A Quick Look Back
Iran’s political past is no stranger to protests after its 1979 Islamic revolution which ended up enacting its modern-day theocracy as part of the main Shiite power hub within the MENA region. The resulting unrest of the elections in which the hardliner Ahmadinejad and the reformer Mir-Hossein Mousavi were competing is one of the most notable examples of political dissatisfaction with the Islamic Republic in 2009 which is known as the Green Movement. Bloody November of 2019-2020 is another important instance of nationwide protests which has ended up in a brutal crackdown on dissidents. Bloody November was also the very first-time internet shutdown was used to systematically isolate 80 million people from communicating with the outside world in an attempt to stop the flow of information on social media (Instagram and Telegram being the popular ones in Iran) and to provide easier suffocation of dissenting and critical voices. The aftermath of the 2009 green movement and the Bloody November both led to the catalyzation of the so-called “national internet” or “national information network”. A label used by the Islamic republic for a type of internet connection similar to China. One that would be entirely controlled by the state and would remain open to foreign services only if they are willing to host their servers in Iran and provide access to the Islamic Republic. In fact, Telegram was blocked for the very same reason and the fate of Instagram as the only unblocked social media in Iran remains completely uncertain. Because most websites and social media are blocked in Iran, people usually rely on VPNs and proxies to circumvent these limitations. We know that China has been one of the main players aiding the restrictions of free access to the internet in Iran (as part of the 25-year cooperation program). What remains to be discussed more, however, is how and why these series of protests initially sparked by the death of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini are drastically different from previous uprisings and how they relate to the Islamic Republic’s ambition for a national internet.
The New Women’s Rights in Iran
The very first factor that marks this series of protests notably different in scope and participation, is the very strong presence of younger women as the key leading figures of the protests in addition to being the most vocal. In fact, the average of those arrested during the protests is reported to be 15 by Ali Fadavi, Deputy Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The Islamic Republic has been extremely dismissive of any kind of gender reform be it from the so-called insider reformers or those voiced by activists and the opposition outside of Iran. When the first waves of protests happened in Iran with hijab, it was again young girls, standing alone on the roof of cars, near the beach, or in the streets removing their scarves that caught the attention of the judiciary system. The response followed swiftly and followed the usual pattern of vague accusations under different labels with heavy penalties and long jail sentences. Just in one case, Saba Kord Afshari was sentenced to 24 years in prison. As reported by the Front-Line Defenders, “Branch 26 of the Islamic Revolution Court of Tehran sentenced the woman human rights defender to 15 years in prison for “encouraging people to commit immorality and/or prostitution,” seven years and six months for “gathering and collusion against internal or external security” and one year and six months for “spreading propaganda against the system”. It was only reduced to 5 years in prison because of public exposure and pressure from human rights organizations. This type of reaction sums up the strategy of the hardliners ever since the 1979 revolution. In each case, instead of the oppression and discrimination that women face, they heavily focus on the perceptions of the accused, their dignity, and their loyalty to the status quo. This is very much in line with Kate Man’s view of dominance and power dynamics. Part of male dominance in the Islamic republic, “especially on the part of the most privileged and powerful, seems to be seizing control of the narrative—and with it, controlling [women], enforcing her concurrence”. Echoing, Kate Abramson, Mann points out that “[this] is not exactly deference: rather, it closely resembles the moral aim of gaslighting”. This can partly account for why any demand for change and reform in women’s rights is reduced to sexual desires, hormonal abnormalities, and drugs. It also can account for forced televised confessions of these activists and their parents as instruments of power in service of legitimization of patriarchal narrative by portraying women’s rights activists as lacking independent agency, confused, agents of corruption, and sinners. The internet shutdown, however, is a more recent practice in control of the outsider narratives of events and eliminating any chance of awareness and agency for the victims. This approach is further evident in official comments