In Iran, I narrowly avoided the morality police

In the summer of 1988, while still in high school, I got involved with an underground feminist group in Tehran as a courier, secretly transporting backpacks full of pamphlets to other activists, who then distributed them at night to women’s clinics where nurses handed them out to patients. The pamphlets encouraged women not to get married too young, to understand basic medical facts about their bodies, and to know their options when it came to divorce, contraception, and legal representation.

One day in August, I was running these pamphlets with a girl named Neda when the morality police stopped us because Neda was wearing lipstick, which was forbidden in the decade after the Iranian Revolution. They pointed their rifles at us. “Clean your lips!” one of the female officers yelled and forced Neda to rub off her lipstick with a large wad of cotton. Only after Neda removed her hand from her lips could I see the blood running down her face. The cotton they had given her was full of broken glass.

Had they found the pamphlets, our fate would have been worse than bloodied lips. The fact that the morality police were obsessed with a woman wearing lipstick saved us from deeper inspection. We could have been forced into a car, beaten, maybe killed.

This kind of brutality in the name of morality is neither uncommon nor new. It has been the Islamic Republic of Iran’s basic strategy for staying in power over the past 40 years. The public punishment and humiliation of women — through harassment, lashes, and more severe forms of physical assault — have been the main tactics used to present the image of incontestable, unquestionable patriarchy. But there’s nothing “cultural” or “Islamic” about this strategy, and it’s important to call it by its correct name: fascism.

In early September, a 22-year-old woman named Mahsa Amini was murdered by the morality police in Tehran. She had been arrested because some of her hair was exposed, and while taking her into custody, eyewitnesses claim that the police repeatedly banged her head inside a police vehicle until she passed out. A short time later, she died in the hospital.

Her death has ignited a fire from the embers of discontent that have been burning for many years among those concerned about the state of women’s rights in Iran. Millions of women and men of all ages across Iran have taken to the streets to protest not just the compulsory wearing of hijabs, but also the regime itself. As one Iranian friend texted me, “If the roosari [headscarf] falls, so does the government.”

I believe that transparency can and will bring down this regime. The rise of social media has made it possible to instantaneously spread photos and videos of instances of police brutality, lifting the veil of the government’s hypocrisy. While authorities have shut down internet access on mobile phones and have blocked Instagram and WhatsApp, graphic images are still leaking out via proxy servers. It’s important that non-Iranians join this fight by amplifying the stories of Iranian women, participating in worldwide demonstrations, and sharing Amini’s story online using the hashtag #MahsaAmini.

Showing support for Iranian women would be meaningful not just for the estimated 4,200 Iranians who live in Philadelphia, but to the Iranian community in the United States, which is made up of as many as a million people. You don’t have to know anything about Iranian culture to support this movement, because the compulsory wearing of hijabs was never a cultural issue. It was always a political one. The Islamic Republic of Iran has simply used this issue as a tactic to create fear and foster obedience. The Quran, in fact, says that “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256).

It took me years to be able to wear lipstick in public. And that’s the whole point of the Islamic Republic’s war on women. It’s not about virtue, modesty, or religion. It’s about making people too afraid to challenge an illegitimate power.

» READ MORE: From Iran’s streets to the U.S. ballot box, women fight back against the ‘morality police’

When I think of the men who murdered Amini, I immediately think of how they must treat their wives and daughters. I also can’t help but think of all the other women who suffer behind closed doors. Every woman in Iran has a story of being mistreated by the morality police, sometimes of being taken into custody and released only in exchange for bribes. In this sense, we are all Mahsa Amini.

Even here in the United States, violence against women is shockingly pervasive and often deadly. One in four women in the U.S. has been a victim of domestic violence. In Philadelphia, there have been so many reports of abuse that the Domestic Violence Hotline has to turn away more than 6,000 requests for emergency housing per year. What is happening in Iran is part of a worldwide issue, and by supporting women there, we are supporting women everywhere.

For far too long, women have been silenced, hurt, suffocated, and displaced. But our hearts are stronger than ever, and we will not stay silent.

Atash Yaghmaian is an Iranian educator, writer, and therapist living in New York City. @AtashYaghmaian