Two years ago, in September 2022, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini was arrested by the Iranian morality police for not covering her hair properly. Three days later, she died in custody. While the Iranian regime claimed that she had died from an underlying health condition, she had actually been beaten to death.
As we mark this anniversary, it is critical that we recognize how this attack is part of Iran’s extended history of violence against innocent civilians, most recently exemplified through its continued attacks on Israel.
The murder of Mahsa Amini led to a collective outpouring of rage and grief throughout Iran. The raw emotion was not only channeled toward the police, but also directed at the Iranian regime.
“Death to the dictator!” crowds in Tehran cried. “Death to Khamenei!” they shouted, in reference to Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.
Women and girls burned their hijabs. The slogan of the protests became, “Woman, Life, Freedom.”
It is important to emphasize that these protests were unique in that, unlike in previous cases, they were truly national and representative of all sectors of Iranian society. They weren’t constricted to young, liberal types in Tehran. There were protests in Mashhad, home of the Holy Shrine of Imam Reza, and in Qom, one of the holiest cities in Shi’ite Islam.
The Iranian regime reacted as it always does: with vicious brutality. Accusing the protesters of being “criminals” backed by foreigners, it unleashed its security services, which killed more than 500 Iranians, including 71 minors, and arrested more than 20,000. People were hanged in public for trumped-up charges. Women and girls were raped by security forces.
Women were spat at, their chadors ripped off and shoved into the white vans of the morality police, which has arrogated to itself the power to arbitrarily decide who is and is not in violation of the law, and is notably lax in its vigilance in the wealthier neighborhoods of northern Tehran.
While the protests were eventually suppressed, Iranian women remained defiant. Their spirits were not broken.
As an Iranian Jew who is in her 20s just like Mahsa was, this issue hits me deeply to my core.
On Oct. 7, the Hamas terrorist organization—financed, armed and trained by Iran—invaded Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 more. One of the sites of greatest slaughter was the Nova music festival, which I was attending with friends. There and elsewhere, Hamas operatives raped and mutilated women before killing them.
Is it any wonder that a proxy of Iran would behave so evilly towards innocent people, especially women and girls? They are driven by the same obsessions, the same hatreds.
The fact is that the history of the Iranian regime is a history of violence towards and discrimination against women. The legal age for Iranian girls to marry is 13 years old. It had previously been 9 years old, which had been instituted upon the regime’s taking power.
Spousal rape and domestic violence are acceptable. Rape outside of marriage is difficult to prove, and many Iranian women are silent, out of fears of ostracism or, worse, accusations of adultery, which would be their death warrant.
A man can divorce his wife for any or no reason. On the other hand, a woman can only divorce her husband for specific failings on his part. While divorced women have custody over children until the age of 7, after that age, the father takes over.
Violations of the hijab law can lead to fines, imprisonment, false diagnoses of mental illness and 70 lashes.
The regime’s theocratic fanaticism and intolerance is accompanied by a consuming hatred of the West and contempt towards Arab countries. Tehran uses its proxies, among them Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen to subvert other countries and peoples, and bend them to its will.
If I hadn’t managed to get away on Oct. 7, I, too, could have been the victim of sexual violence or murdered. That thought haunts me every single day. And in different circumstances, as a young woman, I could have been Mahsa Amini. Or Sarina Esmailzadeh. Or Nika Shakarami.
They could have been your daughter. Or your sister.
Let us take the second anniversary of Mahsa’s death to remember and honor her, Sarina, Nika and the thousands of other innocent people the Iranian government has murdered since 1979.
And let us be inspired to speak up for those who remain oppressed and violated by the cruel regime and its confederates.
