January 24-2014
. . . shunted aside
Masumeh Ebtekar, the highest-ranking woman in the Rohani Administration was selected to speak at the Tehran congregational prayers last week but then unceremoniously dumped.
Some thought she was kicked off the program because she was a woman. But Ebtekar pointed out that at least two women have been invited to speak before at Friday prayers. The difference may have been that they were Conservatives, not Reformists like Ebtekar.
Ebtekar is a deputy to Rohani and the head of Iran’s Environmental Protection Agency. She was invited to speak on Tehran’s air pollution problems. Every week, one or more speakers address the congregation before the beginning of the worship service.
Late last Thursday, less than 24 hours before she was due to speak, her appearance was cancelled. According to the head of the Tehran Friday Prayer office, she wasn’t feeling well.
On her Facebook page, however, Ebtekar wrote that her speech was canceled against her wishes. Some media reports suggested that conservative clerics were opposed to her presence because of her political affiliations rather than her gender.
Ebtekar, besides being Iran’s most recognized champion for environmental causes, is closely aligned with the reform movement, and spent eight years in the cabinet of Reformist President Mohammad Khatami.
Like many in that camp, she was marginalized during the Ahmadi-nejad years and even disqualified from running for the Tehran City Council in last June’s elections. Rohani asked her to resume the post she held under Khatami.
Ebtekar became internationally known as a college student in 1979 when she was the official spokesperson for the hostage-takers at the US Embassy. Referred to sarcastically as “Sister Mary” by Americans, she appeared on US television news speaking English with a flawless American accent, which she obtained as a child attending elementary school in a Philadelphia suburb while her father studied at the University of Pennsylvania.
Ebtekar wrote on her Facebook page that she would not have been the first woman to address Tehran Friday prayers, as Maryam Behroozi, a Majlis deputy in the early 1990s, and Marzieh Vahid-Dastjerdi, health minister under President Ahmadi-nejad and the sole woman ever in the cabinet, had previously spoken.
Ebtekar said she has several times addressed Friday prayers in other cities and has spoken to men and woman many times in many places. She ended her Facebook post, “So don’t take it so hard…. It’ll pass.”