‘For dancing on the streets
For kissing your lover (in public)
For your sister, my sister, our sisters
For changing these rusted minds
For the shame of poverty
For yearning for an ordinary life
For Women, life and Freedom
For freedom (azadi)’[i]
No, I am not quoting Bob Marley although the title is unashamedly pilfered from his album by the same name. He would have approved; he knew that songs of freedom challenge tyranny. I am quoting Shervin Hajipour and his song Baraye (meaning for/ because of) the lyric of which is composed entirely from texts people sent on social media and which has become the theme song of the Iranian women’s rebellion since the murder of Mahsa Amini in police custody in September this year, the theme song of all our aspirations for freedom echoed in the many movements across the world in the past three years. But this what is happening on the streets of Iran’s cities across the country led by young women, often school children, with people from all kinds of backgrounds joining with others on the streets, is special. It is special because it is a whole generation of young people some not more than teenagers calling to question the very basis of the regime, of this dispensation and of its ruling elite, men often above ninety years of age.
‘For yearning for an ordinary life’
Most readers will by now be well aware how this rebellion began and surged into waves of protests galvanising the entire population, giving vent to anger, frustration and grief. But I deliberately want to go over the names of the young women sacrificed so that the many can aspire to freedom. Mahsa Amini a 22-year-old young woman from Kurdistan a western province on a visit to relatives in Teheran was arrested by the morality police on 13 September 2022 for not having her head covered in the proper way stipulated by the government. She died in police custody on 17thSeptember obviously manhandled and tortured and the authorities claimed that she had a heart attack from a pre-existing condition. Protests started in the western province of Kurdistan and soon spread to other provinces as more and more deaths of women in custody came to light. In a Twitter post a video of Nika Shakarami, 16, is seen standing on a dumpster and burning her headscarf in Tehran on 20 September, as others chant slogans against the Islamic Republic. She later disappeared after telling a friend she was being chased by police. Officials have said she died after being thrown from a building that was under construction, possibly by workmen. (BBC Persian, 20 October 2022). Nika's family have said they located her body at the mortuary 10 days after she went missing, and that they were only allowed by officials to see her face for a few seconds in order to identify her. Images of her singing and dancing filled the social media platforms. Her beautiful face haunts me. Similarly Sarina Esmailzadeh, 16 year old and a popular vlogger was killed on 30th September and the authorities claimed she had committed suicide. All their beautiful faces haunt me.
Protests escalated on the streets despite brutal police repression with young women burning their hijab in public and cutting their hair. What began as night vigils soon became protests during the day. Young women and men joined, their parents joined and soon a population was rebelling against the tyranny of the regime. As Iran’s Antigones unleashed their fury at a regime so out of step with the hopes and desires of their generation, the regime hit back pitilessly, with police and the paramilitary forces, the dreaded Basij, sparing nobody especially not the young girls and boys. Scenes of girls taunting the police, scenes of hijabs on fire, scenes of overturned vehicles jostled with scenes of girls being beaten and dragged by their hair recorded on handheld mobile phone cameras which communicated these scenes to the world. Till the regime unable to control and repress these voices shut off internet access. Because they were up against a generation of children who have led parallel lives on social media, a life of possibility and hope as opposed to the shrunken existence on offer by the guardians of the Islamic revolution. So whereas the movement grows and continues with more and more repression for a month now, we in the rest of the world cannot witness what is going on until the people of Iran find yet another way to navigate the internet despite the controls and bans. A whole population is being incarcerated and they will find a way to break out as they so often have.
In the meantime the minister of education has just announced that special psychological schools are being set up to treat rebellious school children! Presumably what he means is that torture chambers and secure prisons are being set up to ‘brainwash’ the children or horror of horrors, lobotomize them. Dear minister, rebellion against tyranny is not a mental disorder. You are killing and maiming your own children, your future generation. Your days and those of your ilk are numbered; they will outlive you, they will prevail.
