Mother Persia Quotes

“Basically, her whole life was a rebuke to religion as a quest for power or superiority rather than for love. Her teaching was therefore called “the doctrine of divine love.”
― Zhinia Noorian, Mother Persia: Women in Iran's History

“The Thousand and One Nights" draws on a sea of pre-existing legends, from lands stretching from Egypt to China. But the name “Shahrazad” is Persian, and as folklorist Maria Tatar explains, the material she conveys “made its way from Persian to Arabic manuscripts in the second half of the eighth century CE.” Reportedly, Shahrazad has a library of a thousand books, knows all their stories, and weaves them together like a classic bard. The tyrant who reportedly commands her love while threatening her life is a typical ancient warlord, who assumes that mercy is weakness. In countering his murderous egotism, she wields the power of myth and the beauty of empathy. Azar Nafisi explains it as a kind art therapy: “the heroine … must rely on ‘woman’s guile’ to survive a madman’s clutches. She turns his nights with her into an unfolding drama, spinning a spell of fantasy that finally restores his sanity.” In her survey of female heroes throughout history, "The Heroine with 1,001 Faces" (2021), Maria Tatar describes this sort of spell-casting as a chief characteristic of women’s art: “it gradually dawned on me that the heroines [of most folk stories] were habitually bent on social missions, trying to rescue, restore, or fix things, with words as their only weapons,” Maybe that is the ultimate function of all these legendary Persian “romances,” and the main goal of women’s popular folklore through the centuries.”
― Zhinia Noorian, Mother Persia: Women in Iran's History

“As a male taxi driver in Tehran complained, “Women no longer know their place, and they have disoriented us men too. They are taking our place everywhere: in the universities, the ministries, on the streets. Wherever you turn, there are aggressive women ready to push you aside. You are lucky if they don’t trample you under their feet.”
― Zhinia Noorian, Mother Persia: Women in Iran's History

“As Fatemeh Keshavarz explains, “It would take an entire book to name and briefly describe the women who have made their mark on Persian poetry and fiction, painting, cinema, photography, hiking, biking, car racing, horse riding, music, scholarship, and more.”
― Zhinia Noorian, Mother Persia: Women in Iran's History

“… many elements in these [traditional Islamic] laws are neither defensible on Islamic grounds nor tenable under contemporary conditions; not only are they contrary to the egalitarian spirit of Islam, they are invoked to deny Muslim women justice and dignified choices in life. … the provisions of the CEDAW [Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women] are more in line with the Shari’ah than are the provisions of family laws in many contemporary Muslim countries. -- Ziba Mir-Hosseini”
― Zhinia Noorian, Mother Persia: Women in Iran's History

“Somewhat like the martyrs of early Christianity, the Shia rebels were killed for refusing to pledge obedience to rulers they regarded as immoral tyrants. Later, both the Christian and the Shia martyrs were widely glorified as saints. But whereas the medieval Christian church firmly downplayed any political implications of the early martyrs’ defiance, the Shia Muslims emphasized those implications.”
― Zhinia Noorian, Mother Persia: Women in Iran's History

“Shahab Ahmed argued for an “exploratory” rather than a “restrictive” view of Islamic principles, where ancient teachings are taken like road signs indicating directions toward greater justice, rather than stop signs that impose eternal limits on social development.”
― Zhinia Noorian, Mother Persia: Women in Iran's History

“In recent years, numerous Islamic scholars have proposed a re-definition of zina (or forbidden, immoral sex). They have argued that sex should regarded as zina not when it is unauthorized (as in consensual sex between unmarried partners), but when it is forced (as in rape).”
― Zhinia Noorian, Mother Persia: Women in Iran's History

“Another female star of the pre-modern age was “Mulla Fatemeh” Naghai, a performer of music and poetry for the Zand dynasty court in Shiraz during the 1700s. This woman gave public concerts outside the Vakil bazaar, playing the lute, harp, tambourine, and reed pipe, and she could recite over 20,000 verses of classical or contemporary poetry from memory. She was an outspoken critic of clerical hypocrisy and of bigotry in general, demanding justice for the powerless both in the court and on stage.”
― Zhinia Noorian, Mother Persia: Women in Iran's History

