Breathing the Mist, Untangling the “Complicated”: How Scholars of Muslim Backgrounds Viewed the Jina Movement in Iran  (©Background)

When scholars, essayists, and journalists discuss Iran and its politics, writing in English, they often incorporate images of traditional tilework, women walking past propagandist graffiti in Tehran, and, frequently, obscure verses from Rumi. While local authors like myself may dismiss these practices as self-Orientalizing, I couldn’t help but reflect on Rumi’s famous lines while writing this review: “Anyone who became my friend from their own opinion, none sought out my secrets from within me” (Harkasi az zan-e khod shod yār-e man, az darun-e man najast asrār-e man).

In this piece, I strive to review a range of articles and essays written about Iran’s 2022 protests—referred to as the “Jina Movement” or Women, Life, Freedom (WLF). The Jina movement began after the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a Kurdish young woman, a stranger in Tehran, who died in the hands of the police. However, as is written on her gravestone by her family, she is not to die . Jina’s immortality sparked an uprising in Iran which created a connected space across all country that brought together peripheral communities, especially women and ethnic groups, in solidarity demanding “life and freedom” in all its aspects. Initially, my aim was to examine how scholars from the Arab World, South Asia, and the broader Global South perceived and understood the protests, exploring whether they related to or compared their own societal contexts to the movement. However, several of the articles were authored by individuals from Muslim backgrounds yet published in Western journals and websites, both factors became critical to my overall analysis. Thus, the term “scholars from Muslim backgrounds” was deemed more appropriate for the title.

At first glance, a commonality among scholars from Muslim backgrounds is their effort to avoid sensationalized, oversimplified, and orientalist narratives of the protests, as they often exceptionalize Iran by isolating the Woman, Life, Freedom movement from the broader context of other uprisings in Iran’s history, its Women’s Movement, or similar movements in the region. Similarly, many analyses by Western academics tend to categorize the movement as either a purely feminist campaign (focused on hijab freedom) or as an entirely political upheaval (seeking regime change). For these scholars, the key word is “complicated.” They highlight the complex histories of the region (e.g., Iran and Turkey) and the intricate relationships between neighboring countries, the multifaceted significance of the hijab for Muslim women across diverse contexts, the hypocrisy of solidarity from Western (white) women, the entanglements of Western imperialism and regime-change agendas, Islamophobia, political interference, and the unique political symbolism of the hijab in Iran compared to the broader Muslim world. But is this “complication” really complicated? And does it stem from the same anxiety among different authors? I would say no.

Some articles written by women writers appear to get deeper into the hijab. This may stem from their attempt to address a global audience they perceive as either unfamiliar with or unable to fully grasp the diverse meanings of the hijab—what it means for Muslim women who wear it, choose not to wear it, wear it in different styles, or are forced to wear it for various reasons. For others, mostly men specializing in regional studies who analyzed the protests in broader terms, the complexity lies in the top-down, state-oriented approach to politics in the region, which frames the hijab as a symbol of exceptional socio-political dynamics of the Iranian society and its relation with governments in the region and global powers.

Another group, as I argue, highlights the complex politics of the Middle East—shaped by the influence of religious institutions, and Western imperialism, which exploits women’s battle to their agenda, while remaining hypocritical for not recognizing the rights of “all” women to freedom and “choice”, including hijabi women in the West, or the right to abortion in the United State. While they manage to remain critical and offer a nuanced analysis, they fail in one key aspect. They exclude the voices and perspectives of local (Iranian) feminists in their understanding of the WLF movement.

It also appears that a group of writers and activists have escaped the ideological “complication” as I discuss later. These include the journalist or activist writers of Arab backgrounds who have aligned themselves with a solidarity network of Middle Eastern and North African women advocating for bodily autonomy—a cause that encompasses but is not limited to the hijab.

Additionally, some articles have mentioned how the WLF protests inspired other communities beyond borders. To mention a few, Afghan women have been emboldened by the slogans and gestures of the protests, which initially transcended borders from Kurdistan to Iran. Similarly, Balochi women resonate with how the movement fostered a solidarity network, uniting marginalized ethnic groups across Iran and Pakistan.

Iraq: Everything and Nothing about Hijab

I have selected two analytical articles by Iraqi scholars, both based in the United States, who discuss how the protests in Iran revived a debate about the hijab in Iraq. This debate involves women of various religious backgrounds as well as secular and Islamic figures and groups.

For Geneive Abdo (2022), an expert on Iran-Iraq and Sunni-Shia relations, the primary outcome of the protests in Iran was the social media discussions surrounding the wearing of the headscarf among female activists and prominent clerics. In Iraq, a secular but socially conservative country where the hijab is not mandated by law, but culturally enforced in many spaces, these debates gained prominence. For example, arguments were raised about whether the hijab should be enforced in public schools, with the Iranian practice of protest, which many schoolgirls, especially in the early months following the Jina uprising, participated in, cited as a parallel experience. Abdo also mentions the views of Ayatollah Sistani, the highest Shia authority in Iraq, who used the Islamic concept of tabarruj (seeking attention, as opposed to chastity and modesty) to pressure Iraqi women, particularly Shia women, to wear the hijab in public. This pressure also extends to mandatory hijab during Shia spiritual celebrations such as the Arbaeen pilgrimage, which is a shared religious observance among Iranian and Iraqi Shia authorities.

However, Abdo asserts that this debate between secularists, religious figures, and Islamists, although resurfacing, did not originate with the protests in Iran. As she argues, “the Iraqi debates reflect an ongoing question in the region about the role of Islam in society, a conversation that has been ongoing for at least thirty years. Now, a younger generation of women is pushing boundaries in new ways.”

In the second article, Rasha Al Aqeedi (2022), a younger Iraqi researcher, offers her perspective on the Iranian protests and explores the hijab’s meaning for Muslim women worldwide, drawing comparisons between the Muslim world and the West. Al Aqeedi also reflects on her own experience as a young woman in Iraq who does not wear the hijab, though she occasionally wears it out of respect for holy rituals and celebrations. In her analysis, she emphasizes that the hijab issue in Iran is a “domestic issue, rooted in decades of activism against polarizing patriarchies.” By polarizing patriarchies.”, she refers to the practice of unveiling women under the Pahlavi monarchy before the 1979 revolution and the subsequent imposition of veiling by the Islamic Republic after the revolution. She also notes that the hijab laws in Iran are more “relaxed” and common than how they are understood globally. However, she argues that for Iranian women, removing and burning the hijab during protests has become a political symbol, representing their grievances against the authority of the state over women. This act has resonated as a collective issue for Muslims worldwide.

This view aligns with my critique of Iranian exceptionalism. Once again, Iranian women are portrayed as being in a situation “different” from those Muslim women in the West and those in other Muslim-majority countries. This positioning creates a dynamic where the protests of Iranian women are difficult for “others” to express solidarity with, resulting in a top-down form of “support” rather than true solidarity.

Al Aqeedi also discusses how Muslim activists in the West view the Western support of Iranian women as “hypocritical”—a sentiment that appeared repeatedly in the articles I am reviewing (BOEH, 2022; Eltahawy, 2022, Naqvi, 2022). She echoes the notion that the issue is about liberty for all, but she acknowledges that the control over women’s choice takes place at different levels for different communities. Citing the case of Muslim women in France or Canada who choose to wear the hijab in public spaces but are prohibited from doing so due to Islamophobia and xenophobia perpetuated by patriarchal governments in Europe and the US, Aqeedi seeks to delve deeper into this complexity, suggesting the level of oppression and punishment women experience in Muslim-majority countries is not comparable to what Muslim women face in the West.

“We need to maintain the conversation about the headscarf sparked by the outcry in Iran,” writes Al Aqeedy (2022). What she means by the need to remain “nuance” becomes clear throughout her article; that hijab can be “a choice vs. an obligation; a clothing item vs. a symbol of oppression; a religious identity vs. a political statement.” It seems we can be certain that all Muslim women share one common experience: the hijab means different things to different people for different reasons. Acknowledging this fundamental fact might help maintain nuance in discussions about the protests in Iran and the hijab, freed from exceptionalizing the political demands of Iranian women for bodily autonomy.

