The events of the past two weeks in reaction to the capture, injury, and unjust murder of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman, at the hands of the Iranian Morality Police, has mesmerized the world. It has captured the imagination of women and men alike, and set ablaze the Iranian people’s enthusiasm and quest for freedom, supported by their diaspora and people of goodwill throughout the world.
Her story and the hashtag #MahsaAmini has been retweeted nearly 200 million times. People from every walk of life have shown their support and solidarity with Mahsa, and with other Iranian women who are on the streets of cities and towns across the country, demanding equal rights and freedom from the yoke of the ruling clerics. Unprecedented demonstrations in more than 150 cities worldwide have been supported by messages of solidarity from celebrities, sportsmen, and statesmen alike. For the first time, an increasing number of women are taking off their headscarf (Hijab) and burning it publicly in an act of defiance against the ruling regime that has held them hostage for well over four decades. On an unprecedented scale, men, too, have been joining women in supporting their God-given human rights, side-by-side, protesting on the streets.
Mahsa represents the anger, frustration, and desires of not only citizens of a nation under siege, but also of women and men all over the world. Her story resonates with people. She was an ordinary young woman from a small town in the Kurdistan region of Iran. She was on a family vacation and had a simple and seemingly happy life. She had no claim to fame nor a desire to be a worldwide voice for the world. She was a happy, healthy young woman with much of the same wants and desires as any woman in the world. Yet, in a split second she found herself faced with the brutality of Iran’s Morality Police, who had a problem with her Hijab because too much of her hair was exposed for others to see. The senselessness of this was incomprehensible to Mahsa, and what ensued is unacceptable to people all around the world. In the process of her arrest, she suffered injuries to her head and within hours found herself in a coma in a hospital bed, and finally at the astonishment of her family, she was pronounced dead.
Who was Mahsa Amini? We do not know much about her. She has become an icon, a symbol of justice and equality. Much will be written about her in the future and many monuments will certainly be built in her name. What we do know is that she was an Iranian woman. . Understanding them may shed some light on what happened to her and what her life and death means to the world.
Iranian Women — A Brief History
The history of Iranian women and their struggles provides an important context here. For well-nigh five centuries, ever since the official adoption of Shia Islam as state religion by the Safavid kings, the clerical class has systematically suppressed the rights of women in every facet of their lives through a hardline interpretation of Sharia law and a deliberate effort at controlling the minds and lives of people. Strict religious rites and practices were enforced on the population, arguably the most intrusive of which was the veiling of women, subjugating them to the backseat of society, stripping them of their rights to vote, socialize, interact, and exist as functioning members of society.
Women In Qajar Era
A key weapon in the hands of the clerics was access to education, which they used to control the women of the country by denying them such a basic right. Even men were not afforded full access to education, allowing the clerics to self-proclaim their dominance over reading, interpreting and enforcing religious text and tradition. So grim was this situation that by the turn of the nineteenth century, the literacy rate in Iran was a mere 1% in total and nearly nonexistent among women. After 100 years of Qajar rule, this number increased to a pitiful 2% in total, but women were still universally uneducated. The clerics had achieved their lust for power. It was during this period that Persia lost much of its territory to Russia and signed some of its most shameful treaties and became economically, socially, and morally bankrupt. The country was backwards by any standard and was plagued by disease, corruption, foreign control, superstition, and unmatched bigotry. Persia had lost its past glorious luster.
Beginning to Breathe!
It was in these dark times, in the middle of the nineteenth century, that a young, beautiful, and brave woman rose in Persia. She was an educated and erudite scholar, a poetess, and a courageous rebel who espoused a new messianic movement that sought to renew religious tradition and forever throw the antiquated and crippling superstitions of the clerics into the dustbin of history. Her name was Fatimeh. Her sobriquet was Tahirih (meaning the pure one), and her title, Qurrat’ul-Ayn (the solace of the eye). She was a force of nature.
It was Tahirih who, in 1848, performed a most revolutionary act in the small village of Badasht in northern Iran. In a gathering to discuss their new creed, Tahirih suddenly entered a gathering of eighty pious men, removed her Hijab and unveiled her beauty, declaring the dawn of a new day of freedom for all. So devastating and shocking was this act that one of the men present took a dagger and slit his own throat to show his astonishment and shame at the defiance of such a fundamental Islamic practice! Tahirih had broken tradition. Soon, she was to be arrested and eventually at the home of the governor of the capital city, she was asked to repent and recant her beliefs. She defiantly refused and raised her voice for freedom. At last she was strangled, gagged and thrown into a well. Before silencing her, it is reported that she had said: “You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women.”
Tahirih’s challenge to her contemporaries was not merely about the Hijab. This was simply a symbol of much greater aggression and suppression of the rights and freedom of her gender and her people at large. She readily died to uphold her beliefs that the time of freedom and maturing of humanity had come, and that women need to hold the reigns in equal part with men to build a new era of prosperity and justice for humanity.
Tahirih was erudite. She sparred with men of learning and often won her arguments with her mastery of both religious text and scientific reasoning. She was courageous and outspoken. In one of the most celebrated poems she declares this emancipation as the time of “beginning to breathe!” She challenged the clerics and brought to light their true motives, their character, and their abuse of religion as an instrument for power and wealth.
The future society she imagined would be “free from the shackles of superstition and bigotry,” would “fight injustice with the power of equality” and would “defeat ignorance through the power of knowledge and inquiry.” She envisioned a world of “love and amity” where differences are blotted out and “otherness” gives way to “unity and oneness.” It was precisely this that cost her her life. The removal of the Hijab was a symbol of her fight for this greater freedom.
Gathering Momentum
At the time of Tahirih’s death, Persia was drowning in a sea of darkness and ignorance. The authorities thought they had silenced her. Little did they know that they had set in motion forces that would shape the fortunes of their nation for decades to come.
