While individual women have always resisted the
honor-based hierarchy of gender power, conscious
efforts to change the status quo began, in Iran, with
the emergence of women’s rights ideas in late
nineteenth-century poetry and journalism, and
especially during and after the Constitutional Re-
volution of 1905–11. In Afghanistan, too, urban
intellectuals took the first steps toward challenging
the status quo in the early twentieth century. Legal
reforms granting women limited rights from the
1920s and 1930s could not displace the ancient
hierarchies of honor. In the mid-1950s, Furùgh
Farrukhzàd (1935–67) revolted, in her poetry and
personal relations, against the male-centered regime
of propriety and morality (Hillmann 1987). Al-
though by the mid-1960s women were granted
suffrage rights, an important step toward legal
equality, honor values continued to regulate gender
relations in and outside the body politic.
By the end of the twentieth century, the theo-
cratic regimes in both countries tried to reverse
what they considered to be Westernization of gen-
der roles. They constructed detailed codes of pro-
priety based on the Sharì≠a, in order to restore the
dignity and honor that Muslim women had lost to
modernity. In Iran, Fà†ima (the Prophet’s daughter
and the wife of Imàm ≠Alì) and Zaynab (Fà†ima’s
daughter) were promoted as role models to be emu-
lated by the new Muslim woman. The Islamic
Republic created a network of patrols, including
the Sisters of Zaynab, which toured the streets in
special cars and warned, arrested, or punished
women who deviated from the new propriety. The
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (1996–2001) cre-
ated a regime of gender apartheid closely moni-
tored by the al-Amr bi-al-mar≠ùf wa-al-nahy ≠an
al-munkar (Ministry of enjoining good and forbid-
ding evil). Men, too, had to observe codes of pro-
priety by emulating the Prophet Mu™ammad (Haj
Bàbàyì2002). The fall of the emirate did not visibly
change the status quo, while in Iran women’s resist-
ance has led to relaxation in implementing propri-
ety codes. In 2004, honor killing and women’s
suicide continued unabated in both countries.Bibliography
M. Haj Bàbàyì, Qavànìn-i Mullà≠Umar. Majmù≠i-yi
qavànìn-i Talibàn dar Afghànistàn, Tehran 1381/2002.
≠A.-A. Dihkhudà, Lughatnàmi, Tehran 1373/1994.
M. Hillmann, A lonely woman. Forugh Farrokhzad and
her poetry, Washington, D.C. 1987.
M. M. A. Mengurì, Beserhatî siyasî Kurd. Le 1914ewe
heta 1958, Sweden 1999.Shahrzad Mojab216 honor
South AsiaHonor (ijjat, ezzat, paxto) refers to good charac-
ter, doing what is appropriate and moral for one’s
gender, age, kin relations, caste, and religion.
Honor often centers on the family, male authority,
and community linkages. Both men and women
construct notions of female honor. However, they
are not always in agreement. A woman’s honor may
be subsumed into family obligations of reciprocity
and hospitality or it may be particular to her gender.
Moore (1998a) describes a Muslim community
in northeastern Rajasthan where the exercise of
honor is fairly typical of rural South Asian customs.
In the male council, honor is defined by the men in
terms of control: elders over juniors, men over
women, and the groom’s family over the bride’s
family. Parents are responsible to see that a child is
married near the age of puberty. Rahman notes that
in rural Bangladesh “the marriage of a daughter
at an ‘appropriate age’ brings honor – social and
symbolic capital – for the household” (1999, 94).
Jewelry that women receive at the time of their mar-
riages should be passed to a daughter’s dowry.
Reciprocal money donations are recorded in red
ledgers as the village community marries its sons
and daughters. Girls are married to men outside
their villages. The wedding is performed in the
bride’s village but the groom’s female kin should
not attend. Following notions of hypergamy, after a
daughter is married, it is honorable for a bride’s
family to give lavishly to the groom’s family but not
to visit or take from them. The young daughter-in-
law in an extended family is expected to work hard
for her mother-in-law. In a custom that was not
expected in her natal village, she now draws her
head shawl over her face in the presence of any male
her husband’s age or older. The council of male eld-
ers says, “a wife must live with her husband, how-
ever he keeps her ‘wet or dry’” (Moore 1998a, 117,
1998b).
Divorce and the patrilineal community’s inability
to control their women are threats to honor. In this
area, affairs are somewhat common. Male elders
threaten beatings and even murder but most cases
are settled by outcasting. Women, too, define
women’s moral obligations in terms of staying with
and serving her husband, caring for her children,
respecting her in-laws, and caring for the elderly.
However, the obligation that outweighs all others is
the duty to a woman’s children (Moore 1998a,
148). A female villager commented, “If you want to
have an affair do it here; why run away!” (ibid.,
147). Running away and abandoning land would
ruin a woman’s house, life, and children. Although