[00:00:00] Nahid Siamdoust: Salaam in the name of the God of Rainbows, welcome to Woman Life Freedom, all in on Iran, a podcast series in which we’ll go deep in conversations with experts on various aspects of the revolutionary uprising that began in Iran in September. when 22 year old Mahsa Jina Amini was killed in Morality Police detention.

In each episode, we’ll unpack an important aspect of the unfolding of this historic moment in Iran. I’m your host, Nahid Siamdous, an assistant professor of media and Middle East studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Our intention is to quote unquote, archive the important insights of our experts here and now, both in their capacity as professional observers, as well as humans living through these momentous times, stay tuned.

[00:01:12] Nahid Siamdoust: Hello, and welcome to the anniversary episode of this Woman, Life, Freedom, All In on Iran podcast series. we have, very fortunate to have four, wonderful writers and scholars. of Iran here today, starting with, Nasrin Rahimiyeh, who’s the Howard Basketball Professor of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine, Shahla Talebi, Social Culture Anthropologist at Arizona State University, Manijeh Moradian, Assistant Professor of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College in New York. and Fatemeh Shams, Associate Professor of Persian Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. I’m just going to give you a quick,report of what we’ve been doing with this podcast. So we, the five of us had a wonderful conversation, a fairly long conversation, and unfortunately due to a technical issue, lost a lot of it.

I, we have the last 25 minutes. Of the recording, which in my opinion was the best part of the recording. This is a section where I asked our speakers to tell us, what their hopes and aspirations and expectations, where of the next five to 10 years, what they would foresee happening with the woman life, freedom movement with, Iran and that part of the recording.

We have. But then, because we lost everything else, I’ve had to go back and re record those interviews with the four speakers. So, what’s about to follow is, individual interviews with these four speakers, each about 25 to 30 minutes. and then we come back together at the end to,project into the future.

So I very much hope that you’ll stick with this podcast. there are a lot of great insights throughout and, very happy to have you here and, let’s, let’s get started. Hello, Shana John. I’ve got you again.

[00:03:13] Shahla Talebi: Good to be here again, it’s actually nice.

[00:03:17] Nahid Siamdoust: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for giving us, once again of your time and I’m so glad to have you. Shahla Talebi is a sociocultural anthropologist, associate professor of religious studies at Arizona State University. She is also, this might become relevant to our conversation, the author of several published pieces, but I’m going to be highlighting, In this introduction, Ghosts of Revolution, Rekindled Memories of Imprisonment in Iran by Stanford University Press, published in 2011. An incredible memoir of your time of imprisonment, both before the revolution and after the revolution. and I very much recommend, anybody who studies Iran to read your memoir. so today, Shahlajan, we’re here to discuss or talk about,the anniversary of woman life freedom in Iran coming up, in mid September. And, I just want to ask you your initial reactions, it’s been a year. what do you think the woman life freedoms and Zendagi uprising has accomplished in Iran one year onward?

[00:04:20] Shahla Talebi: First of all, hello and I john . I know it’s taking you so much more work with these technical issues you had to bring us back. But it’s actually a pleasure to be here and have this conversation with you. so I mean, to be honest, the first Reflection I have, the moment that, I think about the uprisings are the faces, of all those young,men, women, they, that people who don’t necessarily identify with particular gender, kind of a category, on the street, you know, that throwing themselves into this moment that is at once dangerous, is a deadly zone.

They know is, has a lot of risks involved and yet it’s so inspiring. It’s so amazingly literally, radically shifting the ground, on which many of us lived, I would say both before the revolution of 1979 and after. I, I, for me, every time I think about the joy, the dancing, those

holding hands, the,scarves, the shawls that were thrown into the fire, the, the, these young women’s.

standing on these,in the middle of, these streets,

on this high grounds and surrounded by all these young men and sometimes elderly women. And this, there was something really groundbreaking in the way, the idea of the shift. was actually, fighting for life, for life itself, for the very, ordinary everyday life,

not just necessarily for an ideal of a future, which, of course, in the very fact of,fighting for a life that is livable, that is possible to be joyous.

that is

dignified, you’re in a way also fighting for environment, you’re fighting for against class, kind of discrimination against poverty, against pollution, against the systems of the structures of oppressive oppression in

all these different ways. So for me, The shift was really the shift of attitude, the shift of outlook, a different kind of look, at the, even the revolution itself.

The idea of revolution itself, which is not necessarily an, kind of dig toppling of a regime, or, or a particular political system necessarily, but is the, the radical shift in the way we think of ourselves. our relation to the collective, our relation to what I, people would think about for me, at least socioecologies.

I, for me, that’s what it really means to see oneself both at once. a very particular individual, a singular individual, but also integrated very much in relation to everything else that is not just human.

And that to me, just the way the bodies were there present, the way that the art was present and became embodied in every act and

every gesture, all those to me were really, really significant aspects of what we watched, witnessed, either glued.

to these images, and through, our interactions with people in that situation

[00:07:58] Nahid Siamdoust: Mm hmm. You really highlight an aspect of this uprising that is almost not tangible in some ways, even though it is about bodies on the street, but you’re talking about, this coming together, united for a, life that is livable, right? And, I’m curious, given that you have yourself experienced the 1979 revolution very much as an activist on the ground, were there parallels that you were drawing between your experiences of 1979 and what happened in 2022? Or how would you compare these two, uprisings?

[00:08:35] Shahla Talebi: oh God, there’s so many ways that. They’re distinct. But at the same time, there are many, many parallels for me. I mean, I call it spirit, but not in the meaning of a spirit that people usually understand.

Maybe the best word would be attitude. that feeling, that sense of certainty that you’re capable of making changes, changes is.

Transcribed by https: otter. ai And the change, as I said, is less about necessarily change in a particular political structure, but the change in the way people relate to one another,

the people relate to their conditions of their, their lives, and that that hope, that that sense of the possibility of being with others. Regardless of diverse dreams and grievances and desires and ideas, I think one of the things that is really significant, and I see, for instance, in, in Bara’yeh, Sherwin’s Bara’yeh,

one of one of the things that for me really stood out about this is the way it was produced

[00:09:38] Nahid Siamdoust: hmm.

[00:09:38] Shahla Talebi: from collective yet diverse voices, dreams and grievances with the ways in which some of them were about this very present moment.

That they demanded and wanted to experience

And then coming out from a single voice as a single production and then merging. into the collective. and that is something that I think with the, with the revolution at the time, there was both the danger and the beauty of it. I remember when I was coming out of prison, the day that I,

I came out of prison, there were a small group of, people standing there and saying, free Muslim political prisoners, while the rest of the people, the

large numbers were saying, free political prisoners.

The fact that, of exclusion was already there, and unfortunately at times when you were trying to reach the goal. Of, of toppling the regime, those differences, those voiced exclusionary voices were not as highlighted as they should have been. Those were those dangerous moments within a movement. So sometimes last year when people would say, Oh, don’t discuss this for now. let’s, achieve our victory and then we can discuss it. My bodily expression was like the cringe. To say no. Discuss it now. There

is nothing for after if you do not actually really, learn from these experiences to open up space for diversity, for the possibility of living for everyone. it’s going to be really not possible, so that is something that I think was both the joy of being there with your body, with your life, fighting for a better life,

fighting for a livable life, because some for some people life under the shah was absolutely livable, while the reality was that if you had a situation where you would have a voice to say something about some kind of injustice, including poverty or other forms of injustices, you would be easily ended up with torture and imprisonment and even death. So it’s not like the livability of life under shot just because people didn’t have to necessarily, be socially in a particular way. dictated to

do this or that. That didn’t mean that social discrimination did not exist or political

suppression was not really suffocating for many people.

[00:12:24] Nahid Siamdoust: huh. huh.

[00:12:24] Shahla Talebi: And for me, when I think about the parallels, there is also this debt to the dictator that in a way was also very much what death to the Shah or

whatever, was the creating a generic kind of chant under which many of the more complex diverse demands and desires and hopes get buried at times. I think that is also very important not to lose the sight of what it means to think about women, what it means to think about life, what does freedom mean really, which has to redefine our understanding of women, our understanding of life, our understanding of freedom.

[00:13:13] Nahid Siamdoust: Mhm.

[00:13:14] Shahla Talebi: And radically, and those are interconnected, a particular, what Veena Das and Clara Han have discussed as the feminine, region of the self. This is also a feminine region of the collective that does not have to necessarily be about women, even though I think the context of Iran, calling it really by its name is also important. But it’s more about a particular approach that is nurturing, that is inclusive, that allows for diversities to be nourished and to actually flourish. And I think those are the things that, I see both as parallel in the sense of the positive and the negative.

[00:13:59] Nahid Siamdoust: Super interesting. that was the very first experience of revolution in anyone’s living memory that Iranians have had had, I wonder, is there, I mean, were you bothered by the fact that a clear,leader, opposition leader internally in exile anywhere was not readily available in, in the processes, that were happening in those months? Or were you kind of comforted by that? I wonder how you saw that during, leading up to 1979, of course,Khomeini very quickly, it seems, became the all uniting leader.

And so people really rallied around him. No such person existed this time. And how did you view that?

[00:14:40] Shahla Talebi: to be honest, I think, to me, I still consider the, the supposed, supposedly those who claim leadership, particularly,the, the Royalist and the Mujahids and whatever was happening outside, as the most destructive.

the kinds of people who actually claim leadership were the least,appropriate leaders for this kind of movement. This is a different kind of movement. Doesn’t have those, I’m sorry, fossilized ideas of, of leadership. In fact, I had these conversations with many of the young kids in Iran, who, when I would say, Oh, people say you don’t have leaders, they would say, who’s looking for that kind of leadership?

[00:15:25] Nahid Siamdoust: Mm hmm.

[00:15:26] Shahla Talebi: The thing is that, exactly because outside of Iran, it created this illusion of, oh, this is going to be victorious in two months, and the

victory was defined, again, exactly the kind of victory that was defined with 1979.

[00:15:42] Nahid Siamdoust: Mm hmm. Mm

[00:15:43] Shahla Talebi: It actually led, to, some kind of elusive hopes.

it was as if, in Khomeini’s case, others were fighting for him, him sitting in Nafel Roshatto and getting his

platform to say whatever he wanted to say and be very selective about what he was saying at that moment.

And, and this is something is to me, if had we actually allowed this movement to take its own course without giving false hopes to it, or forcing it to a different direction. when people from outside were we’re telling them to how to go and, and fight back

[00:16:26] Nahid Siamdoust: Hello. Hello.

