Muhammad Mahdi Rahimi, journalist and researcher
For several years, the issue of hijab and its legal status for Iranian women has been a constant topic in political, intellectual, and human rights circles connected to Iran. Since the online campaigns that began in 2017, the subject has rarely left the media space. Every few days, a major outlet publishes an article, broadcasts a documentary, or produces news coverage that keeps the issue alive in public attention. During the 2022–2023 unrest, the topic reached its peak and became a tool for broad international pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Thousands of posts were shared, portraying the “horrors” of life with hijab. Hundreds of media articles were written about years of “restriction and oppression” against Iranian women, with front pages filled with images of their hair: “Their Hair Long and Flowing or in Ponytails, Women in Iran Flaunt Their Locks.”
Flaunting
Take a look at the recent negative propaganda about hijab.
Do you see stories about Iranian women being denied education?
Do Western media talk about Iranian women being excluded from social life?
Are Iranian women fighting for the right to vote or to run in elections and need Western support?
For any fair reader, the answer is obvious.
So why this constant focus on showing and promoting the unveiling of some Iranian women?
The answer is the very thing Western culture accuses Muslim culture of: patriarchy.
The truth is that the current campaign against the hijab of Iranian women is itself an expression of Western patriarchy, a form of patriarchy that has now crossed borders and gone global:
“One of the signs of Western patriarchy is that they want women for men. They tell women to wear makeup to please and satisfy men! This is patriarchy. It is not women’s freedom. It is in fact men’s freedom. They want men to be free, even for visual pleasures. That is why they encourage women to remove their Islamic covering, wear makeup, and flaunt themselves in front of men!”
This bitter and degrading reality became openly visible in recent days, as talk of military confrontation between Iran and the United States intensified. Many Western users expressed it bluntly, and it was even welcomed:
“There’s a whole nation of women that look like this being hidden in hijabs … and its our job to liberate them.”
“Men are finally recognizing that Iranian women are hot in the way that Latin women are hot.”
“This is what Alexander the Great saw entering Persepolis”
These are just a few examples from the wave of content over the past two months that has focused on the objectification and sexualization of Iranian women. And there was no sign of the so-called “cultural critics” who spent decades writing against the “male gaze.”
Just as Western colonial policies are now visible without their human-rights and legal masks, Western patriarchy is also becoming increasingly visible without disguise.
Historically, the West is a patriarchal and misogynistic civilization, and this misogyny has been expressed in its most literal form. They hate women, truly! There was a time in Europe when public debates were held over whether women were even human. It seems that, in the end, Western civilization concluded that they’re not. This is why even an absurd question like “What is a woman?” has gained such wide attention in the West.
But this hatred did not remain only at the cultural level. In a civilization built on economic capital, income becomes the main measure of social status. Now look at the paths open to Western women and girls for achieving high income. Do Western media portray doctors, engineers, professors, entrepreneurs, or lawyers as high-earning women? A simple glance shows a different pattern: The more a Western woman submits to the patriarchal system, the more she undresses and sexualizes herself, the faster she climbs the capital-based social ladder. This model has led to more than three million women and girls in Western countries selling nude images of themselves online, often for very little money.
Is such a social structure not degrading?
Are Western politicians and rulers unaware of the humiliation embedded in nakedness?
Do they not themselves strip prisoners and detainees to extract confessions?
The answers to these questions make the hostility toward hijab clearer and help explain the billions of dollars spent on propaganda. It becomes easier to understand why Iranian women have become the target of such a comprehensive campaign.
The woman who sees without being seen
Today, more women around the world understand what lies behind the slogans about “supporting the freedom of Iranian women.” Alongside the wave of sexualization, a wave of resistance has also emerged:
“Notice when they talk about liberating the women of Iran, they’re only talking about liberating them from their clothes.”
“In the wests eyes if you can’t be sexualised then you aren’t free”
Perhaps no one captured this Western anxiety better than Frantz Fanon, the Algerian anti-colonial thinker:
“This woman, who sees without being seen, frustrates the colonizer.”[1]
It was the Iranian woman who, after the Islamic Revolution, once again covered her body from a degrading gaze and opened her eyes to a life of real dignity. Women who once had only 37 percent literacy picked up books and pencils, and today more than 90 percent of them are literate. Iranian women played a fundamental role in the justice-seeking Islamic Revolution, endured the loss of loved ones in war, and carried heavy economic pressures, but, in Fanon’s words, they did not allow themselves “to be seen.”
Wearing the very hijab, they became doctors, engineers, members of parliament, and ministers. Women who were once portrayed in pre-revolutionary “Filmfarsi” cinema in the most degrading ways, for the purpose of reshaping their identity, presented a new form of cinema to the world, one that reached high artistic levels without objectifying women and while preserving hijab.
This conscious choice to protect their dignity and block the degrading external gaze allowed Iranian women to move faster than societies that have spent decades struggling with sexual violence in workplaces, universities, and social spaces.
But the Western gaze does not want to see this. It only sees what it wants to see. Millions of Iranian women can live every day with faith in Islamic law, observe hijab, raise children, study, teach, invent, win global scientific and sports medals, and build businesses, and they will remain invisible. But the moment they remove their clothing, hundreds of cameras turn toward them, their stories are broadcast, and their concerns are amplified.
For Iranian women who know their own history, this backward step means nothing. They will not trade four decades of achievement for a few hundred likes and a handful of obscene comments.
As Imam Khamenei described this confrontation:
“The West and capitalists insist on exporting this culture [of promiscuity], so they fabricate justifications for doing so. They say, that if a woman observes the hijab and sets these limitations for herself, she won’t be able to progress! The Islamic Republic has refuted and crushed that nonsensical logic. In the Islamic Republic, it’s been demonstrated that a Muslim, devote woman — a woman who observes the hijab and follows the Islamic dress code — can progress further than anyone else in all areas… What our ladies and women have achieved today in intellectual and research centers in these fields is definitely unprecedented in Iran’s history. We’ve never had this many female scholars and intellectuals in Iran.”
(The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Khamenei.ir.)
[1] Fanon, F. (1965). Algeria unveiled. In A dying colonialism (H. Chevalier, Trans., pp. 35–67). Grove Press. (Original work published 1959)
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