Interview
Shirzanan’s exclusive interview with Professor Homa Hoodfar
Women have successfully challenged the government
Shirzanan: Nasrin Afzali/ translated by Roja Najafi:
In March, a symposium was held in Montreal on the Role of Sport in Resisting, Accommodating and Remaking Muslim Women, organised in collaboration with Women Living Under Muslim Laws group (WLUML) and the University of Concordia’s Sociology and Anthropology Department. One of Shirzanan\s reporters attended the conference and conducted an interview with the symposium’s organizer, Homa Hoodfar- a professor at University of Tehran, and women’s right activist.
the study of sports is often excluded from sociology, let alone Muslim women’s sports, so how did you manage to organize an academic symposium focusing on Muslim women’s sports?
"We believe women’s sport is an important topic to study, and the issue of Hijab for muslim women makes it even more significant. Of course the Hijab alone is not an issue, but it becomes necessary to research and study it when it eliminates women. For Muslim women, sport is important because of its capacity in breaking social norms and traditions.
In European countries, for example, where Muslims are a minority group, if women from Islamic backgrounds and traditional Muslim families do an activity which is not traditional, they will be accused by their families of becoming Westernized, or being British. By using sports as a modern tool these Muslim women, some with Hijab and some without Hijab, form Muslim women’s athletic groups. so, as Muslim women, they start doing anti-traditional and modern activities.
They become rule breakers - they are not worried about losing their religion or Islamic culture through their activities. The athletic groups are not based on the family traditions that the women have grown up with. And this by itself kind of empowers them to beling to a modern civil society, where women’s organizations are part of the drive towards the main goals of equality.
That’s why it is important to have an academic approach toward Muslim women’s sports. This is the first symposium on this issue. We have invited scholars and specialists who have worked on social issues concerning the countries in the Middle East.
What is your evaluation of women’s sports in Iran?
Women have actively participated in a variety of sports in Iran and they have built strong international connections. Women have held many conferences about women and sport in Iran. They raise issues and the conferences bring a sort of validity to what they want to do. Sociologists from all over the world are working on this topic today - but in fact this is the first conference about Muslim women’s sports since 1992, the time of the first Muslim Countries’ Sports Championships.
The main difference between the conferences they hold within Iran and this one in Canada is that the governments normally sponsors them in Iran. This means there are some limits and red lines that can’t be crossed by criticizing the government. But here we are actually criticizing the policies that the government organizations have in place. The national conferences are important but they do not have the feminist point of view that we have here. This feminist perspective is very important for us because it is a kind of resistance that women have against their social limitations as well as the policies forced on them by their governments.
Can we call this Islamic Feminism?
Well, using Islamic feminism is problematic. The point of the matter is that when we talk about feminism in the West we never say Christian feminism or Jewish Feminism. In Iran we have to talk about women’s rights under Islamic and religious regulations, because that is the context of our society. But we shouldn’t call it Islamic Feminism.
What is the prospect of women’s sports in Islamic countries?
I believe sport - and especially modern sport - have always been political. Perhaps we didn’t recognize its political agenda before, but now because we have developed a stronger civil society, sport has become more of a socio-political issue rather than only political.
That means women want their share of sport - when they see that 95% of the national athletic budget goes to men’s sports and they only have 5%, they start demanding more. They start demanding their social individual rights as citizens of a country.
The criticism that many of our sportswomen face in Iran is that despite all the limitations and inequalities, they continue to participate and obey the regulations. What do you think of this?
I disagree completely. If women had obeyed all of the governmental and religious regulations, we would not have anything called “Women’s Sport" today. The mere existence of women’s sports is because women did not accept the ideology governed by the authorities. What governments desire in Islamic countries is to have no such thing as women’s sports. These arguments about women’s sports are not something the government wants.
The Iranian government wants all women to wear black Chadoors and white scarves beneath it. But what women wear is not at all in line with this desire. Because of this resistance today we have women’s sport.
Today, women in Iran have reached an understanding with the government through dialogue. The fact that Faezeh Hashemi can ask government to cover the expenses of the Islamic Olympics (because this is the cost of the government’s policies on women’s affairs) proves that there is a dialogue between the two sides.
Women want to have sport. On the one hand the government wants them to obey Islamic laws - so women find a smart solution and say, well we’ll have Islamic Olympics. So I don’t think that criticism is valid. Women have successfully challenged the government.
