Inside a Women-Only Seminary in Iran

Sima was 15 when she received her high school diploma. At the time, she did not know what she wanted to make of her life. But then one day, as she walked past a newspaper stand, she noticed a thick registration form for joining a women’s seminary. Without consulting her family or speaking to friends, Sima registered for the entrance exam. 

Even though she says her religious knowledge at the time was average, she passed the interview. She was at Mashhad Seminary for five years, studying to complete the school’s Level 1 diploma, despite the fact that, after the second year of studies, she began to have her doubts. In fact, she began to feel she no longer wanted to have anything to do with religion, but she continued. She wanted to get her degree. After finishing, she continued her education, and went on to study journalism and documentary filmmaking.

As part of their faith, Shia Muslims must follow the edicts of a marja or a “source of emulation,” a religious authority with an established reputation among his peers for knowledge and judgement. An actual marja is always a man. But if a woman successfully completes three five-year courses of study at a seminary, she can be her own, and only her own, marja. And there are other administrative and scholarly advantages: After 15 years of devoted study, these religious women can teach and run bureaus for recording marriages and divorces.

But things are changing. According to Reza Eskandari, the vice president of women’s seminaries in cultural and propaganda affairs, soon the curriculum for female seminarians will be extended, and they will have the opportunity to study from a selection of 100 courses. This way, Eskandari says, female seminarians can play a role in “propaganda” and “guiding the society.” However, a large number of women’s seminaries say that they have not received any directives with regard to this change, and some have labeled the move as “impractical.”

Sima is also surprised to hear this. She says she has never heard of a course called “propaganda” for women seminarians, though there is an introductory course on proselytizing, which educates the students on rhetoric and methods of persuasion. “Proselytizing is one of the first basic subjects taught at the seminary and many lessons are spent on it,” she says. According to Sima, in addition to learning about Ayatollah Khomeini’s treatise “Exegesis of the Means of Salvation,” the five Shia articles of faith, and taking a course on “principles of belief,” the students are taught Arabic, Persian and rhetoric — “so that when they talk about God, decrees or any other subject, they will be ready with the tools to convince.” 

But Sima dismisses the idea of learning the skill of proselytization or taking classes on propaganda as “meaningless.” Women join the seminary “because they believe it to be the most reliable place to get the right knowledge about religion,” she says. 

She says that while some of these classes teach women how to improve how they speak, many of them are geared more at how women behave in the home. “Most of the time they teach women how to treat their husbands, often by using treatises,” she says. Put off by formal documents and lessons on marital life, many female seminarians are not interested in most of the proselytizing lessons on offer, though many of them still have to take them. 

Chapter and Verse

In Shia Islam, the five articles of faith — simply put, oneness, justice, prophethood, leadership, and the Day of Resurrection —  can be arrived at through reason, so in theory a marja has nothing to say about them. In the course on “principles of belief,” seminary students are taught how to use reason to doubt, identify answers to their doubts and, eventually, prove that God exists. Koranology or interpreting the Koran is another key course taught at the seminary. Students must learn each chapter and verse of the Koran in detail and at length, and use them in everyday debates. Another course is Hadith or “reports,” stories of the Prophet Mohammad’s words, habits and actions which, after the Koran itself, are the main sources of Islamic jurisprudence. Students must learn how separate real reports from fake ones. There are also courses on philosophy and logic.

Like male students, female seminarians must also learn Arabic, and those who go on pilgrimages such as hajj, especially during the holy months of Moharram and Ramadan, are expected to use their knowledge of Arabic to proselytize to other pilgrims to convert them to Shia Islam. “But it is not like they teach propaganda tricks,” says Sima. “Even talking about 100 courses on propaganda is a kind of propaganda itself — and a ridiculous one at that.”

Time to Go Home

Female seminarians face restrictions because of their gender. For example, their classes are held from 8am to 2pm, so that if they are married they can go home and attend to their husbands and children. Of course, all religious seminaries for women have dormitories, especially for women from other cities or other countries.

Sima says that for her, the “most painful” experience was gender segregation. Male teachers are separated from female students. “If the teacher was a man, they would set up a partition in the classroom. Women were sitting on one side while the teacher spoke from the other side. Of course after a while he would recognize the voices and could address the students by name.” She says, for her, the religious studies taught at Mashhad rely heavily on gender segregation. “Female students must only mix with others of their own sex and they can only guide other women.”

But Sima has some good memories as well, experiences that created what she described as an “emotional bond” between her and other female seminarians. “We are kept at a distance from public ceremonies and rites,” she says. “We have family bonds, but the moment we step into the street we are strangers. But at the seminary it is not like that. The students, the teachers and the officials use every excuse they can to organize collective ceremonies. Imagine that 600 people are reciting the same prayer. It is magnificent.” She says these ceremonies give the students the opportunity to form closer bonds with even more of their fellow students. Women who are confident and more sure of their life at the seminary reach out to more  reticent students. “They, too, can share in the bonding.”

Over the years, Iran’s religious authorities have often been preoccupied with women seminarians, and have even celebrated them. In 2010, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei called them “the honor of the revolution” and boasted that seminaries for women educated thousands of scholars, religious jurists and philosophers in various fields.

According to available statistics, Iran currently has 500 seminaries for women and more are being built. They teach 64,800 students at the general level, or Level 2, and 8,914 seminarians at the expert level, or Level 3. The Seminaries’ High Council set the policies for these seminaries. According to the council’s website, they are tasked with teaching students that — among other priorities — they must marry “on time” and be a “worthy wife” and a “caring mother.” The website also emphasizes that the seminary education, in terms of both the content and the duration, are designed in a way that does not interfere with those priorities. In other words, it should never be a woman seminarian’s priority to become a great philosopher or an Islamic jurist, or even an accomplished teacher.