The Moral Courage Project – Summer 2009 Human Rights Campaign » Blog Archive

Quick links: content, navigation, search.

Navigation

Soraya and Neda must be remembered

Tuesday, 06. 30. 2009 – by Janice

| More

Over the past few weeks I have watched with the curiosity of an outsider the enormous demonstrations in Iran. As a long-time women’s rights advocate I was horrified and saddened to see Neda gunned down on her way to raise her voice with her fellow countrymen, a right we in the West take for granted.

The murder of Neda’s made me think of Soraya, the innocent stoning victim from The Stoning of Soraya M. Soraya was another woman who was murdered for trying to exercise freedoms those in the West would take for granted. Soraya’s “crime” was that she merely wanted to have the means to care for her young children and refused to divorce her abusive husband because she knew he would leave her and her young daughters destitute. Like Neda, Soraya came to find that there are places and times when those who crave power will kill anyone who poses a threat to their conquest. As the release of the film quickly approached after Neda’s murder, I discovered other ways in which Neda and Soraya’s lives relate.

Like Soraya Neda had hopes for her future. A passionate traveler, she had received training in tourism and hoped for a career leading Iranians in oversea tours. Neda longed to be free to pursue her career aspirations with the same passion that Soraya had to work to support her young children once her husband abandoned them.

Like Soraya there are those trying hard to conceal Neda’s memory. According to the L.A. Times, authorities even asked her family to take down the black mourning banners from the front of the house. The Iranian press was similarly persuaded not to use her full name in print. In The Stoning of Soraya M. the fearless Zahra relates to her audience the heartless decision of the mayor to not allow Soraya to have a proper burial. The book by Freidoune Sahebjam, on which the film is based, describes in detail the men’s opposition to allowing Soraya to be buried. After the decision was made, Mayor Ebrahim tells Zahra:

“Sheik Hassan is of the opinion that she shouldn’t be buried at all…According to God’s law, no woman who has been stoned to death has the right to interment. That’s what Sheik Hassan says…He says that those who have strayed from God’s path have no right to be buried with those who have lived with dignity” (p. 135).

Like the men in Soraya’s village, the authorities are fearful of the power a female martyr can have on a community. Unfortunately for them there are people all across the planet who insists on honoring the memory of these brave women.

There are two women in particular who have helped to preserve Soraya’s memory. We can follow their example in ensuring that Neda is remembered.

Follow the example of Zahra, Soraya’s ally and the sole voice of moral courage in the village. If those around you will not listen, search for someone who will. Search until you find someone else with the moral courage to listen and believe.

Follow the example of Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh, the co-writer of The Stoning of Soraya M. and husband to director Cyrus Nowrasteh. I recently had the wonderful opportunity to speak to Cyrus about the film. He told me that Betsy is largely responsible for the film's existence. Not only did it take over two years to secure the rights to the story, the negotiations were so laborious that on many occasions Cyrus felt the film would not be made. Cyrus told me that if it was not for Betsy’s determination to tell Soraya's story that the couple may not have ever made the film.

Soraya and Neda deserve to be remembered. Follow the examples of Zahra and Betsy. Don’t just be fearless, be resilient. Don’t make excuses for why your voice cannot be heard. If you think it is not being heard, yell louder!

Related Posts:

The message: reform (100%)
Washington Times makes more false claims (74.8%)
A Young Iranian Watches The Stoning of Soraya M. (62.9%)
Soraya's Song (In the Name of God) (RANDOM - 33.3%)

6 responses to “Soraya and Neda must be remembered”

Mehdi Rifai says:
June 30th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
“Sheik Hassan is of the opinion that she shouldn’t be buried at all…According to God’s law, no woman who has been stoned to death has the right to interment. That’s what Sheik Hassan says…He says that those who have strayed from God’s path have no right to be buried with those who have lived with dignity”

