Introduction

In recent years, the study of the relationship between religion and social change as well as the relationship between religion and women's rights has been the subject of many studies and literature. In the context of Islam, there have been many debates on this topic since, in such communities and countries, Islamic laws directly affect women's lives. Women's movements in Islamic countries, despite having a long history, have not achieved much progress in their quest for gender equality (Abu Zayd, 1999, pp 106−9). For instance, an overview of the history of Iranian women's struggles to gain basic human rights illustrates that today, after more than 100 years of efforts, women are still striving to make polygamy illegal, to have unconditional rights to education, to work, to travel outside the country, to transfer their Iranian nationality to their non-Iranian husbands and their children, to have the right of custody of their children, and to be recognized as citizens with equal rights. Throughout their struggles, they have been faced with opposition that argues that women rights must be ‘in conformity with Islamic criteria’, which is demonstrated in several articles of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The question that arises here is whether Islam legitimates a discriminatory perspective and laws against women. Accordingly this chapter intends to investigate women's rights in the main currents of Islam and how women's rights and self-agency of women in various interpretations of Islam are affected by social changes in Iran. To enter into this discussion, it is important to take into account that Islam is not a monolithic and homogeneous religious tradition (Mojtahed Shabestari, 1384/2006). There are different interpretations of Islam which are categorized in this research in three schools of thought based on their understanding of how compatible Islamic laws are with a specific time and space. Accordingly, this chapter considers different interpretations of Islam within a spectrum; on the far right are fundamentalists, in the middle are reformists, and on the far left are secular; each having diverse views on the legitimacy and applicability of all Islamic laws in modern times, and thus having various perspectives on justice and women's rights.