[00:16:27] Shahla Talebi: entire discourse had to be a radically different discourse and started as a radically different discourse,

but in the course of its going forward, at times, these created fogs. over those really, radical, kind of, seeds that were, had come out. And, and because they were young seeds, they were young by, by, by that I don’t mean age, but I mean they were just growing, they were just coming out, to really create spaces for themselves. And that

space was kind of overpopulated in a way by these destructive forces. I’m being very probably dramatic, but that was my embodied experience.

I, I literally sat there and knew at the time how this was going to ruin.

And it, it, it was literally like a feeling of sick, sickening to me,

people talk about how women were kind of gave in, to hijab and everything. People do not realize in March 8th, when we were walking on the street, we were not concerned about the leaders, their leftist leaders supporting or not supporting.

That wasn’t the point. The point was that there was so much. fog in what this revolution was really about.

[00:17:58] Nahid Siamdoust: huh,

[00:17:59] Shahla Talebi: And Khomeini’s voice at the time was so overwhelmingly loud.

That this, it was being,it was being, broadcasted in the loudspeakers

as we were chanting for women, rights, as we were chanting that this revolution was not about going, and putting women in their houses.

so, or for instance, when we were talking about. bread in the, in the, people’s, kind of tables and so on

and so forth, and right away it would come with abar cutting your voice and cutting your voice and not letting you be heard.

Those are these very dangerous moments

and, and I kept telling friends in Iran, Do not forget woman life freedom.

There is something about woman life freedom. Do not let yourself be strayed to talk about Khamenei’s hand as lame. That will be the most dangerous. Yes, the anger is there, but the anger that becomes reactionary and only acts, reacts to the regime,

[00:19:10] Nahid Siamdoust: Mm hmm.

[00:19:11] Shahla Talebi: loses its own revolutionary spirit.

[00:19:14] Nahid Siamdoust: Wait, so I, I just want to make sure I understand this. Meaning, don’t fo when you say a Khamenei’s hand, meaning don’t focus too much on Khamenei, but really on the

[00:19:23] Shahla Talebi: But not only that, not only don’t, don’t focus on them, but also, I don’t know if you remember, there was actually a chant

[00:19:32] Nahid Siamdoust: hmm.

[00:19:33] Shahla Talebi: that Rahbar e ma Cholaghe,

[00:19:35] Nahid Siamdoust: Oh, yes. Oh,

[00:19:36] Shahla Talebi: remember? And I remember the moment I heard.

I, I, I right away contacted a few friends in Iran and

right away said, please be careful. This is going the wrong direction.

And

they, I remember one of my friends said, but you don’t understand this is symbolic. It’s because he has used this as a way of victimization and so legitimization. And I said, doesn’t matter

[00:20:01] Nahid Siamdoust: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

[00:20:02] Shahla Talebi: like this beautiful movement that you have begun should not really fall into those kinds of traps.

[00:20:09] Nahid Siamdoust: Mm

[00:20:10] Shahla Talebi: Responding from just place of anger would

become reactionary,

and, and those are, again, these are just my experience. I’m not saying this necessarily right or wrong. It’s just that I always feel like there were moments, I mean, we were a very small group. There was no way our voice could have really made a huge difference anyways.

But being conscious.

so that is something that I think is important because one of the things that after so many years, after four, more than four decades, Iranians have been able to do is on each of the uprisings, something more, progressive.

[00:20:52] Nahid Siamdoust: hmm.

[00:20:52] Shahla Talebi: has been built on the one before them.

[00:20:56] Nahid Siamdoust: Mm

[00:20:57] Shahla Talebi: And in this one, for me, this movement was the constellation of all those that came before it.

[00:21:04] Nahid Siamdoust: I just want to take us back to given that you. We’re in prison as a woman during the Shah’s regime. And again, after the revolution, I wonder whether, and you write about it in your memoir, but you know, what did you learn about each of these political and ideological structures as a captive in their systems as a female captive in their systems?

And, I’m really sorry. I hope this is, it’s an okay question to ask you.

and I, I wonder in. This is kind of a hang on question, but in hindsight, would you still have agitated for the 1979 revolution? Mm-hmm.

[00:21:40] Shahla Talebi: I think I’ve written about it a little bit in the book.

But I can say both in both regimes, the, the violence was very much at the same time gendered. Both of them were very much gendered. kind of, body politics. And in that sense, they were one may experience them differently. I’ve written about my own experience, for instance, during interrogation where they would very directly talk about my body and even, watch my body, which without me knowing, you know, and then bring it even to in front of my father.

I mean, there were

like ways off because they knew. There was a shared, unfortunate value, and I don’t want to use culture in the same meaning, but let’s just, for the

lack of a better term for now, use it. Because we shared a particular culture in which woman’s, kind of, propriety was very much, seen in a particular light.

under the Shah, regardless of how the fact that we were leftist, for instance, I was a leftist, still, I valued, unfortunately, at times, the same things. I think the difference with this movement is that these young women were coming at the very values, at the face of very values that were seemingly portrayed as the Islamic Republic’s values, while they themselves were absolute hypocrites. regard to them. So that I think was really the facade that they were exposing was really very significant. Under this regime,they, there was a different kind of gender role at play. And so they would say, Oh, you weren’t like that. And we know that they would. Both under the Shah and under this regime, they would have like control, birth

control pills to say that these are sharing their women.

I mean, all those kinds of things. But the totalitarianism, their way of thinking about prisoners. As things, as objects, that they could, they could

try to manipulate into something else. Under the Shah, they had their doctors, laboratories to cure them from their diseases. And if they’re incurable, then they had to be eliminated.

Under this regime, they had to cure their souls.

Turned them into, into collaborators that were called Tabbab. And if they could not turn into them, then they had to be excluded and annihilated. I think these are just some of the ways I could see their parallels. yes, it’s true that because under the Shah, we didn’t have as many prisoners. Controlling of prisoners did not take the same forms. Under this regime, there were so many prisoners that they could actually use prisoners themselves against one another. So the tabwab kind of created a totally different dynamic in

prisons. But overall, I hope I’m answering your question. To go to the last part, would I do it?

Absolutely.

[00:24:56] Nahid Siamdoust: Hmm.

[00:24:57] Shahla Talebi: Of course, not at the same person I am now,I was then with the same kind of certainty with the same kind of ideals necessarily. But, the fact that we fought for livable life for everyone, the fact that in my mind, gender equality was so significant. So important, the discrimination, injustice, the opening up of space, the political space for everyone, the question of representation, these were, we had a vague idea, I mean, I was young, even under this regime, I didn’t understand exactly what,some of those ideas we carried really meant. but at the core of what I was fighting for, which was something I said both under the Shah in my trial and in this one, was that I didn’t learn to become an activist from books.

[00:25:55] Nahid Siamdoust: hmm.

[00:25:55] Shahla Talebi: I became an activist because I saw what’s happening to people in everyday life.

[00:26:01] Nahid Siamdoust: Mm hmm.

[00:26:01] Shahla Talebi: And that was something I could not bear.

[00:26:05] Nahid Siamdoust: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Thank you so much, Allah John. I’m just wondering, from your observations, is this uprising on some level an uprising against religion itself, or is it only against religious government? I wonder if you’ve made observation based on, I don’t know, the slogans and chants. And, I know from the outside, some of our Muslim, brothers and sisters have been a little apprehensive toward this movement because to them, they’re seeing women burning headscarves and, it kind of looks like, well, maybe this is actually a movement against religion itself.

I wonder what, what you think, how you how you think of this.

[00:26:43] Shahla Talebi: great question. In fact, the first talk I gave, at ASU, one of my colleagues, the first question I got was from one of my colleagues who right away asked if this was, if there was any Muslim clergy in Iran who sided with people. And if the people were actually against it. If all the Islam in general,

and again, I, as I explained to him, the, the question is much more complex. first of all, I don’t see this necessarily against religion, per se. in as, as a, totalizing if you want to kind of have a, kind of total answer to it.

I don’t see it necessary against religion. But the issue is that when you are having, a polity. That mixes in this very particular way, that makes a claim, claim to religiosity and, and then religion becomes, religious verdicts become the law.

the issue is that everything becomes politicized at the same time every political act or social act already becomes sacrilegious.

[00:27:57] Nahid Siamdoust: Silence.

[00:28:07] Shahla Talebi: religion in these forms of governance.

That what happens in the process, I think, is that people, not everyone is necessarily going to see the nuances. And, and say, Oh, I’m, I’m, fighting against this particular way of religiosity. The exped embodied experiences for many of these young,kind of, men and women in Iran is that they have, constantly had to deal

with these laws that are very much wrapped around and into

religious ideas or Islamic, teachings and so on and so forth, with particular, of course, renditions. And in that sense, I think it’s interesting to really see, why it is that I’ve seen

some of my Turkish friends are seeing what’s going on and the nuances better than some of my Arab speaking friends. And I

think the reason is because they have seen how these collapsing of these, kind of forms of governance

in this fused forms can create situations where it becomes difficult for people to really, necessarily exclude that. But in the end of the day, what is religion?

[00:29:26] Nahid Siamdoust: Silence. Silence.

[00:29:34] Shahla Talebi: These are

part of, cultural,kind of, fabrics and social fabrics of the society. And they’re at the same time, very much, involved and part of the relations of power They

turn into, means of inserting power and which they have in many ways.

In reality, religion is another factor in all these other factors that are playing, their role. It’s sometimes they have more significant roles because they, they make claims to divine and the sacred, the holy and so on and so

forth. But overall, I don’t see them necessarily. As abstract categories as such.

I hope I responded to you. I

[00:30:18] Nahid Siamdoust: Yeah, I think you really did. You just helped complicate that question and,really place religion,as you say, alongside other factors that can very much be helpful, woven into power relations and used in different ways. Shahlajan, thank you so much. I’m so glad I have your answer to what your hopes and aspirations are for the next, five to ten years, and, that, that is a part of the recording that we managed to save, and this,we’ll play it at the end, of this episode.

Again, thank you so much for the work that you do. It’s been a pleasure having you on this program and wish you all, all the best.

[00:30:56] Shahla Talebi: Thank you so much.

[00:30:57] Misc: singing in arabic singing in arabic singing in arabic singing in arabic singing

[00:31:02] Nahid Siamdoust: Well, Salome again, Mani Jadjoun.

