EditorialPoliticsUSWorld

If US Has Its Way, Iran Protests Will Grow


You are Here: Tweet, Like, Share, Comment, Subscribe…be the Voice of Free Press!

The India observer, TIO, NJ: The 22 year old Kurdish girl, Mehsa Amini’s death under suspicious circumstances at the hands of Iran’s “morality police” has raised a storm across the country beginning with her hometown in Kurdistan. What the police accused her of is somewhat unclear: she was wearing the hijab immodestly? Many Iranian women do. Was Amini unique because she was Kurdish, a region not in adoration of the regime in Tehran?

Also Read, Tweet & Share: Media- Unraveling the hidden agenda of so-called Secular Stories

Iranian cinema, stifled because of the curbs, remains influential internally and abroad. This probably explains Oscar winning stars mobilized enough to chop off their hair in front of cameras with choreographic perfection. The infection reached the European Parliament in Strasbourg where lawmaker, Abiv al Sabanian pulled out a coiffeur’s pair of scissors and, before the Parliament in session, chopped off her hair as an act of protest. This is spreading in Iran mostly. The marvel is that the expansion of protest is despite internet restrictions imposed by the government to control the situation.

Also Read, Tweet & Share: Swinging Nuclear Pendulum between US and Iran

This serial chopping of hair does not necessarily diminish women’s hair style. In some ways it enhances it. Oscar winning stars and glamorous Parliamentarian would like to remain telegenic in the interest of their professions.

“Women have always taken more pains than men to adorn the outside of their head.” By contemporary yardsticks, sexism must have been rife in days when Joseph Addison wrote what we were taught as model essays. The great essayist would have asked, why are they making their hair shorter?

Also Read, Tweet & Share: The flag of Secularism flies high in India with tales of Communal harmony

Shortening of hair would have invited a severe reprimand from Sharad Yadav: “par kati” (clipped wings) he would have snarled. Did Yadav’s opposition to “bobbed hair” for women correspond to the Ayatollah’s aesthetics? I fear there is a huge misunderstanding involved here.

Short hair may also be in fashion but Indian and Persian folklore and literature is replete with celebration of “hair upto the waist and lower down.”

Also Read, Tweet & Share: Dara Shikoh is Our Hero; Let Ram be Yours

“Jamuna mein kal nahakar usne jo baal baandhe,

Humne bhi apne jee mein kya kya khayal baandhe”

Mushafee

(After bathing in the Jamuna, she tied her hair in a bun

My heart also tied itself in thoughts I dare not utter)

A “par kati” cannot inspire that couplet nor the following lyrical composition in raga Behag:

“Lutt uljhi, suljhae ja balam;

Mehendi lagi hai.”

(Come, my love, untangle my hair;

Also Read, Tweet & Share: Referendum In Iraq’s Kurdish North Sets Cat Among Pigeons

My hands are wet with hena)

No room for short hair here.

Oddly, what is happening in Iran, is not a story of coiffeur and hair styling: it is about the hijab which, in Iran means a modest headcover. The Iranian hijab is much simpler – a dupatta or a scarf which makes for a perfect frame for faces leaping straight out of Persian poetry.

Also Read, Tweet & Share: Kurd Region—A New Likely Theatre of War in Middle East

For an Indian journalist, the paradox is engaging: Muslim girls in South Kannada and Udipi districts of Karnataka were some months ago being told to discard the hijab while attending classes. The girls did not compromise. They were fighting for Azadi, their right to wear the hijab. Feminine modesty was not the issue. The question of identity was. A dress code was being imposed on a minority community under pressure. It dug its heels in giving no space to majoritarianism.

Also Read, Tweet & Share: In the Aftermath of Moradabad Riots

Look at the irony. Sauce for the goose in this case is not sauce for the gander. Iranian women are fighting for Azadi from the hijab. Before the revolution in 1979, North Tehran dictated fashions which even metropolitan Paris followed. For this lot – rest of the country in pockets too – the austerities imposed by the revolution altered life styles totally.

