Women on the Front Lines is an hour-long documentary that explores the struggle between the women’s rights movement and strict Sharia law in Iran today. The revelation comes from Hossein Martin Fazeli, a filmmaker whose work brings Iranian cultural issues to the fore. Using an interview-based format, the film is interspersed with beautiful images of the country and abstract artistic expressions of the oppressive conditions women face in the culture.
The film goes to great lengths to portray the restrictions women place on them, from secular laws dealing with the restrictive attire women must wear (their entire body must be covered in public from around the age of nine) to downright profane subordination Status women’s ‘value’ statements in the court system. A poignant example used to demonstrate the latter is a rape case; where the accused man’s testimony contradicts that of the female victim, the woman automatically loses the case because her testimony is only “worth” the man’s in the eyes of the court . So rape in this country goes mostly unpunished unless there are witnesses (how frequent are rape allegations?) to corroborate the woman’s testimony.
Another story, told by a lifelong devotee of the cause, is that of a woman who had an argument with her husband over a rather trivial family matter, after which the husband went to work and she went to see her The Religious Teacher – a longstanding practice for women. When I arrived at Master’s house, I greeted her at the door, told her that I could no longer learn from Master, and told her to leave immediately. When the student asked for an explanation, she was told only that her husband stopped by on his way to work and banned the woman from continuing her studies there. This example shows that the power exercised over women is not limited to their own actions, but also includes the way the people in their lives are allowed to interact with them.
Where many people in Western culture feel they can only understand this subject through the sporadic CNN updates that enter their lives, the women on the front lines do a commendable job of educating their audience about the disadvantages experienced by women in many Islamic cultures seriousness of status.