‘For this forced ‘Heaven’’
Who are these children, who are these women, who is this Gen Z? They are under thirty years of age and comprise sixty percent (yes you read it correctly) of Iran’s 84 million people. The literacy rate is 97 per cent and women make up 65 per cent of university graduates. And yet as Kamin Mohammadi[ii] (Oct 2022) writes, when the Islamic revolution came to power, among the myriad issues that needed attention, the one issue they singled out was Iran’s family law which they changed from one that was the most progressive family law in the region to one that made women dependant on the will of patriarchs and sent their status back to the middle-ages. Women’s word in court is half that of a man, they cannot sing, dance or show their hair in public and can be married at the age of 13! And today Gen Z is saying they will not take this anymore; they want to be like other teenagers, women in other parts of the world. They want rights and freedoms for everybody.
Iran is no stranger to peoples’ uprisings many of which have been women-led. The first demonstration against the hijab was three weeks after Khomeini’s arrival in 1979. Then in the new millennium these massive uprisings grew and occurred with regularity as a new generation of people born in the Islamic republic clamoured for a say in the way the country was being run in 2005, 2017 and most recently in 2019 when the high cost of fuel prices was the trigger but swelled into nation-wide protests for democracy. Since 2009 men have joined women on protests, often donning the hijab in solidarity.
But all Iranian political commentators are saying that this time it feels different. As the movement pans out and refuses to ebb one month into its making, a movement waged by Iran’s children and grandchildren, by yours, mine, and everybody’s children, has more than any others preceding it called to question the legitimacy of the Islamic revolution. It’s different because of the spirit of it, and because it is no longer about economic hardship and inflation or about reform. On the contrary these girls are saying they don’t want this theocracy anymore; they want a different life They are waging a battle against humiliation and repression. As Ramin Jahanbegloo[iii], Iranian philosopher explains, the presence of young and teenage girls in the agitation and their level of anger and frustration against the Iranian authorities is a new mode of revolt. These new heroes of the civil resistance, born in the first decade of this century, are up against an autocratic and paternalistic theocracy. Unlike the military elements of the Iranian regime, who are ill-educated and belligerent, the young protesters are open-minded, talented and creative. ‘Unlike their parents and grandparents who lived with the bitter taste of political defeat against the theocratic regime, the women of Shakarami and Esmailzadeh’s generation learned to be cheerful and imaginative. They dared to think and act differently, while ushering in a revolution of values in Iranian society. This revolution of values was the result of a parallel life and virtual freedom these young women found on social media’(Jahanbegloo 2022)[iv]. For all these reasons the commentators seem to think that this is a point of no return for the Islamic revolution.
For all these meaningless slogans (forced to chant ‘death to America’)
I was talking to a young politically active feminist friend from India a few days ago, and she asked but what next? How is this uprising going to end in any other way than what happened in Egypt with the military takeover? The military is the only stable institution guarding the ‘legitimacy’ of authoritarian regimes. In no way was she undermining the significance of this uprising but merely anticipating with trepidation the imposition of a harsher, military-type dictatorship. I have no answers, I am not a soothsayer. All I can say as a pragmatic feminist is that songs of freedom cannot be silenced for long despite the horrors unleashed by dying regimes. Rebellions and uprisings may or may not develop into revolutions since these dying regimes will hit back with ferocity to keep their hold on the last vestiges of power. Or these aspirations for freedom can be silenced by the added apathy of a world regime fixated on servicing profit at the cost of human lives. Iran has oil and it has nuclear capability: both these commodities make them into an untouchable power, especially now, especially because there is war in Europe and the Iranians support Russia. So despite the posturing going on, the sanctions being imposed, the thirst for oil lubricating the passage of profit tempers what the powers that be will do. In a globalised world of the kind we are now living in with neoliberal capital being the dominant force, the cries of children for freedom take second place to geopolitical concerns. No country is an island and neither are these uprisings ….
For women, life and freedom: azadi
But what about us feminists across the world, how are we demonstrating our solidarity? Given that I am in Europe I can report that there have been demonstrations in all the major capitals here and more are planned in October. Women politicians have demonstrated support by cutting their hair in public (Swedish politician) and giving statements that the regime is on the wrong side of history (Annalena Baerbock, Foreign Minister of Germany). Speaking out against the Iranian regime is not new here; the Iranian regime has for long been vilified just as the regime vilifies the west in turn. This is not to undermine the vigils by young people that have been taking place and are planned in most cities in the coming days.
