George Floyd was killed in May 2020. For months afterwards, his name rang out in global protests against racism and police brutality. Celebrities blacked out their social media profiles, multinational corporations donated to Black Lives Matter, British politicians and footballers took the knee while universities and even primary schools issued statements in response to Floyd’s death.
Armita Garawand, a teenager, has just died, also after an altercation with police officers which left her in a month-long coma. Only this was in Iran, not America, and there have been no global protest movements against the brutality of the Iranian police. There have been no celebrity social media campaigns, no politicians kneeling and no calls for permanent memorials. British students and pupils have been unmoved. How do we account for this difference?
Garawand came to the attention of the Iranian morality police for being in public with her hair uncovered. She was not the first woman to fall foul of Iran’s strict Islamic dress code. In September last year 22 year-old Mahsa Amini was also detained for showing her hair. Witnesses say police officers attacked Amini in the back of a van, a claim the Iranian police deny. She fell into a coma and died in hospital three days later.
After years of protests, women in Iran have over the past 12 months stepped up their challenge to compulsory dress codes in what are considered to be the longest-running anti-government protests since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The bravery of these women in defending their personal freedom cannot be overstated. They push back against the regime knowing that, like Amini and Garawand, they may pay with their lives. But where is the solidarity? Where are the protests against the Iranian regime?
Once, feminists were quick to support others. A little over a decade ago, a police officer in Canada spoke to students about personal safety. “Women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised,” he told a group. In response, “slut walk” protests took place in cities around the world. The angry message was that a short skirt is not an invitation to rape. Women should be free to wear whatever they like.
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This freedom does not, it seems, extend to Muslim women. All too often, when Muslim women demand freedom they are silenced. The Somali-born Dutch-American activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali advocates for the rights of Muslim women yet she has had invitations to speak at American universities rescinded because students argue she engages in “hate speech” against Islam. Students at British universities have tried repeatedly to no-platform Maryam Namazie, a critic of aspects of Islamic theology. Back in 2015, in a clue as to why so few support today’s Iranian protesters, Goldsmiths Feminist Society announced that they “stand in solidarity” with the Islamic Society in its opposition to Namazie’s appearance. To be clear: feminists chose to side with men aggressively attempting to silence a woman.
Such strange alliances are not about religion but politics. More specifically, they reflect the transformation of left-wing politics that has taken place over the course of recent decades. The move from class-based to identity-based concerns has created new understandings of oppression. White working-class men, once backed by activists on picket lines, are now considered privileged. Muslims, meanwhile, are considered by the left to be one of the most beleaguered of identity groups. According to this crude hierarchy of privilege and oppression, criticising Islam is punching down. It compounds the discrimination experienced by an already disadvantaged group.
We see this crass logic play out in the current wave of pro-Palestine demonstrations. Whatever the truth of people’s individual circumstances or the reality on the ground, to be pro-Palestine and anti-Israel is portrayed as siding with Muslims over Jews, oppressed over oppresser, colonised over coloniser and victim over aggressor.
In this broader context, the hijab is reinvented. It is no longer simply a personal religious choice: it also indicates support for a political cause. In Iran, women protest against the hijab because it symbolises their oppression by a patriarchal, socially conservative, religious elite. To some in the West, the hijab also represents oppression but from a different source. Today’s left-wing activists argue that Muslims are oppressed not by their own religious elders but by the racism and Islamophobia systemic within a society built upon colonialism and white privilege. The hijab is embraced as representing the side of the victim in this permanent racial power-play.
The transformation of the hijab into a symbol of political resistance to white superiority means that it is celebrated by multinational corporations and institutions wanting to emphasise their anti-racist credentials. Back in 2021, the Council of Europe issued posters aimed at promoting respect for Muslim women. One read: “Beauty is in diversity as freedom is in hijab.” The campaign was later pulled after a French backlash. Meanwhile, in the UK, a West Midlands park is now home to a 16-foot steel statue of a Muslim woman wearing a head covering. Its plaque reads: “The Strength of the Hijab.”
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While Iranian women risk their lives to reject the hijab, western radicals consumed by identity politics celebrate the same garment. They tell themselves they are striking a blow against oppressors but this simplistic thinking leads to some twisted moral reasoning.
Melanie Phillips is away
