What is Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the National Council of Iranian Resistance, the coalition of the secular and democratic opposition, using to make gender equality the driving force behind her progress? On a lived experience that has been enriched over the past three decades of the fight against fundamentalism. The result is a parliament in exile composed of 52% women, representing a movement led by courageous Iranian women who make the mullahs sweat cold. Maryam Rajavi tells the story of this resistance.
Who is Maryam Rajavi?
Mrs Maryam Rajavi, a fierce opponent of theocracy in Iran in an organization that brings together tens of thousands of women, understands that if she wants to defeat fundamentalism, whose keystone is misogyny, she must first opt for gender equality within her own ranks. Visit
https://www.maryam-rajavi.com/ and learn more about Maryam Rajavi.
It is Maryam Rajavi who will take charge of this change and give a decisive impetus to achieve, through multiple trials, this equality. This evolution has been transformed into a profound reflection on the development of what it calls the "essence of humanity" that sleeps in every being and is a source of energy and creativity, and therefore of inexhaustible combatively. In fact, over the past twenty years, equality of women and men has been established within the opposition movement of the People's Mujahedeen of Iran, first step by step, before moving up a gear, entrusting all leadership and responsibility positions to women.
Far from being formalistic, this approach was necessary to have the strength to overcome more than one political tsunami, but also to lay the foundations for a social democracy project woven with new human relations.
Maryam Rajavi's book
In her book, Maryam Rajavi describes each step of this evolution. How, through willpower, courage, very long hours of discussion and an unfailing love for free choice and freedom, all the women and men voluntarily involved in the Resistance have been able to break free, over the years of struggle, from the chains and obstacles that break the collective momentum and denigrate others. She explains with passion and method how the resistance fighters have been able to acquire new values, fighting the sexist and patriarchal vision that crushed women and deprived men of their humanity. They were based on the conception that all beings are equal in terms of sense of responsibility and that human values produced by respect for others and self-giving form a solid foundation and an inexhaustible source of energy.
This experience has transformed a moral force into a political force and instituted a new perspective on human relations. It has produced a generation of emancipated men and women who have won amazing political victories, such as the removal of the Organization of the Mujahedeen of the Iranian People from the terrorist lists, and who demonstrate unparalleled perseverance and pugnacity. It has also achieved socially and politically the challenge of gender equality, which Western societies are still struggling to achieve. This model has proved its worth in the city of Ashraf, built by the Iranian Resistance in Iraq, near the border with Iran. A source of hope for youth and women in Iran, its population continues to be the target of violent attacks by the Tehran regime.
Maryam Rajavi and the Iranian Resistance are opening a boulevard of hope for all women in the Middle East.