Summary Of Azar Nafisi's Veiled Threat

In a simpler world, when conflicts arose, the two sides of an argument and its members would be unmistakable. Much like two parties differing viewpoints, their members would be as distinct as the color black on a white background. In reality, however, this is not the case. Like many issues in our world today, the conflict in Iran between modernist and traditionalists pertaining to women’s rights and westernization is one of complexity. Azar Nafisi shows in her essay, “The Veiled Threat,” that the answer to the question “who is on which side of the Iranian modernization war?” tends to change given varying circumstances. Although many assume the disagreement in Iran is a definite issue with all Iranian women pitted against all Iranian men, Nafisi shows that men and women, Muslims and seculars, members of

Less obviously, Nafisi points out that oppressive laws such as these also impacted and infringed upon men’s private lives, and laws of this nature actually “alienated not just women but many men who initially supported the revolution.” Seeing as Iran’s internal conflict hinges on the idea of women’s rights, it is natural to assume that men would oppose women’s efforts toward a more westernized Iran, but as Nafisi shows, that did not always prove to be true. Nafisi tells the story of a women named Sediqeh Dowlatabadi, a women’s rights and education activist. With her family members’ destroyed tombs along side her own as proof, Sediqeh Dowlatabadi’s father and brother supported, rather than discouraged, Sediqeh’s efforts in the women’s rights movement, which is just one example of where men crossed an imaginary boundary between the sexes and supported the modernist movement in