Turkey: The Discomfort Between State and Society

Among the two articles authored by Turkish scholars (Gulf International Forum, 2022; Uygur, 2022), one is published by The Gulf International Forum, a Washington-based research institute and the other by the Center for Iranian Studies in Turkey. The first article offers a comprehensive view of the protests from Turkey while the second, published in Insight Turkey, a Turkish journal, might be the only article to successfully frame the protests as a solidarity movement, illustrating the connections and disconnections between women, marginalized ethnic communities such as the Kurds and the Turkish communities in, as well as tensions between various political factions inside Iran, exiled activists, and regional and global powers. While İbrahim Karataş focuses on the complicated history between Turkey and Iran, as well as the dynamics between Turkey’s secular and religious societies, Uygur delves deeper into the vulnerable position of Iran in the region, particularly in light of the mass protests going on in the country and the influence of regional powers such as Israel. This insightful extrapolation, I believe, stems from the author’s local and regional expertise, as well as the focus of the publication on regional relations.

Karataş argues that the Turkish government remained largely silent on the protests for two main reasons: first, to maintain “relatively cordial Turkish-Iranian relations,” and second, due to its discomfort with women’s freedom with veiling\unveiling and Turkey’s “complicated history” surrounding the veil. As Karataş mentions, the complexity results from the modern state building in Turkey and government’s hostility toward veiled Turkish women after the military coup of 1997 , during which they were banned from public spaces.

Karataş describes the divide between the Turkish state and society, noting that, unlike the government, the Turkish people from both secular and religious backgrounds supported the WLF “anti-regime” protests. This support emerged because the protests were seen as a rejection of the “state enforcement of the headscarf,” a law that is not culturally accepted in Turkish society. As Karataş writes, “Conservative Turkish women who wear the headscarf voluntarily sided with Iranian women because they view the veil as a personal choice and decry the use of force by Iranian police. At the same time, Turkish secularists, who oppose the veil on principle, have unreservedly supported the protests.” While the Turkish government found the situation complicated; for society, however, it is far less so.

In the second article, Hakki Uygur presents a different perspective on the WLF protests. He places the Jina uprising in historical context, comparing it to the 2009 Green Movement, which drew crowds primarily from the capital and the educated middle and upper classes, as well as the 2018-2019 protests, which were particularly widespreadin low-income neighborhoods that faced the most severe economic challenges. As Uygur astutely observes, “The nature of the 2022 protests distinguishes itself from previous waves, as it stems from disconnection and ‘emotional distances’ between Iran’s center and peripheral communities.” I argue that the concept of disconnect or emotional distances that Uygur uses refers to the solidarity network built in the movement, wherein causes like women’s rights are intertwined with intersectional causes, such as ethnic liberation. Through examining the different slogans used in Kurdish, Baluchistan, and Turkish regions, Uygur explains why the chants of various groups evolve as they move from city to city, taking on a pluralistic form that doesn’t always align with a singular demand or historical movement.

Afghanistan: The Sisters Next Door

From the earliest days of the Jina movement, solidarity between Iranian and Afghan women, both within their respective countries and among Afghan immigrants in Iran and the diaspora, was evident. They incorporated the slogan of Woman. Life. Freedom, with their own, including Bread, Work, Freedom and Girls’ Education, and repeated them on various occasions in Kabul and other cities (Ziabari, 2022). Afghan women, through social media posts and participation in protests, both in Iran (Alizadeh & Baharan, 2023) and Afghanistan, expressed their support and found inspiration in the movement, perceiving it as part of an international women’s rights struggle.

An article published by the Arab Gulf States Institute (2022) highlights an instance in which an 18-year-old Afghan girl staged a solo protest in front of Kabul University. Holding a sign that displayed the Arabic word iqra (meaning “read”) and the slogan “Iran has risen up, now it’s our time.” she embodied the solidarity of Afghan women with their Iranian counterparts. Other Afghan protesters echoed this sentiment, referring to the Iranian women’s struggle as a catalyst for their own movement, expressing in the media how they were inspired by the pictures and video clips coming from Iran.

