Woman, Life, Freedom: Learning to Navigate Iran’s Social & Cultural Turbulance

Atefeh Afshar

On September 13, 2022, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested in Tehran for not wearing a hijab in accordance with the religious morality police of the Islamic regime. Eyewitnesses stated that she was severely beaten —an accusation morality police have denied. Amini fell into a coma at the police station and died after several days in the hospital. After her brutal death, protests erupted in several Iranian cities and are still continuing today. The brutal killing of Amini highlighted the need for some people, particularly women, to fight against the unjust action of forced veil usage and gave rise to the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement.

Iran is dealing with many political and cultural changes in its society. The current political situation has brought to the forefront of the national conversation questions about women’s place in society. The political messaging of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement now specifies three points: respect for women’s bodies, allowing education for women, and using the United Nations as a mediator.

It is notable that what is happening right now in Iran contrasts strongly with Iranian History. In 1936, Reza Shah Pahlavi, the king of Iran, started the reformation under the name of the modern reformation. One of his programs was the kashf-e hijab (“unveiling”), which banned the wearing of many forms of Islamic veils, including hijabs. The unveiling process was meant to symbolize national liberation from ossified traditions, but it was not successful.

and IRGC-linked terrorist groups, is now seeking to bar these students from social activity by attacking them with chemical weapons. Many students have been hospitalized, and based on previously published reports, the toxic substance used in the attacks has been identified as nitrogen gas. Some of the symptoms of nitrogen poisoning are nausea, vomiting, coughing, and shortness of breath. What is the reason that this poisoning is happening in girls’ elementary and high schools?

Now in the 21st century, an unveiling movement is again taking place in Iran, this time by the will of Iranian women. What is happening, however, is that women’s progress and issues are being reduced to the question of the veil. But, as we have seen in history, women’s bodies have often been used as a target to express the power of the regime, with the result that women are forced to conform to the regime’s standards.

In an interview with The Guardian, medical professionals claimed that the women injured during the protests have different wounds than men. Nurses and doctors explained that Iranian forces often shot at the faces and genitals of female protesters. Ghazal Ranjkesh, who was shot in the face and lost one of her eyes in the protest, wrote, “I am Ghazal. I have a question. Why did you shoot me? Why were you smiling?”

When women’s progress is reduced to the question of the veil, more significant women’s issues are ignored. Veiling is not the only criterion that defines a woman’s role in society.

School-aged girls are some of the most pioneering and influential members of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in Iran. Iran’s regime, with the aid of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)

Cameron Michel Amin says, “In the wake of the Constitutional Revolution, a number of schools for Muslim girls opened up, including some run by foreigners, such as the Ecolé Franco-Person (opened by a French convert to Islam).” Moreover, he claims that educational reform took precedence over extending basic education to all sections of society during the reign of Reza Shah. By any measure, though, education for men and women improved in Iran during the reign of Reza Shah. Between 1924 and 1944, the percentage of female students at all levels increased from 16.9 percent to 28 percent. We have a new generation of independent women who want to progress in all parts of society. It is important to note that not all women want to train simply for household jobs or to be better mothers and wives; women seek to be educated for their own merit and for the sake of gaining knowledge.

Everything is politicized. Politics have penetrated even the smallest and most private matters of our lives, including what we choose to wear. The political and economic situation occurring now in Iran began in September of 2022 when the Islamic regime started using force and violence against women to suppress the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement.

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), now officially known as United Nations Children’s Fund, is an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children around the world. However, when it comes to Iran and Iranian children, UNICEF and the United Nations seem to take a different approach. Either UNICEF cannot or will not do anything for Iranian children. If this is the case, is it worth asking why they use “for every child” as their slogan? This is the third call of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement: UNICEP needs to apply their commitment to helping children to Iranian children, too.

Edward Said, a literary critic of Palestinian descent, has convincingly argued in his often-cited work Orientalism (1978) that there is a danger inherent to the reductionist trend to “Orientalalize,” which is intensified in the modern and postmodern era. One of the most common aspects of the post-modern and electronic world, according to Said, is that an effort is made to shape a new concept of the East by interpreting words such as “Arab,” “Muslim,” “terrorist,” etc., in terms of the historic prejudices that still exist in the European mentality, prejudices which are based on black and white categories of thinking about the “East” that define it as other to the “West.” The simplification of intellectual currents and political realities allows people to misinterpret and misunderstand the nuances of what is really happening in places like Iran.

When we observe children playing together, it is easy to see that they do not treat each other differently based on physical or cultural differences. But when they become educated, it changes the story because education is the essential factor in creating personality. Love is a skill that needs to be learned, and mastery of it increases with experience and practice. Conflicts like the one occurring in Iran highlight the importance of educating with love, particularly children who help us remember what a more beautiful world looked like.

Human beings are members of a whole, in creation of one essence and soul. If one member is afflicted with pain, other members uneasy will remain. If you have no sympathy for human pain, the name of human you cannot retain.

—Verses from Sa’adi’s Bani Adam, the 13th-century Persian poem.