Women and children have always been the most susceptible victims of the power-seekers, terrorists, and the cults. Most free nations strive to establish laws so as to protect women against mistreatment and manipulation and put their rights of equality into practice. The recent statement by the European Parliament calling on the European Commission to give practical effect to “its roadmap for equality between women and men” encourages the move to its accomplishment.
But I was disappointed to read an article by Professor Daniel M. Zucker who is a Chairman of Americans for Democracy in the Middle-East. In his recent article published in Global Politician, he rebukes the statement by the European Parliament on behalf of a terrorist group that has long been manipulating women insiders against their will for the cause of its undemocratic, cult ambitions. Mr. Zucker reprimanding the EUP says:
The EUP statement on Gender Equality is meaningless as long as the EU supports misogynist tyrannical regimes like the Islamic Republic of Iran by proscribing an egalitarian, democratic, moderate resistance group such as the PMOI.
Seemingly an advocate of the cult of Mojahedin, Mr. Zucker seems to have been kept in dark about what happens to women inside the cult and how they have been deprived of their rights as well as being severely abused. A partial look at the cult’s present aired programs on the condition of women residing in Camp Ashraf well indicates that military uniforms, discipline and forced harsh tasks are routine female managed task inside the camp. Has anybody asked why are so many women kept against their will in a military camp separated from their families and relatives?
Mr. Zucker states that Iran “is a bastion of gender inequality” while he is unaware of the fact that inside Mojahedin women were looked upon as the instruments from the very beginning and victimized under a male-hegemony. None of the many women members are permitted to marry at the present notwithstanding they were forced to marry whoever the leaders ordered before the ideological revolution. Nadereh Afshari, a separated member of the cult, in her book “Love Is Forbidden” writes:
All the women and girls before the 1980s [before the ideological revolution] were forced to marry whom they had not the least interest in as a process to achieve the gates of freedom, prosperity, perfection and a natural evolution. (128)
Following the ideological revolution, the process to achieve the gates of freedom and perfection took a revolutionary route and forced divorces superseded involuntary marriages. Women were the sole victims again and they had to divorce whom they had perforce married. There are countless evidences of women rights violated by the cult and the assumed domination of women at the present signifies a position of scapegoat. Unlike Mr. Zucker, the EU fathoms the unegalitarian Mojahedin and has good reason to keep it as a proscribed terrorist group.
kavehpur@hotmail.com
Ehsan Kavehpour – Mojahedin.ws – April 17, 2007