•Let’s take a stroll back through history. It’s 1906 and a woman, with intelligent eyes and a heart filled with hope, has opened the first school for girls in Tehran. Her name is Bibi Khanoom Astarabadi; she is the author of one of the first known books written by an Iranian woman, which was used for years by early feminists and women’s rights activists in the region; and she has turned one of the rooms in her spacious house into a classroom and called it the School for Maidens.

•It is important more than ever to understand how far Iranian women have come to get where they are today. Since the beginning of widespread protests in Iran in September, as a result of the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of the morality police for wearing what was considered an “improper hijab,” the rights of Iranian women have been in the spotlight once more.

•The Islamic Revolution of 1979 promised to bring equality and justice for everyone, and to uplift the underprivileged who hadn’t benefited from the rich land they lived on. More than 40 years have passed, and the only beneficiaries of such abundance have been the Islamic Republic and its most loyal allies.

•Women’s rights in Iran have certainly come a long way, and although it has always been brutalized by the clergy and religious values, it has pushed through layers of patriarchy, sexism and violence to find a firm footing. The reaction of the governing body hasn’t changed that much, and while women were called prostitutes for pursuing education in the late 1800s, in 2022 they are still being stigmatized as outcasts and their moralities questioned because of their pursuit of freedom.

•You can never go backward. You can’t take away the literacy of an educated person or remove the desire to be independent from someone who has tasted freedom. Iranian women have already fought for decades for freedom and equality; they aren’t going to stop now.

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#OpIran
#MahsaAmini #مهسا امینی