Original link: https://sehseh.substack.com/p/bc1
In September 2022, the Iranian woman Mahsa Amini died after being arrested for not wearing a hijab. Protest anger spread from the country to the global Iranian community. (AP)
Text / Zhang Yuxuan
The largest and most violent protests in recent years have erupted in major Iranian cities since Sept. 16 over the death of a woman.
According to ” Al-monitor ” reports, the incident happened on September 15. A 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, accompanied her family to visit relatives in Tehran, and was detained by the ethics police because she did not wear a hijab on the street- – In Iran, women are required to cover their hair with a headscarf in public, and the ethics police are tasked with arresting those who violate the rules.
Two hours after she was detained, it was reported that Amini was in critical condition and was sent to the hospital for emergency treatment, and unfortunately died two days later. Police say it was a heart attack, but family members believe it was abuse. Amini’s brother said he saw black and blue beating marks on her leg.
The incident quickly went viral on social media and sparked protests against police violence in the following days. Her story resonated among the vast majority of Iranian women, because almost every woman has experienced being mistreated by the moral police, while more Iranians are dissatisfied with the police’s violence, opacity, deceit, and death in prison or in prison. heard from time to time.
Protests spread like a spark to cities in Iran. Seeing the video on Twitter, a large number of women took to the streets to hold up protest signs, and some women stood in solidarity with Amini, taking off their headscarves and shouting at the heights . There are also women who take off their headscarves and dance by the fire , symbolizing two things that the regime does not like: the flames symbolizing ancient Persian beliefs, and women dancing. While not in Iran, I also found that there have never been so many Iranian friends and well-known Iranians who followed to express their support for Amini on social media.
The core slogan of this protest is “Women, Life, Freedom” (Zan, zendegi, Azadi), which summarizes the three things that Iranian protesters want most. The more radical slogan is “Down with tyranny, whether it’s the king or the supreme leader” (Marg Ba Setamgar, Che Shah Bashe Che Rahbar), which appropriated the Iranian regime’s favorite slogan “Down with America” and became a verbal weapon for protesters. The change in slogan shows the hijab as a fuse to spark dissatisfaction with other parts of the government in Iran.
Observing this event, it is worth looking at it from two perspectives, one is undoubtedly feminism itself, and the other is the political situation in Iran.
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Feminism in Iran: It’s not just the hijab that sparks outrage
The core of this protest is undoubtedly women’s rights. As long as you know Iranian women, almost everyone can tell about an experience of being harassed by the moral police and not wearing a hijab. After the 1979 revolution in Iran, all women, regardless of religion, must wear a headscarf in public, even foreigners. This makes Iran and Saudi Arabia the only existing countries with hijab mandates.
What sets Iran apart from other Muslim countries, however, is its customs. Many women in Muslim countries without the hijab mandate still wear hijabs in a tight and airy way, but many Iranian women are reluctant to do so. Those who have been to Iran will notice that many women wear the hijab half-covered.
From the perspective of some conservative Muslims, the way Iranian women wear is purely indiscriminate, but from a secular perspective, as long as the hijab is mandatory, it is oppression. Therefore, in Iran, the ethics police have a lot of “business”, which is why so many Iranian women have been troubled by the ethics police.
However, the strictness of enforcement varies depending on the political situation: the previous reformist President Hassan Rouhani was slightly lenient during his administration, but slowly with the conservative President Ebrahim Raisi taking office in 2021 Get strict. In general, the hijab is seen by the Iranian government as an ideological battleground, a fight against “corrupt Western culture” and one of the pillars of value for the founding of the Islamic Republic.
Of course, this is not the first time Iranians have protested the hijab injunction. Eskandar Sadeghi, an Iranian-British political scientist, pointed out that since 1979, when former Iranian Supreme Leader Khameni forced women to wear headscarves, the opposition and protests of Iranian women have never stopped; and in recent years, women have been playing the role of key role
In September 2022, the Iranian woman Mahsa Amini died after being arrested for not wearing a hijab. Protest anger spread from the country to the global Iranian community. (AP)
In 2018, a woman, Vida Movahedi, took off her white turban and stood high on the street, becoming a symbol of resistance. Even my Iranian male friends admire the bravery of Iranian women.
The core reason why this “Amini’s death” has sparked such a huge protest is that “being troubled by the hijab” is the daily experience of many Iranians, and to suffer this bad luck just because the hijab is not properly worn can be said to be death Government ideology. In addition, the police also denied the abuse, and instead said that Amini died of a heart attack, and provoked dissatisfaction among Iranians that the government often hides the truth.