[00:31:05] Manijeh Moradian: Salam.

[00:31:06] Misc: weather Is for

[00:31:08] Nahid Siamdoust: This Is take two. Thank you so much for being here.

[00:31:11] Manijeh Moradian: Of course.

[00:31:12] Misc: victory

[00:31:13] Nahid Siamdoust: really enjoyed your insights in the conversation that we unfortunately lost. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna put those, some of those questions to you again. But before that, quickly, just a quick intro, Manijeh Mouradian Is Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University.

Her wonderful book, This Flame Within, Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States, was published by Duke University Press just this past December, December 2022. And she’s a founding member of the Raha Iranian Feminist Collective. and more importantly for our conversation today for the Feminists for Jinnah Collective and on the editorial board of the jaddalia. com Iran page. I’ve heard you speak about your book and I find that, even though it is, examining the activism leading up to the 1979 revolution. I find it so relevant to our conversations today. So I definitely want to talk to you about your book But before we do that, Manish Jain, can you just give us a little bit of intro to yourself, your background, your upbringing, what brings you to this subject?

[00:32:18] Manijeh Moradian: Sure. Well, first of all, thank you so much for inviting me to be part of this really important conversation with such esteemed and fabulous colleagues. I’m, I’m very grateful. To be included. so my background, I was born in Washington, DC. My father is an immigrant from Iran. He came here in 1960 as a foreign student and became part of the anti Shah student opposition that I write about in the book.

he came from a, Zoroastrian. Family, in a rural area outside of the city of Yazd and he experienced a lot of segregation, discrimination, religious oppression, in Iran and really became a communist during the Mossadegh era. and, and, and there’s a lifelong leftist. so I, I was raised with a kind of Marxist, framework from, from my, my very youngest years.

and, growing up in the United States, I saw the toll that the, Iranian revolution, the hostage crisis, the, the hostilities and demonization, towards Iran. I saw the toll that all of that took on him. it was really devastating for him to feel like he had lost, the hope and the possible future of a, of a freer, Iran.

and I also saw the leftist community that he was a part of really become, fragmented and, and fall apart as well. So there was, there was a lot of fallout, even in the diaspora, even for those of us already here, from the events in Iran.

And, growing up in the aftermath of that was, was not easy.

Mm

[00:33:50] Nahid Siamdoust: can imagine. And, this has not culminated in a revolution, but I find that, a lot of what’s happening in the diaspora and the fallout could potentially be, similar. but, taking it to the uprising, what are, what are your,thoughts about this anniversary?

What do you think the women, life, freedom, gender, and also the,Uprising has accomplished. what can we draw from it?

[00:34:12] Manijeh Moradian: I think it’s accomplished many things. I think one of them is to really make clear what we call in academia, intersectional feminism, but this is not just an abstract term. This is something that actually comes out of feminist movements, mostly in the West. But we really see this kind of what we mean by intersectional feminism has become a kind of like the dominant idiom of resistance in Iran right now.

So what I mean by that is there’s a kind of broad, generalized understanding among, many, many millions of Iranian people that gender and sexual oppression are not side issues or secondary issues to, for example, economic inequality or censorship or that, that. Or, discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities, that all of these issues are interconnected, right?

They intersect on people’s bodies, in their lives, in their life chances and in their relationship to each other and to the government, the same government that is oppressing women. Is oppressing Kurdish people, Baluch people, all working class people, migrant populations, et cetera, et cetera. So there’s this consciousness, right?

That the targeting of women’s bodies, the efforts by the state to control women’s bodies. Is unacceptable

is an issue that everybody men included should be concerned about and is part and parcel of the entire repressive apparatus. It’s the same system, right? That’s that’s

targeting, people based on their ethnicity, their religion, their gender, their sexuality, and it’s the same system, right?

That’s unable to meet people’s basic economic needs or provide a viable future for the population. So that kind of, right? What we might call a kind of like revolutionary feminist perspective, I think actually became the central, idiom of the struggle, which is very, very different from,

the Islamist idioms of anti imperialist revolution that dominated in 1979. And it’s also different from the kinds of Marxism that were popular among a lot of students. and other folks, in the 60s and 70s that really didn’t

understand why,ethnic, religious, gender, and sexual differences, needed to be foregrounded in a vision of liberation.

[00:36:35] Nahid Siamdoust: I really, I really, love this point that you made in our previous conversation where you drew parallels between 1979 and today. And

[00:36:42] Manijeh Moradian: Mm hmm.

[00:36:43] Nahid Siamdoust: And you know, in a very lucid way, you explained how, there was a hierarchy to the activism of the time versus today. And I would love for you to just expand on that again, the diffusion, that we see today.

And I don’t know if diffusion is actually the correct word, but just what you talked about, versus back then where certain issues were sidelined.

[00:37:05] Manijeh Moradian: Sure. And I just want to emphasize that, that these difficulties, these kind of political, theoretical, ideological difficulties were not unique to Iran, right? So, in the, the revolutionary movement in Iran in the sixties and seventies was happening at the same time as many other anti colonial, anti imperialist revolutions. And Especially on the left, the, the frameworks of Marxism, Leninism, of Maoism, of Third World Marxism, there are many different names for, for the different strands and tendencies of, of socialist or communist ideas that were circulating at the time. they, they, They all had certain, blind spots or gaps or problems, right?

That, we are living with the, the legacies of that. and there was, I think, a kind of ranking of oppressions.

a, a kind of, the idea that there was a, a, a primary contradiction in third world societies. And that was the contradiction between imperialism. And like national sovereignty, right?

and so that the first goal was to get rid of imperialism and have national independence.

And after that, only then could we

talk about other issues that were considered secondary. Like gender equality, like sexual rights, like the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, but also quite frankly, like economic issues were really postponed, right? There was a sort of assumption that if you got rid of imperialism, all the other problems would sort themselves out.

And of course, we’ve learned so, so painfully in country after country, that this is not the case that while formal national sovereignty is very important. Right. Nobody wants to be dominated by a foreign power. And that’s certainly true for the majority of Iranians right now. Nobody wants to be dominated by a foreign power, but national sovereignty should never be counterposed to bodily autonomy, to bodily sovereignty, right, to, to democratic rights.

It’s, to economic and social justice. So I think that for the past,40 years, four decades and more in many parts of the world, feminists, labor activists, students. many different kinds of social movements have been grappling

with the problem that just because you got rid of the imperialists doesn’t mean you got the freedom and the equality that you wanted,

right?

And so, so I think what’s happening with the Zanzandi Azadi uprising is a continuation of this unfinished freedom struggle that you could argue Iranians have been waging against foreign powers and different forms of… domestic despotism or authoritarianism

for over a hundred years.

And I think what’s so amazing about what we see now is that

you have these real theoretical and political developments.

this painful history that, that make it possible for new kinds of unity, right? For the, for the revolutionary movement in Iran now, to cross class lines, to bring men and women together rather than pit them against each other,

right? And to have a vision of freedom that is extremely capacious, right? In which nobody’s.

Nobody’s rights have to be sacrificed for the greater good, right? There, where we don’t have that kind of hierarchy in terms of what people imagine as an alternative. They don’t just want to replace one government with another, they want, they want transformed society, right? They want a society in which people can live differently in relation to one another. and I think that’s one of the accomplishments we see right now too, is that you do have a cultural shift. you do have every day, these daily acts of mass civil disobedience. Where women are

not wearing their hijabs in public and they’re not being harassed and targeted by ordinary people for those acts.

By and large, there is a new form of respect for women. There is a new sense that respecting women doesn’t mean men controlling women’s bodies. Respect for women means respecting them as powerful actors with the right to control their own bodies. And so the fact that so many women are moving through public space With

violating the laws of the land, not wearing their mandatory hijab and are supported

by the population, I think, represents the kind of cultural shift that really happens in the context of mass movements, mass shifts in consciousness that come about through struggle.

and those are victories that we have to continue to cheer on, because they can, of course, be. eroded. And as we know, the government is, is trying to attack that support, not only the women who don’t wear her job, but,workers in a restaurant who serve those women or in a cafe, a taxi driver who gives that woman a ride, workers in a bank who allow that woman access to her, to her funds.

You know, the government is trying to go after. Families right is trying to attack that massive cultural shift, and try to roll it back. But I think that’s going to be incredibly difficult to do.

[00:42:12] Nahid Siamdoust: Right. I mean, this has been a real problem. this, this context within which for decades people have formulated anti imperialism Also to mean that certain subjects are off limits, right? That we don’t talk about hijab as being central to these discussions because that could be seen as being Islamophobic and whatnot has kind of caused problems for a lot of thinkers and writers on, uh, you know, where to place themselves and

how to still remain anti imperialist while not being perceived as being Islamophobe. And of course, there’ve been many charges, launched against, especially sort of, you know, uh, leftists or anti imperialist thinkers, post colonial writers in the West. And, I wonder what, how you parse that out for yourself in, in your own work and writing.

[00:42:59] Manijeh Moradian: Absolutely. So, I mean, it’s, it’s so important, following on the work of many feminist scholars who’ve written about the history of hijab and the history of,how colonial powers really targeted Muslim women for de veiling as part of their identity. part of their conquest of, of different, um, you know, Muslim countries, it following in this vein, we really have to understand hijab as situated within, within histories, within societies and within power relations. So it’s

true that hijab can be. A form of agency and empowerment for women in certain contexts, for example, in the United States, where there’s so much Islamophobia, racism, discrimination against Muslims, the decision to wear hijab to claim your religious identity proudly as a woman and to reject the idea that Muslim women are weak and passive and dominated by men, you know, to prove

that wrong, right?

That’s a very powerful, it can be even a feminist act, right? but

in the context of Iran, where hijab is imposed by the state under the threat of violence with the entire repressive apparatus of the state backing that up, it’s a completely different situation. And so there’s no contradiction between opposing Islamophobia. in the United States and opposing mandatory hijab in Iran. If you.

have a consistent ethical politics of supporting liberation of supporting, women’s right to self determination over their own bodies, over their own lives, there’s no contradiction here. I think also the role of feminists everywhere. It’s to challenge the oppressive aspects of their own societies and cultures. It’s what we do in the United States. It’s what Iranian women are doing there. To acknowledge that there’s oppression in Iran is not necessarily to feed the logics of war and sanctions and

imperial aggression.

Right. If we don’t, if we’re not able to do both things at the same time, we essentially throw Iranian women under the bus and not just Iranian women, but all the oppressed populations of Iran,

I think, and religious minorities,Afghan migrant populations, or they’re not all migrants, right?

