Iran Islamic Regime Has Been Womenophobic Long Before Mahsa Amini
43 years of peaceful protest and civil disobedience
You must have heard about the mass protests in Iran in response to the murder of Mahsa Amini by Morality Police. However, you might not have heard about Iranian women’s long journey of fighting for their rights!
After the Iranian revolution of 1979, the Ayatollah and his radical followers started to deprive women from their rights in spite of all their contributions to the revolution. Within less than a month from their victory, on 7th of March, Kayhan newspaper announced that “Women should wear hijab in the governmental offices.” It was also announced that the 8th of March is a western celebration and they will soon announce an Islamic women’s day. This day turned out to be only about being a wife and a mother!
Soon after these announcements there were huge women protests and strikes all over the country, especially in Tehran. Women kept chanting “we don’t want compulsory hijab.” At the same time there were counter protests organized by radical groups which kept shouting “wear a scarf or be beaten up.” During these protests Homa Nategh, a university professor and activist, mentioned that they are not against hijab, they just don’t want it to be forced upon them!
In the meantime, most politicians and influential people kept saying that the country was in a fragile state and had many issues to deal with, so, women’s issues were not of importance! Strangely, the same response male politicians have always used for women’s rights!
Unfortunately, due to the vast support of theologians for hijab, women had to give in! This time Homa Nategh said that Getting rid of the Imperialism is more important for women so, they can wear hijab to achieve the bigger goal! She later called this claim “a betrayal to women”.
But it didn’t stop there and within less than 2 years, Khomeini banned the entrance of women without proper hijab to the governmental organizations and set more dress codes. This time women didn’t organize such vast protests due to the much unrest in Iran. They decided to first protect their country which they have fought for and then discuss hijab. However, it got worse every day and starting from 1985 a rule was set for women who disobey hijab dress codes to receive 74 lashes!
One of the prominent political activists of the time who never gave up on her fight against compulsory Hijab was Homa Darabi, a Pediatrician and university professor. She was fired from her position as a professor in December 1991 due to the non-adherence to hijab. She continued her peaceful protests and the fight against sexism until she gave up and immolated herself in the middle of a street in Tehran in February 1994 as a protest!
Even though all Iranian newspapers, except one, refused to write about her, a huge crowd attended her funeral. Her friend said in her memorial speech: “Homa thought with this revolution, women will gain their rightful position in the society. She didn’t think they would need a separate fight. Now not only they didn’t gain anything new but even lost many more.” Unlike the Iranian media, the western media showed a lot of attention to this tragedy. However, the regime shamelessly lied that she committed suicide because she was mentally sick and depressed.
In 1986 an organization was established to fight the immorality. This organization became the official notorious Morality Police in 1996. This force kept getting more and more barbaric everyday with many reports of harassment of women on the streets and beating them up if they spoke up against their actions.
Moreover, these medieval rules enabled some extremists to do the same to random women on streets just because they were told that’s what their God expects them to do!
Despite such unsafe environment, women continued the civil disobedience whenever they could. The regime and its trained extremists also continued to find new ways to oppress women. They even went as far as burning women on streets with acid!
In September 2014 in the city of Isfahan, about 15 women who did not have proper hijab were burnt by acid by some anonymous cyclists and one of the victims died from the injury. As always, the regime kept denying any link between extremists and these terrorism attacks. Although, they threatened the families of the victims against following the case, ignored the victim who had a plate number of the motorcycle, arrested the photographers and journalists who shared these stories and blamed it on Israel! At the end they were forced to announce they have arrested the criminal but we all know that’s an absolute nonsense!
After this disaster, there were again massive women’s protests asking for justice which didn’t gain much. The regime was later forced to ban severe physical violence which could lead to injury or death for the random civilians who want to reeducate women on streets! Please heed that they didn’t ban the harassment but only the severe physical violence! What is even more painful is that in the legislative process, 13 members of the congress voted against the law and 3 voted neutral. Meaning they admit they prefer a dead woman over a woman with improper hijab.
Even this horror did not stop women’s fight. Several women were arrested and sentenced to different periods of imprisonment for making their disobedience public through social media. One of them was Souri Babaii Chegini who walked in public unveiled and shared a video on social media. At night, 8 police officers went to her house to arrest her. Her husband says she refused to wear her scarf to a point where police officers forcefully put it on her head before taking her to custody.
One of the most famous and organized movements of women’s protest was called Girls of Enghelab Street. This movement started with Vida Movahed’s symbolic act on 27 December 2017 when she took off her white scarf, put it on a stick, stood on a utility box in the street and moved the stick peacefully! She was arrested but she inspired many more women to continue same protest in Tehran and other cities. At least 29 more women were arrested because of this protest and they were all sentenced to one or two years of prison. One of them Shaparak Shajarizadeh, whose video of this protest became viral internationally, was sentenced to 2 years of prison and 18 years of suspended imprisonment. She was also beaten up in prison!
The regime even set a fine for the cars in which women don’t have proper hijab. They started using traffic cameras to recognize these cars! This not only put financial pressure on normal people, but also enabled taxi drivers to harass their female passengers!
In June 2019 a girl took an online taxi and in the middle of the way the driver started insulting her and shouting at her that she must fix her scarf. When she resisted, the driver forced her to get out of the car in the middle of the highway! The story got viral because of this girl’s twit so, the national media decided to honor the driver for “doing his social responsibility”! They brought the girl and her mother to the TV and humiliated them by forcing them to apologize to the driver. At the same time they thanked the driver with gifts!
One of the most recent stories of small disobedience which ended with huge punishment happened in July 16, 2022. An extremist woman started harassing some girls in a bus about their improper hijab. The girls started to talk back and defend their rights but the extremist got more vulgar and both parties started filming each other. Finally, the fight got so heated that the whole bus started supporting those girls and threw the extremist out of the bus.
The next day Sepideh Rashno, one of those girls whom the extremist woman filmed, disappeared! She was kidnapped to be arrested but no one knew where she was! Iranians started a huge campaign on social media asking “where is Sepideh Rashno”! But no authority would answer. After 2 weeks she suddenly appeared in a TV program along with the extremist woman and 2 of the other girls in the bus. Sepideh was tortured and forced to apologize! She later was sent to hospital for internal bleeding! One month after the inhumanely forced apology, she was temporarily set free on a huge bail.
Even after murdering Mahsa Amini they continued lying and insulting women! A university director twitted women who are protesting Mahsa’s death are “a bunch of whores mourning the death of another whore”! He also claimed that Mahsa’s picture around the world is being used for western men to “masturbate” and hoped for all these women to be executed and sent to the hell like Mahsa!
These are just very few stories of Iranian women fighting “peacefully” for their most basic rights and getting terrible punishments in return! We’ve been insulted, beaten up, tortured, imprisoned, burnt by acid and many more for compulsory hijab but being murdered was the last straw! If this regime is not stopped right now no one knows what will be their next act against women!
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