an overall over them, and clothes bearing foreign words, signs, or pictures” (Paidar 1995: 344) can be understood as bad-hejabi. But the term can also refer to the use of nail varnish, brightly colored overalls, or even modes of body movement or talking (Kar 1380/2001: 127). Mehrangiz Kar, a lawyer and activist for women’s rights, states that the fines paid by women accused of bad-hejabi represent a considerable revenue for the judiciary. According to the Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Law, “Unveiled women who appear in public places and in the public’s sight will be sentenced to prison from ten days to two months or to pay a fine of 50,000 to 500,000 Rials.”

Patterns of dress are often a form of communication. Veiling expresses modesty, as in the expression, “My sister, your veil is a sign of your chastity” (Khaharam, hejab-e tou neshane-ye effat-e toust). In political discourse the veil is presented both as a symbol of inner purity and modesty (nejjabat) and as an ideological device in the war against “cultural invasion.” That women are improperly veiled is seen as caused by plotting by the internal and external enemies of the Revolution. This view is best formulated in the famous slogan, “My sister, your veil is more vital than the blood of the martyrs.” An improperly veiled woman “dishonors the blood of the martyrs of Islam” (see Paidar 1995: 339). Violence against so-called bad-hejab women has been a daily scene since the Revolution.¹⁸ To find a solution for the bad hejabi “problem,” the Majlis (parliament) started a debate and research for creating a “national dress code” for Iranians in October 2005.

Veiling is a gender question involving men also. Historically, men in Middle Eastern societies were also supposed to be “veiled” (see El Guindi 1999: 117–28). Men are concerned, even if to a different degree, with veiling in a more abstract sense, and in the concrete sense of covering bodily parts seen as immodest. Like women, men are not allowed to exhibit their bodies or to adorn them by wearing ties or bow ties, sunglasses, necklaces, or earrings. Having long hair is taken as a violation of the Islamic order. Wearing short-sleeved shirts or shorts is against normative modesty. Men’s averted gaze is also a consequence of veiling. As Abu-Lughod has noted, modesty means more than veiling according to strict Muslim reading. It means hiding your natural needs and passions, for instance, by not smoking, laughing loudly, or talking too much. Modesty is about “masking one’s nature, about not exposing oneself to the other” (1986: 115). Covering “sexual shame,” the veil makes sense of the dichotomy between related and unrelated people. A woman should cover her sexual shame for men she is not related to, that is, men who might be potential sexual partners.

Both men and women must be protected from being seen by unrelated persons of the opposite sex by following a set of rules of modesty that apply to architecture, dress, behavior, eye contact, and forms of interaction (Milani 1992), but they must also veil themselves in more indirect ways. Women must to some extent veil their voice. “Veiling of the voice includes using formal language with unrelated males and females, a decorous tone of voice, and avoidance of singing, boisterous laugher, and generally any emotional outburst in public other than the expression of grief or anger” (Naficy 2000: 562).

The salient side of normative modesty is effacement. In the Iranian culture, face (rou) is a common metaphor for self-assertion and is used as a symbol in measuring the social ethic. Kam-roui (little-face, shyness) or rou nadashtan (not having a face) is a sign of humbleness, while rou dashtan (to have face) or pour-roui (full-face) stands for self-exposure, brashness, and free expression, in what is perceived as an aggressive and arrogant manner. The expression roum nemishe means “my face does not allow me to say or do it.” A person’s honor and reputation are his/her aberou (water of face). Similarly, the expression sharm-e hozour (shame of presence) refers to the same high-valued self-effacement. One who has sharm-e hozour (one who is ashamed of his/her presence) is a meek and respectful person. The mahjob (veiled one) is a courteous person. Thus self-abasement (symbolic self-sacrificing) and self-effacement (veiling) are main features of the social ethic that the Islamic state has constructed.