A local female friend of mine in Iran described the Amini incident in one word: anger.
I think this description is very appropriate. Iranians are angry at the state violence of the moral police, the habitual lying of the police, the oppression of ideology, the existence of the moral police system, and the fact that many people are not eating, why the country still spends so much money on women’s headscarves above this kind of thing.
The protests sparked by Amini’s death also had an international dimension. The reason why this matter has received so much attention from the international media is because the Western media particularly care about the issue of women’s headscarves.
In the past three to four years in Iran, protests related to the economy and corruption have not received such extensive attention and coverage. To put it bluntly, it is because the Western international media attaches great importance to the “ideological issue” of women’s freedom. As for the daily economic affairs of Iranians life, no one cares.
Frankly speaking, the female hijab is not always at the top of the domestic political agenda in Iran, and there are many other rights that feminist groups in Iran need to fight for, such as education, employment and so on. Sadly, these are not topics that the international media will care about either.
Political situation: The political and economic crisis behind the protests
What’s more intriguing than the whole mass protest over the death of the hijab girl is the political situation.
The incident came after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had not attended public events for two months, raising doubts about whether his always poor health had worsened. On September 6 this year, for the first time, he even missed the Assembly of Experts, which has been held twice a year since he took over. According to the Iranian constitution, the meeting is responsible for monitoring and selecting the supreme leader.
It was not until September 17 that Khamini finally attended a Shiite religious ceremony , but this did not dispel the doubts of the outside world. Judging from the newsreel, Hamini’s voice is exhausted and feeble. His tenure of more than three decades since 1989 could come to an end at any time.
Here is a point to point out the peculiarities of Iran’s political system. Iran is not as the outside world thinks, where the supreme leader has the final say. There are many different factions in Iran’s domestic politics, which are calculating the arrangement of power in the post-Hamini era.
At present, the strength of the people on the table is not very solid: President Lacey has not achieved half of his first term and has not yet achieved any political achievements; Khamini’s eldest son Sayyed Mujtaba is rumored to be one of the candidates, but there is no basis for public support ; There is also Sadeq Larijani from a prominent religious and political family, but the family has some disputes in the past, so I am afraid there is little hope.
It is under such circumstances that a political crisis triggered by the death of an Iranian woman, coincidence or not, affects the next step in Iran’s political situation.
Furthermore, from the perspective of the development of the situation in Iran, protests against the government in Iran have become more and more frequent in the past few years. There have been many protests due to the economic depression under the epidemic, and in 2020, Iranians protested that the Revolutionary Guards mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian Airlines civil plane. The nuclear deal being negotiated between Iran and the West is still in sight, meaning that Iran will continue to face severe economic sanctions reimposed by former U.S. President Donald Trump , and the economic outlook is bleak.
Judging from the development of the protest in the past week, the protest itself has gone beyond the simple “hijab issue”, mixed with many people’s dissatisfaction with the government. There are those who are dissatisfied with the current president, those who are dissatisfied with the supreme leader, those who are dissatisfied with the entire system, and those who are dissatisfied with the economy. The focus of the women’s hijab has the crisis of being marginalized.
In addition, protests have degenerated into riots in some places, and these phenomena are not a positive development. Some young people surrounded and beat the lonely police; some climbed on the public building and tore off the portraits of the two Iranian spiritual leaders on the wall, causing a burst of cheers from the crowd; some excited young people vandalized the police car.
It is difficult for mass movements to shake the ruling class in the short term
The author believes that this protest is still difficult to shake the ruling authorities in Tehran. Pro-government protesters in Iran burn American, British and Israeli flags. (AP)
Personally, I don’t think this protest will fundamentally change: there is no leader in the protests, and Iran’s ruling class remains united, without serious divisions. Currently, Western governments are more concerned about Ukraine and have little response to the voices of the Iranian people. Some overseas may call the protest a revolution, but wishful thinking.
The most likely outcome is that the Iranian government backs down a little, punishing the police to appease the population, but possibly with a tough repression. This time, the Iranian government has disrupted the Internet on a larger scale, which has also made Iranians worry that the government will take more extreme measures. Either outcome suggests that Iran’s politics and society may become increasingly unstable in the short term as pressure builds.
Even so, we can still stand with thousands of Iranians in solidarity with Iranian women, expressing support on social media with ” مهسا_امینی# ” (#Mahsaamini). “Women, life and freedom”, may Iranians enjoy these universal values sooner rather than later. (Finish)
About the author | Zhang Yuxuan (talk about the founder of Iran)
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This article is reprinted from: https://sehseh.substack.com/p/bc1
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