The Legacy of Mahsa Amini: Promoting Women’s Rights in Iran
In September of this year, Mahsa Amini, a 22 year old woman traveling through Iran with her brother Kiarash, was arrested by the Iranian Guidance Patrol (commonly known as the “morality police”) due to “improper” veiling. Hours after Mahsa’s arrest, Kiarash was notified of her placement in an intensive care unit in Kasra Hospital, due to brain damage sustained from severe a beating, which ultimately led to a coma. She had also suffered significant bruising to her legs and face. Three days later, the Iranian government announced Amini had died from complications of a heart attack, but her injuries appeared inconsistent with the government's narrative and were quickly interpreted by both the Amini family and Iranian citizens as an attempted coverup of the Morality Police’s brutality. Amini’s death has since sparked widespread public outrage against the over-policing of women’s bodily autonomy in Iran.
Protests began at Amini’s funeral in Saqez, spreading first to the University of Tehran, and eventually engulfing the rest of the country, all the while garnering domestic and international support. Videos of Iranian women burning headscarves and cutting their hair in public have circulated on various social media platforms along with chants, music, and artwork, further fueling the protests.
Authorities in Iran have denounced the movement. Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khameni has blamed the United States and Israel for the recent political unrest, describing the uprisings as a foreign effort to destabilize the country. Iranian officials have also continued to indict dozens of people for allegedly inciting riots, while many protestors have been killed by Iranian forces. A study conducted in April 2022 by Amnesty International illustrates how over 96 prisoners arrested for political activism in Iran since 2010 have been denied life saving healthcare by Iranian officials. In addition, the Iranian Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) released a report earlier this month revealing that over 1,200 people have been arrested since Amini’s death, alongside approximately 200 fatalities, of which many victims have been children.
Furthermore, for over a month, Iran has become subject to one of the most severe internet restrictions since the Mahshahr massacre of 2019. Social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, and messaging sites such as Whatsapp, have been disabled throughout the country.
A Brief History of Women’s Rights in Iran
Although Iranian citizens have participated in numerous protests within the past century, the 1979 Iranian Revolution is largely believed to have set in motion significant restrictive measures on Iranian women’s bodily autonomy and general freedoms.
Prior to 1979, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi had contributed to several autocratic-induced initiatives to improve women’s rights in Iran, such as the Family Protection Law of 1967, which had placed strict limits on polygamy and allocated women and men the same rights in divorce as well as child custody.
Despite these advances for women, Boston University Professor Shahla Haeri maintains that many Iranians were angered by the aggressive censorship of political and social movements in opposition to the Pahlavi regime. Protests against Mohammad Reza Shah began not as an Islamic revivalist movement, but instead as the coming together of a diverse sector of the Iranian population. Haeri elaborates how “women were part of it… Jews… Muslims… merchants… middle class was involved, I mean almost people from all walks of life.” By the mid 1960s, Ruhollah Khomeini had risen as a leading figure in the opposition movement against the Shah, claiming Westernized Muslim values were corrupt. When the Shah finally left Iran in 1979, Khomeini, now the Ayatollah, filled the gaping power vacuum and established the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Ayatollah Khomeini led the ‘Islamization’ processes in Iran, which installed strict rules for women’s conduct in accordance with Sharia law. The Family Protection Act, as well as many other progressive policies instilled by the Shah, were swiftly repealed. Professor Haeri elaborates that “women lost a lot of their rights– polygamy was re-instituted…[women lacked] protection or custody of children, and they were forced to cover their hair.” In describing her visit to Iran a couple years after the revolution, Professor Haeri notes that “everybody had to dress in drab colors, either black, gray, navy blue or brown… it looked so horrible…there was no color to be seen in the streets of Tehran.” Ayatollah Khomeini also disapproved of an Iranian national identity, and instead promoted ummah, or a global Muslim community.
33 years after Ayatollah Khomeini’s death, Iran remains an Islamic republic adhering to strict rules and regulations under Sharia law. Established formally in the 1990s, the Morality Police is charged with monitoring men and women’s modesty in public. However, women are more frequently targeted by the Morality Police than men. Lacking clear guidelines regarding ‘appropriate’ outfits, modesty is often left up to the personal interpretation of police officers. Apparent violations of regulations result in fines, lashes, beatings, or even acid thrown at women.
Vigil Held for Mahsa Amini
On September 29th, the Boston University Persian Student Association (PSA) held a candlelight vigil in front of Marsh Plaza to honor the death of Mahsa Amini. Iranian students and members of the diaspora gave speeches about the relationship of the current protests to their families living in Iran.
I had the opportunity to speak with two Boston University students at the vigil, Hannah and Kiana. Kiana and Hannah are both e-board members of the PSA, and Hannah herself had taken the initiative to set up the vigil. “I organized the vigil because I was angry,” Hannah recounted, “and I didn’t know what to do about it.”
Kiana and Hannah both have family members currently living in Iran. Kiana described how censorship has greatly impeded her ability to communicate with the maternal side of her family: “since the internet has been cut we haven't been able to speak to them as often.” Hannah shared a similar experience: she has been largely cut off from her grandfather, who is currently receiving medical assistance in Iran for personal illness. Hannah revealed she has “no contact with [her grandfather’s caretakers] unless they gain a brief connection through a VPN.”
Despite the feeling of solidarity and collective grief during the vigil, Hannah felt that the representation of the crowd was not as broad as she had hoped for: “Most people in attendance were Persians… I would’ve liked to see more, seeing as this is an issue that needs support specifically from people who aren’t Persian.” Hannah noted that these protests have been “the biggest one to date, and a lot of people aren’t understanding the gravity of the situation.”
Going Forward: Islam and Women’s Rights in Iran
Western media often portrays the myopic assumption that Islamic values are the source of women’s repression in Iran. However, many modern Islamic feminists have challenged the notion that Islam and women’s rights cannot intersect. Professor Haeri, who currently teaches an anthropology course on women in the Muslim world, explains how a deeper analysis of the history of powerful women in Islam reveals “how vocal they were, how self-confident they were, how visible they were, and it seems the Prophet Muhammad had no problem interacting with them [or] accepting political allegiances [with them].” However, as time went on, and Islam stregnthened in terms of “administrative and global power”, patriarchal structures became increasingly integrated into Muslim societies and systemically impacted the interpretation of women in the Quran. That being said, Quranic verses are often reinterpreted, and with the advent of women in the modern era decoding sections of the religious text to reveal more egalitarian interpretations, Iranian and Muslim feminists have contested laws entrenched in patriarchal standards of conduct.
Similarly, many Islamic scholars argue that the Iranian government uses Islam to justify authoritarian, sexist policies that control women’s bodies. Iranian women are not asking to remove the veil altogether, they are asking for the opportunity to choose if they wear one or not.
Although the Iranian government has made numerous attempts to censor and perpetuate false narratives of the current protests, international pressure, especially through social media, has resulted in greater transparency between Iranians and the international community. Kiana described how “a lot of [her] friends who aren’t Iranian would have had no idea what was even going on if it wasn’t for social media…we have been able to bring awareness to [Iranian people’s] reality.” Professor Haeri also notes that although social media can occasionally be a double edged sword, it “has been a positive instrument in publicizing what these women and young men demand.”
The future may be uncertain for Iranian women. But as international pressure mounts, and the momentum of the current protests remains, the voices of Iranian women who have been silenced until now will be brought to light, and those, like Mahsa Amini, whose voices will remain unheard, can be honored through collective efforts to promote women’s freedoms in Iran.
The author would like to sincerely thank Professor Shahla Haeri, and students Hannah and Kiana for their participation in the research and writing of this article.
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