A friend from Lebanon told me yesterday that there have been demonstrations there too and that the Shia faction of Lebanon’s fractious political parties (supported by Iran) were successfully prevented from disrupting the demonstrations. I cannot say the same for India my homeland and where I learned to become a feminist and where feminist support for the women of Iran is muted at best and misunderstood at worst. Except for a few protests, there has not been the kind of groundswell of opinion that one would have expected. Why is this so? Places like Lebanon and India are complicated. Their complicated colonial and post-colonial histories make their relationship to world-wide oppression and tyranny contingent on the dominant political narratives. As far as I understand, in India feminists are caught between the dominant political narrative of Hindutva[v] and present state politics of majoritarianism, and, Muslim communities in Karnataka state who are minorities resisting this onslaught by citing religious freedom and owning the hijab[vi]. Statements condemning what is happening in Iran can easily be interpellated in India as the ’backwardness of the Muslim community and its need for reform’. Doyens of Hinduvta then become the ‘secular’ champions posing as the saviours of Muslim womanhood.
We have to declare ‘azadi’[vii] from this tyranny of majoritarianism, of nationalism, of politics dressed up as religion or whatever non-secular -ism suits the current dominant tyrannical regimes. We must declare azadi from the tropes that use women’s bodies, attire, behaviour as raw material for oppression. The girls on the streets of Iran’s metropolises are teaching us that the right to choose how women want to live is paramount. Dear IR[viii] that is why you will lose because it’s no longer the US and the evil west trying to defeat you (although they have caused enough harm already), it’s your own women.
To end I would like to cite the well-known Iranian film maker Mani Haghigi who was just prevented by the authorities from leaving for London where his latest film Subtraction is being screened at the film festival. He said: “Let me tell you that being here in Tehran right now is one of the greatest joys of my life. I cannot put into words the joy and the honour of being able to witness at first hand this great moment in history, and I would rather be here than anywhere else in the world right now. So if this is a punishment for what I’ve done then by all means bring it on. Let me end this with the three words that have given Iranians so much joy and courage in the last few weeks: women, life, freedom” (Haghigi 14 October, 2020)[ix].
[i] Baraye the song composed entirely of texts on social media by Shervin Hajipour and with English subtitles can be accessed at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hmQiqwdM5Q
[ii] Kamin Mohammadi ‘Why Iran’s female-led revolt fills me with hope’. The Observer, Sat 8 Oct 2022.
[iii] Ramin Jahanbegloo Iran is seeing the Political Awakening of a Generation. The Wire 30 Sep, 2022. Accessed at https://thewire.in/rights/iran-theocracy-mahsa-amini-hijab-protest
See also an interview in the Wire by Karan Thapar with Ramin Jahanbegloo
Ramin Jahanbegloo is the director of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Peace at Jindal Global University.
[iv] Ramin Jahanbegloo. ‘Unprecedented resistance: the young women protestors in Iran have chosen to shake off the Islamic Republic’s guardianship’. The Indian Express, October 11, 2022
[v] Hindutva (literally “Hindu-ness”) is a modern political ideology that advocates for Hindu supremacy and seeks to transform India, constitutionally a secular state, into an ethno-religious nation known as the Hindu Rashtra (Hindu nation).https://www.hindutvaharassmentfieldmanual.org
The website is run by South Asia Scholar Activist Collective. SASAC 2021
[vi] See also a discussion by Shahrukh Alam ‘Narrative on hijab in Iran and India frames our ttitudes towards minorities’ The Indian Express October 15, 2022
[vii] Azadi means freedom all the way from Iran to South Asia. In recent decades with the rise of the Hindu right wing political party it has become a battle cry of peoples’ movements. It was popularized in the specific form in which it is chanted today called a ‘nada’ by a student leader and now politician Kanhaiya Kumar. The person leading calls out the specific issue from which freedom is sought and the others chant azadi (freedom). Its very moving when a body of people participate. The women’s movement in Pakistan was apparently also using this form before it gained popularity in India, so a friend from Pakistan tells me. All I can say is words like freedom (azadi) travel.
[viii] IR is my short form for Islamic Republic.
[ix] Mani Haghigi video message on Twitter on 14 Oct 2022. Also article by Andrew Pulver, ‘Iran bans Mani Haghigi from attending London film festival’. The Guardian 14 Oct 2022