and televised state analysis, even as the protests are continuing. In one case, Mousavi Jazayeri, one of the clerics appointed by the supreme leader in Ahvaz voiced his take on the recent uprisings by saying that “80% of those arrested are children of divorce and 50% have a history of addiction to drugs and alcohol”. In another statement, the media’s favorite public speaker, Ali Akbar Raefipour, known for endorsing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and supporting Chinese elections as his recognized ideal, stated in an appearance in the state media that “[for] 2 years they’ve been sitting at home during the Coronavirus [pandemic] and couldn’t move, so, unfortunately, sexual stimulants are numerous. Checking the internet- because thank God they have access to VPNs”, he says facetiously and continues “teenagers who are faced with sexual stimulates [and] now what is happening in the streets? matters such as discharging of these emotions, crowds alongside the matter of women. These two have precisely come together so, of course, it is natural for these to be in the field”. Women never just are. They cannot simply be for the Islamic Republic. Women can be only in so far as they are sexual objects of the state’s version of Islam. Unfortunately, this kind of benevolent sexism is still widespread even among academics both inside and outside Iran. For example, more recently, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a philosopher and University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University, writes that “In the Quran, man is given domination over woman but he is not given this responsibility as a two-legged animal. Rather, he has been entrusted with this task as the imam of God and His vice-gerent, whose soul is surrendered to Him”. In another statement dating back to 1985, Mohammad Hossein Tabatabai , considered to be one of the most prominent thinkers of modern Shia Islam, we read that “... On average, a woman is behind a man in perfectional characteristics such as the brain, heart, arteries, nerves, height, and weight, … and the woman's body is generally softer and more delicate, and the man's body is larger. And it is harder. Gentle emotions such as love, compassion, and the desire for beauty and adornment are more present in women than men, and on the other hand, the power of reasoning is more present in men than in women, and therefore a woman's life is an emotional (and sentimental) life and a man's life is a rational life”. It is really important to note that the state’s image of what a “good female” is and what are the rules and strategies for achieving it are known as they have been part of mandatory religious courses starting from elementary school to university. This means that both the general public and the more recent moderate views of Islam, who are amplifying a progressive attitude, such as those seeking reformist interpretations can understand the underlying ideologies and state forces in play when criticizing or theorizing about Islamic ethics. Among this important group of scholars are people such as Kecia Ali at the University of Boston, or the Iranian activist and Quranic scholar, Sedigheh Vasmaghi.
Generation Gap and Devolving a Women’s Movement
The clear rules, social expectations, and gender narratives so entrenched in the traditional Islamic revolutionaries of the Islamic republic have all slowly faded away in the post-revolution generations. With each generation moving away slightly more than the previous one. What has substituted this view has developed under strict suppression and total lack of support from the state be it formally in the media or semi-formally among journalists, newspapers, or university instructors? In other words, the rules of what makes a “good female”, social expectations, gendered roles, and strategies for achieving them have all developed either in informal circles of activists such as social media, the Iranian diaspora outside of Iran or by reliance on informal, illegal or sometimes heavily censored legal translations of books that are far away from anything that might be deemed Islamic in the sense desired by the state. The systematic maneuvers to force female voices into silence and forced confessions have backfired. Because the state does not understand the rules and the developments of these new “good females”, it has been in a kind of perpetual confusion in dealing with hijab protests. This confusion is the result of a significant generation gap between the ruling few and the young majority. Since women’s fight for their rights has been developed in mediums far from the reach of the state, as time has passed, the gap has increased both in its scope and in its depth. This gap is among the most important features of the protests. The reason that brutal force, state propaganda, and even full internet blackouts are not working in curtailing these protests, is because of the unsatisfactory and superficial understanding of women that has been growing over 4 decades under the eyes of the male Ayatollahs.
