The Veil and the Persepolis

Introduction

In Marjane Satrapi’s book, Persepolis, the author talks about her personal life with emphasis on the 1979 Islamic Revolution in her native Iran that toppled the Shah. The book has many aspects pertaining the Islamic way of life in Iran. However, it is the stand out themes that the book brings to surface that has made the book a favorite for scholars seeking an insight into the Islamic way of life. Among the themes that are brought out are those of nationalism, political systems, childhood, religion, and gender among many others. What comes up especially with regard to the themes of religion, childhood and gender in the book is the symbolic meaning of the veil. In the book, the veil represents a variety of issues from the obvious physical meaning to the hidden connotations and symbolism that is associated with it. This paper examines the symbolism of the veil from both the perspective of the author and the scholarly perspective of what the veil represents. In this regard, the paper examines the significance, importance, symbolism, and the effects of the veil.

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Significance of the veil

By mentioning the veil, the author refers to the wearing of hijabs by women and females in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Under the Shah’s leadership, Iran was not an Islamic state, but rather a monarchy in which the role of the Monarch superseded that of clerics (Dabashi, 2006). There was a clear distinction between religion and state as the Shah ruled the country under civil rules as opposed to religious/Islamic rules. Under the Shah’s leadership, there were no strict rules of how women should dress in public. The country was still comprised of an Islamic majority populace, and there was an unwritten rule that women were to dress decently in accordance to the prevalent Islamic rules (Hamzeh, 2012). However, the government was still not too interested in how exactly women dressed. As a matter of fact, the Shah’s regime was punctuated by increasing flow of western cultural issues into Iran. The country’s women were increasingly dressing and behaving more and more like their counterparts in Europe and North America. In addition to the clamor for political change, the Muslim clerics who spearheaded the Iranian revolution cited religious and moral decay as a basis for change.

During the Revolution, Iranians clustered around the Clerics in an effort to bring about both political and moral change to their country. Women quickly became the face of the Revolution by turning away from the western ideals propagated by the Shah’s regime (Dabashi, 2006). Both young girls and mature women took up to strictly following the teachings of the Quran, which required women to be moral in their dressing. Females started wearing the hijab and covering all the bodies except for the eyes only. This turn to religion by the country signified support for the cause of the revolution and defiance of the Shah. After the Revolution toppled the government, they put into place an Islamic Republic that essentially did away with the Shah’s civic rules in favor of Islamic law. This move by the Islamic regime to change the country’s law proved to be a doubled edged sword. The author reveals that the veil turned from representing liberation into a new form of oppression.

Importance

The analogy of the veil is also an important one in terms of what the Islamic Revolution brought to the country. The veil is an important aspect of the Muslim faith as it symbolizes the basics of Islamic ideology (Cooper & Yue, 2008). This ideology is that of the purity of the mind that results when females cover their bodies so as to sway temptations away from potential spouses. However, the view during the revolution was a slightly different one from that of the Quran. Here, the veil became representative of the nation’s acceptance of governance under strict Islamic laws. This acceptance by the nation, and by extension female, to dawn their veils is argued by many scholars as being the tipping point in the revolution. The Clerics gained overwhelming support for their ideals, while the Shah’s western ideals started to be frowned upon in public (Dabashi, 2006). In a nutshell, the wide acceptance of the veil was a moral victory during the revolution since wars are won in the mind first. Even after leaving Iran, the author’s attachment to the veil transcends that of defiance into becoming a source of national and religious pride. This is normally a differing point between women from the western world and those from the Muslim world. Whereas in the western culture the wearing of a hijab is seen as oppression of the female gender by a male dominated religion, most Muslim females feel quite the opposite (Cooper & Yue, 2008). The veil to them is an important part of who they are and what they stand for in terms of religion and morality. Many young Islamic females, in fact, see that out rightly abandoning wearing the veil is not a move forward in terms of personal liberties, but rather a betrayal of their proud culture (Hamzeh, 2012).

Effects of the veil

The veil in modern times has come to be considered as a symbol of oppression towards the Islamic females (Hamzeh, 2012). Based on the events of the books, the veil has been mentioned as a symbol of the change in liberties not only in Iran, but throughout the Muslim world. Iran under the Shah was rapidly acquiring fundamental gender liberties which compared to today’s standards may seem trivial, but were comparably better than those in neighboring countries within the Middle East. Therefore, the adoption of an Islamic law by the country’s revolutionary government was seen as steps in the backward direction. By legally requiring that women wear veils that completely cover their bodies, many scholars have argued that it has resulted to women completely losing out on their rights (Winter, 2008). These rights have ranged from women’s freedom of expression, association and speech to other social and political freedoms. Women under the rules of the Islamic law continue to be disenfranchised in countries such as Iran which associate every move by women as amounting to contradicting the teachings of the prophet (Hamzeh, 2012).

The veil has also come to represent continued male dominance over Islamic women in various aspects of the females’ lives (Cooper & Yue, 2008). By keeping the women in their repressive veils, the males continue to challenge women’s progress in various aspects of their lives. With the continued resistance to grant women extra freedoms in their societies, Islamic nations continue to project the perception that they are repressive and unjust in nature (Winter, 2008). For this reason, Muslim women are usually caught at crossroads between repressive men dominance on how religion is driven and love for the Islamic faith. The author in Persepolis demonstrates as much when she continually rebels at the restrictions that wearing the veil brings about without openly defying the Islamic symbolism of the veil. An example is when she wears sports wear instead of the full prescribed attire, but still refuses to criticize the Islamic religion for the restrictions. The veil can also be seen as symbolizing a means for change or empowerment tool (Winter, 2008). Since there are certain expected characteristics and behaviors by women in these Islamic communities, an open defiance of such expectations like wearing the veil can end up hurting women’s causes. Therefore, in order to be heard, a woman has to essentially conform to the society’s expectations and then make their case heard from within legal institutions (Winter, 2008).

Conclusion

The reality is that the exact interpretation of what the veil means is subject to the perspective through which an individual approaches the topic from. The literal meaning is that the veil is a representation of strict Islamic ideologies aimed at promoting morality. With respect to symbolism, the veil played an important part during the Iranian revolution where the introduction of the wearing of veils by women was a significant win on the part of the Clerics. The symbolism was that by taking up more Islamic ideologies, the nation was effectively rebelling against the repressive Shah regime. Based on the Iranian Revolution, the wearing of the veil also symbolized liberation of the public. However, to the rest of the world, the veil represents a symbol of oppression of the female gender in the Muslim world. This oppression is viewed in terms of the limited freedoms and liberties that women are subject to under the Islamic religion.