Justice for the death of Mahsa Amini
The plaque her loved ones left on her grave reads: “Beloved Zhina, you will not die. Your name will become a symbol.”
Days ago, Iranian women rose up against the "morality police" and the impositions of a theocratic, patriarchal regime, demanding justice in Tehran for the brutal death of Mahsa Amini. The 22-year-old died in police custody after being arrested for not wearing her veil properly and showing part of her hair. As an act of defiance against gender apartheid, numerous protests took place in the streets. We witnessed many women with scissors in one hand cutting their hair and their hijab (veil) in the other, amidst the burning of veils.
Flames symbolize a profound political transformation. In addition to Tehran and Kurdistan, protests in Sari, Mashdad, and Kish stand out, representing the largest mobilizations since the 2019 protests. Among the recent precedents for Iranian women's attempts to achieve freedom is a 2014 social media protest called "My Silent Freedom," which dared to defy hijab laws when a group of women shared videos and other images.
A favorite slogan of the ayatollahs is "Paradise lies beneath the feet of mothers." In Iran, as in other Muslim-majority societies, feminist dynamics have shifted with each new generation. The magazine Zanan, credited with originating the concept of "Islamic feminism," is a prime example. The growing presence of women in all spheres of social life, their high level of higher education and presence in universities, and their advocacy for rights counteract the regime's persecution of what it deems "inappropriate attire." Women in Iran have been legally required to wear the hijab since 1979, following the success of Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution. According to Article 368 of the Iranian Islamic Penal Code, women who appear in public without a veil can be sentenced to up to two months in prison. This law applies to women as young as nine years old. In practice, the authorities enforce the mandatory use of the veil from the age of seven, that is, when girls enter elementary school. Those who refuse to wear it face harsh penalties, including arrests, fines, and imprisonment, and, as in the case of brutal events, even death.
On one hand, the feminist movement calls for the liberation of thought from the Muslim religion, primarily from the ulema, who are the men who claim to be the authoritative source of the narrative and impose their interpretation of the Quran and the sacred scriptures.
Fighting against femicidal policies in the world, this state of war against feminized bodies that in my books I call gender apartheid, which seeks to appeal to terror to impose policies of discipline and control, when the spectacle of the massacres of women and dissident sex/gender identities in the territories speaks of the necropolitics of power or the politics of letting die.
The patriarchal critique of the domination of bodies/territories is universal but situated. My research has focused on questioning the salvationist rhetoric of hegemonic feminisms, whose discourse and practice revictimize women of the Global South, in this case, Iranian women. This is the opposite of the image we have of them in the West, of them as "passive victims." What we observe is that, faced with the extreme repression of gender apartheid, which causes death and brutal repression, these young women are not afraid. They are not victims at all; rather, they are challenging, through their actions, the oppressive religious and political powers that enshrine the abuses of patriarchy and violate their rights, in order to achieve the longed-for gender equality.
The only way to stop the systematic murders of women is to develop the common struggle of all women's movements in the diverse contexts of patriarchal oppression that have their own history; to foster Lordean sisterhood (Audre Lorde); to de-Westernize the prejudices of hegemonic feminists who represent all "oppressed" women "without agency" through Orientalist and racist devices that locate Western white supremacy by othering and exoticizing non-Western identities; and to translate the feminist revolutions that, as among Iranian women, occur within the very heart of religion.
There is a need to recognize that the veil is the quintessential symbol of women's lack of freedom post-9/11. It is necessary to decolonize, depatriarchalize, and de-orientalize our perspective, which was shaped by Western eyes, according to Chandra Mohanty.
Note from the Interview with Karina BidasecaCo-coordinator of the Southern Epistemologies Working Group. Coordinator of the South-South Program at CLACSO. Professor at UBA and UNSAM at EIDAES.
6th October 2022
CLACSO Working Group
Epistemologies of the South
They support
CLACSO Working Group on Feminisms, Resistance and Emancipation
CLACSO Working Group on Afro-descendants and counter-hegemonic proposals
CLACSO Working Group on Anti-capitalism and Emerging Societies
Postcolonial Feminist Conference
NuSur. South South Core EIDAES/UNSAMiones
University Program of Studies on Asia and Africa (PUEAA – UNAM)
This statement expresses the position of the aforementioned Working Group and not necessarily that of the centers and institutions that make up the CLACSO international network, its Steering Committee or its Executive Secretariat.
