The Story Of Iran’s Struggle From An Iranian In Exile
Students of Amir Kabir University in Iran recently protested against the Islamic Republic and the law requiring women to wear a hijab. Creative Commons photo.
(ANALYSIS) Thousands of young Iranians packed Tehran’s Azadi Stadium, Iran's largest sports venue, for a concert in May. “Azadi” means “freedom.” But the crowd full of children and teenagers was not there to see an act of creative free expression. The people came for a state-sponsored show of the state’s star preacher, Abuzar Roohi.
For months, the clerical establishment in Iran had been promoting Roohi and his hit song “Salute Commander” — a pledge of allegiance to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — as a way to indoctrinate the younger generation in a system that sanctifies death and seeks absolute obedience to its leadership.
Then on Sept. 16, the death in police custody of a young woman arrested for violating Iran’s hijab rules triggered nationwide protests. The protests have exposed the reality of a nation revolting for liberty and life, with a long history of Iranian women fighting for their rights and bodily autonomy against the Islamic Republic as a whole.
A name becomes a symbol
According to eyewitnesses, Iran’s notorious “morality police” beat 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while arresting her in the capital, Tehran, for allegedly showing too much hair. The police authorities denied all allegations of misconduct.
A few hours later, while still in police custody, Amini went into a coma and was transferred to a hospital in Tehran, where she passed away three days later.
In an attempt to cover up her death, the authorities tried to rush her burial, transferring her body that same night to her hometown, Saqez, in Iran’s western province of Kurdistan. The next morning, according to the BBC, Amini was buried, and her family marked her grave with the words, “(You) haven’t died, your name will become a symbol.”
Amini’s name has indeed turned into a symbol galvanizing the whole nation to rise and demand justice and liberty. Enraged by her death, many Iranians rushed to the streets demanding accountability.
Led by women — young and old — people are still facing guns and bullets to take to the streets, calling for the downfall of the Islamic Republic while chanting, “It is the year of the bloody (uprising) when (Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei) will be overthrown” and “We don’t want an Islamic Republic!”
In moments unseen in Iran’s modern history until now, women have danced around bonfires, burned their headscarves in the flames and cut their hair in public as a sign of defiance.
Protests have ebbed and flowed despite the violent crackdown on any form of dissent, with the government arresting thousands, including 36 journalists, and killing at least 185 people, including 19 children.
‘Salute Commander’
“Women, life, liberty,” the slogan that encapsulates the Iranian nation’s continuing uprising, is in stark contrast with what the Islamic Republic stands for.
The subjugation of women with the pretext of enforcing Shariah, Islamic law, has been one of the main pillars of the current Iranian government, along with its empty and hypocritical “anti-imperialism” and animosity towards Israel. The theocratic and authoritarian nature of the government has also translated into the persistent persecution of dissidents and thinkers.
For years, the Islamic Republic heavily invested in creating a death cult out of a political interpretation of Shiite Islam that values death and martyrdom over life.
As part of this effort, the clerical establishment tried to indoctrinate children in school and through state media. The catchy song “Salute Commander,” sponsored and promoted by the state, is but one example.
Over the past months, in addition to being regularly broadcast by state media, the song has been performed as part of a nationwide tour by preacher Abuzar Roohi that included stadiums and a performance at the Naqsh-e Jahan Square in the central city of Isfahan.
In the song, children pledge allegiance to the supreme leader and vow to sacrifice not only their own lives but also the lives of their parents for the 83-year-old ayatollah.
This is not the first time that the clerical establishment in Iran has sanctified death or the death of children. For decades, in schoolbooks and murals, the regime has been celebrating 13-year-old Hossein Fahmideh, who according to the official narrative, sacrificed his life in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war to stop an Iraqi tank from advancing.
A culture of resistance
The uprising has borrowed many elements from Amini’s Kurdish background. Ethnic Kurds have been subjected to decades of persecution in Iran, including mass executions, marginalization and cultural erasure. Fighting for basic rights and autonomy for decades has forged a culture of resistance among Iranian Kurds.
Above all, the battle cry of the Kurdish people in their decades-old struggle against oppressors, from the Islamic Republic to the Islamic State, has become the main slogan of the uprising: “women, life, liberty.”
Following Amini’s death, this culture of resistance has spread through Iran like wildfire, inspiring the whole nation.
At Amini’s funeral, when her family voiced fear of state retribution for not staying silent about her death, crowds erupted with chants of “fear no more,” reassuring them that they will not stand alone in the face of the state.
A few hours after her burial, Kurds organized rallies and a general strike across the Kurdistan Province. These calls for nationwide general strikes went viral on Persian social media, and businesses outside the province joined in.
Kurdish parents who have lost children in the protests asked people not to offer condolences but to continue the uprising. While burying his son killed during the protests, a father said: “Take the hands of your children and go to protests. Be the harbingers (of change).”
“If people like me don't go (to protests), then who will? I have lived my life, let them at least not kill our young people,” said 62-year-old Minou Majidi, a mother of three, before joining the protests and being killed by security forces.
Point of no return
For years the state has tried to hammer Iranians into a homogeneous mass that bends to its will. As part of this effort, it tried to cut people off from the outside world by imposing heavy-handed censorship and bombarding them with propaganda. However, life and technology have rendered these efforts ineffective.
Iran has a population of 83 million, of which 57.4 million use the internet. With the state heavily restricting access to the internet, almost all Iranians are experienced in using censorship circumvention tools like VPNs. Iranians widely use satellite dishes to receive and watch TV channels beamed into the country from abroad.
Watching the world through the lens of the internet and satellite TV channels while struggling with a corrupt dysfunctional system that has refused to reform itself, has led to anger and frustration piling up in Iran.
The mounting anger and dissatisfaction, in turn, have translated into recurring protests in the country, which the state has suppressed with brute force. But despite the brutality of state crackdowns, over the years, the frequency of these protests has surged.
In tandem with this fight, people have found new symbols and anthems to counter the ideology upheld by the clerical establishment.
These symbols are not limited to the current protests but include images of people who were unjustly executed by the state and those who have resisted oppression despite knowing that they will pay a high price for it.
Meanwhile, the state has responded to this battle of symbols with desperation — using threadbare talking points, accusing dissidents of seeking “fornication not freedom” and being pawns of the U.S. and Israel.
In the face of the Iranian people’s desire for life, a government that has nothing more to offer than sanctifying death has no chance of surviving.
Speaking with Time magazine from her Tehran home, leading human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh — who is on medical furlough from the prison, where she is serving a 38-year sentence — described the situation as a point of no return. After 43 years of ayatollahs having an ironclad grip on power, Sotoudeh said, the current uprising has made the possibility of regime change in Iran “very real.”
Only time will show if the slogan “women, life, liberty” will triumph over the supreme leader's government.
This story was published in collaboration with Egab. Religion Unplugged editors know the identity of the writer, and given conflict and security concerns in Iran, are protecting the writer’s identity.