Another article, published by the United States Institute of Peace, features Afghan-American authors who discuss how “street protest slogans, social media posts, and other connections illustrate a synergy between the movements.” These authors argue that both movements should leverage this solidarity to convert their shared courage into meaningful change.

An article published by e-flux, titled A Struggle for Everyone and written by Iranian female activists and researchers, goes beyond exploring how Afghan women were inspired by the protests. It examines how the networked, pluralist, and intersectional nature of the Jina uprising enabled Afghan immigrants, especially women, to actively participate in the movement. The article argues that Afghan immigrants also suffered from police violence and were of the —arrested interrogated, imprisoned, and killed—and their names were echoed by the media as “martyrs of the Jina Uprising.” However, the interviews conducted by the authors with 10 Afghan men and women in Tehran indicate the incident has not brought Afghan immigrants, often viewed as the “Other” closer to Iranian society. Two years after the uprising, a massive wave of anti-immigrant sentiment, along with hateful anti-immigrant hashtags trending on social media, led some to interpret this backlash as a nationalist response to the inclusive themes of the Jina uprising.

Tayyebeh, a woman interviewed in the article, expressed that the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment had not left her hopeless. She says: “The Jina uprising was a fight for humanity because it recognized women as human beings. I fight for any other uprising that shares this principle.”

Pakistan: The Chains of Fear

Naqvi and Zaheer (2022), two Pakistani scholars present the most polarized view on in their article published in the Regional Studies journal in Pakistan. Rather than discussing the nature of the movement, the article focus on the role of global media in making the protests a global phenomenon. The authors assert that the uprising was “anti-hijab” and hegemonic global coverage of the protests, which allegedly serves the United States’ imperialist anti-Iran agenda, transformed the hijab into “a political symbol instead of a social issue.”

Naqvi and Zaheer suggest that protests were composed of “two movements: the pro-hijab movement and the anti-hijab movement,” but Western power who have long exaggerated on women’s challenges in Iran highlighted the “anti-hijab” protests and depicted them as either an unfolding revolution or “regime change.” They ultimately had to scale back their media coverage once they realized such goals were unachievable, and this contributed to the gradual decline of the protests.

Authors compare of the global media role in highlighting Mahsa Amini’s death with ignoring the killing of a woman by American soldiers in Baghdad serves the conclusion that global media shapes the narrative of the movement. However. their “post-truth” analysis lacks a reference to voices of protesting communities in Iran. This includes Balochi community voices from Zahedan city, where many Balochi women who wear the hijab—actively protested for months, chanting, “With or without hijab, we move toward revolution.”

The article employs another oversimplified dichotomy that serves no meaningful purpose in exploring the conflicts. It suggests that hijab is perceived as “repressive” in one part of the world and as a symbol of “Islamic identity” in another. They convey a sense of blaming the Iranian government for fueling Islamophobic, imperialist Western interference in the Muslim world because it has not adequately addressed domestic anti-hijab issues or anti-regime agitation. To this end, authors suggest that the Islamic Republic: “take concrete actions regarding the controversies surrounding the morality police. A suitable solution would be to reassess the role of the morality police and transform it into another force to ensure people’s rights to liberty in public.”

The cautious approach of the authors may have roots in the spread of the protests beyond Iran borders, and to Pakistan’s Baluchistan. An article published by the leftist media outlet Truthdig (2022) highlights the massive protests in the area, where Mahrang, one of the Pakistani activists organizing the protests, describes how the march to Islamabad and the widespread protests “broke the chains of fear” for her people in both areas.

Feminist Voices of Muslim Background in the West: Decolonizing the Hijab

Feminist scholars and activists of Muslim background, now citizens of Western countries have provided a more nuanced approach to addressing the “complexity” of the issue. They express their support and solidarity with the movement while adopt a critical tone towards the hypocrisy of white politicians supporting it.

Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian-American political commentator and activist, does not hesitate to label the uprising a “feminist revolution” (Eltahawy, 2022, Oct. 12). She argues that revolution ignites a fire in communities, then spreads, inspiring resistance against both small and large oppressors.

She cites examples from across the Muslim world, particularly in religiously patriarchal states like Iran and Saudi Arabia. In another essay, she critiques (2022, Oct. 10). the hypocrisy of white Christian politicians who eagerly watch women in distant lands rise up, yet fail to recognize oppressive behavior at home, such as the restrictions on abortion care in the United States.

Her critique aligns with the postcolonial critique of the mainstream discourse of “saving brown women from brown men.” Addressing white women who compare Christian and Islamic patriarchy and pity Muslim women in contrast, Eltahawy writes, “This isn’t a ‘whose flavor of patriarchy is worse’ letter,” meaning both enforced pregnancy and enforced hijab are means of state control over women’s bodies.

She concludes in bold words, “This is a ‘fuck the patriarchy everywhere’ grenade that I gift to you. This is not The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s real life. This is a wake-the-fuck-up moment because clearly, you’ve been drifting, cruising on the delusion that your whiteness will save you from white supremacist patriarchy.”

The postcolonial discourse is also present in an analytical statement put out by the Belgian NGO BOEH (Boss Over Your Head). They argue that the Jina uprising is a “battle to decolonize the headscarf,” viewing it as a tool of religious patriarchal control, whether it is enforced by the Iranian state or forced to be removed in Europe. The BOEH NGO, which is run by a group of feminists, mostly of Muslim backgrounds, immigrants and LGBTQ+ community members, accuses European politicians of hijacking the voices of Iranian women and using their struggles to promote their own agendas. Furthermore, they criticize the “liberal and left-wing” narrative that depoliticizes the struggle, reducing it to a mere issue of “freedom of choice of clothing,” out of fear that this interpretation could be weaponized against minorities and migrants.

Arab Women: You Are Not My Guide… I Am the Compass

An expression of international feminist solidarity is undoubtedly evident in the articles, but it is most powerfully expressed through the statements, slogans and letters written by Arab women from the MENA region.

An article published by Raseef 22, a Beirut-based independent media outlet, compiles solidarity statements and protests from across the Arab region, including feminist lawyers, human rights defenders, and civil society activists from Tunisia to Lebanon. As it brings words from solidarity protests in Beirut, it read, “Mahsa Amini did not die, her body just went to rest… And here is her spirit inspiring women in Iran and all patriarchal countries to regain authority over their bodies.” The article is titled “You Are Not My Guide; I Am the Compass.” This feminist compass has guided Arab feminist writers, preventing them from falling into the trap of oversimplification. For instance, during a solidarity event at the National Museum in Beirut, Lebanese women held banners reading: “Our anger is one, our struggle is one,” “Women’s hair is not sinful, your oppression is sinful,” “The veil is a personal freedom, not a governmental matter,” and “My body and my hair do not belong to anyone but me.”

On the other hand, this ‘compass’ has helped create a network that is both plural and inclusive, yet discerning in who it includes. It consciously excludes right-wing politicians and other hypocritical figures, refusing to be bullied into silence for fear of hijacking the voices of Iranian women or endorsing top-down demands for “regime change” or “anti-hijab” sentiments. An interesting example of this is when, in Lebanon, demonstrators rejected the attendance of Abbas Yazbek, a Shia cleric opposed to the Iranian regime, at a vigil. Activists refused his presence because of his stance as a religious authority that oppresses women. As activist Zahraa al-Dirani explained, “We don’t care if the sheikh is against the Iranian regime; we object to him representing a religious authority that oppresses women.”

Discussion: Remembering a Feminist Memory

It is perhaps difficult—if not nearly impossible—to offer a comprehensive overview of how writers of Muslim backgrounds viewed the Jina uprising. Any attempt to do so risks generalizing, hegemonizing, Orientalizing, and oversimplifying. At the same time, these writers, in grappling with what they described as “complicated,” sought either to uncover what was not visible in the global image of the protest or to highlight elements overlooked by those in control of mainstream global narratives. However, in addressing a primarily Western audience, this can also echo Edward Said’s concept of “Orientalism in reverse,” where the act of Orientalizing and exceptionalizing oneself becomes an ideological framework.

