If there was a list of things that truly help Muslim women fighting for agency over their own bodies, then white European women cutting off centimetres of hair on the internet would be near the bottom.
Since the tragic death of Mahsa Amini in police custody last month, after she was arrested for allegedly flouting Iran’s strict dress code by wearing her hijab too loosely, there has been an outpouring of anger from women throughout Iran – as well as those further afield lending their support and solidarity.
Iran has now seen weeks of protests as women take to the streets – in defiance against the rigid codes of modesty that are mandated by the Iranian regime and often brutally enforced by the so-called morality police – fighting for the right to determine their own way of dressing. We’ve seen hijabs set on fire, political figures being heckled and even schoolgirls joining in with the protests.
Understandably, this wave of outrage has spread around the world too, with hashtags bearing Mahsa Amini’s name trending for weeks now.
Some female Iranian expats living abroad have joined in by cutting off their hair in a show of solidarity or bravely spoken out about their own experiences with the morality police. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has urged the international community and the UK Government to act swiftly to curb the violence and suppression facing Iranian women.
These women have been real allies… others not so much.
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Unsurprisingly, this powerful surge of defiant women’s voices emanating from Iran has caught the attention of feminists globally, including some very high-profile figures.
Angelina Jolie has spoken about her respect for the women of Iran, writing to her millions of followers: ‘Women don’t need their morals policed, their minds re-educated, or their bodies controlled. They need freedom to live and breathe without violence or threats.’
Priyanka Chopra received almost half a million likes on an Instagram post celebrating Iranian women standing up to patriarchy and fighting for their rights. And a whole host of actresses have joined in too, including France’s Marion Cotillard and the UK’s Charlotte Rampling, using the hashtag ‘HairForFreedom’ to share videos of themselves cutting off portions of their own hair in support of Iranian women.
But here’s the problem.
Standing up for the undeniably vital and noble plight of Iranian women to be able to have full agency over their own bodies is a good thing. Women in a country as tightly-controlled as Iran need external pressure to be put on the state if they have a hope in improving their circumstances.
But this outrage, this solidarity lended to Iranian women, is misguided on a number of levels. And that makes it incredibly problematic.
Firstly, it’s painfully selective. Where is the burning anger of French actresses when Muslim women in their own country are fighting for the right to cover themselves? Where were the French actresses defiantly flouting anti-niqab rules in solidarity with their own country-women who were banned from public spaces wearing their religious attire? Why haven’t the likes of Priyanka Chopra spoken up about women in India being banned from wearing the hijab, or the wave of state-manufactured islamophobia sweeping her own country?
The problem is that (mostly white) feminists only embrace Muslim women who fit their own narrow expectations of what a feminist should be.
The fight to remove a piece of religious clothing is seen as brave, patriarchy-defying and admirable. But the fight to wear modest garments is seen as the opposite. It’s seen as succumbing to misogyny, allowing ourselves to be oppressed, even when it can be as dangerous and brave an act as removing your hijab in a country like Iran.
Secondly, I fear that the protests in Iran are being misunderstood (and even, potentially, manipulated) by white feminists who are failing to put them in the context of Iran’s political and social landscape.
Under strict regimes like Iran, the state uses anything in its power to control, to coerce, to limit. Women’s bodies are cheap currency and easily manipulated by a state obsessed with absolute control. We see this the world over – take the erosion of women’s bodily rights in the US after the overturning of Roe v Wade, for example.
So when Iranian women are burning the hijab, what many of them are setting ablaze to is the way the state warps religion to exercise total power over them. Crucially, this is different to the religious, spiritual notion of ‘hijab’, which constitutes an entire etiquette of modesty that is much more comprehensive than a black piece of cloth.
Many of the women in Iran are fighting for the right to choose to cover or not, something numerous Muslim women like me take for granted. If the law changed today, a sizable chunk of them would still wear the hijab, but it would be under their own compulsion rather than the regime’s rulings.
This is different to the idea white feminists seem to be rallying around – this image of all Muslim women the world over ripping our hijabs off in an anti-patriarchy frenzy and admitting we were oppressed by our religion all along and that true liberty lies in mini skirts and long, flowing hair.
The hijab is being used in these Iranian protests as a symbol of the iron fist of the state – a metaphor for how every tiny part of life for Iranian’s is under strict limitation, and how the beautiful, equitable notion of the hijab in Islam is being warped into an arbitrary stick to beat individual Iranian women with.
So lend your solidarity to Iranian women, by all means.
But if your feminism is intersectional then it should equally envelope Muslim women fighting for the right to dress in a way that they want all around the globe, including in places like Europe – which are not the cornucopia of progressive women’s rights that some might believe.
The fight to cover and the fight to uncover are two sides of the same coin. If you only support Muslim women on one side of this coin, then your feminism is worthless to us.
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