A vote by Iran's reformist-dominated parliament to join an international agreement on women's rights is provoking bitter denunciation from hard-line clerics.
Over the weekend, dozens of clerics in the holy city of Qom held street protests on Friday and Saturday against parliament's vote in favor of Iran joining the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
The parliament approved the convention on July 23. The vote has to be endorsed by the unelected, hard-line controlled Guardian Council to become law. The council, which must approve all legislation before it becomes law, is likely to reject it.
"This is a colonial convention seeking to impose Western culture on Islam. Definitely, the Guardian Council will reject it," the daily Hambastegi quoted leading hard-liner Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi as saying Monday.
Mesbah Yazdi added that the vote is a "shameless insult to senior clerics whose religious rulings must be followed by Shiite Muslims." He said the convention contradicted "at least 90 Islamic rulings."
A majority of Iran's population are Shiite Muslims. Iran's 1979 revolution put Shiite clerics in charge of policy making, but many Iranians are rejecting that arrangement — and see the vote on the women's rights convention as a welcome step toward equal rights for men and women.
Under the strict form of Islamic law applied in Iran, a woman needs her husband's permission to work or travel abroad. A man's court testimony is considered twice as important as a woman's. Men can keep up to four wives at the same time, a right not granted to women.
Iranian men can divorce almost at will, but a woman who wants to divorce must go through a legal battle that can take years and possibly end with her relinquishing the right to divorce.
Parvin Ardalan, a women's rights activist, said the convention — if ratified — will allow women to pressure the ruling Islamic establishment to change laws that discriminate against women.
Despite being restricted from the nation's highest political posts, Iranian women — who number over 32 million of the nation's 68 million population — enjoy more political rights than women in most neighboring Gulf Arab states, including the right to vote and hold public office. However, as in Saudi Arabia, wearing the veil is compulsory in Iran.
Iranian women have enjoyed greater freedoms since the 1997 election of President Mohammad Khatami, who appointed a woman as vice president. Other women have been appointed to top government posts, but not Cabinet positions.