Also Read, Tweet & Share: Indian Diaspora becoming vanguards of assertive Hindutva

Many interests in and outside Iran are crouching in the slips for just such an opportunity. From the very outset, the regime has had to brush under the carpet a risky theological debate. In Islam, particularly among Shias, there is room for a second coming by the twelfth Imam to sort out the world’s chaos. An Islamic state cannot, therefore come into being before the arrival of the twelfth Imam. To cope with this situation, the institution of “Vali faqih” or intermediate Imam was created.

Also Read, Tweet & Share: Another Muslim prayer row, UP Police takes Muslim’s side, Hindutva zealots unhappy  

Vali Faqih, in this concept is temporarily incharge, pending the arrival of the Imam. To be a transient entity at inception must carry its own insecurities.

Spiritual leaders like Saiyyid Ali Sistani in Najaf, believes the role of the clergy is to guide, not to govern. Between these positions there is sufficient space for splinter groups and external mischief makers.

Also Read, Tweet & Share: The Afghan Riddle, Wrapped In A Mystery Inside An Enigma

Against this background, consider the United States which has been hostile to the regime ever since the Shah, their man in the Persian Gulf, was dethroned by the Mullahs. The US, uncomfortable with the unfavourable stalemate in Ukraine, nervous about European resolve in the war, (Italy is already receiving Russian gas) unsure of the compressional election in November, will certainly try to help the opposition in Iran. Indeed, it is doing so already along with Israel, which knows how to cover its tracks.

Also Read, Tweet & Share: Indian Business Association Apologizes for bulldozer politics at Independence Day Parade

When the Economist speculates that the protests may well be the precursor to a regime change because of the “exhilarating bravery” of the women, Tehran better take note. If men join, “the removal of the vile system may no longer be inconceivable.”

Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, was quite explicit that the US would transfer to the protesters, advanced variants of the information technology that was responsible for so much internal and regional mobilization in Syria.

Also Read, Tweet & Share: India Than, Now and Tomorrow

James Glanz and John Markoff of the New York Times had reported well before the US involvement in Syria. “The Obama administration is leading global effort to deploy “shadow” internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down communications networks.”

Also Read, Tweet & Share: Hindus for Human Rights and Chain Fast for Peace Start Navaratri Chain Fast in Support of Indian Socialist Party’s

The NYT reporters described “one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth floor shop in L street, Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs, looking like a garage band, are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype ‘internet in a suitcase’.” It was all in preparation of an elaborate “Liberation Technology Movement”.

Also, Read more from this Author: Caste And Communalism: Can RSS Change With Muslims Meeting Bhagwat?

Curated and Compiled by Humra Kidwai

 Articles written by contributors have different viewpoints. The views expressed in the articles are the author’s own and not necessarily supported by TIO, The India Observer its affiliates, staff, or the management. Our Articles can be reproduced, with the following conditions, (1) No alteration to the content, (2) Visible, and full credit is given to the Author & Editor. (3) Citing, The India Observer, TIO. In the case of online or electronic media, a link to the original article must be given. Rules are strictly enforced. Any questions, email the Editor at: Mediaiss@gmail.com Or TheIndiaObserver@gmail.com

All Copyrights reserved. Please be guided.


Saeed Naqvi

Saeed Naqvi

Saeed Naqvi is a senior Indian journalist, television commentator, interviewer. He has interviewed world leaders and personalities in India and abroad, which appear in newspapers, magazines and on national television, remained editor of the World Report, a syndication service on foreign affairs, and has written for several publications, both global and Indian, including the BBC News, The Sunday Observer, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Washington Post, The Indian Express, The Citizen and Outlook magazine. At the Indian Express, he started in 1977 as a Special Correspondent and eventually becoming, editor, Indian Express, Madras, (1979–1984), and Foreign Editor, The Indian Express, Delhi in 1984, and continues to writes columns and features for the paper.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *