With or Without Hijab, We Move towards Revolution
The people of Iran are fighting for their freedom, on the streets. A resounding chant sweeps across the nation: «زن، زندگی، آزادی» or “Woman. Life. Freedom.” Simultaneously, women are cutting off their hair and burning their hijabs in public amongst many other instances in an ongoing fight against the totalitarian government that has oppressed the people for the past four decades. In this spotlight, we want to explore what has happened in Iran. Where do the protests come from? What is the situation of Iranian women? What can we learn from their bravery? To answer all these questions, Leila Faghfouri Azar, an Iranian woman and lecturer in law and politics at the University of Amsterdam, agreed on helping with an interview.
Zhina Amini, also known under her non-Kurdish name Masha Amini, was a 22-year-old woman of Kurdish descent from Saqez, Iran. On a visit to Tehran, she was detained after being arrested by the Iranian morality police on September 13th, 2022 for ‘wearing her hijab improperly’. She never returned. Following her brutal murder on September 16th, 2022, Zhina Amini was buried in her home city of Saqez in a glorious march by the Kurdish people. Her death sent a wave of public outrage across the world, most profoundly felt in her home country of Iran. Zhina’s murder was not an isolated incident; the people of Iran have been fighting against the ruling regime and its oppression for decades. Her murder revived a spirit of collective resistance dating back decades “against the highly corrupt economic system, the rapidly increasing number of unpaid or unemployed workers, the growing poverty, violence against political dissidents of all generations, breaking records in the number of executions, massacres of political dissidents in 1981 and 1988, and structural oppression against women” as Faghfouri Azar explained.
The protests immediately following Zhina’s murder were peaceful but were fought with a violent recoil from the Iranian state authorities, constituting a frighteningly long list of human rights violations. An eyewitness present at a protest taking place at Sattar Khan Street in Tehran on the 25th of September told Amnesty International that “The security forces did not show mercy to anyone. They fired shotguns at people and subjected people to beatings with batons, punching, and kicking.”1 It has been reported that between September 19th and 25th 2022, at least 60 people were killed by the Iranian state for partaking in protests opposing the regime. Among the listed victims were 23 children between the age of 11 and the age of 17, of whom nearly half were part of the ethnic Baluchi minority that has historically faced oppression by the Iranian government.2 Furthermore, the Iranian authorities have actively attempted to silence the increasingly lower-growing chants calling for change by enforcing internet shutdowns.
As Amnesty International, our focus will always be on human rights. The fundamental human right to freedom of religion has confined Zhina and many other women in Iran. As Faghfouri Azar explained, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, “religion has been used to create legal and political institutions for the purpose of suppressing everyone who opposes it”. The compulsory hijab law, on which ground Amini was arrested, is a physical manifestation of this confinement that evokes religion as a means of discriminating against and oppressing women. A brief look into Iranian history makes clear that Iranian women’s freedom of religion has been violated for many decades: Legislation, both from a side evoking religion, meaning complete enforcement of wearing hijabs since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and from a side evoking secularism, meaning a complete ban of hijabs under the monarch Raza Shah from 1936 to 1941, has repeatedly intervened in what women should or should not wear and what they can or cannot choose to do.3 Today, along with the chant of “Woman. Life. Freedom.”, another chant frequently echoes through Iran: “with or without hijab, we move towards revolution!” The Iranian people are fighting for democracy, equality, freedom, and the freedom of choice.
Although the Iranian government has tried to shut down the nationwide protest by force and has even approved the execution of protestors, a culture of resistance has been growing among the Iranian people. They have actively been fighting for their freedom since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran. What we, in the Western world, can do to support the protests, Faghfouri Azar calls establishing “a culture of solidarity”—one that sees “every struggle for freedom and equality to be an integrative and necessary part of a bigger struggle in which Western citizens act as equals”.
Right as we finished writing this newsletter, headlines went around the world that Iran allegedly abolished the so-called “morality police”, responsible for arresting Zhina Amini.4 However, as Amnesty warns, this should not be trusted, as the information available is very conflicting, and the Iranian government would simply continue the enforcement of the compulsory veiling laws and similar discriminatory policies by other means.5
As people from the Western world, living in Amsterdam, we cannot imagine the scope, importance, and background of the protests and people’s resistance against the ruling regime. We conducted an interview with Leila Faghfouri Azar to learn more about the current situation and its background. Below you can read the interview.
