On 16 September 2022, 22-year-old Masha Amini died after being arrested three days earlier by the vice police for "wearing inappropriate clothing”. Masha Amini was stopped by the police with only a small amount of hair sticking out of her veil, she was arrested and taken to the police station. Two hours later, she was taken to hospital with, officially, a 'heart problem', the authorities denying any involvement in her death. No one believes this, as it is known that this type of transgression is part of the regime’s common practices. Women have been beaten by the hijab police for years. Beating and killing women is in their DNA. It is generally ignored by politicians and the media, but Masha's murder this time has shaken the world. This is a pivotal moment for women in Iran and other countries. The level of anger is extremely high and is spilling over into the streets. Women everywhere are taking off their veils and burning them.
It is important to understand that the hijab is not just a piece of cloth for Iranians. It is the most visible symbol of the oppression of women. It is the most visible symbol of the Islamic State, the Taliban of the Republic of Iran. For thousands of Iranian women, the obligation to wear the hijab is like the Berlin Wall, and they are convinced that if they succeed in tearing down this wall, the Islamic Republic will fall with it.
This is why the institutions try to gag them. Everything is done to avoid hearing this cry which, if it reverberates, can sweep away everything in its path. The second the guardians of the Revolution take note of this revolt, their power is over. This explains the brutality of the riots and the cruel repression. At the moment, women are burning police cars, which were not sent there to protect the population, but to kill the demonstrators. Some people say that the population is acting violently, I don't think so. Attacking the police of a murderous dictatorship, which kills instead of protecting, is not violence, it is resistance. The hijab police is only the armed arm of an oppressive regime that murders its opponents. This is why, in the streets, we hear cries of "no to the hijab", "no to the Islamic Republic”.
The bloody repressions of the Iranian regime’s power are numerous. There was the 2009 movement, and "bloody November",when demonstrations in over a hundred cities ended up drowned in blood. The difference is that this is the first time that women are on the front line, challenging one of the pillars of the Islamic Republic. This is totally unprecedented. The revolution is here. Just after the Islamic revolution in 1979, many women took off their veils and waved them in the street, but it never happened again. This is the first time in forty years that we have seen these magnificent images. And it is also the first time that women without veils are standing side by side with men in the street, challenging the ruling power. It is just extraordinary, and the reason why so many people believe that we are experiencing a "women's revolution" that could put an end to the Islamic Republic.
The regime can kill them or put them in jail, but it is powerless to stop the anger and the demands of the people. The women all say that they are going to demonstrate without knowing if they will return home at night, Yes, they can kill them, but they cannot kill the idea that animates this struggle, which is to fight for a secularised democracy. The Iranians of the 21st century, men and women alike, are ordinary people who, like the rest of the world, yearn for freedom and peace.
Yet there are so many Westerners who refrain from supporting them, for fear of stirring up so-called “Islamophobia”, which is an irrational fear. The fear of the police and a regime, which imprisons women, suffocates them, tortures them, rapes them and puts them in prison or kills them in the street because they do not follow Islamic law, is not irrational. It is very real. When you see European politicians like Ségolène Royal, Ann Lind, Catherine Ashton, Frederica Mogherini visiting Iran and complying with Islamic rules, wearing the veil, while women are being arrested a few steps away by the hijab police, is mind-boggling. In order not to offend anyone, these ladies ostensibly wear a hijab in the name of which so many women have been killed. These unashamedly political women play a role in strengthening the regime. They legitimise the oppression of Iranian women. They reinforce the oppressor who killed Masha Amini, and as such should be considered accomplices.
To note the absence of certain Western feminists who, in their comfort, choose to pay lip service or remain silent. It is sickening to call them "feminists". These women who celebrate "hijab day" without a word for Masha Amini, are not feminists but traitors. How can they celebrate hijab day when millions of women are fighting for their freedom and mourning a sister murdered by the police and remain silent. The real feminists are in Iran or Afghanistan. They are the ones who confront the mullahs, the Taliban, who defy the Islamic Republic of Iran, despite the danger.
The goal of the Taliban and the Islamic states is to eliminate their faces. They don't want to let them win, they want to show their faces and fight for their identity. This is what true feminism is about. The opposite of the bourgeois women who celebrate hijab day without a word for Masha.
When George Floyd was murdered in America by the police, everyone was united in indignation. And now, where are the democracies and the defenders of human rights while they are being killed ? How can we stand in solidarity with George Floyd and remain silent over this ?
Take to the streets ! Go everywhere! From Paris to London to New York, all feminists should be united against this horror. Feminist demonstrations were taking place in the U.S., when Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, paving the way for abortion to be banned in half of the U.S. states and women everywhere mobilised to demonstrate and shout "My body, my choice".
Only in the eyes of some western "feminists" the bodies of women in Iran do not appear to belong to them, they remain a sign on which the Taliban or the Islamic Republic can engrave their political message. Western feminists accept so long as they do not take to the streets and express solidarity, as this means that "our bodies belong to us, but your bodies, in Iran, Afghanistan or elsewhere, remain the property of men and fundamentalists". The women who agree to wear the veil to go to Iran or Afghanistan and who wear a hijab in front of these oppressors are legitimising a dictatorship that erases their faces. By their awful silence, they are telling these torturers that they are right. Silence is consent. But the women there will speak until they are heard. These women are the real heroines, Iranian women who, are in constant danger of being shot or imprisoned. Women such as 19 years old Saba Kordafshari and 21 years old Yassaman Ariyai. Both were arrested and sentenced to 24 years in prison. Saba's mother and Yassaman's mother both took off their veils to take over from their daughters. They took to the streets saying that they would be their voices from now on. These mothers are also in prison now and from prison they continue to show their solidarity with the ongoing revolution.
The recent attempt to assassinate the writer Salman Rushdie in the middle of negotiations on the Iranian nuclear deal could be a signal that the end of the regime is looming and that its servants know this. Their only way to survive is to conclude the nuclear deal. In order to negotiate, they are taking hostage citizens with dual nationality. At this very moment, French, Swiss, British and German citizens are languishing in Iranian prisons, used as bargaining chips, so that the democracies will come back to the table and conclude this agreement with Iran. The terrorist attack on Rushdie and other assassination attempts are linked. They are trying to send a message to the world. The US government must hold, as must its European allies, in reducing their relations with Iran to a bare minimum, as long as Iran does not respect all political prisoners, as long as it continues to kill its opponents. If Europe and the United States continue to try to reach an agreement with this regime, then it is not only the Islamic Republic that will have blood on its hands, but also all the states that will have sacrificed civil society and human rights to the exigency of reaching an agreement. History will judge those who compromise themselves. Dictators, on the other hand, are capable of uniting. If the democratic countries are not able to do this to end Islamic terror, the terrorist states will unite to end democracy instead.