Now This Is Courage

    “Ready to be next, but not the last.” This is the message 17-year-old Sima, a young woman from Tehran, has been writing on her bedroom mirror in lipstick each evening over the past two weeks. She has been adding a victory sign, then heading out to join protesters in towns and cities across Iran, determined to overthrow the nation’s autocratic/theocratic, Islamist regime.

    It is impossible to overstate the bravery of Iran’s protesters. Men and women, united in opposition to the dictatorship, have taken to the streets in defiance of the threat to their lives. As I type this, more than 500 people are now estimated to have been butchered at the hands of the Ayatollah Khamenei’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Thousands more are thought to have been injured so far. Reports suggest hospitals are overwhelmed with victims of police shootings.

    None of this has stopped women from joining demonstrations. “I am not afraid,” one female protester is filmed saying. “I’ve been dead for 47 years.” Her arm is raised in defiance, as blood drips from her mouth and on to her chest. For the record, Akram Pirgazi, a mother of two, was the first woman to be killed by police in this current state crackdown.

    The protests began just before Christmas. Yet for almost three weeks now, mainstream Western media has largely ignored the Iranian women risking their lives daily, protesting on the streets of Iran. Only now, with bodies piling up like kindling, are headlines being made.

    Robina Aminian, a 23-year-old woman from a Kurdish region in Iran, dreamt of studying fashion in Milan. Last week, she was shot at close range in the back of her head by Iranian security forces and then buried by the side of the road. She joined protests, reportedly full of optimism and joy, after her textiles classes at Shariaty College had finished. Today, her vibrant, smiling face shines from the front covers of British newspapers.

    Sadly, not even this has been enough to nudge privileged Western activists to so much as summon up a hashtag in solidarity with Iran’s women. Instead, those quick to “blackout” social media take the knee, or don a keffiyeh for the supposedly ‘right’ cause, have determinedly and gutlessly, looked the other way.

    The presence of women at the heart of Iran’s uprising is significant. By protesting against laws mandating strict dress codes and compulsory wearing of the hijab, women are not just defying Iran’s Islamist dictatorship, but also the sexist and oppressive practices associated with Islam more broadly. Anti-hijab protests expose the myth, endlessly repeated by many international news outlets, that the latest round of protests in Iran took off simply because of rising inflation and the spiralling cost of living. That myth would be a lie. Iran’s women are not taking to the streets meekly begging for food or asking for a little extra money. They are marching in defiance of a brutal regime that has terrorized all Iranian citizens for decades. And they are burning hijabs, a hated symbol of women’s particular oppression.

    For many Iranian women, these protests did not begin a couple of weeks ago. They ignited in September of 2022 when Iran’s morality police attacked Mahsa Amini in the back of a police van for showing her hair in public. She fell into a coma and died in a hospital three days later. The following year, in October 2023, teenager Armita Geravand was assaulted by morality police for not wearing a headscarf. After a month in a coma, Armita died. Their brutal treatment fueled the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement and galvanized women protesting against compulsory dress codes in what were some of the longest-running anti-government protests since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

    Throughout this recent wave of protest, mass displays of solidarity from the West’s activist class have been notable only by their absence. Greta Thunberg, everyone’s favorite idiot scold, ever so vocal in criticizing Israel, and inanely screaming about global warming, seemingly has nothing to say about the killing of women in Iran. Celebrities queued up to sign petitions, pen open letters, make TikTok and YouTube videos, and join protests critical of Israel’s defensive actions in Gaza. Students established protest camps on posh university lawns and hundreds of thousands of people marched through British and American city centers week after week, purportedly in solidarity with Palestinians. But when it comes to supporting Iranian women? Crickets…

    Actually, what is happening in the West, especially Western Europe, is more shameful than mere silence. At the very same time women in Iran are defying the morality police, burning hijabs and demanding ‘freedom’, Europe’s cultural elites are busy promoting hijabi-chic in advertising campaigns and public-information posters. The garment rejected as oppressive in Iran is being normalized as hip headware in Europe. In Europe, hijab is promoted as striking a blow for ‘diversity’ and a challenge to ‘Islamophobia.’ Please…I’m begging you people. Grow up. 

    The silence of the narcissistic Western virtue-signalers in both Europe and America (and you know who you are) reminds us that not all women are equal. Hamas’s attack against Israel on October 7, 2023 revealed that Jewish women do not count. Forget the #MeToo slogan, ‘Believe All Women’ – Jewish rape victims are to be forever doubted. Now we know that Iranian women do not count either. For Western activists, hatred for Israel and support for Islam are all-consuming.

    Let’s leave the faux-feminists to their hypocrisy. Iranian women do not need Western saviors. To date, the iconic image to emerge from the Iranian protests is of a beautiful young woman, hair loose about her shoulders, lighting a cigarette from a burning image of the ayatollah. How great is that! In one fell, visual swoop…she is telling the piece of shit Iranian leader, to “Kiss My Ass!” That is freedom, ladies and gentlemen. These women are braver and more principled than keffiyeh-clad Western women can ever imagine.

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com