Human Rights and Gender
While Ayatollah Montazeri has been celebrated as a champion of the rights of political prisoners, and human rights associated with the public sphere, in an interview conducted in 2003 in Qom with the Iranian feminist academic Golbarg Bashi he said that while men and women enjoy the same dignity and respect in the eyes of God, women's rights must remain strictly under the domain of Shi'i fiqh rather than international human rights conventions such as CEDAW.
In response to Golbarg Bashi, Ayatollah Montazeri said:
Women are humans too... When we say humans, it includes both men and women... you see, if people around the world want to say certain things about women for example being equal to men in matters of inheritance or legal testimony, because these issues pertain to the very letter of the Qur'an, we cannot accept them... Now, consider that God Almighty has made it incumbent upon men to cover the expenses of women... in Iran we cannot accept those laws that are against our religion... on certain occasions that these laws contradict the very clear text of the Qur'an, we cannot cooperate... Men in general (no'-e mard ha), all things considered, are productively more active – both intellectual activities and practical activities... All things considered, the intellectual and practical activities of men are more than women.When Bashi informed him that currently (2003) in Iranian universities, "some 60% of students are women" and asked him "so in future generations, when the number of professors, physicians, high-ranking experts, etc, will be mostly women, will Islam be able to have an ijtihad and modify these unjust laws because they no longer correspond with reality?"
Ayatollah Montazeri responded: "Those aspects of the Islamic law that are based on the very letter of the Qur'an, the answer is no. But certain other things yes, you can, and they can be subject to changing times. But those that are from the very letter of the Qur'an, no they cannot, and those have certain wisdom and subtleties in them."
Read more about this topic: Hussein-Ali Montazeri
Famous quotes containing the words human, rights and/or gender:
“The only human beings I have thoroughly admired and respected in the world have been those who carried the load of the world with a smile, and who, in the face of anxieties that would have knocked me clean out, never showed a tremor. Such men and women end by owning us, soul and body, and our allegiance can never be shaken. We are only too glad to be owned. Religion is nothing but this.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“Human beings have rights, because they are moral beings: the rights of all men grow out of their moral nature; and as all men have the same moral nature, they have essentially the same rights. These rights may be wrested from the slave, but they cannot be alienated: his title to himself is as perfect now, as is that of Lyman Beecher: it is stamped on his moral being, and is, like it, imperishable.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)
“But there, where I have garnered up my heart,
Where either I must live or bear no life;
The fountain from the which my current runs
Or else dries up: to be discarded thence,
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads
To knot and gender in!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)