Many born in Iran with no rights. You we make connections between, for example, the attacks on immigrants in the U S and the attacks on immigrants in Iran. It’s not to say they’re identical, but they’re not unrelated. Nation states everywhere regulate gender and sexuality, try to control women’s bodies,

marginalize certain populations and hyper exploit them.

These are technologies of power, right? These are technologies of governance and power. They manifest differently. In different historical contexts, different cultural contexts. But I think that, that, you know, the job of transnational feminists is to build solidarity across these divisions and differences, right?

We have to be attentive to the fact that there are multiple sources of oppression in Iran. It’s true that sanctions and threats of war are harmful to Iranian people, but it is also true that the force that’s oppressing everybody in the day to day that’s right in their faces is their own government.

Right. and so we don’t have to pick and choose against, again, it’s a sort of move away from a hierarchical model

of thinking about oppression and liberation. and really, saying that we have to be able to, point out that, there’s a, there’s a collusion between foreign imperial aggression and authoritarianism in Iran. Right. That, I mean, you had people on the show a few episodes ago, I guess, or maybe the last episode who were talking about this, the way that the Iranian government really uses,sanctions and threats of war to, to its own advantage,and to the harm of ordinary people. So again, there’s more than one source of oppression.

And I think that it’s a huge mistake for People in the United States who are against Islamophobia, racism, and war

to think that our only job is to denounce us policy. If that’s all we do, we’ve essentially closed the door. To solidarity. And quite frankly, quite frankly, we’ve also seeded the issue of women’s oppression in Iran to people who maybe don’t oppose sanctions in war, right? To a kind of,Islamophobic and, imperial feminist analysis that can still really

dominate in Western context. So I think it really behooves those of us who are, who want to see an end to a foreign domination in the Middle East more broadly. To talk about the, the, the systematic, patriarchal authoritarianism, the state repression, the carceral state, you have to talk about how unjust and how brutal that government really is because we actually want to be on the side of liberation everywhere.

Right. The solution is not Western domination. The solution is, is, ordinary people getting to decide for themselves what government they want to have. And I think the Iranian people have really spoken over and over again this whole last year that this is not the government that they want. Right.

That they want to see a total and complete change, to a government that respects equal rights for everybody. And that is a legitimate demand. And I think if the left or if, if transnational feminists or really anyone based in the West can’t recognize that there’s a really big problem.

[00:48:28] Nahid Siamdoust: Yes. Wonderful. Thank you so much. that was all really so well put. And I’m thinking, in terms of your, the discussion that you have in your book, the Flame Within, you talk about, um, you know, leading up to the 1979 revolution and the activism among students, in the US and you talk about the webs of solidarity.

among, people from various parts of the world who are fighting for their own liberation, supporting Iranians. And I wonder, as this uprising was unfolding in Iran and you, yourself being situated in the United States,how were you observing what kind of webs of solidarity, international solidarity were happening for the women life freedom movement and how those were potentially different to what you studied in your book leading up to the 1979 revolution?

[00:49:20] Manijeh Moradian: Thank you for that question. I, I mean, it’s, there’s, there’s so much that’s different. so I’ll just start by pointing out. Maybe the obvious, right? Which is that during the period when foreign students were organizing a transnational opposition movement against US support for the Shah of Iran, this was, of course, the Cold War context, a context in which the US government was supporting Sympathetic dictatorships, dictatorship sympathetic to us interest across the third world right across Asia, Middle East, Latin America, Africa. This was a common policy coup d’etats like what happened in 53 in Iran were carried out by the CIA in multiple contexts, right? And you had anti colonial movements, often with the, very important participation of students and young people also happening around the world. So Iranian students saw themselves as part of a kind of global uprising, a global young people’s rebellion, right, against, imperialism. Right. and so in that context, it was much easier for people to compare notes, especially in diaspora where you had foreign students from many of the countries that had seen CIA backed coup d’etats then started sending their, their university students abroad to get a Western education and then come back home and help kind of uh, modernize and remake their societies to, to serve Western interests, right?

So that was the, that was why you had all these foreign students from Iran and other places in a place like the United States to begin with. And, among those populations, there were people who really couldn’t go along with that. They really didn’t feel okay with,being part of propping up these dictatorships and enriching, an elite at the expense of the majority of Their populations.

and they could compare notes. They could share their experiences of dictatorship of imperialism. and they could, they could make the connections, right? And the connection for, for most of these different, intercolonial movements really was opposition to us imperialism. There was a kind of clear line, a clear straight line.

You could draw right.

Support for Pinochet us support for the Shah. U. S. Support for the South Vietnamese dictatorship, and on and on, right? You could draw that straight line. and, and, and it was easier in a way to connect those dots, right? And to back each other’s movements. I think since 1979, since the Iranian revolution, Iran is not a neo colony of the West.

the, the oppression of it. Yeah. Carried out by the Islamic Republic. You can’t blame it on the U S you could talk about the complicated interrelation between sanctions and state repression. you can, you can unpack those dynamics, but it’s very, very different right then during the cold war.

And I think it’s that it’s that U S Iran conflict, the just overdetermined geopolitical hostilities between these entities that position themselves as polar opposites. This creates tremendous pressure. On the Iranian diaspora to pick a side, right? And because the majority of the diaspora, for very understandable reasons, is very much against the Islamic Republic.

It’s, it’s usually the reason they had to, to leave Iran, right? there’s this tremendous pressure to sort of ally with, Western governments, the United States government, or the UN, which of course is dominated by,sort of hierarchical security council structure. And there’s this pressure to. To ally with these, these Western, governmental sources in the hopes that they will have some power, some influence, some policy that can be beneficial to ordinary Iranian people. that can help ordinary Iranians in their, desires for more equality and rights and, and,to be free of the Islamic Republic.

But I think that is, that’s where we get into a bit of, of a mess, right? Because I mean, one, we could talk about if that’s true, if that’s the role that these Western governments really play, is there a record? Is there a historical record of Western intervention and policy really bringing about, you know, democracy and equality?

So, so there’s that, right? There’s like the empirical historical litmus test we might want to want to subject that to. But then there’s the other problem, which is that if you see western governments as your allies, it’s really hard to build solidarity with other social justice movements and liberation movements that are fighting against.

[00:53:42] Nahid Siamdoust: Mm hmm.

[00:53:43] Manijeh Moradian: U. S. imperialism. Neocolonialism extractivism, other other context in which the U. S. really is propping up really unjust power structures, right? So it kind of separated, it has the effect of separating Iran out from the constellation of social justice struggles, feminist movements in other parts of the global south.

For example, people don’t tend to identify with one another or make those links between the movements because Iran is sort of in this separate category.

All, all on its own. Right.

And that, I think that isolation is, is, is really something that I’m trying to,

and, and the networks and, and organizations I’m part of are trying to break out of, you know, is that we have to understand Iran as a site of patriarchal authoritarianism and various forms of resistance and struggle, just like so many other places, you know, and we have to try to break down those, um, Those, um, alliances between, the diaspora and Western governments and, and reroute solidarity through grassroots movements.

That’s much harder to do today when the left as a whole internationally is very, very weak. and when, Iran has been so pitted against, the West in a way that makes it very hard, to redraw those. Those lines of solidarity from below.

[00:55:05] Nahid Siamdoust: Right. And in, in your, in your, actions to really,help build structures for support and solidarity, you’ve been a founding member of the Feminists for Jina collective. And I just want to, as a kind of last question to you, I just want to know, what did you… as a collective considered to be important to put out in the manifesto that you all published. what is the work that Feminist for Gina, believed to be central to the kind of support that the movement needed? If you could just give us a little bit of insight into that.

[00:55:37] Manijeh Moradian: Sure. first, just one correction. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t say I’m a founding member of feminist Virginia. I would say that I was, I was lucky enough to be invited to join in the very early days of,

in in late September, of 2022. but feminist Virginia is really a remarkable, historical development.

It’s really led by. Iranian women who grew up in the Islamic Republic, who directly experienced, you know,the mandatory hijab among other forms of gender discrimination and, and, sexual inequality. And many of them were activists in Iran in the student movement

and the women’s movement journalists, and, doing all sorts of activities.

in Iran and now are in diaspora. And so this movement is, this network is really led by, by them. And I have the sort of honor and privilege of working alongside them, learning from them, and sharing what I’ve learned doing, work in diaspora

for, for so many years. I think what feminist Virginia has been trying to do is really, give voice to a kind of. Anti capitalist intersectional feminism. In other words, a feminism that has a broad radical vision for what social transformation and freedom and liberation really mean, right? So an organization that’s trying to bring together, the demands and aspirations of many different populations within Iran in a united, in a united,vision right for, the kind of future that would, make equality and justice, imaginable.

so feminist Regina has been, bringing a kind of queer sensibility, anti capitalist sensibility to a feminist, politics of solidarity. And I think that’s really unique, because I think there’s been a lot of feminist solidarity with, the, the movement in Iran, but there are many different kinds of feminism. and there are feminisms, as we know in the West, right? There are many different kinds of feminism and there are feminisms that, are,imagine that, what we need is, just Have women be equal to men, right? That’s one version of feminism, you know that women can be ceos, too You know things like that, right?

I think that the kind of feminism that feminist regina is rallying around And trying to uplift those tendencies within iran Um is is is something much more transformative much more radical, you know that that’s really about Dismantling structural oppression in all of its forms. And in this way, I think there’s a lot of synergy and resonance with other forms of feminism.

For example,

the forms of feminism that have emerged from, the, the black freedom struggle in places like the United States or other forms of feminism that we used to call third world feminism that emerged out of anti colonial context. in, in, in the previous era, in other words. The idea that in order for women to be free, we can’t just change a few laws that discriminate against women, right? we actually need to change the economic system as well as the culture, right? We need to change not just the laws of the land, but the way that we treat each other, the way we relate to each other within our families, within our communities, within our neighborhoods, on the street. that we need, we need a kind of revolutionary change at every level of society, right?

From the domestic to the public. To the legal, right, to the economic, right, that all of these are feminist issues and demands that we don’t, we

don’t separate them out, as if they’re separate from something like,ending ethnic oppression, right? of course we, we, this is embodied in the figure of Gina Amini herself as a Kurdish woman.

marginalized economically, ethnically, religiously, and because of her, because of her gender, there’s no way to separate those things out. They’re literally embodied, right? In the

same human beings. And so the vision of freedom, the vision of liberation begins from that embodied experience of overlapping oppressions, and therefore offers us a picture of the kinds of,radical change that we would need in order for real freedom to be possible.

