Letting mere symbols guide your politics is a bad idea: it can force you to block with conservatives, e.g., Chirac's UMP which was the party that initiated the hijab ban in France; and it can invite an undesirable reaction: in Iran, it was the Shah's heavy-handed attack on hijab that was a factor in building Muslim opposition to him. If a dress code that forces women to wear hijab or anything else is wrong, a dress code that forces women to remove hijab or anything else is also wrong -- that's the ABC of civil liberties.
Set symbols aside and focus on substance, such as the right to abortion. US leftists generally fail to see similarities between Iran and Venezuela, but one of the similarities is conservatism: women in both societies lack the right to abortion, except the right to abortion performed to save the mother's life (the right that women in El Salvador does not enjoy, as even most MPs of the ostensibly secular FMLN eventually voted for total criminalization).
In 2005, the Iranian parliament -- dominated by "conservatives" many of whom backed Ahmadinejad in the election in the same year -- "voted to liberalise the country's abortion laws" (Frances Harrison, "Iran Liberalises Laws on Abortion," 12 April 2005, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4436445.stm>). It was the same clerical gerontocrats who blocked Ahmadinejad's oil ministry reform, decree to allow women to attend sports events at stadiums, etc. that vetoed the liberalized abortion law. Unless the basic structure of the Islamic Republic is undone, either through a passive revolution or other means, a fundamental change is not possible. That is why Iran needs a populist political force capable of pursuing its own social and economic agenda and sweeping away all -- including the mullah–bazaari nexus -- who stand in the way. Such a force, given the fact that a majority of Iranians -- including most of neoliberal "reformists" -- are religious in one way or another, won't and can't be secular at this point in history.
A couple of weeks ago, "Pope Benedict XVI told Venezuela President Hugo Chavez in a meeting at the Vatican . . . that he doesn't want him to weaken the abortion ban the South American nation currently has in place. The meeting came on the same day that news broke about a court's decision in Colombia to allow abortions in certain rare cases" (Steven Ertelt, "Pope Tells Venezuela President Hugo Chavez Don't Weaken Abortion Ban, 12 May 2006, <http://www.lifenews.com/nat2265.html>). It is frustrating to see that Colombia is ahead of Venezuela on this one. I understand that there is a chance to put the issue on a referendum in Venezuela, but Chavez probably won't move on this till he succeeds in removing the term limits.
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>