Women In Iran: The Mahsa Amini Protests

The struggle for women's rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a theocratic fundamentalist dictatorship, under the thumb of its clerical Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In September of 2022, anti-government protests swept across the country after the death of a young woman in Iranian police custody. Her name was Mahsa Amini. The Iranian regime responded with a harsh crackdown, killing over 500 people, including 72 children. Since the start of the uprising, young Iranians have been filming the violence themselves and posting it online. Despite the albatross of Iranian censorship on independent and foreign media, hundreds of hours of this footage have surfaced online. Much of it has been cross-checked with the testimonies of eyewitnesses and protestors. Exiles have also given a glimpse into the chaotic situation of a rapidly changing Iran. 

Mahsa Amini

On September 13, 2022, a young Kurdish woman named Mahsa Amina was found in a coma. She had been brutally beaten by Iran’s religious police. Photos of her bruised, beaten body went viral online. Mahsa was aged 22, about to start university. She had come to Tehran on a day trip. The morality police, who impose Iran’s austere dress code on its citizens, accused her of being immodestly dressed. As word spread, people began to gather near the hospital. Some filmed on their phones. Protestors were outraged, jeering at the police for their murderous and bloodthirsty brutality. The demonstrations soon grew in size and number. Shortly after Amini’s death, Tehran police released edited footage of the girl collapsing inside a police station. They denied beating her, and claimed she had a heart attack. They claimed they had done everything to keep her alive. 

“Women, life, freedom!”

The brutality perpetrated against Mahsa by the Iranian zealots was not an isolated incident. Women are regularly arrested,  detained against their will, and murdered. “Women, life, freedom!” Kurdish protestors chanted. It became the slogan of a new movement, which quickly spread from the Kurdish minority to the wider country. The protests called for greater freedom and gender equality in Iran. In solidarity with Mahsa, many Iranian women began to rip off their hijabs, the symbol of their oppression under sharia law. Many young women lit their hijabs on fire, and posted it online. Protests spread across the Islamic Republic. Mourning women cut their hair in protest. The protestors have called for the removal of clericalism from Iran. “The mullahs must go!” Some of them have chanted angrily. The opposition to the hijab became a sign of women taking back control over their bodies from an oppressive theocratic regime. 

Hijab hysteria

Before Iran became an Islamic Republic, it had been ruled by the pro-Western Shah. His name was Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah ran a police state, which jailed political opponents and ruled through repression. Nevertheless, under the Shah’s leadership, Iranian women enjoyed the right to dress themselves freely. Women were a substantial part of Iran’s workforce. But with the revolution of 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini seized power. The constitution was rewritten to impose sharia law. The hijab became compulsory for all women in public. When Iranian women protested against this arbitrary restriction, the religious regime responded with a brutal crackdown. Over the decades, women have repeatedly risen up in protest. “Death to the dictator!” Some of them have chanted. Despite the pleas of the women, the theocratic Supreme Leader has stubbornly refused to grant them more freedoms. He dismissed the Mahsa Amini protests as a nefarious plot by Iran’s foreign enemies. “In this incident, a young girl passed away,” the Supreme Leader reflected. “Well, it was a bitter event. It made us very sad too.” “This movement was not normal,” he complained. “These riots were planned. These riots had been planned. If there hadn’t been this case about this young woman, they would have created another excuse.” Many people across the world have expressed solidarity with the protests. One prominent figure is Zar Amir Ebrahimi, an internationally acclaimed Iranian actress. The gorgeous brown-eyed beauty was once a television star in her home country of Iran. However, after a sex tape leaked in 2008, she was sentenced to 99 lashes and banned from appearing on TV. She had effectively been chased out of her homeland by rapid religious fanatics. She has lent support to the Mahsa Amini movement by compiling testimony of the regime’s brutal crackdowns. 

Forces of fanaticism

When the protests first broke out, the Iranian regime gave orders to violently confront the dissenters. Journalists were rounded up by Iranian authorities. They arrested the reporter who published the photo of Amini’s grieving family, and her Twitter account was suspended. The regime imposed severe censorship of Internet access across the country. Phones were seized. Footage of the protests were wiped out from social media sites. Protestors were coerced into closing down their accounts. Officials opened gunfire on any dissenters. Some protestors were literally beaten down in the streets. Iranian schoolgirls have been instrumental in the Mahsa Amini movement. Despite Internet blackouts by the government, videos went viral showing acts of defiance. Girls defaced the images of the Supreme Leader, which is punishable as a crime in the Islamic Republic. In some high schools, girls literally chased out government officials. In Iran, Generation Z is angrier than ever. They are fed up with having religion rammed down their throats. But the extent of Iran’s tyranny extends far beyond the borders of their state. These revolutionary fanatics impose their rules by threatening violence and intimidation against fugitive exiles. Activists abroad live in fear of arrest or assassination. By November of 2022, the crackdowns escalated. “Those who planned the protests were connected to foreign services,” the Supreme Leader alleged dismissively. “They committed crimes.” “We will not let go of their collars,” he stated threateningly. “Anyone who is proved to have collaborated or been involved will no doubt be punished, God willing.” The unhinged theocratic regime began to prosecute thousands of protestors. Many of them were charged with the religious crime of moharebeh, which is a Persian term that means, “waging war against God and state.” Those accused and caught were executed by hanging. As of the summer of 2023, seven protestors have been executed. Some were convicted of killing Iran’s security forces. Others were sentenced to death row. For now, the protests have quieted down. But the unrest continues in the form of hundreds of small gestures of defiance. Families of the deceased continue to speak out, despite the risks of retaliation by Iran’s criminal regime. Women in Iran continue to speak out against a hostile religious dictatorship, as they strive to obtain the rights and freedoms of a normal life. The struggle for women’s rights in Iran is playing a decisive role in that nation’s trajectory. Will it continue to limp along as an international pariah state, under the tight controls of its insufferable religious establishment? Or will Iran reject its fundamentalist past, and rejoin the community of civilized nations in the common embrace of modernity?

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