“In Iran, men also fight for women’s freedom”

« O“You cannot burn women made of fire”, this is the motto of Iranian women and of Mona Jafarian, a tireless Franco-Iranian activist who has become one of the voices in France of the Iranian people. Today she is releasing the book I am Iranian published by Éditions de l’Observatoire. Followed by more than 150,000 people on her social networks where she relays the words of Iranians through videos and testimonies she receives, she is the founder of the Femme Azadi association. She spoke for a year with around fifteen Iranian women who survive and fight tirelessly against the regime of the Islamic Republic.

Through these testimonies from all the social circles that make up Iranian youth, the different speakers address themes that have become electric in France: the wearing of the veil, the support of men in feminist struggles, Israel, Islamism and especially secularism. . An essential work for hearing and understanding the Iranian people and their diaspora, and which sounds for its author like a warning about the future of France.

The Point: How was this work born, composed solely of testimonies from Iranian women?

Mona Jafarian : My publishing house, L'Observatoire, had previously published a work in which many personalities wrote in place of Afghan women who could no longer do it themselves. My editor suggested I carry out a similar project for Iranian women. I then suggested giving the floor directly to them so that they could address their point of view on the current situation, on the demonstrations following the death of Mahsa Amini [Kurde iranienne de 22 ans arrêtée pour port non conforme du voile, et morte trois jours plus tard, NDLR] or even on the West. I received an immediate green light and the project was built like this. I didn't expect to collect such strong testimonies… It was very difficult to take psychologically. I wanted those who read this book to truly understand the Iranian people and not to reduce them to a romantic aesthetic of Amazons burning their sails to the background of songs!

Do you think that the West does not understand the violence suffered by Iranian women?

No, quite the contrary. I often receive messages asking me why Iranians are not “protesting”, why they are not “taking to the streets again” when there are 85 million of them. The French do not understand what it means to protest just by walking in the street in Iran. One of the women who testified explains it, recounting the horror she suffered for daring to walk hand in hand down the street with her boyfriend. Going out in Iran means exposing yourself to physical and sexual assault. Rape of women, children and also men, as my book reveals, sometimes until death ensues. By reading their stories, what they suffered, what their brothers suffered, we can finally fully understand what it means to protest against the regime in Iran. Beyond this difficulty in realizing the degree of repression, the hypocrisy of the heads of state, or even of the UN, is real: they know what is happening. An independent United Nations commission even produced a 580-page report listing all the crimes against humanity committed by the Islamic Republic! But nothing happens…

In this book, the women testify, but they also talk a lot about Iranian men, who are true allies in their struggles…

Of course. Even though the book is titled I am Iranianyou just have to read it to realize the importance of men in the struggles for freedom. A big brother who opposes his father, a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, to protect his mother and his sister… Yet another who will demonstrate in the streets, until ending up in prison, where he will suffer the worst abuse ! It's an entire people who are fighting, not just women! Today, if we see that Iranian women are resisting without veils in the streets, it is also thanks to the men who walk alongside them and fight for them! There is a real difference with the situation of women in Afghanistan, where the majority of men are “Talibanized”. In Iran, we chant “Woman, life, freedom”, but also “Man, homeland, prosperity”, the slogans complement each other, like our common commitments to humanity and the freedom of the Iranian people.

Iranian women tell you about their aversion to the veil and what it means to them. One of them talks about her incomprehension in the face of the fight for the wearing of the hijab or even the abaya in France…

I was ashamed to talk about it with them during our discussions. For many young Iranian women, the fact that women can fight in France to wear the hijab or the abaya is nonsense. In fact, one of them to whom I ended up talking about it even burst out laughing during our exchange! She actually said to me in Persian: “It's not going well, let them come and mess with the moral police and I'll go for a walk rue des Champs-Élysées ! » Iranian youth, although very progressive, do not understand these accusations of “Islamophobia” when the symbolism of the hijab is denounced, here in France! For her, it's incredible, and there's reason to think so…

In France, feminist voices committed to Iran seem divided on the question of wearing the veil and, more broadly, universalism.

Indeed, and that is precisely the whole point of my book. We speak with a lot of Iranians, contact is direct and we relay the videos and testimonies they send us. There, there is no fuss: the veil is a tool of oppression that they burn! They do not bend it respectfully, they do not fight at the risk of their lives for the “right to veil themselves or not”, otherwise they would not destroy it in the flames. They fight everything that this veil represents, which is not just a simple piece of fabric. In France, we are silenced and stigmatized for speaking out like this, while 40 million Iranian women want to regain their freedom! I am of course not attacking women who wear the veil in France, but the ideology which makes them think that they must wear the veil and accept what that implies to be “respectable”. I am fighting what is being established in French society… And this is not a point of view of a “diaspora bourgeoisie”! In my book, there are testimonies of women coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, or even extremely religious ones. The LFI movement in feminist activist circles is completely disconnected from what is happening in Iran and does not understand to what extent it is a universalist and secular country!

One of the women interviewed also discusses the Iranian people's support for Israel. What did you think of it?

I hesitated to leave the passage in the book, because, like the question of the symbolism of the veil, Israel is an electric subject in the West but not at all in Iran. But I wanted to let them say what they wanted, and the reality is that the Iranians are fed up with seeing their money used to finance terrorism, while they live in great precariousness. The Iranian people have no animosity towards Israel, nor the West or the United States, but, on the contrary, a real lucidity on terrorism. An Iranian woman interviewed expresses her fear that the Islamic Republic will start a war and that it will be the people who drink. Another talks about the Arab militias who come to Iran to lend a hand to the regime and commit the worst abuses to enforce Sharia laws and silence protests… This is very far from what we hear today in breast of French youth!

You seem, in this work, as optimistic for the future of Iran as pessimistic for that of France… Why?

It is established, the Islamic Republic is dead and buried for the Iranians. The regime is rejected by almost all of the people. He tried everything but lost the ideological battle. By collecting and translating these testimonies, I felt a great disappointment with Western leaders, but I also understood to what extent we feel censored in France. Without wanting to, we have allowed Islamism to gain ground and we have much more modesty than women who live under the yoke of this Islamism. It is a real slap in the face of our French society that women risk their lives to defend universalist, secular and republican values ​​while in France we tremble at the idea of ​​evoking them!

To Discover

Kangaroo of the day

Answer

But I still have hope for my two countries: Iran is 45 years ahead of France, and everything that happened there, this convergence of struggles between the extreme left and Islamism, I see it appearing here… Let's hope that we don't have to go through what the Iranians suffered for France to become secular again!

I am Iranianby Mona Jafarian, Éditions de l'Observatoire, 192 p., 18 euros, published November 6, 2024.