Iran is fighting for all Women, Life, and Liberty
On September 16 2022, Mahsa Amini, a 22 year old woman from Iran's Kurdish minority, was murdered by Iran's morality police for breaking the law requiring women to cover their hair with a hijab, or headscarf.
Since then, the brave people in Iran and across the world have been protesting against the authoritarian Islamic government.
Before we get started, a reminder that being critical of the Iranian government is not an excuse to be Islamophobic.
Since the protests began, 250+ people have been killed by government police and military forces, with over 14,000 individuals arrested.
Many of these victims are young women, activists, journalists, and lawyers. You may have heard the names Nika Shakarami, Sarina Esmailzadeh, or Asrah Panahi - all 16 year old girls who were brave enough to defy the Iranian government and were murdered by police because of it.
As protests continue to sweep across Iran, the Islamic Regime has committed heinous acts of violence against the public in attempts to suppress the protests.
Military forces are targeting members of Iran's minority ethnic populations, such as the Baluch and Kurdish communities, using live ammunition and even missiles.
Riot police also trapped, shot, and teargassed peaceful student protesters at Sharif University in Tehran. Thousands of protesters have 'gone missing,' and been unlawfully detained.
We are in complete solidarity with the women and people of Iran.
It is unacceptable to force women to wear hijabs. It is also unacceptable to force them not to. This is about bodily autonomy.
No government should have a say on how a woman should dress, and the people in Iran are not just fighting against their own oppressive government, they are fighting for feminism and women's rights for all of us.
The struggle against patriarchy, and the struggle for choice, is a global struggle that is close to all of us. And this goes far beyond world governments forcing women to wear or remove hijabs and other religious symbols (let's not forget our very own Quebec's Bill 21).
From banning access to reproductive and gender affirming healthcare in the United States, to sexual and gendered violence across the world - we are all targeted by the same systems of violence that Iran is currently defying: the Patriarchy.
The protests in Iran are an intersectional issue that is fighting for your rights and liberties too. It is part of the global war for feminism, for religious freedom, for choice.
And patriarchal control isn't always as overtly fucked up as restricting your bodily autonomy or not paying us the same as white men. This fight also those 'smaller' (but still significant) examples of everyday sexism, like cat-calling, mansplaining, or that urge to add exclamation points in an email so you don't seem 'bossy.'
These are all ways that the patriarchy subjugates women and polices our choices.
In the Western countries, we often toss global issues to the side because 'if they don't affect us directly, they don't exist.' But we can't let ourselves fall prey to the great colonial urge to do nothing.
This country is home to over 200,000 Iranian-Canadians, 1.8 million Muslims, and 19.2 million women who's rights and freedoms are tied to the Iranian fight for freedom.
TL;DR: Iranian Issues are Canadian issues.
The hijab is not the focus of the conversation, this is an international movement for women's sovereignty and people's bodily autonomy.
It's dangerously easy to let issues from 'far away' fade out of the news-cycle. But there is nothing that the Islamic Regime wants more than for the world to stop talking about and caring about the fight for freedom in Iran.
Which is exactly why we cannot stop.
Continue to amplify news about the Iranian fight, and attend local protests if you are able.
Diversify your feed with these great accounts:
@IranianCollective
@NazaninBoniadi
@Muslim
@From____Iran
@PersiansWithPurpose
@MiddleEastMatters
Take action now to support the fight for women's rights, feminism, and equality for all of us, in Iran and beyond:
Donate to support organizations fighting to protect human rights.
united4iran.org/en/donate.html
Amnesty International also has an emergency fund specifically for the violence in Iran
Sign petitions:
Call for the UN to remove the Islamic State from the women's rights commission - womanlifefreedom.today/#sign
Call for a UN investigation of the Islamic State's crimes under international law - amnesty.org/en/petition/end-the-protest-bloodshed-in-iran/