[00:59:38] Nahid Siamdoust: Thank you. I mean, there are ways in which reality, every once in a while there are historical moments that so, clearly put forth these moments that, create waves and ripple effects and, and, clarities that,this confluence of, factors that it creates. comes together in Jina and causes this uprising is quite confounding.

And I’m not sure,

anybody writing a drama could have, could have done any, any better than, than reality and history itself. And, manager John, thank you so much, for giving me of your time again and for. explaining things in such a clear manner for, for all of our listens to just gain insight into these complex webs,economic, political, social, and every way that, that you’ve just explained to us.

And I really appreciate having you on this, anniversary program. Thank you so much for all the work you do and, for being with us, here.

[01:00:35] Manijeh Moradian: Thank you so much, Nahid, for creating this conversation and this platform and this opportunity. Really appreciate this podcast and you. Thank you so

much.

[01:00:44] Nahid Siamdoust: Hello, Fatemeh John.

[01:00:47] Fatemeh Shams: Hi, hi

[01:00:48] Nahid Siamdoust: this is this is take two. You’ve already given me a bunch of your time. We’ve had such a great conversation. And unfortunately, most of it is lost. So here we are, again,

[01:00:59] Fatemeh Shams: Yeah, it’s a it’s a double pleasure to be back so

Thanks for doing this again,

[01:01:04] Nahid Siamdoust: most kind of you. Thank you, Fatemeh John. Just a quick introduction; Fatemeh Shams is Associate Professor of Persian Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the interaction of literature, society, and politics. She is the author of “A Revolution in Rhyme: Poetic Co-option under the Islamic Republic” published by Oxford University Press. And, Fatemeh is also a very well known poet, and we recorded a wonderful episode a while back, a few months ago, on the poetry and the slogans of the woman life freedom uprising, and if you haven’t listened to it yet, I very highly recommend it.

So you know, we had this great conversation for this anniversary, so episode and, I’m just going to dig back into some of the questions I asked you, starting with, if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself, your trajectory, where you’re coming to the subject from, just sort of your positionality as academics like to say.

[01:01:25] Fatemeh Shams: right? Uh, well I was born. 1983, during the iran iraq war and I also grew up. under the Islamic Republic and was very much, trained and educated and influenced by the educational system in Iran, up to the end of my, college years as a, as a student in, faculty of social sciences in Tehran University. I was born and raised in Mashhad in northeast of Iran, which is one of the More conservative cities, compared to the rest of the country,it’s one of the major centers for Shi’ism, the city for, the shrine of the eighth Shia imam. So, really just, I was exposed to that, official, religious ideology that was constantly promoted. As part of the propaganda, machine of the, of the Islamic Republic since I was a child. and it was around, 17, 18 years old when I moved to Tehran in order to pursue a degree first in literature and then in sociology at Tehran University. And that coincided with my political activism. I became part of the student movement, and I remained active ever since politically speaking.

So, I would say. Tehran University and my years at Tehran University and my life experience in Tehran, and particularly in Kuwait on Ishqa, played an important role in who I became later in life. As an academic who also, regards activism as an essential part and parcel of being an intellectual, and an important,dimension in the life of intellectuals as far as, our field and our discipline, Iranian studies and Middle Eastern studies is concerned. in 2000 and nine, I would say the height of my political activism in the student movement really happened during the rise off the green movement. It was,

during that period that I,joined, the youth movement more actively as part of the youth youth campaign for, the opposition figures, meaning, at the time back then, I’m your and I played an active role in their campaign before having to, basically leave the country. and ever since I have not been able to go back, for a period of time between 2000 and nine and 2000. 13 14. I would say I, I had a, I had a very, I would say life changing, but also, traumatic experience of being exposed to many different forms of,state promoted violence, online digital trolling and also persecution of my family members back in Iran. and, I think that that kind of,affected my life in many different ways. and also my political views. as, as a formerly reformist and then later on, more on, kind of having moved on from that discourse as a, as a, as a liable way of change or a possible,trajectory of change for, for Iran. and, After that, I mostly was active,as as an advocate for the human rights and also particularly women women’s right. and Since last year, I have been deeply involved in the ongoing woman life freedom movement,

from, yeah, from afar.

[01:05:14] Nahid Siamdoust: right. You’ve been a very vocal voice, in fact, in online media spaces and, but you know, since, since you mentioned it, I’m just going to try to hold on to this moment in your life. In 2009, where you were very active in the reforce. And,you were part of the youth committee that was, planning events, even, I believe, or doing some of the thinking behind the Musevi campaign for the, for the youth, section of it.

Since then, you’ve had a complete break, as you said, with this movement and believing that things could change from within. And, this has been a conversation that’s been very recurrent in discussions about woman life freedom. And so I’m just wondering, having once believed in reforms from within,the system in post revolutionary Iran. Where do you think things went wrong? Was it the moment in 2009? When did it dawn on you that this, this system could not change and reform from within?

[01:06:09] Fatemeh Shams: Yeah, I mean, that’s a great question. I think what is important to highlight here is that is to, is to remember that A lot of those who were active in the student movement ever since the rise of the reform movement in Iran. the fact that they campaigned or they supported the reformist, candidates, including Mohamed Khatami and later on Miroseni Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi and Zahra Rahnavard.

It didn’t, it didn’t necessarily mean that these figureheads manifested all the ideals and all the dreams and hopes, off these student activists. That was basically the major reason I know for many of the student activists, in fact, and the reformists was the fact that, this is the, this is the only option, that viable option that we have at the moment.

If, If, we want to to have hopes for change, Sometimes, being, in a position that we are today with many years of experience and also having gone through that, transformation and having tried every possible option that was in front of us creates this dilemma that, whether or not we were in fact naive, whether or not we thought that, what we believed in or what we fought for, it was in any case doomed to fail. This is, this is a position that I see a lot of, a lot of our folks actually discussed, especially over the past year. Um, my reaction to that is that, I would like to see things in under a different light. And that is that we gave this system every chance that we could have imagined to, to avoid violence, to avoid, mass persecution and killing of innocent civilians. and it failed and it didn’t work because every single time There was a, a barrier. There was a, there was a very brutal response and crackdown going back to, his dead here. And, the students movement. I think the way that Mohammed Khatami responded to that crisis was entirely, disappointing and disheartening for the student movement. They still didn’t give up,to this day, and that doesn’t mean, the fact that they didn’t give up the resistance. It doesn’t mean that they they still had hope in the reformists. I think that hope faded away soon after,the crackdown on on the student movement. But the fight and the resistance still continued all the way through, the green movement and what, in its aftermath as well. And over the past, 14 to 15 years, I think what has drastically changed is not only,the hopes and ideals and, dreams of those who were active in the student movement or, in the reform movement, but but also the figure heads off of the of the reform movement as well. A couple of events that happened over the past year, I think we’re extremely important was that,after 14 years of being under house arrest.

Miro Saneh Mousavi called on the, founding,constituent assembly, Majlis al Mu’asassan, which, symbolically basically was a call on,putting an end to the, to the current regime and calling on, all different, opposition fronts and political fronts to come together in order to, envision a new political regime, and I think this is a huge step.

[01:10:02] Nahid Siamdoust: I was actually going to ask you, how do you then see, you know, within this context that you’ve just presented us, right? So what do you see as the achievements of this past year of the Women, Life, Freedom Uprising? I know there was a moment in time when we couldn’t even refer to it. as an uprising versus a revolution without getting a lot of, criticism from certain quarters. But at this point, it’s clear that as far as we understand a revolution to be a political, structural revolution, that hasn’t happened. But, oh, it has certainly been a cultural revolution.

And, but I’m wondering within this, context, what do you see as the accomplishments of this past year of the Woman Life Freedom Uprising?

[01:10:43] Fatemeh Shams: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the points that, A lot of, you know, our folks and, uh, scholars in the field have, paid attention to, and I would like to highlight it again because I think it’s extremely important to, to honor and cherish, the achievements and the accomplishments, Over the failures, is that, the much more visible and stronger presence off and, fearless presence off women and girls, who literally risk their lives every single day that they go out without a job has increased.

So this this incredible increase in the number off unveiled women and girls

who take the risk off getting arrested, but they go to the streets because they no longer are willing to give up the right that they feel and they think that they reclaimed at least to a certain level. Sure. there are up and downs in the numbers.

And also, if you consider a countryside or like provinces. depending on how conservative or, like less conservative provinces, the numbers might increase or decrease, but this is a fact. You talk to anyone from Iran, they will tell you, especially, in in major cities, even in conservative cities like Mashhad that I personally cannot imagine as someone who has not been back for 14 years. Sometimes my sister and my family members describe or share pictures. of certain, scenes in the bus, for example, or in galleries and exhibitions in supermarkets in, shopping centers that I cannot believe this is happening in Mashhad, one of the most conservative cities that they are closely, it has been always closely under surveillance because of its political and ideological significance. so there has been definitely a pushback, and this pushback has been very visible on the side of women and girls that still continues to this day. I think that has been the biggest accomplishment. And if anything is going to change, the start will be there.

As the body of the woman has been the main battlefield since the rise of this, government back in the 19 eighties. that’s the most important accomplishment. Another accomplishment that I think, the pressure that this movement has imposed on different factions of the regime has led to, important fissures and, and gaps and fractures within different political factions of the regime. We have had, as I mentioned, the reformist figureheads such as Khatami and Mousavi coming and calling on an end, either an end on the current political regime or, the more conservative, posture that Khatami. presented a few weeks ago, saying that, there is no hope for reform anymore.

And I cannot envision it personally. And this regime is going to, topple itself with its own hands if it continues to,to impose compulsory hijab on women. This is an important, change. Again, we might have a lot of critics, personally have a lot of reservations and criticism for Mohammed Khatami, but I think this is an important shift within the political factions themselves and the way that they have positioned themselves, the positions that they have taken over the past year compared to the, you know, to the pre woman life freedom. period or, the disagreements and the leaks that we have had, the news that has

Leaked about,internal disagreements and fractions within the IRGC, that, there was even an attempt apparently to overthrow the, the regime from within the IRGC itself, bombing the fire, basically opening fire on, on, on the leader’s office, which was then stopped because it was, it became really, I mean, it was revealed to that, prior to. To the attempt. but it was even something that the leader himself verbalized in his most recent speech before the IRGC commanders, and he warned them, you know,threaten them against this internal disagreements and fractions. I think these are important to to consider that, the price and the cost that this brave protesters have paid. has not gone in vain and it, it’s not, it has, hasn’t been just

failed and, is not going to be forgotten just because the political system didn’t change.

