Mardom Mazloom

Dear Redwine

Let's keep in mind that many women didn't mind removing their hejab back then. Those who minded still had a "choice" to wear whatever non-chaadori kind of clothing they wanted, similar to today's fashions in Iran.

So who was forced in reality? The answer is, MEN, not women! It was men who were forced to deal with it, and with the fact that they can no longer indignify women with wrapping them in chaador.

And who was the most inflamed? Mollahs! Hence, their gradual use of the word "forced" (ejbaari) as propaganda against Reza Shah. Please don't fall for those clever Mollah propaganda.

As another commentator said, there was nothing wrong with outlawing "chaador", as it was an oppressive tool in the hands of men, similar to other oppressive methods such as marriage to a 10 years old girl, all of which should have been banned.

I think Reza Shah did the right thing and in the right way. It was as a result of kashfe hejaab and many other equalities granted to women during the Pahlavis (some say by force) that a new attitude towards woman and a new attitude in women toward their own selves became entranched in our Iranian socieity.

As a result, even after 30 years of IRI, most of our women today have not accepted "zelat" and can even be considered the frontrunners against the mollahs, the degree of which is uncomparable to muslim women in other countries.

مظلوم عزیز

بسیار بجا و به موقع نوشته اید.

یاد خانم اعتصامی بسیار پسندیده است.

1285-1299

Mozaffaredin Shah signed the farmaaneh mashrooteeyat in 1285.

Reza Shah's coup was in 1299.

He was crowned 5 years later. Read about Ahmad Shah, whom Reza Shah- peacefully- replaced.

We had 14 years of mashrooteeyat- Iranian style democracy-under Qajar and arguably, a decade after that. Was the life of the average Iranian improved? Not a bit!

There was no Iran. People identified themselves as "Khorasani", "Gilani', or "Kermani", or "Kurd",..etc. The union was in coma, and it's deteriation, imminant.

No security, no roads, no infrastructure. We were not much above Afghanistan. A dirt poor nation.Infested with ignorance and disease. Illiterate. Superstitious. Half of the population in chador.With nothing to be proud of.

Read about that period, and then you realize the significance of the rise of Reza Shah, and his impact - that is even felt today- on Iran.

..........

Red wine jan no need to explain it .

In the free Iran I'm going to open GO-GO bars in 4 corners of Iran and advertise FREE lap dances for the first 10 customers,and if there was a lady who wants to wear hijab  to dance we let her be FREE in DEMOCRATIC IRAN . Bon soire  Maziar

Jamshid jan,

You’re right in that we Iranians are never happy of what we have. I don’t know the exact reason of that? But, it’s perhaps because we are all raised very soosool-var, and behave in the society as we act in our respective families with our moms and dads!

I’ve heard from some Mullahs that if you rule over Arabs try to feed them as much as possible and if you rule over Iranians keep them as hungry as you can. Mullahs understood it well.

But as you say things are changing now, our youths who were born in war time, knew shortage, are well educated and are aware of what’s going on in the world. Keeping Iranians hungry won’t work anymore.

I thank you, benross, Divaneh, Mehrban, Red wine and Azarin khanoom for the good talk. It’s time for my son to go to bed. Good night!

A great man!

I think Reza Shah is one of the greatest men in our history! Full of charisma and guts...R.I.P. Reza Shah!

Thank you for this tribute!

Azarin

PS @Jamshid: Great comments! Smart... as always!

با زور،هر جور آن،در هر جریانی... مخالفیم

مردم مظلوم جان،قربانت گردم بالام جان،منظور بنده زور است و مورد استفاده آن ! حضرت علی‌ (که ما از مخلصین تام شما بوده و هستیم !) در هر جای تاریخ که بنگرید،زور که پیش آمد،باعث بد بختی عام و خاص شد !

بنده اصلا با حجاب و قوانین صحرایی اسلام موافق نیستم ولی‌ اجرای کشف حجاب را امری درست برای آن زمان مملکت نمی‌بینم !

