A Comparative Study on the Islamic Feminism and Imam Khomeini's Approaches to Women's Socio-political Rights in an Islamic Form of State

The establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran, as an unprecedented form of government, and its quality and effectiveness has absorbed many critics in recent years. Islamic feminism is one of those approaches that emerged in response to this revitalization of the political Islam in late 1970s and has become popular since 1990s. The present study uses Margot Badran's theory of women's citizenship in Islamic states and addresses two pioneer Islamic feminists, Leila Ahmed and Saba Mahmood, to examine their approach toward the possibility and quality of women's social and political participation in an Islamic form of state. It, then, puts their ideas in a comparative framework with Ayatollah Khomeini's, as the main founding father of the Islamic Republic. The results indicate two absolutely distinct approaches as Ahmed and Mahmood reject even the assumption of women's social and political rights and participation in an Islamic form of state due to its religious metanarratives with the embedded discrimination and misogyny. In Ayatollah Khomeni's view; however, achieving women's social and political rights and participation is not only possible, but also, an essential of the Islamic state. For him, women also make the cultural identity of the Islamic society, so, their consensus and participation warrants the existence and the continuity of the Islamic state.