Moral Space

The norm imposed on Iranian youth is that they have to be “veiled” in the abstract meaning of the word, to be modest. In their social practice they should maintain the distinctions and segregation between related and unrelated (mahram and namahram) people. This protects the moral values of society from corruption, by evil lusts or “cultural invasion” by the earthly Great Satan, the United States. Another feature of the politics of veiling is strict gender segregation, which is enforced in public places such as beaches, swimming pools, schools, hairdressers, or sports halls. According to the law, there should be separate sections for the sexes at political meetings, conferences, weddings, funerals, demonstrations, and even different queues in front of a bakery. Buses are divided into two parts separated with a metal grille. Men should get on and off through the front door; the rear section and rear door are for women. Women are excluded from sports halls, where “unveiled” men play football or wrestle in shorts. Mixing the sexes was seen by Ayatollah Khomeini as a plot “designed by foreigners to propagate promiscuity, and to weaken the Muslim youth’s determination.”¹⁹ All places where segregation cannot be imposed, for example, in the street, shopping centers, or parks, are under the supervision of the moral police.

Another noticeable feature of Iranian normative modesty is the division of space into public and private spheres. Private space (andaruni) is associated with women and family relations (mahram). Public space (biruni) is associated with men and unrelatedness (namahram). Traditional urban house designs use high walls and inner rooms to protect the family from the public. In southern Tehran, the quarter (mahalleh) still functions in its traditional role, as an interstitial space between private and public, under the control of neighbors. If this moral geography is violated, it might cause stigmatization. One way of understanding the chador—the black veil that covers the body from head to foot—is to see it as a “mobile andaruni.” Just as the walls of a house protect the inhabitants, the chador protects women moving through public space from being looked at by unrelated men.

Imposition of the Islamic order has transformed traditional definitions of space. The urban sociologist Amir-Ebrahimi (1380/2001) argues that after the Revolution even public spaces in the cities have to some extent been transformed into andaruni. The patriarchal father’s attention to the female virtue (namous) of his family is now part of the way the state manages space (Foucault 2000: 207). Although traditional principles of marking off public space from morally controlled “private” space are not followed in modern architecture and urban planning in Tehran, the attitude maintaining them is still powerful in some places. For instance, in all public places such as cinemas or restaurants there is a section “specifically for families” (makhsous-e khanevadeh), which is separated or “protected” from the single male’s (afrad-e mojarad) erotic power.

I experienced this “spatial morality” personally several times when I was asked to leave restaurants in Iran because I did not respect the “family space.” Once I was refused entrance to a well-known traditional teahouse. “It is only for families. We do not want to have mojarads [single people] here,” the doorman told me. Mojarad generally means single, but usually refers only to a single male. The discrimination against mojarads does not include women. While single men are not allowed to enter “family spaces,” single women can do so. A single man is called azab, an Arabic word which means unmarried but also “to be distant.” So, the dangerous single men are supposed to be distant, unattached, and isolated. At the entrance to the traditional teahouse, upset by being discriminated against, I insisted on entering, and the porter repeated: “Here is only for family-possessed [khanevadeh-dar] persons.” Being “family-possessed” brings connotations of morality, civility, or virtue. To call somebody “without-family” (bi-khanevadeh) is an insult, meaning that the person is vulgar and undignified. The moral geography in Iran is thus organized in a way that segregates the family (read women) from unrelated, particularly single, men, who are supposed to be potential challengers of the order of sexual purity that is upheld and protected by the omnipresence of the patriarch. The most blatant discriminations against young bachelor men are done by the basij.

Once I asked Bahman, a basiji in the Shahrak-e Gharb (I shall return to him in the next chapter), “Why do you stop only cars in which there are young people, while cars in which there are families can go through?”

Bahman: “Families usually are not a problem. But be honest and tell me don’t you become suspicious, if you see three well-dressed young men in a car at midnight?”

To summarize, the personal modesty that is designed and imposed from above implies a social control of the body that acts not only by covering hair and skin but also by desexualizing the body in public and by imposing a normative poverty. Modesty in appearance and behavior thus operates both as a symbol of Islamic order and as a mechanism for maintaining it, in a combination of self-regulation and external control. The modest body demonstrates the normative values of the social body (see Douglas 1982), defining its social boundaries and confirming a person’s loyalty to the social order. Operating by humiliating the self, the body and its desires, the social order is turned into a project of self-abasement. If one side of this is to create an aestheticization of modesty, the other side engenders the celebration of sadness.

Iranian Blues: The Politics of Grief

When you are among Iranians, don’t smile too much; they don’t. (Lewis 2000: 333)

Iranians frequently complain that the Iranian culture is “a culture of sadness” (farhang-e gham), “a culture of mourning” (farhang-e azadari). Contrary to Western conceptualizations of it, in the Iranian culture sadness in its various shapes of grief and despair is not an indication of anomaly or a destructive feeling, but rather is normal and even valued.²⁰ The medical anthropologist asserts that dysphoria is central to the Iranian ethos (Good et al. 1985: 384). Such feelings are usually seen as symbols of inner purity (safa-ye baten). Once, while attending a concert, Dara and I saw Davod sitting close to us. Davod is a young man from Shahrak-e Gharb. An activist in the Local Association (anjoman-e mahali), he is accused by many other youths of being a political opportunist and having a “businessman style” (bazari maslak). Dara and his friends in Shahrak-e Gharb rarely missed a chance to criticize and belittle him. During the concert, Dara told me to look at Davod who, impressed by an old sorrowful melody, was shedding tears. Apparently surprised by Davod’s tears, Dara said after the concert: “Did you see? He cried. He is sincere. Despite his deceitfulness, his heart is clean.” Sadness and grief (qam o qosseh) are marks of social sophistication and personal “depth” (‘oumgh) and decency. Cheerful persons who express their joy frankly, laugh loudly, and joke with others risk being stamped as “happy-go-lucky” (alaki khosh), “unconcerned” (bi-khiyal), or bidard. In rural Iran it is still usual for people after long laughs to say “forgive me, God” (astaqforella), as if laughing is in itself a sin.

The centrality of tragedy to collective consciousness in Iran is reflected in popular culture and mythology. The Iranian national epic Shahnameh (Book of Kings) consists of tragedies. The best known of them are the tragedy of Rostam and Sohrab and the story of Siavash (I will return to these myths later). From the pre-Islamic mythologies in Shahnameh to the drama of Karbala, tragedy is related to the most conspicuous form of self-abasement and martyrdom. However, the Iranians’ vision of tragedy is first and foremost rooted in Shiite history and principally in the drama of Karbala.

The Tragedy of Karbala

The Karbala massacre took place in the month of Moharram 61 A.H. (ca. October 680 A.D.), on the plain of Karbala, located in today’s Iraq. Imam Hossein, son of Imam Ali and grandson of the Prophet, was martyred on the tenth day of Moharram, known as Ashura.²¹ The detailed history of Ashura is a story of loneliness, thirst, loss, torture, and bereavement. The anguish and regret of the Shiites are expressed and performed in a commemorative ritual of Ashura.²²

The annual ritual of Ashura has since then been celebrated everywhere in Iran for ten days (1st to 10th Moharram). The ritual is a complex arrangement of collective, ritualized mourning through public recitation and the chanting of elegies (rowzeh-khani); ta‘ziyeh (a theatrical representation of the tragedy); and the Moharram procession (dasteh).

It is no exaggeration to say that the whole Iranian population, more than 90 percent of them Shiite Muslims, go through the ritual every year. Even the lives of nonbelievers and religious minorities are affected by the ritual. Moharram is the first month of the Arabic/Islamic lunar year. It is often called mah-e azadari, the month of mourning or “the time of sin.” Public morale forbids weddings and marriage preparations during the month of Moharram. No joyful ceremonies take place; TV and radio programs are cheerless, “weighty” (sangin), and “serious” (jeddi). During the ten days of Moharram, the whole society is driven into a state of depression. TV and radio broadcast programs about the Karbala tragedy and the rituals. Thus, even non-Muslims are involved, albeit indirectly.²³

