WOMEN AND CRIMINAL LAW IN POST-KHOMEINI IRAN

This chapter evaluates how Iranian criminal sanctioning laws are notoriously severe, and in some categories, carry disproportionate penalties for women. Women's moral virtue plays a crucial role in the utopian vision of Islamic society envisioned by the religious leaders of the Islamic Republic. In the mindset of these lawmakers, the harsh criminal sanctions serve a deterrent purpose in the broader project of regulating morality and rehabilitating social values, first corrupted by the previous regime, and second undermined by the reformists. Women, of course, were the focus of the post-revolutionary social rehabilitation project when, immediately after the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini moved to suspend the Family Protection Act of 1967. The 1982 enactment of the first of a series of revisions to the penal code, the Law concerning Hudud and Qisas (Limits and Retribution, respectively) further aimed to reintroduce the element of religious moral sanctioning. Not long after, women were to embody morality physically under the legal authority of the Mandatory Veiling Act (1983). Alongside an unflagging emphasis on women's morality and societal rehabilitation, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government introduced important changes to the Civil Codes on Marriage and Family and to the Islamic Penal Codes. The chapter then looks at the latest changes to the criminal codes as they affect Iranian women.