Thirty years of struggle for freedom and equality

Sohaila Sharifi

 

There is a short video clip on some websites showing Iranian women’s 1979 historic march on International Women’s Day. Each time I watch this clip I feel overwhelmed with emotion and pride. The black and white, not so great quality, video clip shows thousands of women from all walks of life - veiled and unveiled - marching through the streets of Tehran protesting Khomeini’s latest speech in which he had said that it was the duty of Muslim women to cover themselves and spread the message of the ‘Islamic revolution.’ His fatwa was to become law and every woman was forced to observe it. In the clip, some of the women are holding up banners and some have their fists raised and are chanting slogans. After all, for many of them it was also their revolution – that had been crushed by the political Islamic movement.

 

Whilst the protestors are mostly women there are a considerable number of men supporters among them too. The majority of women are wearing modern, smart clothes, some according to the latest fashion and some simply in jeans and a coat or a jumper. Some have their hair loose and parted in the middle; others have it tied back or clipped to the sides. They don’t look very different from women anywhere else in the world. It is their angry faces and their passionate cries though that differentiates them as brave revolutionaries who had fought shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the country and had just managed to overthrow one of the most powerful dictatorships in the region. It is the slogans they are chanting that give me goose bumps each time I watch the video clip. Because what they demanding, the slogans they are chanting and the songs they are singing are still as relevant as they were thirty years ago: 'Freedom is our culture; to stay at home is our shame;' 'Liberty and equality are our undeniable rights;' ' We will fight against compulsory veiling; down with dictatorship;' 'In the dawn of freedom, we lack freedom for women;’ ‘women’s rights are neither eastern nor western; they are universal;’ ‘Freedom does not take rules and regulations,’ ‘We want equal rights;’ and ‘we haven’t had a revolution to be taken backwards.’

 

A young girl is telling a French reporter how she and her friends have been out demonstrating against the Shah for nearly a year hoping that they would get a better life, freedom and equality, and how things are moving in the opposite direction. It is like going back many centuries, she says. Somewhere else a middle-aged woman wearing a floral chador is explaining that she had grown up with her veil and her chador and doesn’t mind wearing it, however, ‘it is not for myself that I am here,’ she says, ‘I have young daughters who are educated and independent and they don’t want to be told what to wear. It is to support them that I am here today.’

 

Thirty years on, many of these women (or at least those lucky enough to survive the Islamic regime’s brutality) still dream of the freedom they have fought for and which had been so brutally suppressed. They have passed on the dream to the next generation and are now watching with a mixture of fear and fascination at how their young sons and daughters are pursuing the same dream and fighting the same regime with even more passion and bravery. Some like Mina Ahadi refused to let go of the banner and carried it all the way from Tabriz and Tehran to Berlin and London and proudly lead the fight for secularism and freedom across the world.

 

The battle between the Islamic regime and the Iranian people, particularly women, started from that historic demonstration and has continued. Throughout these decades, the veil has remained the main focus on both sides. The Islamic regime and its hezbollah thugs have brutally thrown acid on made up faces, slashed uncovered legs and literally pined the hijab to the foreheads of those who refused to comply. They sacked any working women who refused to observe the hijab and throughout the past thirty years they have come up with more restrictions and tricks to keep the veil on women only to face increasing resistance and a stronger and more militant movement especially from the younger generation. It is interesting to note that unlike their parents and the older generation, the majority of young people who are standing up against the government and bravely shouting that they don’t want an Islamic regime have never seen anything different; they have been born and raised under the strict rules of Sharia and yet they demand unconditional equality and freedom. One can only conclude that despite the government’s every effort, it has never managed to kill the dream of those who marched the streets of Tehran thirty years ago.

 

The women’s liberation movement in Iran is a growing and uncompromising movement that has taken the lead in the fight against political Islam not only in Iran but in some European countries too. It has become an international movement. The hijab has become one of the main pillars of not only the Islamic government in Iran but also of political Islam worldwide. Today we have to fight the veil not only on the streets of Tehran and Isfahan, but on the streets of London and Berlin. Today we have to fight against Sharia law not only in Iran but in Canada, Britain and Sweden. Today we have to save children from faith school and religious indoctrination not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iran but in Britain and many other European countries.

 

Iran, however, remains the main battlefield, because that is political Islam’s stronghold; and as long as it is so, there is no other alternative but for freedom lovers, secularists and those who dream of equality and a free life to topple the regime of sexual apartheid in Iran. The movement for equality and freedom in Iran, the women’s liberation movement, the worker’s struggle and the growing Left and secular movement in Iran are the pillars of the international Left, secularist and humanist movements. This movement in Iran needs to be heard, supported and strengthened.