The participation of women in civil society and their public and private roles is a complex and contentious topic that has engaged the state and women in a dynamic debate. In post-reformist Iran religious women continue to take an active role in order to promote women's emancipation. This study examines the involvement of religious women in civil society in Iran. A case study has been conducted, which focused on a religious organization named "Zeinab Society" (Jamayeh Zeinab). Members of this organization encompass both the conservative and reformist religious activists. These women activists believe that, Islamic texts offer an equal representation of both men and women, while at the same time acknowledging gender differences. By exploring how these women, with their attachments to both political activism and religion, opt for far-reaching changes in gender relations , this study will further analyzes the internal and external constraints these female activists encounter. This research further address one of the fiercely-debated gender discrimination issues that the Zeinab Society has countered. This controversial debate was concerning a bill in the Family Protection Law, which was revised by the Iranian parliament in 2008. The newly revised bill allowed husbands to take additional wives without the consent of their first spouse. Zeinab Society was one of the leading groups that opposed the Family Protection Law. Consequently, parliament dropped the controversial articles before approving the bill. This study has indicated that the Zeinab Society has shown resilience throughout three decades of struggle within and against the state by women loyal to the ideals of the Islamic Revolution. Women's activism has taken many forms in Iran- the most substantial sort bridging the gap between jurisprudence and theology, and engendering democracy. This research examines the extent to which these activists consider their religion a crucial resource for political mobilization in achieving gender equality. I examine this new trend among female activists, who by adopting the language of the religious and political leaders, are demanding that the state implement its promise of justice which they believe is mandated in Islam, while challenging a more secular, Western notion of gender equality. The findings of this research indicate that the new wave of religious activists, with their unconventional and female-centered interpretations of Islam, are challenging and reforming Islamic doctrine from within, rather than imposing or advocating a Western model of feminism.

My paper analyzes the writings of a female Iraqi Shi`i intellectual named Amina Bint Haydar al-Sadr, more commonly known by her pen name Bint al-Huda. Sister of the famous Shi`i philosopher Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, Bint al-Huda was a prolific author of newspaper articles, religious treatises, novels, and short stories, none of which have been translated into English. Starting in 1960, she wrote a regular column on women's issues for the fledgling Islamist periodical al-Adhwa'. The timing of the journal's appearance coincided with a public controversy over the 1959 Iraqi Personal Status Law, which removed family law from the jurisdiction of religious authorities and brought it under control of the state. While in many ways Bint al-Huda's defense of Islamic family law echoes that made by other Muslim opponents of the personal status law, I submit that a close reading of her critiques, supplemented by an analysis of the interpersonal relationships depicted in her fictional works, reveals important differences. I argue that Bint al-Huda, who never married, was preoccupied with the problematic construction of marriage in modern secular law as a temporal event that marks the beginning of a new family, and a new life, for the woman (one that cannot be easily ended), and simultaneously demands the curtailment or erasure of her existing relationships with other people. In her political columns she argues that western family law codifies the exploitation (istighlal) of women by merging the property of husband and wife and then giving the man disproportionate rights over the so-called joint property created by the marriage, which, inter alia, makes divorce more difficult for women. At the same time, her fictional works criticize modern marriages that rupture a woman's ties with her female friends and her male siblings. I show that this preoccupation can not be read as some sort of anti-modern resistance to the destruction of historically "old" social bonds (tribal, extended, patrilineal, religious) by historically "new" ones (conjugal, nuclear, child-centered, secular), since Bint al-Huda both affirmed the modern institution of companionate marriage and criticized tendencies to privilege it over other equally modern types of relationality. Foremost among the latter were non-kin, intragenerational friendships among young women made possible by the expansion of education, literacy, print culture, and a bureaucratic/industrial labor force in the 20th century. The Shi`i female homosocial lifeworld represented by Bint al-Huda was neither "traditional" in a historical sense nor "private" in a domestic/familial sense.