How do you, as an ex-pat living so far away, feel about the protests in Iran right now?
I am observing the situation with all my hopes and fears. While I am hopeful that the Iranian people succeed to achieve freedom, equality, and democracy after an ongoing struggle with two dictatorships for more than a century, I fear that the ruling regime might be able to crush the current uprising. In that case, the regime could re-event itself again. There is also a chance of neo-colonial interventions, which could deviate people’s autonomous resistance from its genuine origins and aspirations.
How would you explain the emergence of the mass protests that have erupted since the killing of Masha Zina Amini? Her death in police custody sadly was no isolated case, so why do you think it sparked such a scale of protests now?
Let me briefly clarify that the Iranian people have been continuously fighting against discrimination and oppression during the past four decades. They organized various mass protests in 1981, 1999, 2009, 2017, and 2019, just to name a few. I believe the current uprising is the revival of the previous mass protests of November 2019, which were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. I must add that in the period between 2019 and 2022, we witnessed numerous small-scale protests of teachers, workers, students, the retired, and other groups across the country. These protests were mainly motivated by economic demands. This socio-historical contextualization helps us understand the root causes of the current situation in a better way. Zhina’s murder and the message of resistance that the people of Kurdistan sent to the entire country during their glorious march at her funeral in the city of Saqez, revived the spirit of collective resistance in most cities.
We found out about Amini’s Kurdish background - what is the situation of Kurdish people in Iran? Could her ethnicity have played a role in her arrest, and does it play a role in the protests right now?
Zhina was a young, Kurdish woman. Each of the three words I use here symbolizes one dimension of a totalitarian regime that people are revolting against. The ruling regime has a patriarchal, misogynistic, and discriminatory character. But for now, let me only focus on her Kurdish identity as it signifies the historical, structural discrimination and oppression against Kurdish people and other nationalities (including the Arab, the Baluch, the Turk, etc.) and religious minorities in Iran. Historically, congruent with the oppression of the first demonstrations against the totalitarianism of the clergy, the regime brutally crushed the Kurdish people’s uprising who were claiming their collective rights in March-April of 1979. Interestingly, women organized massive protests against the implementation of compulsory hijab in March of the same year. As we can see, the ruling regime grounded its foundations on the oppression of women and nationalities from the very first days of its establishment. Like other nationalities, people of Kurdistan have experienced structural and multi-layered marginalization which is observable in the growing poverty. This goes hand in hand with cultural discrimination and political exclusion from notable administrative and legal bodies. Zhina’s murder, in my view, symbolizes the intersection of sexual, national, and class oppression of a religious dictatorship. At the same time, this event revived the spirit of resistance against such oppression. The women, the youth, and the minorities play a leading role in these emancipatory protests.
Allegedly, Amini was arrested because she didn’t comply with the compulsory veiling laws. In some news articles, we found phrases such as “the hijab became the symbol of oppression” - is this an accurate description of the current situation, or is it moving away from the bigger picture?
There is of course a degree of truth in considering the law of compulsory hijab as ‘one’ of the ‘symbols’ of the structural oppression against women in Iran. I, however, believe it would be reductionistic to take compulsory hijab as ‘the’ overarching symbol of oppression. To give a wider picture, I would like to suggest that the current mass protests represent people’s resistance against the highly corrupt economic system, the rapidly increasing number of unpaid or unemployed workers, the growing poverty, violence against political dissidents of all generations, breaking records in the number of executions, massacres of political dissidents in 1981 and 1988, and structural oppression against women.
While in Iran, a woman must wear a veil, in France, wearing a veil is, in some ways and occasions, restricted, limiting the freedom of religion (as argued by the European Court of Human Rights). Can these situations be compared? Should there be more media attention towards the situation in France, considering Islam is depicted by some people here in the "West" as the root cause of all the dissatisfaction and protests in Iran?
