Peace Line

Peace Line – at the celebration of the fourteenth anniversary of the establishment of the Iranian Music House, which took place on the evening of Tuesday, October 13, 2013.

Unity Hall

The event was held and Dariush Pirniakan requested the broadcast of women singers’ voices and boldly criticized the Islamic Republic’s policies towards music in his speech. Dariush Pirniakan, in the presence of the Deputy Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, said: “It has been 34 years since I have been active in the field of music.”

Winter
This is still considered forbidden here. There is no evidence to show that music is forbidden and it is not right to ignore this large population of music listeners. I ask the scholars to explain where in religion music has been declared forbidden? In addition, the important demand of the music community is the freedom to broadcast the voices of women.

He had said elsewhere: “The frequency of a woman’s voice is like that of a man’s. Therefore, in terms of gender, it is not clear why one is permissible and the other is forbidden for musicians. Furthermore, the potential and ability of women’s voices are not being utilized.”

On the other hand, the controversies and consequences of Ali Jannati’s controversial statement on October 22, 2013 about women singing solo, where he said, “If women singing solo does not lead to corruption, there is no problem,” not only caused the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Hassan Rouhani, to be summoned to the parliament’s open session and receive a warning from the parliament, but also sparked the process of seeking fatwas from religious authorities, which continues to this day.

On this very day, only eight days after his fourteenth anniversary, the Iranian Music House, which is close to the government’s media, reacted to Dariush Pirniakan’s statements and called them “contrary to beliefs and Islamic values” and “against the law”. He resigned from his position.

Recently, the spokesperson of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Iranian Parliament, in an interview with the Mehr News Agency, criticized the solo performances and singing of women in Iran. He also announced the sending of a letter signed by a number of parliament members to President Hassan Rouhani in protest against some activities of women in the field of music.

“Considering the importance of the issue, the monthly magazine of “Peace Line” went to Hossein Naghavi Hosseini, the spokesperson of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, and in a short telephone conversation, we asked him why he opposes solo singing and women’s singing. “See, this is against the beliefs and religious values of our country. This issue has become prevalent and has led to the violation of sanctities in our country, and that is why the Minister of Culture and the President are responsible for it.”

This stance is in a situation where in recent months, the activities of Iranian women on their stages have still faced many oppositions and restrictions. Two examples of these restrictions are the cancellation of the concert of the music group “Erfan” due to the presence of female musicians who were supposed to perform on stage at the Khorsheed Art Center in Isfahan, and the cancellation of the Women’s Festival which was supposed to be held in late Khordad month.

Naghavi Hosseini, in response to the question of what events have occurred in recent months that led you to decide to write such a letter criticizing the government’s performance, simply stated that “the situation has become very critical and does not require repeating the obvious.”

We asked this representative of the parliament about the other signatories of this letter and he said, “If we were to reveal the names of the signatories, the letter would have been published publicly.” This statement creates doubt that the letter is confidential, but he also says, “This letter is not confidential and if it were, I wouldn’t talk about it…”

He continued, “As I mentioned in my interview with Mehr News Agency, if Mr. Rouhani does not pay attention to the demands of representatives in this regard, we will intervene and use our legal powers and limits to solve this problem.”

As mentioned earlier, in December 2013, the parliament also used the same powers and legal boundaries that Mr. Naghavi Hosseini had brought up, and by summoning Ali Jannati, the Minister of Culture and Guidance in Rouhani’s cabinet, and questioning him, after listening to the minister’s responses and Hamid Rasaei’s explanations about what they called “promoting obscenity”, they ultimately did not find the minister’s explanations convincing and gave him a yellow card with 105 votes in favor, 97 votes against, and 18 abstentions out of 224 present representatives in the session.

Ali Jannati said in the meeting: “Mr. Rasaei stated in his question that any type of singing by women is corruptive, but we believe that some cases, such as the theme song of the TV series “Mokhtarnameh”, which has also been approved by a religious authority, are not corruptive.”

At the end, when we asked Mr. Naghavi Hosseini if it wouldn’t have been better, considering that you are a representative of the people and perhaps many people would agree with women singing or playing solo, to first ask the people’s opinion before making your own the criterion, he did not continue the conversation and left the question unanswered…

The question that is being raised, and is not only relevant to today, is how can individuals who claim to represent the people, refuse to be accountable to them and speak against women’s singing and solo performances, which is even a controversial issue among Shia scholars, by saying that this goes against the beliefs and religious values of the people?