Conventionally the dominant Shi'i religious thought has excluded women from positions of religious and political authority in many Muslim societies. This type of exclusion was often justified through clerical reference to Islamic texts which alluded to women's inferiority and incapability for leadership or positions of judgeship. The 1979 Islamic Revolution enforced this stance and hindered women's access to key political decision-making positions. However, Iranian women have continuously challenged this traditionalist interpretation through women-centered rereading of religious texts. In recent times, women's demands for reform has resulted in more liberal and reformist interpretations concerning Shari'atic notions of female authority in which few religious leaders have shown an inclination to reconsider their traditionalist position. However, the clerical justification for such modern shifts from the conventional stand falls into two categories. The majority of Shi'i reformists justify their shift on female authority through discussion of environmental changes in which they argue that the "quality of women" has improved over time providing them with the necessary skills to acquire political or religious authority; while a minority of reformists argue that a feminist rereading of the texts is required to correct the conventional position. Through outlining the shifts in reformist Shi'i thought concerning female authority over the years, this paper argues that each of these categories of clerical justification has a different implication for women and on the future prospects of reform in the society. This work examines the extent to which each of these reformist positions democratizes religious interpretation. This work will illustrate that the majority position does not contribute to democratization of religion since it merely accommodates the gender perspective of the current society without fundamentally altering the conventional interpretational framework. This reformist position maintains the clerical establishment's authority over declaring women's capabilities for leadership by placing the blame for women's historical lack of power on women themselves. Hence, it justifies women's access to authority in modern times through women's own progress rather than clerical misinterpretations. Conversely, the minority stance emphasizes clerical misinterpretations that unjustly hindered women's access to positions of power and ignored religious principles of gender equality. In this regard, this paper raises the issue of voices of authoritative reform in the modern Shi'i discourse concerning women's societal status. It concludes by arguing that although there is a demand for feminist centered re-reading and re-interpretations of religious texts, the current dominant Shi'i reformism still maintains its monopoly on religious interpretation.

When it Comes to War, Jews and Shi'ites Share the Same Trigger During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) the Islamic Republic of Iran used various ideological Shi'ite stories to entice its people of various age and sex to fight against the Iraqis. The story of the third Shi'ite imam Husayn and his murder at the Battle of Karbala (680) by the Sunni Umayyad forces provided the struggle with a religious dimension that was effective in enticing Iranians to fight. With the help of the newly-established Revolutionary Guards the Iranian government supported this effort and placed mullahs in charge of it. They succeeded when they used such stories to mobilize the public. Iranians volunteered in roves to fight the Sunni Iraqi dictator, Saddam Husayn who, according to mullahs, embodied Yazid, the Umayyad caliph. However, Iranian Shi'ite mullahs were not the only Middle Eastern clergymen that used religious stories to encourage their people to kill or be killed. In recent developments Israeli military and civilian rabbis acted similarly to their Iranian counterparts and used Jewish stories of struggle against those who wanted to destroy their livelihood on their forefather's land during operation Cast Lead (Winter 2008-2009) against Palestinians in Gaza Strip. During that operation the rabbis used certain ideological stories to boost the morale of the IDF fighters. Shi'ite sources in this study consist of tragedy literature on the Battle of Karbala as remembered in public sermons' (rozeh khani) proceedings that commemorate that event in the month of Muharram; interviews with mullahs who conduct these sermons and were in charge of this effort during the war; and interviews with fighters that were influenced by these religious stories. Similarly, Jewish sources used in this study include material with the same ideological nature such as the liturgical poem eleh ezkarah, which is recited in the Day of Atonement's musaf service or Medieval poetic martyrologies like lamentations (or the kinot), of the Ninth of Av, in addition to interviews with military rabbis and soldiers that confirm the rise of religious rhetoric in the military. Through careful examination, comparison, and juxtaposition of Jewish and Shi'ite sources, along with testimony of Israeli and Iranian military and religious personalities, this study suggests that in lieu of failed policies that usually depend on nationalist ideologies and lack of public and military sympathy for fighting, Iranians and Israelis used similar religious stories to generate support and involvement for acts of war against others.