(Wikimedia Commons/ideaophagous)

Over the past few weeks, protests have raged on after a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini died in the custody of Iran’s so-called morality police. Her crime? Wearing her hijab improperly.

Outrage over Amini’s death has catalyzed some of the country’s largest anti-clerical protests in decades, with women standing at the forefront. Kurdish-Iranian and Iranian women in particular have bravely taken to the streets to burn headscarves, tear down pictures of the country’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and publicly shear their hair in defiance of the theocratic regime violently policing their bodies. In response, Iranian police forces have arrested, beaten, tear gassed and shot hundreds of protestors with a death toll nearing 200 people. 

Women are risking their lives and freedom in Iran; they fight for the ability to choose to cover or not, to feel empowered by the choices they make for their own bodies and not the fear of those choices being made for them.  The courage of Iran’s resistance reinforces a simple fact — no policy, no government and no state should dictate how women dress or use their bodies. As protests continue to swell, Western involvement must stay limited to supporting grassroots efforts and amplifying Iranian voices amid their censorship.

Control over women’s bodily autonomy is a broader problem throughout Iran as well as in other countries. In Afghanistan, the Taliban recently reinstated a hijab mandate that, if broken, could result in loss of employment or even imprisonment. Iran has a history of imposing modesty laws on women as young as seven. All women are required to wear headscarves in public spaces and dress modestly in adherence to guidelines set in place after the 1979 revolution.  

Similarly, recent years have also seen an influx in political decisions limiting hijab wear. For instance, France infamously banned the burka, full-face veils in public settings as well as hijab wearing in public spaces for girls under 18. Outside Europe, India’s southern state of Karnataka has upheld legislation specifically banning female Muslim students from wearing hijab. These decisions exemplify the rush to strip away their right to wear hijab, operating under antiquated ideas of what Islam represents. Whether governments use Islamophobia and excuses of secular values to ban religious wear or misuse religion to mandate strict dress code, they are bound in their mission to undermine women’s bodily autonomy and personal freedoms.

Historically, the U.S. government’s interventions in Iran have been harmful. In the last fifty years, the U.S. ousted a democratically elected leader, supported a destabilizing dictator and enacted sanctions harmful to millions of Iranians. Western involvement in Iran and the region at large has come from a place of imperialism and economic opportunity. Any kind of top-down intervention in Iran would not only further tensions between the U.S. and Iranian governments, but more importantly, fail to support the people at the very heart of the movement. To call for more Western intervention, as it has manifested in the past, is to infantilize the Iranian women fighting for freedom. This movement and so many grassroots movements like it rely heavily on more creative and subversive methods of spreading revolutionary ideas and organizing the masses — and that’s exactly where Western aid can lend a hand.

The internet has been the most pivotal vessel for Iranian people to spread awareness about the ongoing protests — but the Iranian government’s crackdown on this tool has been brutal. Beyond street violence and mass arrests, officials have heavily restricted internet access, limiting protesters and supporters abroad from spreading awareness on mainstream social media. Many Iranian protestors use services like the web extension Snowflake to subvert restrictions, but these tools cannot work where the state has cut off the internet completely. 

Supporting Iranian protesters’ access to the internet is vital in their ongoing conflict. Internet companies can provide their services independently of Iran’s government through systems, like Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Starlink. Social media platforms could also adjust policy or work to create tools to allow Iranian women to engage directly with an international audience. In response to growing pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand and Myanmar, Twitter officialized the hashtag #MilkTeaAlliance, allowing activists from around the world to spread ideas and news quickly and effectively. Twitter was also a vehicle for activists in Palestine to share tactics on fighting tear gas attacks with Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020. Urging social media platforms like Twitter to validate hashtags like #MahsaAmini may help protesters in Iran tap into international solidarity and global connections they can leverage in their fight for justice.

We must allow the women and people of Iran to dictate the terms of their own liberation. Individuals should continue to utilize social media to boost the words and posts coming from protesters on the ground, urge media platforms to continue spreading information from Iran and oppose military intervention that would only perpetuate a long legacy of colonial violence. 

Above all, we must keep Mahsa Amini and the Iranian and Kurdish people centered in their fight for Jin, Jiyan and Azadi – women, life and freedom. 

The above editorial represents the majority opinion of the Wheel’s Editorial Board. The Editorial Board is composed of Isabelle Bellott-McGrath, Rachel Broun, Evelyn Cho, Ellie Fivas, Marc Goedemans, Aayam Kc, Elyn Lee, Saanvi Nayar, Shruti Nemala, Nushrat Nur, Sara Perez, Ben Thomas and Kayla Robinson.

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The Editorial Board is the official voice of the Emory Wheel and is editorially separate from the Wheel's board of editors.