[01:15:26] Nahid Siamdoust: mm hmm,

[01:15:26] Fatemeh Shams: Another important accomplishment I would like to highlight is that, and I think it it’s relevant to what I said at the beginning, is that it seems like the collective. Imagination and desire for change and this intersectionality of all the sufferings and inequalities and discriminations. Against different, ethnic groups, religious groups, gender, orientations and sexual orientation orientations. All of this, along with the economic hardship have come to, head.

And the result has been the rise of an intersectional movement that is now

[01:16:08] Nahid Siamdoust: me

[01:16:09] Fatemeh Shams: creating and has initiated important conversations with other resistance movement for gender, equality across the world. And I think This is extremely important, for the feminist movement, for the women’s movement in Iran and in diaspora. yeah. And also to acknowledge what, and to remember again what, the sociologist Asif Ebayat mentioned in his observations of the movement, is that for the first time after 44 years, and I even would like to go beyond the history of the Islamic Republic and say in the, in the past. century really, the since the, the rise off Iran as a nation state.

This is the first time that we have a civil movement. that that has, is advocating for reclaiming the life itself. Jumbasheh barayi boz pasgiri zendegi. I think that the reason that This observation is extremely critical is to understand that Iranians, particularly the newer generation, the younger generation that had, was born and raised. under the Islamic Republic has come to a point of complete break from the ideology of the government as far as it, it’s concerned with their lives and personal lives and lifestyle and dress code and, little, freedoms and everyday life practices and experiences. This is, this is critical because I think once the lifestyle, becomes a concern, And the way in which people want to live their lives and not only the desire is there, but also we see that this desire has been put into action in the form of the movement that we have seen over the past year.

And it still continues. Then it will be very difficult for a political regime to continue to justify and legitimize its presence and its existence. It either has to transform or has to go away. So I think this is the dilemma that the Islamic Republic You You know, has been facing over the past year, and I also see that the brutal violence that has been used against the protesters in light off this particular observation because they do feel and see and realize that they’re in trouble in crisis, and they’re not willing to change their position. And The only tactic to an strategy for a regime that doesn’t or is not willing to change itself is either to fail or to incite violence, and they’ve chosen the latter. And I don’t think that, that’s a sustainable strategy that they can, move forward for for much longer. Yeah,

[01:19:17] Nahid Siamdoust: It’s really been interesting because they’ve really tried to Disperse the method of control through the people themselves, right? Asking taxi drivers not to allow women who are unveiled in or shopkeepers or restaurant keepers or so. It’s really an interesting moment to watch how these methods of sort of violent confrontation are almost being spread to be enacted throughout society. and I mean, you have gone from being very much within the heart of the, student movement for reforms in 2009 and the preceding years to now being very much part of the Iranian diaspora, quite vocal online and through your poetry and writing. And I wonder how you’ve been viewing the role of the diaspora.

And whether you, throughout this past year, whether there, there have been any moments of hope for you thinking that there’s a real, not really viable sort of opposition, from abroad, I don’t think that is accepted by most people in Iran. They know that their reality on the ground is ultimately what’s going to determine the.

the future. but you know, how do you, how do you see this activity outside of Iran, what have you made of it?

Do

[01:20:32] Fatemeh Shams: mean, the question of diaspora and how it has responded to this movement really Deserves, I think a full episode and a,

on its own and a roundtable where people can come and

speak, perhaps from different, actions of Diaspora as well. But just to, to briefly respond to this important question, I think that the way that the Diaspora responded initially, has been in many ways inspiring and really just unprecedented.

You know, the

chain off the protests that took place in major cities and the height of it really was the peak off. It was, that historical moment in Berlin. They’re more than some people say 80, 000. But you know, I was simply in Berlin and asking friends who actually were part of the collective will organize the protest.

And they were telling me that according to the to the to the police in Berlin, more than 100, 000 Iranians. showed up. And, and, that moment of solidarity, I think, was extremely important, inspiring, and it gave a lot of hope to not only those of us in diaspora and exile, but also to, folks in Iran. that, I’ve been in touch with. Unfortunately, I think one of the major, perhaps, criticisms or critical observations that I had was that at some point, I think, certain, factions of Diaspora, they forgot that whatever we as the Diaspora, members of the Diaspora, activists in the Diaspora are doing is really just a follow up or perhaps a support and, equal off what is happening on the ground. And I think the danger the risk for the for the any diaspora movement arises when they think that they are ahead off what is happening within the country.

And they are, ahead in the sense that they are the ones who should take the lead, and they’re the ones who should tell What people must do or must not do inside the country and a lot of these people were unfortunately have been detached physically detached from the the realities on the ground because of the political persecution and you know living in exile, you know takes its toll on many Different levels, psychologically, mentally, physically.

But I think one one important thing is that you lose touch with reality. No matter

how much you’re in touch with people, you are not there to bodily experience the violence in the street, the fear of getting killed and getting, arrested and tortured or beaten up as simple as that. And I think, anyone who is not on that position should constantly remind themselves that You’re not in a position to to call people to call on people to, go to the street and go on the front line. I think that, at some point having, too many, um Uh, calls on protests from outside without having a concrete and clear tangible idea of what is happening on the ground, unfortunately, led to a lot of,disagreements. And, in a way, I don’t know how to what to call that,

Conflicts perhaps a lot of conflicts

and a lot of misunderstandings between confusions between those who were inside and those who are outside the country. It also made it much easier for the regime to brutally crack down on the protesters and to easily just affiliate them. those protesters in the streets with, with opposition movement outside Iran. So I think

[01:24:20] Nahid Siamdoust: Mm-hmm.

[01:24:20] Fatemeh Shams: was definitely part of the problem. Another problem was that when the diaspora members and factions, they started fighting within themselves and accusing each other of being agents and lackeys of the regime or, kind of basically, in a way inciting the The same kind of violence that

the regime has been, inciting against a lot of exiled, opposition, activists over the past two decades. so what I think what that created was a, was a huge lack of trust. and, internal conflicts within the members off the opposition in diaspora where they could come to unity and, create a, a front where, different factions of diaspora could could take part in.

Unfortunately, certain factions, decided to take, to take the lead, without having any legitimate,

exactly navigation of the situation on the floor, but also legitimacy that they seem to create for themselves rather than

an sort of being organically ascribed to them. the regime of course, particularly it’s digital army and the cyber, attacks and the cyber trolls, they took advantage of these internal conflicts and at some point it was very difficult to actually. separate and distinguish between, online trolls, whether they are part of the opposition or they’re part of the regime.

and I think that was extremely hurtful and damaging, to not just, particular individuals who were trolled and attacked and humiliated and harassed, but also to the whole movement itself, because at some point. a lot of a lot of, activists. I personally observed that, they gave up

[01:26:12] Nahid Siamdoust: They kind of went silent, right?

[01:26:14] Fatemeh Shams: silent. They were pushed to silent. They were

canceled. They were harassed, even those even even though some of them still continue to this day. But it doesn’t mean that they’re not hurt. It doesn’t

mean that they’re not damaged.

[01:26:27] Nahid Siamdoust: Mm hmm.

[01:26:29] Fatemeh Shams: yeah.

[01:26:29] Nahid Siamdoust: It’s incredible because, you know, in some ways it almost seems like, the strategy both of the Iranian regime and of some diasporic groups who wanted to have a monopoly on the discourse was very similar. It was basically to stifle and silence debate.

[01:26:46] Fatemeh Shams: And I think one thing I will, I will add, I don’t know if there is enough time, but I think this is important is that I think one problem that most factions of diaspora in fact shared one, one, there was one particular, feature was there that mostly, I mean, I’m talking about the figureheads, right?

Yeah. It was this top down view off change. the political change that, they imagine that if if there is a change, there has to be a top down change. And I think that just entirely, ignored the fact that this was very much a an intersectional, As well as grassroots movement. You can say that from its key slogan and the way that it inspired the whole movement that it started as part of. Originally, it started by,grassroots activists, Kurdish women activists, Kurdish activists,

and for the first one, for the first time, it was chanted in Mahsa Amini’s Funeral by women, by grieving women who actually attended her funeral.

So if you go back to the roots, and I think this going back to this route is extremely important and then you come and then you flash forward and see what happened and how certain factions of diaspora, monopolize that slogan and

that whole struggle to a point that Kurdish activists. And,those who were affiliated with Kurdish movement, were easily accused of separatism.

[01:28:25] Nahid Siamdoust: Mm-hmm.

[01:28:26] Fatemeh Shams: and this is exactly what the regime has been doing over the past 44 years. And I think that was just a very disturbing, observation just to see how certain factions of diaspora are acting exactly in the

same fashion as this. fascist regime.

[01:28:44] Nahid Siamdoust: Playing into the hands. Fatemeh John,I have, the recording of the conversation between the four of you where you talk about future projections and your hopes forward is there and we will have it in this program, in this episode. So I just want you to rest assured that we will not be ending on this.

Dark note. the, these dark notes are there and they’re really important to acknowledge and, take, stock of, so, but with that, I’m, so thankful that you, came to speak with us again. Thank you so much for the work that you do and for your insights.

[01:29:18] Fatemeh Shams: Thank you, Nigel, for doing this important work. And, yeah, I look forward to, to the final episode when it’s out. Thank you.

[01:29:27] Nahid Siamdoust: Take care, bye. And with us, we have Nasrin

Rahimiyeh, who’s a Howard Baskerville Professor of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine. She’s the Editor in Chief of the Journal of, Journal of Iranian Studies and a former President of the Iranian Studies Association. Among other books, she’s the author of Iranian Culture, Representation, and Identity, published by Routledge in 2015. I’m so glad to have you on this anniversary program to discuss,aspects of the women life freedom uprising one year, one year on. And before we start, I just love to I’m going to ask you about yourself a little bit, if you could just share with our listeners a little bit about your background,your, your trajectory, your, where you grew up, and, and then we’ll take it from there.