The Karbala tragedy has also affected Iranian art and literature. Ta‘ziyeh has been praised and developed as a particularly Iranian style of drama. There is a painting style related to the Karbala tragedy, known as pardeh or “coffeehouse painting,” that visually narrates the battle. A new generation of artists have developed “coffeehouse painting” into a modern art genre known as the “Saqakhaneh School” (see Chelkowski and Dabashi 1999). The main purpose of the Ashura rituals is to maximize lamentation. Shiite tradition encourages and promotes weeping as a way to salvation. Weeping for Hossein, called the “Lord of Martyrs” (Sayyed-ul Shohada), not only brings divine forgiveness, but also contributes to the triumph of the Shiite (see Enayat 1982: 182). A recurrent expression in official speeches is that “Islam needs tears.” Tears would even help Imam Hossein: “A learned man saw in a dream that the Imam [Hossein] had recovered from all the wounds [inflicted on him at Karbala]. He asked the Imam how his wounds had healed so miraculously. ‘With the tears of my mourners,’ replied the Imam.”²⁴

As Motahari formulates it, the Karbala tragedy is a “school” (maktab) and a “culture” (farhang) (see Motahari 1379/2000). Another Islamist, Emalduldin Baghi, in his book Jamm‘e Shenashi Qiyam-e Emam Hossein (Sociology of Imam Hossein’s Movement), agrees that the rituals of Ashura fulfill various social functions. They protect the society from cultural impurity and alienation and revive ethical values, such as “faith,” “martyrdom,” “sacrifice,” “dignity.” The cult of Ashura guarantees social cohesion and represents an “ideal lifestyle.” It imposes a norm and is a means for social control and guidance of the young people (1379/2000: 76–82). Thus, the Karbala tragedy is more than a historical event. As Michael Fischer puts it, it provides a paradigm, because it is

(a) a story expandable to be all-inclusive of history, cosmology, and life’s problems; (b) a background contrast against which the story is given heightened perceptual value: in this case, primarily Sunni conception, but other religions at times serve the same function; and (c) ritual or physical drama to embody the story and maintain high levels of emotional investment. (Fischer 1980: 27)

Good et al. (1985) and Good and Good (1988) also believe that the Moharram ritual organizes a “prototypical” view of the social order and the self in Iran. The central concept of the Karbala paradigm is “self-abasement.” Mourning and self-flagellation represent the feelings of guilt of all Shiite Muslims who were not there to help Imam Hossein. They represent the Kufan people repenting their abandonment of Hossein. How a “sense of guilt” and “valued dysphoria” has been manipulated and utilized in the political mobilization before and after the Revolution will be examined below. A recurring slogan since the Revolution has been “We are not like Kufans to abandon the Imam alone” (Ma ahl-e Kufe nistim Emam tanha bemanad).

Before discussing the role of the Karbala tragedy in the emergence of the current social order in Iran, I want to comment that, despite the fact that the shadows of the overwhelming ritual of Moharram reach out into all parts of the nation, there are subtle variations in the interpretation of the Karbala tragedy. For instance, in rural areas the Moharram ritual is only an excuse for teenage boys to have fun. Being together in long nights spent at the hosseinye, they make jokes or play cards (Fischer and Abedi 1990: chap. 1).

One way to avoid a fatalistic and static representation of Iran—as entirely subject to the ubiquitous sadness (e.g., in Good et al. 1985; Good and Good 1988)—is by “historicizing” the process whereby the Karbala tragedy has been transformed from a central symbol of folk religion into the focus of a state ideology.

The Politicization of Karbala

For Ayatollah Khomeini, the Karbala events had transformed not only the history of Islam, but the whole of human history. Imam Hossein’s heroic movement was depicted as an archetype representing the eternal struggle of Goodness against Evil, injustice, and tyranny. This new interpretation of the Karbala tragedy became popular among young people, despite the disapproval then shown by orthodox clerics.