Rebellious Silence, a Photography, by Shirin Neshat

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“Rebellious Silence”
Rebellious Silence is title of a photograph by Shirin Neshat represented the Iranian women and the revolutionary ideas behind this character that showed a fundamental role in every aspect of the Iranian political contemporary history. In the present, Iranian women must follow to strictures of dress and regulation including the hijab and full body covering as well as many other regulations forced on them by the Islamic Sharia’a law. However, this was not always the case. Before the Iranian revolution, the Shah began modernizing the state of Iran and presenting woman’s rights. Yet, many religious groups intensely opposed with what they saw as a destruction of Islamic culture. When the Islamic Republic seized the power from the Shah in 1979, they started to eliminate the changes made to women’s rights. In this essay, I will discuss the role of women in series of incidents that reflects the importance of women within the Iranian culture as well as politics. This essay will explain how education has contributed to the knowledge of many urban Iranian women to their unjust state. It will explain Iranian women both pre and post Iranian revolution and will illustrate on the different perspectives Iranian women have of Islam to highlight the current condition of Iranian society. Finally, it will argue how women were subjected in politics and how influential their role was and still in the politics of modern Iran.
According to Sullivan, in an attempt to open itself up to the rest of the world during the 1930s, Iran was developing a gradually modernized state, thus reducing the religious and social strictures that bound and estranged Iranian women (223). More schools, hospitals and higher systems of education and governm...

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...cover due to the repressive society they represent. Nevertheless, this was before Islamic government form many religious customs into laws. The Iranian women before and after the 1979 revolution reflects that the advanced education of women has contributed to the urban frustration of a women’s place in Iranian society and that several intellectuals of Iranian women support feminist viewpoints. As it’s shown above, the case of women movements were involved in all the major political and social changes of modern Iranian history. This reflects the essential role of women as a fundamental topic among the Iranian society. The characteristic model of Fetemah that Shariati discussed as a symbol of liberated women accurately reflect the Iranian women pre and post the revolution. Till today, the spirit of the urban rebellious liberated women is formed in the Iranian women

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