Within a few decades, a vibrant women’s movement gathered momentum in Iran. Women began to participate and flourish in many aspects of life. Iranian women played a significant role in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905–11 and worked hard to incorporate equal rights and freedoms for themselves. Although much of these efforts were defeated, in a little over half a century since the killing of Tahirih, Iranian women were making their mark in history. During these times, women such as Sediqeh Dowlatabadi, a feminist activist and a journalist, pioneered the Persian Women’s Movement. Other notable women of this period was Commander Bibi Maryam Bakhtiari who became a military commander and played a key role in during the revolutionary campaign of 1909.
By 1909, Iran’s first all-female school had opened in the town of Qazvin. When the Qajar dynasty came to an end and Reza Khan took the reigns as the first King of the Pahlavi dynasty, he began to promote the ideals of equality among sexes. He ordered the police to remove women’s Hijabs in public. Schools and universities began to enroll women, and soon women entered into every aspect of the Iranian society.
The emancipation of women was gathering momentum daily. Women began to flourish in many aspect of life, from politics and business to science, technology, and the arts. Two of the most celebrated and impactful poets of the past century were women: Parvin Etesami and Forough Farrokhzad, both of whom died at a young age but left an indelible mark on Iranian literature and on the minds and souls of the public. Their message was one of freedom and justice. Their cry resonated with a nation fast developing, but still grappling with inequity and inequality.
Under Siege
The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was a turning point for this cry. Soon after the clerical class rose to power, they began to implement strict Sharia laws again. The most visible of these was the implementation of the mandatory Hijab for women. Initial resistance was met with forceful controls by the authorities and, within a few years, an elaborate machinery of education, enforcement, control, and prosecution was created. Girls were required to wear the Hijab from a tender age of nine, and every aspect of women’s lives were controlled and restricted. Men and women were not allowed to interact in public, sit on the same seats in public transportation, go to public swimming locations together, or show any form of public affection or familiarity. A strong, well-armed and well-financed “Morality Police” was formed to ensure women strictly obeyed these rules. In addition, women were not allowed to exercise many of their freedoms including the freedom to travel abroad without the permission of their father, husband, or brother. Iranian women were under siege.
These restrictions, while often challenged by women of the larger urban centers, began to become the norm. Women incorporated these restrictions in their daily lives. However, as these restrictions continued to constrict their lives, the women of Iran turned their attention to one area where restrictions didn’t apply — education. Women participated and excelled in all fields of education: social sciences, engineering, math, biology, information technology, and every other imaginable field of learning. More than 60% of the graduates of technical universities were women. Iranian women began to shine on the global arena of business and science. Maryam Mirzakhani, a graduate of the famous Sharif University and Professor of mathematics at Stanford, became the first Iranian and first of only two women to receive the “Fields Medal,” the most prestigious award in mathematics. Shirin Ebadi became the first woman judge to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and Anousheh Ansari became the first Iranian woman entrepreneur to go to space, making her the first self-funded woman astronaut.
An unintended consequence of the persecution of the Iranian women was that they became the most skilled, educated, and capable group of women in the world. This little-known fact is perhaps the greatest reason why the world must pay special attention to what’s going on in Iran today. For the first time in modern history, a full and equal participation in building a new society is being exercised before the entire world.
And yet the “Morality Police’s” suppression of rights continued to persist. Social media began to capture interaction with these police with increasing intensity. Women began to defy the headscarf, resist the unjust laws, and engage verbally and physically with the system. Many female human rights activists found themselves in the notorious Evin prison, among them Nasrin Sotoudeh and Narges Mohammadi. A new women’s movement was brewing and the government doubled down on its efforts to contain it. The most visible form of that containment was the wearing of the mandatory Hijab. That was a red line for the government and, too, was becoming a red line for the well-educated, urbane and sophisticated women of Iran.
Women, Life, Freedom
It was against this backdrop that the brutal capture and murder of Mahsa Amini by the Morality Police was confronted with a nationwide reaction. The Iranian population’s patience had run out after 43 years of suppression and persecution. What initially seemed to be a defiance of the mandatory Hijab, clearly became a demand for justice and freedom. The freedom to think, speak, and live in a society that puts human dignity and prosperity at it’s core.
This time the clear leader of this movement are women. This time their cry of “Women, Life, Freedom” is heard across the country and across the world. This time, men have found the courage to support them and to champion their cause. In fact, their cause is the cause of freedom; freedom for all.
It is both noteworthy and rather ironic that a society with the most repressive and oppressive set of rules against women would give rise to the most educated and capable women, and would stir a universal consciousness of justice, equality and freedom.
Iran is facing many social and economic challenges today. The years of crippling economic sanctions has left the population struggling for daily subsistence. Corruption is endemic and has caused environmental, social, and moral catastrophes on a scale that is unimaginable for a country with rich natural resources, culture, and history.
Yet, Iran is moving on and rising once again, and has great promise and potential. Its young population of more than eighty-five million people are among the most educated and informed in the world. They are determined to build a different future for themselves and are raising their voice for freedom and equality. They need to build everything from scratch. They are ready. They have their greatest asset in their possession — Iranian women.
Perhaps Tahirih was right after all.
** Shane Tedjarati is the founder, Chairman and CEO of the Tribridge Group (Tribridge), Chairman of VS Partners LLC (VS Partners) and Senior Advisor of Honeywell International (Honeywell). Shane is a seasoned and highly respected business executive with over 35 years of experience throughout the globe, including more than two decades spent in Asia in general and China in particular. He is an avid aviator and speaks six languages. He divides most of his time between Shanghai, Hong Kong, Dubai, London and the San Francisco Bay Area.
