Veteran CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour posted a photo of her on Twitter to announce that an interview with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi had been canceled after he demanded she wears a headscarf for their meeting in New York. She posted a picture of herself, without a headscarf, sitting in front of an empty chair where the Iranian president would have been.
This photo symbolizes what many women and girls all over the world are being denied when they refuse to put a headscarf on. They are denied education, freedom of movement, and of course bodily autonomy. Women in Iran are chanting the Kurdish slogan jin, jiyan, azadi (women, life, freedom) against the Islamic regime that does not allow women to go out of the house “bareheaded.”
Women in Iran have been dissenting against the forced Islamic dress code and the so-called moral police for years now, but the recent wave of protest against the regime has taken a dramatic turn after 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini’s death, allegedly caused by Iran’s morality police, a unit that enforces strict Islamic dress codes for women, such as the compulsory headscarf.
Women are taking off their headscarves, burning them, and chopping off their beautiful locks while hoisting it like a flag to show their defiance against the forced hijab.
This became a flag for all the women who are dissenting against forced Islamic dress codes all over the world. Iranian women are brave enough to risk their lives and have shook the world, but women in many other countries have to deal with this as well. This movement in Iran is not an instant reaction to Mahsa Amini’s death.
Women in Iran have been fighting the theocracy for years and the ongoing protest just got its momentum and became bolder because of Mahsa’s death. This is not an issue that only women in Iran are wrestling with.
This section of women all over the world, regardless of their nationalities, either fight or suffer in silence by conforming to the Islamic dress code imposed by their families, their governments, schools, or societies in general.
Forced hijab is not always enforced by the law.
Women here in Bangladesh are harassed, shamed, humiliated, and name-called for being “immodest” by strangers on the street, on public transport, and even by aunties at the dinner table.
Not too long ago a middle-aged woman named Shila Akhter harassed and hurled abusive words at a young woman at Narsingdi railway station and the young woman's “immodest” clothes were stripped off by the burqa-clad woman.
When someone forcefully takes off a woman's headscarf she feels humiliated and it a clearly an act of hate crime. However, when a woman has to cover up against her will or be shamed for not following the Islamic dress code, she feels just as humiliated and harrassed. Unfortunately, the latter is neither considered a hate crime against women nor an act of humiliation.
Everyone should remember the photo of the flag made with the chopped-off hair of Iranian women when the dust settles. This will be the everlasting symbol of the dissenting voices against the people in power who tried to write their ideology on women’s bodies.
I think it is time for that section of western feminists, regardless of their skin colour or nationality, to understand that culture should not be respected if it is oppressive. They may put up a performative solidarity post on their social media platform with the one-liner that the hijab is a choice.
For many women around the world to put a full stop after the statement will close all the windows for women who might get killed, disowned by their families, and labeled as being immodest when she removes that “choice.”
Novelist Toni Morrison once said: “The function of freedom is to free someone else.” I think Western feminists and activists should use their freedom to give voices to the women protesting in Iran and women who have to follow the Islamic dress code against their will all over the world.
Kohinur Khyum Tithila is a journalist.