Iran has been in the beginning stages of a civil war since Mahsa Amini’s murder on Sept. 16. In brave displays of defiance, Iranian protesters have made their voices heard in their fight for emancipation from a cruel and unjust ruling system. With this attention has come worldwide civilian commentary about the state of Iran and its religion. However, the one group that seems to be excluded from this discourse is Iranian women themselves.
This isn’t to say that Iranian women aren’t being given pedestals to talk about their experiences with the mandated hijab. In fact, the opposite is true. Western media is finally giving these women the proper platforms to discuss their experiences under the Iranian government.
However, what doesn’t seem to be understood is that Iranian feminism and calls for change are not brand-new concepts. Iran today is incomparable to Iran freshly out of the Iranian revolution, but people seem to treat them interchangeably. To overlook the long history of Iranian women fighting for their rights is to erase them from Iran’s history.
Government-mandated modesty laws originated from the Iranian revolution of 1979. This is when the ulama – an influential council of men educated in Islam – took control of Iran and enforced a misuse of Islamic beliefs by forcing its religious influence over the state. Directly after the revolution, the established modesty code required women to wear black chadors, a long black cloth that completely envelops the body. Only a few years later would criminal punishment be introduced for those who violated modesty laws, with punishments ranging from fines to imprisonment.
However, there has since been a shift in the garments of Iranian women. The chador is no longer the enforced staple amongst Iranian women, with more and more women wearing looser clothing alongside a hijab. In addition, the implementation of the Gasht-e-Ershad, the Iranian morality police, has allowed Iranians to push ideas of what is considered un-Islamic. This is because the Gasht-e-Ershad doesn’t have a hard-and-fast rule on the amount of hair exposure and fitting clothing allowed. While this does lead to abuse of power, as it gives full authority to the police to declare what is allowed, it also allows Iranian people to push the boundaries of what they can wear.
Ignoring these distinctions in legal clothing is to ignore the Iranian women who deviated from enforced norms through mass defiance, risked their lives to demonstrate against the mandatory hijab law and defied their government every day. When we conflate two completely different eras of Iran, entire livelihoods that were sacrificed in the fight for the right to choose are dissolved.
About a decade ago, there was debate regarding whether Iranian women should be able to wear form-fitting leggings. Many conservative speakers declared the look to be anti-revolutionary and un-Islamic, but many Iranian women fought back, wearing the leggings while evading morality police. As Iranwire’s Parvaneh Massoumi put it, “looks that were risque even a decade ago are becoming, by sheer force of mass determination, ordinary today.” Leggings are just one example of clothing Iranian women have made ordinary. Colorful wardrobes, looser hijabs and tighter pants would not be commonplace had it not been for the bravery of Iranian women sporting them.
Another issue with the coverage of Iran’s protests is that many are turning this into an allegory for what happens when religious extremism, especially when discussing Islam, takes over a country. It’s argued that religious extremists under Islam have taken over Iran and destroyed the freedom of women.
Iran today is no doubt under an Islamic fundamentalist group, but citing religious extremism as the sole cause for the state of Iran today is to turn a blind eye to the financial abuse from both the United Kingdom and U.S. governments. Their joint effort to facilitate a coup against Iran’s elected prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh was inspired by his demands for a larger cut of the profits from Iranian oil. Mossadegh, wanting to rebuild the Iranian economy, desired 50% of the profits from the oil the UK had been taking for years. Wanting to keep their shares of Iran’s oil trade, the UK, with the help of the US, instated Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as the new Shah instead.
Had it not been for their robbery of oil and betrayal of Iranian people, Iranians may not have felt like their only option to regain independence was to place their faith in the fundamentalists that hold power today. When Western media forgoes their direct contributions to Iran’s Islamic revolution, they erase the UK and US’s faults and ultimately paint themselves as an innocent party. Religious extremism is not the sole issue. By framing it as such, the media is not only conflating Islam with fanaticism, but is also taking the focus away from the Iranian women suffering under this regime.
When Islam is painted as the bad guy, western countries — mainly the U.S — yet again turn themselves into the white savior character they see themselves as, liberating people from a life subjugated to Islam. It gives them an excuse to pander to an anti-Islam, and therefore anti-Middle East, narrative. This is the same narrative that has given them enough public approval to go through with the war in Afghanistan in the name of counterterrorism.
If we want to actually support the efforts of Iranian women, we must uplift their voices. In truth, the stakes of Iran’s feminisim movement could not be more different from feminism movements in the West. In Iran, feminism could mean life or death. Being mindful of this distinction, while simultaneously being respectful and supportive towards their fight, makes all the difference in how we discuss the revolution. Facilitating real change starts when our political discourse actually recognizes the contributions of the women who have put their life on the line for their own rights.
Layla Asgarian Nahavandi is an Opinion Intern for the fall 2022 quarter. She can be reached at lasgaria@uci.edu.