[01:30:29] Nasrin Rahimieh: Well, thank you very much. First of all, thank you for including me in these conversations. I’m honored to be part of your podcast. I, I’m from Iran. Obviously, I grew up on the Caspian Sea in what used to be called Bandar Pahlavi and now Anzali. And I, did most of my schooling in Iran with the exception of the last year of high school when I was part of an exchange program that, allowed me to do my last year of high school in the U.

And I was very fortunate. I lived with an American family. that hosted me and they were, they treated me as their daughter. And I went to a private school in New London and that was my introduction to a life outside Iran. And after that, I had really planned to go back to Iran, but, my parents had other ideas.

So I ended up finishing, going to school in Switzerland and then Canada. And, the revolution happened while I was. studying Canada and then at that point, it became obvious that going to Iran was going to be delayed. At least that’s the perspective I had. and then I, before I knew it, I had started my academic career in Canada and 17 years ago, I was recruited. to the directorship of the Persian Center that they were creating here at UC Irvine. And so I’ve been here since then.

[01:32:02] Nahid Siamdoust: Wonderful. So at the time of the revolution, you were abroad and, observing things from abroad. and I’m, I’m curious, when the woman life, freedom revolution or uprising,

when this was happening, were you drawing parallels to your experience? And I know you weren’t there in person, but just observing it and being so close to it and having family and friends back home. But were you drawing any parallels to the years or months?

leading up to the 1979 revolution, or how are you comparing these two historical movements, when this was happening here?

[01:32:35] Nasrin Rahimieh: I saw a lot of similarities for me, obviously being on the outside, having, at that time, I was much closer to Iran in the sense of psychologically, I had, I hadn’t been too many years since I’d left Iran And I followed the news very closely. And of course, when we think back to it, it seems. It’s impossible to imagine that we somehow lived without social media and constant news feeds. But I was riveted by what was happening in Iran. So whatever I could read, I remember Manchester Guardian and Le Monde Diplomatique were kind of like my go to. And then, of course, listening to the BBC Persian, news service. And seeing the reports on television, and there was a sense of, even from, it was a sense of euphoria that was palpable even from a distance. And the fact that you could see and feel the will of the people, the desire for change. And I had a similar sense of attraction, like getting goosebumps last year,when the protests for, first started. And seeing these young people on the streets, and then, seeing the generations, across generations, how people were involved in the protests, there seemed to be a sense of coming together, a sense of community that I saw, not unlike what happened in the 1979 revolution. I mean, We did, we saw a lot more of the, government’s clampdown of the revolution, of the, I’m sorry, the Mass Amini movement, but, there were, there were decidedly similarities. What. Is what has given me pause, and of course the whole world, is how much and how quickly and how severely and violently the Islamic Republic has dealt with the protests. it’s the fact that’s, thousands upon thousands of people are imprisoned, are tortured, and that there are executions happening. it makes me want to stop at the parallels right there, because one thing that did happen in the 1979 revolution was at a certain point, it was like Iranians We’re not willing to kill other Iranians. And we saw the top ranking military people coming to the conclusion that yes, it’s over. Whereas this is not what we’re seeing today or we didn’t see last year when the protests were so widespread.

[01:35:21] Nahid Siamdoust: That’s really fascinating. Of course, at the time, the Carter administration was also really pushing the,the government in Iran, the Shah’s regime to, Act much more moderately on the human rights front and to release prisoners and to stop executions. And so, at the time, the government in Iran was also heeding calls from the U.

government, right, which was its biggest backer in the world. The Kavlevi regime was seen as a puppet regime in the Middle East. And of course. That kind of pressure coming from a foreign government that has hold so much sway over Iran is no longer given, right? Do you think that, that, had, that had something to do with, with what we saw back then?

Or how do you place the impact on the influence of the U. S. government on what actually ensued, leading up to 1979?

[01:36:17] Nasrin Rahimieh: I do think that had a major role. It, was obvious that the Shah. Was very much attuned to what the White House wanted and, the ways in which they were, the Shah and his people were heeding the messages from the U. S. So the Shah’s, uh, government was seen as a puppet regime. It was also very aware and conscious of how much it needed the support from the US. And I mean, the following the revolution, we have heard all these, Stories about how, the Shah felt that the U. S. had betrayed him and felt that it was pointless to fight and so on. I think there’s a huge difference because the Islamic Republic has not given up on its anti Islamic American and anti imperialist posture and, so in a way it feels like it has license to forge ahead and not worry about how it’s seen in the U.

or by some of the European allies, in fact.

[01:37:26] Nahid Siamdoust: Or in fact, it’s, regional supporters, given that they are leading equally repressive authoritarian regimes, right? If we think about Russia or China or, the, the countries that we now see conventionally as, allies of, of the Islamic Republic,

And I’m wondering, You have been part of the Diaspora for, over 44 years now, I know you write about, the diaspora, you’ve written about, Iranian, literature and culture and exile. Can you tell us a little bit how you’ve seen this diaspora change and what you think the impact of that has been on this most recent uprising, in terms of their support, their activism,if you can draw any sort of comparisons there, or what insights, can you offer on that?

[01:38:11] Nasrin Rahimieh: Well, yeah, I mean, the 48 years that I’ve spent outside Iran, and I think of the first few decades, it was just a very different sense of Iranians living abroad, particularly at the time of the revolution, where I was going to university in Canada, we could count the Iranians on one hand, fingers on one hand, and we were all still.

very much united and very supportive of the revolution and then as our, the number of exiles and refugees, grew post the revolution and the Iran Iraq war, our communities have, emerged differently. I think that they are, that we, we live very much, we have very much. complex diasporic communities now, depending on when they left Iran, what particular kind of ideological formations they come from, and their, sense of nostalgia, in fact, about when they left and what they left behind. So it’s a wonderful thing that our diaspora is so mixed, but at the same time, it creates this sense of fraction, and it’s much easier for me to detect a kind of, a lack of unity that sometimes manifests itself in very harmful ways. I, when I think back to the time of the revolution, there was this need to read, to find out, to listen to more reports, and everyone, who was, those of us who were students were working so hard to translate articles, pass reports back and forth. that wasn’t the sense I had, with the Maasai Amini movement. Initially, of course, I think the diaspora… Iranians organized, very well and organized protests in support of the Iranians on the streets. But unfortunately, it did not take very long before, those factions within the diasporic community started, attacking one another. And, it’s… Has been at times very discouraging, particularly when, we have seen the attacks directed at academics, journalists, social activists, people who want the best for Iran and do not imagine that they are necessarily intentionally. choosing the future political directions for Iran, but would support the movement. I think, unfortunately, there are those who see themselves, as having a role to play in the future, and at the moment when it felt like the regime might collapse, then we collapsed as a community, as I would describe it that way. It was disheartening for me to… Myself to be subject of so many attacks and to be painted as a, spy for the Islamic Republic is seen as a regime sympathizers. And at the time I asked myself, What good will this do? How are we helping our fellow Iranians in Iran? Our fighting among each other is not going to help the cause. If anything I think that it helps the Islamic Republic because they can develop, they can see how they can manipulate those wedges between us. So that’s a big difference I see in our diaspora community here.

[01:41:53] Nahid Siamdoust: That’s super interesting. I know one of the charges that happened, that were, launched against, Iranian academics in the West or other academics in the West who have been very hesitant to really highlight the issue of enforced hijab and other matters. the, the criticism that’s been leveled against them is that, they’ve turned a blind eye to women’s plights in the name of upholding their values of anti imperialism and,their, their ideological values. And, and I wonder if, if, if that’s, that’s a charge that you, parts of which you think are valid, like what do you, what do you make of these charges that are, launched at. academics in the U. S., not just by diaspora communities. but I’m talking about even, Bahar al Hidayat’s letter from prison, where she said, this, this is, this has gone off the rails, whereby, anti imperialists.

say that I, as an Iranian woman who is objecting, to the hijab, cannot speak for myself. What do you make of these charges against U. S. academics being too leftist to, see the validity of, the women’s resistance in Iran against certain forms of Islamic repression?

And I want to ask you, because in our original conversation, you brought this up. So I just want to get some of that from you again. But. about the misapprehensions of some of our,Muslim or hijabi colleagues in the West and their, stance vis a vis the women life freedom, uprising.

can you tell us about some of those conversations that you had, of, Well, people from the outside looking in and, through the mess of it somehow perceiving this uprising as being, in some ways against Islam or against hijab and finding it difficult to really express their solidarity.

I know you had shared, at least one conversation that you had with a, with a colleague. I’d love for you to just share that with us again.

[01:43:41] Nasrin Rahimieh: Actually, I do have a colleague, in our school who teaches Arabic, and she’s, very dear to me. I meet with her regularly. and she’s someone who, herself, veils herself. I, it was in the… thick of the, protests when she turned to me and she said, Oh, it just breaks my heart to see these women who are so misguided and, are protesting our right to wear the hijab. This is so unfortunate. And this is not what the message of Islam is. And I, I was quite taken aback by that because I felt that. Yeah, but this is, if you listen to the protesters, they’re not talking about Islam. They’re talking about, the kind of politicization and weaponization of Islam and autocracy that they’re I don’t think any of us would want to see Islam Christianity in any religion. So I was quite taken aback by her response, and I found myself a little, it kind of, reluctant to engage in that discussion because I felt that she had already taken such a strong position that If Iran stands for Islam and any countering of Iranian policies was in negation of Islam or challenge to Islam, that I must say, I didn’t do a good job actually turning that occasion into a dialogue, but I also had students from various Muslim countries who would Come to me and ask, what’s going on?

What do you think about this? Most interesting to me were the youngest women, Iranian Americans, and or from other Muslim nations, who really felt moved by their peers in Iran. How these young women were taken to the streets, were willing to risk their lives. So, we saw a mix. And, which is fortunate, but I also really always think about that opportunity that I missed to have a discussion.

[01:46:03] Nahid Siamdoust: Hmm. Well, if you were to respond to her today, how, how how do you think you would change your response?

