Rage Against the Veil

Rage Against the Veil: The Courageous Life and Death of an Islamic Dissident, Parvin Darabi and Romin P. Thomson, Prometheus Books, 1999

In February of 1994, a woman committed suicide by setting herself on fire in a public square in Teheran, the capital of Iran. This wasn't your average woman, this was Dr. Homa Darabi, one of Iran's most popular child psychiatrists and a lifelong advocate for civil rights. Darabi's sister, Parvin, tells her story.

Seemingly born a dissident, Darabi became a student activist in the politically volatile days under the Shah, while earning her medical degree. She did her medical residency in the United States, eventually getting her license to practice in 49 states. While Parvin emigrated to America in 1964, Homa was always drawn back to Iran. At that time, people thought that Ayatollah Khomeini would return from exile in France, remove the Shah from power, then hand power over to a democratically-elected government. Besides, anything was better than the Shah and SAVAK, his secret police. They were wrong.

Khomeini reimposed harsh Islamic law on women. The most well-known law mandated that women cover everything but their faces and hands in public. Also, a man can divorce his wife without telling her. A woman cannot work, travel or go to college without her husband's permission. Beatings, jailings and executions of women and young girls in the name of God were commonplace.

Homa was fired from her much-loved teaching position at Teheran University and forced to close her private practice because her dress was not sufficiently Islamic. With seemingly no purpose in life, Homa became more and more depressed. Parvin tried, several times, to get Homa on a plane to America, but Mohsen, Homa's husband, was, at best, apathetic to her plight.

This book is very impressive. It tells the story of one woman's life in Iran, instead of trying to sound like a sociological treatise. Written in an honest and forthright manner, it is Highly Recommended.