“In popular Islam as most Iranians know it, various female saints are deeply revered, and spiritual women are well respected. Their powers, however, seem to be personal, not institutional. Female leaders are seen as inspirational, but not authoritative. Male clerics are generally accepted as the definers of religion, but probably most people’s actual values and world views are more shaped by their mothers or grandmothers. ... As in popular religion almost everywhere, loving care, personal aspiration, and moral decency are usually better respected than institutional authority.”
― Zhinia Noorian, Mother Persia: Women in Iran's History

“Clearly, many of the women’s movement’s “victories” were not so much positive steps toward greater rights, as defensive successes in blocking efforts to further erode their rights.”
― Zhinia Noorian, Mother Persia: Women in Iran's History

“In general, the public domain was “male space,” and women were usually deemed part of the private realm—as if they were “the private gender.” The boundaries between these spaces have been permeable or solid, moveable or fixed, physical or invisible. The doors between them may be closed or open. These boundaries have been drawn by men or by women, each for their own reasons of inclusion, exclusion, or self-protection.”
― Zhinia Noorian, Mother Persia: Women in Iran's History

“In one way, the whole official culture of the Islamic Republic was on guard to control women. In another way it was the women setting boundaries on men. Instead of the old context where male space was public but dangerous, and women’s space was safe but private, now whole segments of public space were reserved for women.”
― Zhinia Noorian, Mother Persia: Women in Iran's History

“The Women’s Freedom Society began in a very proper, intellectual way in 1906, holding lectures and discussions on issues involving women’s rights. To avoid attracting crowds of single men to its public gatherings of women, the society’s leaders imposed a rule: no single men would be admitted unless accompanied by a female relative. But one of the single men turned away at the door complained to his cleric, and this cleric denounced the Women’s Freedom Society as an anti-social conspiracy. Next, gangs of angry men broke in, fighting for their rights and disrupting the lectures until the society disbanded.”
― Zhinia Noorian, Mother Persia: Women in Iran's History

“Foolishly or not, many women harbor their own visions of what their faith should stand for, and those visions have popular appeal.”
― Zhinia Noorian, Mother Persia: Women in Iran's History

“In many languages such as Arabic or French, everything seems to have gender. As the name-givers have sexuality, so does everything they name, be it the sun, the moon, the fatherland, or God. Verbs and pronouns vary by gender, and it’s embarrassing to say them wrong. Some advocates of sexual equality suggest reforming language, so that people can be mentioned without gender-stereotyped labels. But various languages are already like that, and one of them is Persian.”
― Zhinia Noorian, Mother Persia: Women in Iran's History

“In this book, we want to tell lots of stories about great Iranian women, what they have done, what battles they fought, and what differences they made. These tales will challenge all sorts of stereotypes, and of course that’s part of the agenda. But it is the women themselves who defy stereotyping and provide the edutainment.”
― Zhinia Noorian, Mother Persia: Women in Iran's History

“As an Iranian woman in the West, I see and share a lot of concern about the fate of my country’s women. But I’m also disturbed at how commonly the Western people I know view female Iranians as either helpless victims or brainwashed enemies—even if they personally know vibrant, successful, multicultural Persian women. In both Iran and the West it’s still widely assumed that males have always been the authors of Iranian culture, business, law, religion, art, education, literature, agriculture, science, architecture, philosophy, social mores, and the writing of history. But of course Iranian women have always been creative, influential players in all of these fields. They’ve always had their own goals, values, passions, and accomplishments, whatever challenges they've faced, and their contributions have enriched the world. As I recall the commonly obscured female half of my heritage, I want to paint a big picture of women’s initiatives in every period of Iranian history. Of course many excellent authors and scholars have been working on that for decades, and their work has helped to dispel traditional bias. But I and my Western male co-author hope to make our own contribution. We want to link the insights and accounts of many Iranian women together, show their significance for the world, and do it through a stream of stories that people of all cultures might enjoy.”
― Zhinia Noorian, Mother Persia: Women in Iran's History