نکته بر چیست ؟ امر بر این حادثه ..صحیح تر این باشد که خود زن پوشش خود را انتخاب کند،به دور از حکم مردان ! زن هر چه می‌خواهد،باید اطاعت کرد و به روی چشم گذاشت ! با زور که نمی‌شود زن را در خانه حبس کرد و آن را از جمع به دور ! زن باید حق انتخاب داشته باشد.

با زور،هر جور آن،در هر جریانی... مخالفیم.

عزت شما زیاد.

شراب سرخ جان، آخه عزیز من،

در لچک به سر زن کشیدن، اون هم به زور، چه برکتیست که میبایست آن را حال اختیاری کرد؟

مگر در شهر نانت شما نبود که چند وقت پیش خانمی را که نقاب بر سر داشت را پلیس توقیف کرد و بعد معلوم شد شوهر مبارکه ایشون چند زنی هست؟ اگراین آقا این اجازه را به خود نمیداد که خانمش در یک قدم پایین تر از خود حتما باید نقاب بر سر داشته باشد، این اجازه را هم به خود نمیداد که چند تا زن بقل هم بگیره؟

لچک به سر گذاشتن چون عملیست که خانم ها را در جایگاه پایین تر از مرد قرار میدهد، را باید غدقن کرد. همانطور که بردگی عملی غدقن و دیگر اختیاری نیست.

Dear Mardom Mazloom

"Any hint why Reza khan didn’t do this simple thing?"

Perhaps because he had severe limitations due to the conditions of the time? Or perhaps he was just a flawed man like the rest of us who did what he thought was best at the time? And also, perhaps because he lacked our advantage of having the hindsight knowledge?

But I guarantee you, if he had done away with mollahs, today, the good Iranians that we are, we would be blaming him for another of our today's shortcomings. If he would have taken care of the sources of that other shortcoming as well, we would still blame him for yet another.

In fact, today we might have blamed some of our shortcomings to him for having rid Iran of all mollahs.

If he didn't force the removal of hejab, we would be blaming him for not having forcefully remove it while he could. If he did remove hejab by force, we would then blame him for having dont it by force.

This is just being us. This is being Iranian. We look at a glass that is three quarter full, but we don't discuss the three quarter that is full, instead we zoom in and ciritsize the one quarter that is empty.

ایشان مقلّد بود

ایشان (آقای میر پنج!) مقلّد بود و نه سازنده یک ایده صحیح که کار ساز باشد در مملکت ایران (پوشش و حجاب منظور است در اینجا !) ! همانطور که به زیر کشیدن حجاب اشتباه بود،به زور گذاشتنش امروزه به دست اسلامیون..یک اشتباه بزرگتر است ! آخر این چه منطقی‌ است که باید به وسیله زور به خلق فهمانده شود !؟

یعنی‌ ایرانی‌ آنقدر بد بخت است که توانای انتخاب پوشش خود را ندارد ؟! تف به این سیاست و لعنت به این جور سیاستمداران که اینچنین باعث هرج و مرج در مملکت ما بودند و هستند و ما هنوز اندر خم یک کوچه ایم بی‌ آنکه به هوش آییم و خود برای خود تصمیم گیریم،دور از قاعدهٔ و مذهبی‌ که حتی بانی‌ آن از خود ما نیست !

تا کی گمراه بودن و تا کی سردرگریبان... دلمان می‌سوزد و از غریبی دیگر نای شکوه نداریم.. حال مجدد کاغذ سیاه کنید و به جان هم بی‌ افتید !

Wonders of hindsight

Having the hindsight is such a wonderful thing, isn't it? It makes you be able to say things like, "if he had done this, then we could have been like this."

The uninformed hindsighters should put themselves back in time and without the knowledge of the hindsight and while facing all the multitudes of problems and difficulties that were going on back then.

When they do, they realize that despite their bravado, they would not have been able to do one tenth of what the uneducated but visionary Reza Shah had done, considering his severe limitations and Iran's miserable condition at the time.