The traditional understanding has consistently relied upon some forms of overt or covert sexism, but prominent among them has always been Benevolent sexism which “is a form of paternalistic prejudice (treating a lower status group as a father might treat a child) directed toward women. Prejudice is often thought of as a dislike or antipathy toward a group. Benevolent sexism, however, is an affectionate but patronizing attitude that treats women as needing men's help, protection, and provision (i.e., as being more like children than adults). Benevolently sexist attitudes suggest that women are purer and nicer than men, but also mentally weaker and less capable”. Sexism is often built in on the level of theory and is only utilized to punish, order, and control those that the system sees as being “detached “rebellious” or “irreligious”. Sexism and control only amplify, as is the case in the recent brutal crackdowns, and turn into full hostility when women want to remain detached from the system and dare to assert themselves as those having independent agency, as being girls, painters, writers, and activists. Sexism turns to misogyny when women want to be autonomous and simply wish to simply be away from the system - without any other ideological or religious attachment. As Mann notes “Misogyny does this by visiting hostile or adverse social consequences on a certain (more or less circumscribed) class of girls or women to enforce and police social norms that are gendered either in theory (i.e., content) or in practice (i.e., norm enforcement mechanisms)”. The misogyny has always been there with traditionalist Islamicists, but the recent protests have just brought it to the forefront because as its main goal, the protest is saying no to religious and clerical bullying. Women, Muslim or not, want and must make their own choice when it comes to hijab. Clear marks of male hostility under the Islamic republic are the murder of 16-year-old Nika Shakarami, and the 16-year-old Vlogger, Sarina Esmaeilzadeh both of whom were brutally beaten to death. At the time of writing this brief article, 17-year-old Arnika Ghaemmaghami has been added to this growing list. This is Misogyny on full display.
The Blessings of a Leaderless Movement?
The value of this bodily autonomy is the result of a long and lengthy struggle for Iranian women. It is not obtained from a leader, from a set of ideological commitments, or from any foreign official. These rights have not been bestowed by anyone to women. They are the ones who have, individually and consequently, collectively became fed-up with dominance over virtually all parts of their life, social status, and personal freedom and have begun demanding and acting for their rights. This presents another problem for the centralized and familiar “good mother” revolutionary model. Since this development has been independent and has been locally motivated, it remains a leaderless movement. While this might be problematic to some people hoping for stable change or regime change, it is too soon to say what the future holds and what will be the impacts of this movement. This very fact has become one of the reasons that have seen such success in combating old-style state propaganda and sheer brute force against it. There is no one to put forward as the bogyman. It does not matter who is arrested and how many people are killed, who is portrayed as the “sinner”, the desire has developed and has reached the point where they can no longer blame it on favorite stars of the Islamic republic’s long-favorite narrative. Any call for reform or regime change has always been quickly linked to activists and protestors being introduced as the agents of Israel, the UK, or the US.
While the political and social history of the west has a lot to understand and address in terms of its history within the MENA region, it is clear that when it comes to women’s rights, it has to accept responsibility for its own post-imperial 1979 Islamic republic, and it has no choice but to acknowledge the independence and autonomous agency of women. The very narrative of the revolution is no longer able to compete even when it comes to girls and boys as young as 14 and 15 who are the main vehicles of the movement. This spells disaster for a regime fixated on its appeal to the past and its own religious ideology to justify its use of instrumental power structures every time it engages in retaliation tactics, sexual assault, or torture. Women today are among a highly educated group of people representing more than 60% of Iranian universities, but given the systematic discrimination essential to the reflationary ideals, they also represent the main unemployed groups. Away from power structures and awareness of the effectiveness of social media and online presence, women have been able to make themselves heard resulting in the harshest internet restriction in the history of the country all in favor of the religious patriarchy.
The Cleric’s Dream: “a national internet”
The 2009 protest known as the green movement was in part shaped and amplified by social media and resulted in the virtual blanket ban on all social media platforms. Instagram and WhatsApp used to be the only remaining options for communication and they too have been blocked. This situation seems irreversible as more and more officials are voicing their support for a national internet. What exactly is a national internet? It is essentially closer to what is called an intranet consisting of a network for sharing data, hosting, and transferring data for easier communication, usually within an organization such as a university or military institution. The upshot of these systems for the Islamic republic is the power to enforce the exclusion of access by outsiders. One example close to this is China, which before the Islamic republic, had the worst internet freedom. Of course, China has long been assisting the regime with blocking internet access, tracking technologies, and providing telecommunication technologies needed for this isolationist policy. After all, shutting down the internet is not without its costs. To this end, the state has been consistently preparing ads, banners, and huge amounts of subsidy and financial support for local applications. Given that the lack of trust has been building up from within in cases such as Flight 752 when the IRGC was revealed to be responsible for shooting the passenger flight down, and the more recent state media coverage of local and international news, very few people are optimistic enough to embrace the change to a local application which affords a no questions asked full access to the security forces and the telecommunication services. Both of these services are controlled and managed by the IRGC.