Actually, that's not true. Women who receive the punishment of stoning are considered to have atoned for their sins, and are actually accorded a full Islamic burial. Its the same as all those who have received punishment for their sins. There's even a story of a woman who willingly submitted to stoning during the prophet's time (the story is interesting because the prophet worked hard to dissuade her from being stoned, apparently). Some blood spattered on one of the apostles, and the man hurried to brush it off. The prophet stopped him, though, claiming her body had been purified of sin, and therefore her blood was not "unclean." Interesting that people don't remember these kinds of stories when they practice Islam.
Neda Agha Sultan Video – Original – Shocking – Adguru.Org … says:
June 30th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
[...] The Moral Courage Project » Blog Archive » Soraya and Neda must be … [...]
mercy bell says:
July 1st, 2009 at 2:27 am
beautiful.
UmmeJahan says:
July 1st, 2009 at 2:53 am
If we really want to empower Iranian women then we should lift sanctions on Iran and let it develop as an independent country. We tend to repeat our pattern of "help" to oil-rich nations. We impose our own puppet 'king' and if that fails, we demonise the regime and try to create instability by supporting several opposition groups. If that doesn't work, we demonise the culture and religion of the people and attack them with drones or "shock and awe" bombing raids.51% of Americans voted for Mr.Bush in his re-election.Do we really believe that people stoning an innocent woman to please an unseen God are more cruel than people who bomb thousands of innocent women for the sake of controlling their rulers and oil?

Adam G Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
@UmmeJahan, You say: "Do we really believe that people stoning an innocent woman to please an unseen God are more cruel than people who bomb thousands of innocent women for the sake of controlling their rulers and oil?" I agree that both actions are wrong. What's important is that we not forget about one tragedy just because another has occurred. It's not a question of "who is more cruel" – this train of thought is not constructive and will help no one. Rather, we must focus one one issue at a time if we truly intend to solve anything. If we're discussing the human rights of women in Iran, we cannot wave other atrocities – no matter how tragic – in front of each other's faces and forget about the issue at hand.
Ville Komsi says:
July 1st, 2009 at 9:30 am
MODERATOR! SORRY — A BETTER BEGINNING THIS WAY. AND SOME MINOR CORRECTIONS…

Hopefully you are not telling us, UmmeJahan, that everything is just a question of who rules — whether it is "we" or "you"?

OK, hypocrisy is counter-productive. Telling that we are pure and fine, altogether, and "they" are barbaric altogether doesn't help anyone and makes the world just worse.

For instance: I have not read Betty Mahmoody's book (Not Without My Daughter) and probably will not either. Why? Because I have seen a splendid film document made here in Finland (2002) by Kari Tervo and Alexis Kouros with Bozorg Mahmoody, the father. Also Tehran and the USA were visited, and US-born former Tehran neighbors of the Mahmoody family interviewed. The most striking moments of the documentary showed several "respectable" American award granters telling bluntly that they were not at all interested whether the story was true or not — they just thought it was a good, well-written and politically correct story, and they were making it a best-seller. Still more striking was the powerless figure of Bozorg Mahmoody visiting Helsinki, invited by the document-makers, trying here to contact, several times, by phone, the US consulate so as to ask for any chance to phone or send a message to her now almost-adult daughter in the US. The camera was filming, the phone call was taped, and the discourtesy from the employee (ending in an abrupt shut-off) was palpable. Still, finally, he somehow got a phone number to his daughter's student dwelling. Once she answered … but shut immediately off. I might weep. At the end of the document, there definitely was no credibility whatsoever left for Betty M. and William Hoffer, the actual book writer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Without_My_Daughter

I've also seen Kim Longinotto's documentary "Divorce Iranian Style" (1998) of a day-to-day working of a moslem divorce court in Tehran. The warmth, humor and understanding in this document is heartening. She clearly had won the confidence of both the well-meaning old judge and his secretary, and of the divorce-seeking women. One of the latter actually admitted to the camera: "I don't want to divorce, in fact — just to make him a bit jealous and nicer to me."

http://www.wmm.com/filmCatalog/pages/c454.shtml

But Kim Longinotto was not there to say that everything's OK. She just wanted to show an everyday side of things, milder than macabre. Because we must have this understanding, too. Another documentary by her that I've seen, "Sisters In Law" (2005) of female judges in a Cameroonian town dedicated to eradicate family violence, is equally heartening.

Now, I don't know what kind and quality this Soraya film is of — and I certainly will see it if I can. Irshad's opinion of its value and necessity weighs much at me.

What I'm trying to say is that black-and-white conceptions concerning even one person — not to speak of whole cultural or political spheres — are perilous. But that is a reason for trying to see all sides, not a reason to brush away the apalling sides.

UmmeJahan's attitude seems to me just as counter-productive as the hypocrisy of the world rulers.