Having the hindsight knowledge is indeed wonderful. It makes us think that we are smarter than we really are.

Jamshid,

I might sound too harsh, and perhaps many of us on this site wouldn’t exist if it was the case but there is something that Reza Shah could have done and that was to finish the job and burn all the shepeshus hairy face mullahs in a boat just like Attaturk at his time.

Any hint why Reza khan didn’t do this simple thing?

Mehrban you’re welcome,

Persians were used to live in a matriarchal society. We owe much to Iraninan women. Even now the most real and harmful opposition to mullahs comes from IranianEs. In my view, what Reza shah did was to revamp all the dust of superstition and hatred which was laid down in our hearts after these last 1400 years. I agree with you that this was not enough to put the society in the orbit of modernity, but the taken step was already huge as it revealed to people that the suit does not make the monk as Mrs. Etessami said it magnificently

چشم و دل ر ا پـــرده می‌بایست، امـا
از عفاف چــــــادر پـــــــوسیــــــده، بنیاد مسلمانی نبود

I'm thankful to JJ or any other friend

who put Parvin Etessami’s poem in a better form than the one I posted. I'd always problems to put rhymes in a proper form in web forums.

I’ll also be grateful if any friends know how to put poems in the right form.

Mixed feelings

Like Mehrban I have mixed feelings about Reza Shah. He was definitely a great force of modernization but he also undermined Iran's new born democracy and the gains of Mashrooteh. To assume that lack of such dictatorship would have led to undesired outcomes, is nothing but assumptions. We are still to see the outcomes of the Pahlavi dictatorship as the IRI is nothing but the bastard child of the previous regime.

We must understand that Reza Shah was not a visionary but a product of his own time and the Mashrooteh movement. I wish he had passed all his acts of modernization through the Majlis in the same way that the Ata Turk did.

Jamshid

Jamshid, I do not know how but maybe with the same fortitude and gumption that was necessary to ban the Hejaab.  I am not sure which one was more difficult to swallow for the Iranians at that time self rule or taking their hijaab away.  Ataturk did it in Turkey, maybe Turkey was more homogeneous.  Jamshid there is no doubt that Reza Shah ideologically was not a Democrat we all know who he sided with.  I do not take that against him so much as I think if we overlook his contributions we would be unashamedly ungrateful.

It is interesting

It is interesting, as Ervand Abrahamian points it out in his book (I'm not quoting), that both Pahlavis ruled with complete respect of the constitution. There was no democracy, but there was always a token election, a token parliament which was drafting the law and there had to be the voting process as any modern institution, plus the fact that the members of the parliament were essentially all we got.

So it's not as if Iran was deprived of some luminaries. They, or their affiliates were always there. The mere fact that they always maintained modern institutions and were adamant that the process of lawmaking and decision making had to go through this modern formula, shows that they were dreaming of a day when Iranian people as self conscious individual citizens would be able to carry out the modern -and democratic- institutions by themselves.

Mehrban

"Too bad he had no inclination to Democracy, if he did he may have been the only man in Iranian recent history with the ability to implement it."

Mehrban, could you tell me HOW he could have implemented a true democracy in a country with only 0.1 percent literacy, with no conception or institutions of democracy, with mollah and feudal land owners sabotaging progress, with tribesmen declaring independence in every corner, with foreigners plotting against Iran at every opportunity and with the average Iranian not only being a pro-dictator of one sort or another but also easily manipulated?

How?

Mardom Mazloom Thank you

Reza Shah was an amazing man.  Modern Iran owes a lot to him.  As far as I know he was not educated but his instincts for modernity were unmatched.  He not only banned the hejaab (a brave undertaking given the deeply religious society of Iran at the time).  He also took the judicial system of Iran out of the hands of the Islamic courts and installed a new secular judicial system.  

Too bad he had no inclination to Democracy, if he did he may have been the only man in Iranian recent history with the ability to implement it.  But he didn't and we are where we are. 

Thank you Mardom jaan your posts are greatly appreciated.