Perhaps the key to unraveling this complexity lies in returning to feminist literature and methods, which focus on elevating the voices of local women involved in the protests—a perspective notably absent in many of the articles. By doing so, we may come to view the Jina uprising not as a binary—either a women’s movement for freedom of the hijab (political or depoliticized) or a purely political movement seeking regime change—but rather as a connected space, a network inherently shaped by diverse, and sometimes contradictory alliances, so powerful that voices of the voiceless people who were the main actors beyond the uprising were unable to be excluded despite the efforts of dominating forces inside Iran as well as global and regional establishment powers

Movements led by ordinary citizens do not possess a singular identity, particularly when they involve feminist, labor, and student movements within a loosely organized network of solidarity. To preserve the activism at the heart of these struggles, it is essential to make the effort to uncover the voices of the ‘local’—no matter how difficult they may be to access, reach, or translate. As Sarah Ahmed puts it, this process is about “creating feminist memory that serves both as a functional archival tool and preserves feminist activism.”

References

• Abdo, G. (2022, October 3). Iraq reacts to Iran protests: Women reckon with the hijab debate. Wilson Center. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/iraq-reacts-iran-protests-women-reckon-hijab-debate
• Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a feminist life (p. 17). Duke University Press.
• Al Aqeedi, R. (2022). Iran’s protests have everything and nothing to do with hijab. Newlines Magazine. https://newlinesmag.com/argument/irans-protests-have-everything-and-nothing-to-do-with-hijab/
• Alizadeh, S. & Baharan, G. (2023, December). A struggle for everyone. e-flux Journal. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/145/606184/a-struggle-for-everyone/
• BOEH. (2022, October 10). Jin Jiyan Azadi: Baas over eigen hoofd – need we say more? https://boeh.be/jin-jiyan-azadi-baas-over-eigen-hoofd-need-we-say-more/
• Eltahawy, M. (2022, October 10). Dear white women cheering Iranian women on: This isn’t a ‘whose flavor of patriarchy is worse’ letter. Feminist Giant. https://www.feministgiant.com/p/essay-dear-white-women-cheering-iranian
• Eltahawy, M. (2022, October 12). Women, life, liberty. Feminist Giant. https://www.feministgiant.com/p/essay-women-life-liberty
  Mannheim, K. (1936). Ideology and utopia: An introduction to the sociology of knowledge. Routledge & K. Paul.
• Gulf International Forum. (2022, December 12). Iran’s 2022 protests: The view from Turkey. Gulf International Forum. https://gulfif.org/irans-2022-protests-the-view-from-turkey/
• Naqvi, S. F. H., & Zaheer, A. (2022). Mahsa Amini and the anti-hijab protests in Iran: A post-truth analysis. Regional Studies, 40(2), 36-57. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373019092_MAHSA_AMINI_AND_THE_ANTI-HIJAB_PROTESTS_IN_IRAN_A_POST-TRUTH_ANALYSIS
• Raseef 22. (2022, October 14). Solidarity of Arab women with Iranian superhero role models. https://raseef22.net/english/article/1089973-solidarity-of-arab-women-with-iranian-superhero-role-models
• Truthdig. (2022, October 10). Balochistan finds its voice. https://www.truthdig.com/articles/balochistan-finds-its-voice/
• U.S. Institute of Peace. (2022, October). Iran’s protests and Afghan sisters next door. https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/10/irans-protests-and-afghan-sisters-next-door
• Uygur, H. (2022). Iran in the wake of Mahsa Amini’s death. Insight Turkey, 24(4), 11-22. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/48706285
• Ziabari, K. (2022, October 3). Women in Afghanistan are inspired, emboldened by protests in Iran. Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington https://agsiw.org/women-in-afghanistan-are-inspired-emboldened-by-protests-in-iran/