In a exhibiting of transnational solidarity and friendship with Iranian ladies, Muslim ladies from Turkey, India and Afghanistan, share their ideas on the #WomanLifeFreedom motion.
One 12 months in the past, Mahsa (Zhina) Amini was killed whereas within the custody of the Iranian Steerage Patrol after being arrested for improperly carrying a hijab. The aftermath of her loss of life has introduced elevated consciousness to the politics surrounding obligatory hijab legal guidelines, that are detrimental to the lives and experiences of Iranian ladies. Nonetheless, “To Veil or To not Veil?” is only one facet of the broader subject of bodily autonomy that Iranian ladies have grappled with for the previous 9 months.
The #WomanLifeFreedom motion has emerged after Amini’s loss of life as a unifying pressure, bringing collectively Iranians throughout variations. All are striving to amplify their voices and demand recognition. This motion has sparked numerous conversations amongst Muslim ladies students each inside their communities and within the diaspora.
We’re activists advocating for the rights of Muslim ladies. We reached out to 4 pals from throughout the Muslim diaspora to debate the Lady, Life, Freedom motion, in a exhibiting of transnational solidarity and friendship. Listed below are their voices.
Hafza Girdap: “[We] should relentlessly and constantly converse out for ladies’s autonomy and gender equality.”
Hafza Girdap is a Ph.D. candidate in ladies’s, gender and sexuality research at Stony Brook College, focusing her doctoral analysis on self-identification and gendered illustration. Along with her tutorial research, Girdap conducts analysis at European Heart for Populism Research gender program as a nonresident analysis affiliate.
Girdap has been organizing and talking at UNGA and U.N. CSW panels for 3 years and serves as the manager director and spokesperson for AST (Advocates of Silenced Turkey). She is a founding member of Set Them Free, which advocates for the rights of girls and youngsters arbitrarily imprisoned in Turkey.
It’s essential to acknowledge that the tragic loss of life of Mahsa Amini and the discourse surrounding ladies’s bodily autonomy are influenced by political Islam (Islamism) and far-right populism, each of which search to exert energy and management over ladies’s our bodies, utilizing the hijab as a proxy.
Hafza Girdap
Yalda and Girdap’s friendship developed when Girdap joined Yalda’s Ph.D. program. Regardless of the variations of their observance of hijab, their friendship transcends such boundaries.
Hafza invited Yalda to her class through the early days of the rebellion as a visitor lecturer. Yalda mentioned the problems of presidency violence and police brutality towards Iranian ladies, drawing parallels to the racialization of Muslims and Islamophobia in america. Via their dialogue, Hafza and Yalda concluded that carrying a veil in solidarity with Muslim ladies within the West could possibly be equated to burning one’s veil within the streets of Tehran through the early days of the #WomanLifeFreedom motion.
Hafza penned an announcement of solidarity with #WomanLifeFreedom:
“I stand in solidarity with the folks of Iran who’re preventing towards the despotism of the Iranian regime following Mahsa Amini’s tragic loss of life whereas in custody of Iran’s morality police for carrying an ‘improper’ hijab. It’s essential to acknowledge that the tragic loss of life of Mahsa Amini and the discourse surrounding ladies’s bodily autonomy are influenced by political Islam (Islamism) and far-right populism, each of which search to exert energy and management over ladies’s our bodies, utilizing the hijab as a proxy.
“In Iran, ladies are anticipated to undergo the regime’s tyranny and put on the hijab no matter private desire. The worldwide human rights group and people advocating for international solidarity should relentlessly and constantly converse out for ladies’s autonomy and gender equality.”
Ather Zia: “I wholeheartedly assist the demand for ‘Lady, Life, Freedom’ by the Iranian folks.”
Dr. Ather Zia is a political anthropologist, poet, quick fiction author, and columnist. She is an affiliate professor of anthropology and gender research on the College of Northern Colorado Greeley. Zia is the creator of Resisting Disappearances: Army Occupation and Ladies’s Activism in Kashmir, which acquired the 2021 Public Anthropologist Award and Advocate of the Yr Award 2021. She is the founder-editor of Kashmir Lit and is the co-founder of Crucial Kashmir Research Collective, an interdisciplinary community of students working within the Kashmir area.
The Iranian authorities should acknowledge the disproportionate violence and oppression inflicted upon its personal folks, significantly the acute subjugation of its distinctive ladies, and put an finish to it swiftly.
Ather Zia
In November 2019, a bunch of Kashmiri and Indian feminists, together with Zia, participated in a panel dialogue with presenters from numerous Hindu and Muslim backgrounds coming collectively to boost consciousness of the violation of human rights perpetrated by the Indian authorities.
On the identical time, Iran was on the cusp of experiencing a wave of uprisings primarily involving the working class and concrete poor. Yalda attended the convention when she confronted an web blackout, shedding contact along with her mom inside Iran. Zia knowledgeable Yalda that Kashmir had already endured a hundred-day web blackout. This shared expertise of violence fostered a friendship between Yalda and Zia.
“I wholeheartedly assist the demand for ‘Lady, Life, Freedom’ by the Iranian folks, particularly Iranian ladies and women. The Iranian authorities should acknowledge the disproportionate violence and oppression inflicted upon its personal folks, significantly the acute subjugation of its distinctive ladies, and put an finish to it swiftly.
“I urge the Iranian authorities to revive the rights and liberties of its residents, particularly ladies, stop human rights violations, and launch all political prisoners. Moreover, I condemn the US sanctions towards Iran, which exacerbate the humanitarian disaster and the gendered violence throughout the nation.”
Tahmina Sobat: “Ladies of Afghanistan and Iran are re-defining the maps of resilience.”