In recent years, there has been significant growth in an outpouring of funding and support for local applications and so-called startup companies which are aimed at creating and sustaining the backbone of this national internet. One of these projects was Soroush Messenger, developed by Setak Houshmand Sharif for Android, iOS, and other operating systems such as Mac, Linux, and Windows. Soroush was part of an imitation project which was launched in order to sway the public to a copy version of the popular Telegram application. Soroush was Launched in 2015 with 700,000 users (Iran has a population of 80 million), Soroush was then supported by the majority stakeholder of the application, the national media, as a success story. Approximately 45 million people were using Telegram at that time and have continued to do so even after it has been blocked. But this lack of participation in the national internet was made worse. In 2018, Milad Noori, a programmer and security expert, was able to gain access to all phone numbers of group members in a chat and even managed to publish the phone number of then-the Minister of Information and Communications, Azari Jahromi on Twitter. Finally, in 2019, the whole project ended in failure, and Soroush was put on for an auction by the state media. Soroush started with $135,000 in unsecured loans among other local startups, but since then Gap, iGap, Bisphone, and most notable Rubika have been taken up as the main focus of the communication section awarding them a total of 1 million dollars just for a year. Today as reported (in Persian) by the state’s polling agency, “the Rubika application has the most followers among domestic applications with 5.7%. After that, Soroush messenger with 3.6%, Bale with 2.2%, Ita with 4.4%, iGap with 1.8% and Gap with 0.3% users”. Soroush has since then struggled and has rebranded itself as Soroushplus and has given its previous status to Rubika.
Back in 2021, the Chinese feminist activist Xiao Meili shared videos and her account of the abuse she had witnessed on the micro-blogging service Weibo. Since the Chinese government holds exclusive control of these local applications, after other feminists joined in defense of Xiao Meili, their accounts and dozen other accounts were removed. Lu pin another Chinese feminist said that “the goal of this campaign is to make it harder for feminists to gather online”. This is the golden dream of the Islamic republic and has been often times voiced by them as the “proper” space for social media. Among the keywords which have been blacklisted in China are 89 (referring to Tiananmen square, June 4, 1989), oppression/repression, Unrest, and Chai Ling (the dissident), which together with wide and unquestionable access to data provides an easy way not only for the state to remove people from a single micro-blogging platform but to practically remove all online presence of dissidents. The goal is to keep the state from changing be it in theory or in practice. In theory, sexism is built in and shame and control are weaponized in order to keep the established order, but when stakes are high and there are women asking for their own rights as independent entities detached from the system, Misogyny comes to the front. When competition is killed and suffocated, there is no other alternative that the state has to compete with. There is no other narrative that must be controlled. They write the narrative. A narrative in which women are by definition sexual objects in service of male dominance and the religious order. Imagine how easy it would have been for the Islamic republic to shut down Narges Mohammadi or the horrific death of Mahsa Amini by the morality police If the scope of censorship was not beyond the reach of the state.
Now is the time to support and speak up
The recent protests have yet again sparked the importance of free internet and the importance of being heard. Equally, they have brought the so-called national internet to the forefront of the regime’s future policy. If there is a time for those in the west to speak out against what is happening in Iran, and for women, it is now. I remember when I was talking to Sahra, a feminist activist in Kabul, before I lost contact with her as the Taliban took control, telling me how people have abandoned them and how western moral consciousness was always late and after the fact. It is important to recognize that burning hijab, and wanting a choice to dress as they see fit are not Islamophobic. It does not mean they are no longer Muslims, or that they hate the religion. It is about the state dictating how everyone else has to understand the religion, women, and how everyone must interpret and understand the religion and imposing a male-dominant structure on how individuals should conduct themselves while giving up their own intellectual and moral autonomy. This goal cannot be achieved under a theocratic regime that does not recognize in its constitution and law bodily autonomy for all women and people of Iran. Certainly, this does not mean that all those who embrace a separation between the state and the mosque are anti-Islamic or anti-hijab. This must be clear from seeing those in hijab fighting alongside others in the streets of Iran for everyone’s right to choose. This is the time to speak up and to be loud not after the dust has settled down and all the blood has been washed away under the cloak of the clerics.