These are two different cases, and the role of religion must be examined in each differently. Under the rule of the Islamic Republic of Iran, religion has been used to create legal and political institutions for the purpose of suppressing everyone who opposes it. The law of compulsory hijab is an illuminating example of evoking religion for institutional discrimination and marginalization of women. This, manifestly, differs from individuals’ autonomous decision to practice religion in their private life. What Iranian people fight for is a democratic governance based on the separation of religion and state; a political system that secures individual and collective freedoms for every citizen. For example, right now in Iran, young female students chant together “with or without hijab, we move towards revolution” in universities. But in Europe, freedom of expression and religion is a premise which should function to protect individuals’ freedom of choice and decision. I believe we must put the cases of Hijab in France and the ECtHR’s ruling thereupon in this framework. Also, it must be noted that Islamophobia is an important challenge in Europe and the question of hijab must be viewed from that perspective, too. Sociologists suggest that wearing hijab by young women in Europe, at least in some cases, is a manifestation of their political agency. In this context, laws limiting its practice, as the ECtHR has argued, jeopardize their fundamental rights and freedoms. Women have full autonomy of their bodies and what they want to wear should be their own choice. This is something that some politicians don’t want to respect.
Since 1979 there have been many protests in Iran, but the regime has always managed to put them down. How is the current situation different? What do you hope to see happening that will support change in Iran?
The current uprising is different for at least two reasons. It is politically radical as it aims to overthrow the entire regime. The Iranian people want to create a democratic society. Moreover, the protests take place in more than 200 cities, in which all generations, socio-economic classes, and nationalities are involved. The radicalism and intersectional characters of this uprising, together with the praiseworthy courage of women and the youth make me hopeful of the creation of an alternative and genuine vision of politics and society. This new vision could liberate the Iranian people. It could also serve as a source of inspiration for other countries in the whole Middle East.
Very recently, the regime publicly announced to sentence many protesters to death… Is this successful in creating a culture of fear and in deterring other protesters?
It is very typical of every authoritarian regime to threaten people when they revolt. But what I am observing these days is the emergence of a culture of resistance among protestors. Since Zhina’s funeral, we have witnessed that many funerals turn into marches of resistance in which people chant slogans of ‘freedom and equality’. I believe this indicates two shifts in people’s mindset and morale. It, in the first place, envisions the unity of people’s front against the regime and its oppression. Second, it testifies to the failure of politics of terror. The Iranian people act courageously and resist narratives of victimization, which unfortunately play a dominant role in frameworks shaped by human rights NGOs. Rather, they see themselves as freedom fighters and the killed as inspiring heroes who did not wait for their freedom to be granted. They are ‘fighting’ for it.
Lastly, what should people know about the women of Iran, and how can we support their fight for human rights?
Together with the culture of resistance that has emerged and is flourishing in Iran, a new culture of solidarity could emerge and grow in the West. I believe this vision of solidarity needs to see every struggle for freedom and equality to be an integrative and necessary part of a bigger struggle in which Western citizens act as equals. Such a culture of solidarity, therefore, should emancipate itself from any vision of moral domination. It should preclude any forms of victimization or inequality. It should respect heterogeneous forms of political agency and offer support to emancipatory social experiences. After the devastating failure of interventionist and humanitarian projects in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, Iran is our last chance to collectively emancipate ourselves from local and global domination and authoritarianism.
References
[1] Amnesty International. (December 6, 2022). Iran: International community must not be deceived by dubious claims of disbanding morality police. Amnesty.org. Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/12/iran-international-community-must-not-be-deceived-by-dubious-claims-of-disbanding-morality-police/
[2] Amnesty International. (September 28, 2022). Iran: “Protester killings must be urgently investigated by international accountability mechanism” says Amnesty chief. Amnesty.org. Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/iran-protester-killings-must-be-urgently-investigated-by-international-accountability-mechanism-says-amnesty-chief/
[3] Amnesty International. (October 13, 2022). Iran: Killings of children during youthful anti-establishment protests. Amnesty.org https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde13/6104/2022/en/
[4] Sedghi, H. (2012). Feminist movements in the Pahlavi period. Encyclopaedia Iranica, IX/5, pp. 492-498. Retrieved from http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/feminist-movements-iii
[5] Yee, V., & Fassihi, F. (2022, December 5). Iran Has Abolished Morality Police, Official Suggests, After Months of Protests. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/04/world/middleeast/iran-morality-police.html?searchResultPosition=1
[6] Amnesty International. (December 6, 2022). Iran: International community must not be deceived by dubious claims of disbanding morality police. Amnesty.org. Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/12/iran-international-community-must-not-be-deceived-by-dubious-claims-of-disbanding-morality-police/