Tahmina Sobat is a human rights lawyer from Afghanistan. Sobat started working as an assistant for ladies empowerment at Zardozi, then moved to the Impartial Human Rights Fee in Afghanistan in 2017. She has completed in depth analysis in authorized evaluation of girls’s rights, together with ladies’s harassment within the office in Afghanistan and girls’s function in peace-building. Her Ph.D., titled “The Position of Grassroots Feminism in Demilitarization and Peace-Constructing in Afghanistan,” will supply a brand new perspective on the U.S. counterterrorism methods and Afghan ladies’s advocacies for inclusion in peace negotiations.
In acknowledging the ache and sufferings imposed on ladies of [Iran and Afghanistan], we resist, protest and proceed to construct areas of care and solidarity.
Tahmina Sobat
Sobat met Yalda and Dominik throughout her graduate research in Mankato. The shared time in this system fostered a deep friendship and sense of solidarity. Tahmina’s fierce resistance within the face of the takeover of the Taliban’s regime in Afghanistan was an inspiration to her friends and a supply of hope for Yalda.
Tahmina and Yalda have been reunited in March of this 12 months when Tahmina was invited as a visitor speaker for a #WomanLifeFreedom sequence organized by Yalda and hosted by the Minnesota Humanities Heart. In discussing transnational solidarities with the #WomanLifeFreedom motion, Tahmina highlighted the parallels between Iranian and Afghan ladies.
Right here is an excerpt from Sobat’s assertion:
“Because the loss of life of Mahsa Amini and the start of the current uprisings in Iran, I’m positive that each Afghan girl has felt triggered and traumatized by the continuing atrocities towards the protesters in Iran. It’s because, Afghan ladies themselves have been experiencing struggle, state brutality, repression, and harmful international interventions within the identify of ‘humanitarian help.’ As Afghan ladies, we present our solidarity with our Iranian comrades both within the type of Zahra Hasti’s dance on prime of the roof of her home, or others within the streets of Herat and Kabul.
“In recognition of our shared struggles, we scream ‘freedom’ and ‘schooling’ whereas the Taliban are actively shutting down the voices of our chants. In acknowledging the ache and sufferings imposed on ladies of the 2 nations, we resist, protest and proceed to construct areas of care and solidarity between the 2 actions, one that’s impressed by a transnational method, pays consideration to the relations and inequalities of energy, and takes the histories of colonialism, imperialism, militarism and settler colonialism critically.
“As a part of these solidarities, based mostly on our experiences of struggle and invasions we share perception on what actions of social justice ought to pay attention to and preserve these actions away from being learn by way of the lens of worldwide sisterhood, the hazard of struggle and invasion within the identify of ‘saving’ Iranian ladies because it occurred to Afghanistan in 2001. Ladies of Afghanistan and Iran are re-defining the maps of resilience, I invite everybody to affix them by listening to their calls for and standing beside them!”
Sanober Umar: “I stand in awe of the Iranian ladies … simply as I stand in solidarity with my fellow Muslim ladies in India.”
Sanober Umar, an assistant professor of politics at York College, was a panelist throughout a dialogue titled, “The Potentialities and Perils of Transnational Feminist Solidarity with the ‘Lady, Life, Freedom’ Motion.” Yalda and Dominik had the chance to take heed to Umar as she explored the complexities of solidarity by inspecting how the Indian proper wing, which largely ignores the lives and our bodies of Muslim ladies inside India, all of the sudden confirmed solidarity with the #WomanLifeFreedom Motion.
In her enlightening assertion, Umar expresses her assist and delves additional into these essential conversations:
“Because the phrases ‘Lady, Life, and Freedom/Liberation’ echo all through Iran, among the many Kurdish folks and world wide, we should acknowledge that this slogan goes past the mere act of donning or discarding a headband. It speaks to problems with management, desirability, efficiency, and self-discipline—how nation-states dictate the phrases of life and freedom for numerous ladies. Our evaluation shouldn’t be restricted to a simplistic universalist notion of girls having the selection to decorate as they please however ought to embody the understanding that these selections are embedded in constructions that search to restrict our identities.
“I stand in awe of the Iranian ladies who courageously problem the violent and oppressive methods of their nation, simply as I stand in solidarity with my fellow Muslim ladies in India. Indian Muslim ladies are presently confronting the far-right Hindu nationalist regime that stigmatizes them on a number of fronts and now seeks to ban the carrying of headscarves in sure provincial college areas.
“As feminists and sisters in transnational solidarity, we refuse to be constrained by the perils of right-wing nationalist boundaries inside our respective nations. We should be cautious and vigilant about imperialist and liberal feminists making an attempt to co-opt our discourses of liberation from patriarchy and authoritarianism with out contextualizing our distinctive political, cultural-religious, and historic trajectories. Rumi’s name (usually mistranslated by orientalist students) resonates deeply in these instances, ‘Out past concepts of perception and unbelief, there’s a subject. Allow us to meet there.’”
The Want for Transnational Solidarity
These 4 Muslim ladies activists from Turkey, India and Afghanistan specific their assist for the #WomanLifeFreedom motion, acknowledging the shared struggles ladies throughout totally different nations face. They emphasize the necessity for transnational solidarity.
Ms. stands with the #WomanLifeFreedom motion. We imagine within the energy of transnational solidarity. These influential statements shared listed here are a reminder to all of us that we should stand collectively and tackle the injustices witnessed. The Iranian authorities is purposefully mutilating the our bodies of younger Iranians, robbing them of their lives just because they demand freedom. This state violence should cease now. Change takes time, and so does revolution. We can’t stay silent. Younger Iranians deserve freedom; they should dwell.
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