Epilogue

As I finish writing this book, nine years after I first began this study, I realize that much has changed in Iran. The hard-liners’ control over all branches of the government has led to increasing state violence and various religious-fundamentalist impositions. Rampant corruption among state officials, high inflation, severe economic stagnation and unemployment—exacerbated by U.S. sanctions—privatization and the erosion of state welfare, and the mismanagement of natural resources have made life increasingly precarious for people in Iran, including my research participants, who sadly did not remain immune from the state crackdowns on NGOs and charities.

A glimmer of hope amid the sorrow is the mass uprising that erupted following the state killing of a young Kurdish woman, Jina (Mahsa) Amini. Jina’s severe beating in state custody by the morality police over improper hejab and her subsequent death ignited public outrage and a civil unrest that rapidly spread across the country. At Jina’s crowded funeral, in her hometown of Saqqez, and later in demonstrations that spread across eighty cities and towns, women furiously and defiantly ripped off their headscarves while dancing on the streets, as crowds of men and women cheered them on. The decades-old Kurdish slogan of “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” [Woman, Life, Freedom], chanted during Jina’s funeral in Iran’s province of Kurdistan, soon became the rallying cry during the protests across the country.

Much has been speculated about the significance of this movement as potentially the first-ever feminist revolution, one that has placed women at the center of struggles for democracy, freedom, and dignity for all. By constructing a collective claim to life, manifested in the slogan of “Woman, Life, Freedom,” this movement has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to mobilize broad solidarity between various segments of society. Defiance against compulsory hejab in these protests is not merely about hejab but also the many layers of injustice and violence enacted by the state. The movement, in fact, has shown an intersectional character by denouncing not only the structural oppression of women but also its ties to the structural oppression of religious and ethnic minorities. After all, Jina’s Kurdish and Suni identities were what led to speculation about her particularly violent mistreatment and why the first protests erupted in the Kurdish region of Iran, with its long history of marginalization and revolutionary resistance.

While Jina’s death marked the beginning of the uprising, since then, numerous women, men, and children have been killed, injured, and imprisoned, and some executed by a state desperate to repress the largest and most inspiring uprising the country has witnessed since the 1979 revolution. In all state crackdowns, ethnic minorities have been subjected to the most violent repression, such as the drone attacks and shelling of Kurdish regions and the massacre that took the lives of ninety-three individuals in Zahedan as the police fired live ammunition on protesters and into a Suni mosque during worship services. State narratives that emphasize protecting Iran’s “national unity” and “territorial integrity” have long been weaponized against ethnic-minority groups such as the Baluch, Kurds, and Arabs, who are forever suspected of instigating separation by simply claiming their identity. The long history of Persian-centrism has not only facilitated the state’s assimilation policies and structural discrimination against ethnic minorities but also has contributed to a culture where the recognition of ethnic struggles is perceived as divisive and a threat to the movement’s unity. The erasure of the Kurdish voice and perspective by both Iranian diaspora media and international media is evident in the omission of the Kurdish origin of the now globally popular slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” and the lack of recognition for the role Kurdish women played in this revolution.

Compounding matters, numerous groups outside and inside Iran have attempted to appropriate and co-opt the movement’s message and outcome. The images of women’s unveiling, burning headscarves, and flipping turbans have rightfully worried those who fear that the Western (mis)representation of the movement would embolden neocon war-hawk politics and promote interventionist, Islamophobic, and savior attitudes. Meanwhile, well-funded conservative oppositional groups in the diaspora continue their attempts to restore the monarchy by investing in satellite channels that give considerable airtime to Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former Shah and dictator whose ascendency to power in 1953 was facilitated by a CIA-orchestrated coup. By showcasing the images of unveiled and fashionable Iranian women in the years prior to the revolution, their television programs romanticize Iran’s past and position unveiled women as the symbol of the nation’s restorable lost freedom. Their attempts to hijack the revolution, however, have been met with a popular slogan chanted on the streets: “Death to the oppressor, whether Shah or Rahbar [supreme religious leader].”

The transformative potential of this uprising remains in the coalition of variously oppressed social groups as well as activists’ success in building an intersectional and anti-imperialist feminism. During contentious times, the tendency to erase the diversity of identities and struggles in the name of unity can be strong, and the demands of the most marginalized groups, such as ethnic and sexual minorities, are often silenced to avoid “divisive” politics. Given the enormity of this historic moment, the need for reflexivity and constructing a revolutionary discourse that does not reproduce class, ethnic, sexual, and religious hierarchies is crucial, as is the recognition that the freedom of women is tied to the freedom of Afghans, Kurds, Azeris, Baluchis, and Arabs from all forms of oppression, local and global.