[01:46:10] Nasrin Rahimieh: I think I would say to her, oh, yeah, I mean, I can see your point, why you might think that this is, this movement is simply about, People’s right to wear the hijab or to exercise or to, to live according to their, religion, but in, I wonder if I can give you some material, if we could talk about it and read a little bit together about, how the Islamic government uses. their so called Islamic values to, abrogate people’s rights, basic rights. And then I’ve had a sense that this colleague would be open to discussing about, discussing Islam itself, if, if it provides certain freedoms, if it’s a matter of, Thinking through your ideas and your beliefs and what is fundamental to yourself and having the right to choose,

I’m sure she wouldn’t negate it, but I think it was partially because she’s from, Egypt. And she probably has had very little to do with Iran, and she may not have, had an occasion to read about what has been happening in the post revolutionary period. I would definitely want her to read about the treatment of political dissidents, of the torture and rape of, men and women in prisons. I know that her values would not… and accord that as, normal behavior and Islamic behavior. So that’s, that’s what I would say to her. It would have to be a fairly extended discussion. I think

[01:47:51] Nahid Siamdoust: Right, right. And it’s interesting because actually in the Egyptian context, veiling and putting on the hijab has been an anti authoritarian, anti imperialist act over the last 20 years or so. So, it’s, uh, nearly sort of the opposite context. And it’s fascinating because, you know, when I, travel in the Middle East or talk to people, let’s say from, Pakistan.

I mean, at least Pakistan is not ordinarily seen as being the Middle East, but let’s say Muslim world, people from, Palestinians or Pakistanis or, Egyptians or, others in the region, there was a time. And I think this continues for certain groups where, you know, the Islamic Republic.

Is seen,as what it professes itself to be, which is a champion for Islam and independence and so on. But, of course, those people are not, uh, you know, they’re not intimate with how, what that actually means in translation as far as the people living in Iran are concerned and the violence of that kind of imposition of Islamic authoritarianism on the bodies of women and men on a daily basis and what that means.

Yeah.

[01:49:00] Nasrin Rahimieh: says something, about the Islamic Republic success, in its propaganda.

Right? Because, my husband once traveled to or quite a couple of times traveled to Lebanon

and, and he had, he would have run ins with people who would say, Oh, yeah, Iran, you know, we look up to Iran and so on. But, but, you know, at the same time in when he would involve them in discussion and say, tell me more about this.

It was like they give us support. Look at all the mosques they’ve built. Look at this

[01:49:29] Nahid Siamdoust: hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm

[01:49:31] Nasrin Rahimieh: So I think that’s, that’s what I mean by the very successful propaganda machine that the Islamic Republic has put in place.

And, so some of our neighboring countries actually see only those kind of what I, what I call like the, the, the success stories that the Islamic Republic wants to provocate. But it doesn’t, of course, underneath all that, it doesn’t talk about, how it treats its own people. And how it denies people basic rights under their own Islamic law.

[01:50:09] Nahid Siamdoust: It’s really fascinating. I imagine the people your husband spoke to were, the Shias in Lebanon or Southern Lebanon, South of Beirut and so on, because there are certainly parts of Lebanon where the Islamic Republic is just seen in the exact opposite way, right? So it’s whatever segments of that population that the, that Iran has been supporting over the last 40 years or so. So I just want to bring this to a close and just ask you, this is the question I was asking, our guests at the beginning. I’m now asking you, at the end of this,section of interview with you that I’m going to couple together with the rest. So a year on, what do you think the achievements of the Women Life Freedom Uprising have been?

What have been the accomplishments? What are some concerns? How do you wrap your head around it one year on? Thank you.

[01:50:55] Nasrin Rahimieh: I think it is a magnificent,reflection of what has been going on in the Islamic Republic, over the past few decades, since its inception, the Islamic Republic has been, fighting you know, numerous occasions women has been, I would say, misogynist in all its laws and social actions, and there’s not a single period of that history where we haven’t seen women rising up, protesting, fighting, sometimes in very pragmatic ways to change laws and so on, and I think that this is the culmination, I saw the protests as a culmination And, and not necessarily in the end of actually the, the movements that I see as having, been there from the very beginning of the revolution that, show us a kind of resilience and, steadfastness. In fighting the Islamic Republic’s, very, anti human, anti women laws and processes and so on. I, I think The Women, Life, Freedom movement showed the world that Iran might profess to be an Islamic republic, might believe to have support from certain, certain parts of the region, but it hardly can claim to have the support of its full population. The fact that different generations chose to come out to the street and the fact that it wasn’t just women protesting, but that men are also supportive of these changes where we saw the cross section of. University students, professors, people of all walks of life, it really showed us something of the Islamic, it sort of lifted the veil from the Islamic Republic and and showed the world something that it had probably not seen as well. And for that, I believe that it was a magnificent achievement. I don’t think it’s over. I don’t imagine that we will see quick change tomorrow, but I think that, by all evidence, the Islamic Republic is itself quite frightened, about the way its own population is turning against it.

[01:53:25] Nahid Siamdoust: Well, Nasrin John, I’m going to leave it at that. Thank you so

much for your insights. I really appreciate you being here, part of this conversation. You have been a very prominent part of the Iranian studies community in the U. S. and continue to be, as the editor of The Journal of Iranian Studies.

thank you so much.

[01:53:48] Nasrin Rahimieh: appreciate

[01:53:49] Misc: Mine.

[01:53:57] Nahid Siamdoust: Okay, and now we are getting to the unfortunately fairly short segment of the conversation that we managed to salvage from the previous recording, and this is where our speakers get to talk about their dreams and wishes and projections for the future. So, I am now going to roll back and play that part of the recording.

Um, I want to take us to the very last question because I know, some of you have to run and, I think you’ve all given us so much food for thought already. And, it’s a tricky question, but it’s just, you know, given that this movement has been so much about the imagination and, um, I wonder if you can give us your best guess for what we will see happen over the course of the next, um, let’s say five to 10 years where, you know, we talked about the achievements and the accomplishments of this uprising, which are immense, regardless of any kind of, structural revolution or anything like that.

Um, and in fact, those are Those outcomes are still unfolding on the, on people’s daily lives in Iran as we speak. But if you were to sort of project forward, where would you take this? if you want to speak with both feet on the ground in a very, practical manner, or if you want to take it into your imagination, Manish?

[01:54:53] Manijeh Moradian: Okay. I have no idea what’s going to happen over the course of the next 10 years. I can say what politically what I would like to see happen, what my, what my dreams are. so maybe I’ll just do that because that’s really all I can do. I do think that

those of us. Iranian feminists, academics and diaspora, I think we really do have an ethical obligation to do the work that Shala just outlined, which is really to, unpack these tangled knots, to reframe and rethink and resituate how Iran is understood in a kind of lexicon of,Feminist liberatory politics, right?

break out of this, the geopolitical top down frameworks that distort. and constrain, how Iran is, is seen and understood and that really placed tremendous limits, in terms of solidarity. So what I would like to see happen over the course of the next 10 years is, is really to, rebuild. A transnational feminist internationalism, you

know, what Veronica has called the feminist international, and to, to see that not as only something happening in Latin America, but to see that really as a global phenomenon that Iran is part of that, the Iranian movement is part of, and to be able to, to establish new lines of communication and learning and understanding that enable all. feminist activists in different parts of the world

to understand each other as peers, I think one of the significant developments of, of the,

of the Jinnah uprising is that the idea, the idea that Muslim women need liberating or saving by some outside foreign power, let alone by a military, I think is just completely discredited.

It’s like we see women in. Fighting to liberate themselves. And the question

is, how do we respond to that? do you stand with those women? Do we, can we make connections between our very different yet not unrelated struggles for bodily autonomy? here and there. Can we make connections between struggles against mass incarceration here and there? can we can we talk about an abolitionist feminist politics here and there? what other circuits, what other frameworks, what other ways of relating to struggle in Iran to oppression and resistance in Iran? Can we offer and can we foster and can we build that Again, move us away from these top down, by really these binaries, right?

The West, Islam, right? That’s just a disaster, especially for people in Iran, but also for, the hopes of a, of a, of an ethical, transnational feminist solidarity, so that’s, that’s where I can put my efforts, you know, small

and feeble as they may be, here. And I mean, my biggest dream. For the next 10 years is that we see successful feminist revolutions in country after country that not only dismantle patriarchy and oppression of LGBTQ folks, but that really challenged the entire economic structures of capitalism that rely on, gender inequality and ethnic and racial inequalities,

right?

I think it’s it’s that direction that, that the movement in Iran has been has been gesturing towards, right? And that Need to, nurture and uplift, and, and really,follow, follow that lead. So I hope that can flourish over the next 10 years.

[01:58:26] Nahid Siamdoust: Thank you. That’s really sort of a, projection for a global revolution and a beautiful image. So thank you for that manager John. And, what about Fatemeh? Mm hmm.

[01:58:37] Fatemeh Shams: yeah, I mean, I think we are. First of all, I think we’re very much still in the middle of this movement in the middle, in the

middle, in the sense that it’s very much still happening. And this, this process of becoming and transformation is still in place.

and I think also, if you look at,you look at what’s happening As we speak, in Iran, seems like the, the regime doesn’t want this to be over either.

it’s been, 11 months and still Niroofar Hamedi and Elohim Mohammadi and, you know, uh,

hundreds of others are still in custody and, uh, without fair trials. And I think this, what, what this means is that The regime itself has recognized, of course, has not acknowledged, but knows that it’s in deep crisis, knows that, you know, this paradigm shift in Iranian subjectivities. Has, taken place and, it, it witnesses the centrality of women and, and also men who are fighting, side by side, these women in the streets, it sees that the bodily relations of the citizens amazing, which those ideas and goals have been embodied in them, have completely transformed and if there is this,Naked violence, their violence

that we see against the citizens through different sophisticated mechanisms of oppression, identifications and so forth, or closure of businesses for serving unveiled women. I think all of this, shows that, this movement is still very much happening.

[02:00:13] Nahid Siamdoust: Mm hmm.

[02:00:13] Fatemeh Shams: And it’s a movement, as I mentioned, that is very much closely tied with life itself. So it cannot be pushed back very easily. And I think that’s really important, again, that this is something that, this movement has that previous

movements didn’t have, in my opinion, and it’s not something that could be stopped. As we move forward, I think one thing, that, was left out of the conversation because we are short of time, but I hope that there will be another conversation. Another subject that we need to unwrap and entangle is, the way that different segments of Diaspora,

[02:00:52] Nahid Siamdoust: Mm hmm.

[02:00:54] Fatemeh Shams: responded to this

movement, manipulated it, co opted it, hijacked it.

it’s binary of Islam versus West as much as it’s created in, parallel

resistance groups and movements and activists outside the Iranian society. It also is, is a binary that has been unfortunately fueled and, promoted by, certain figureheads

of the diaspora. I personally think, you know, in one of the questions you mentioned, since this is my last chance, I just wanted to say, I think that, based on my observations, at least,coming from a conservative, hometown in a place like Mashhad, in,among family members who were more traditional and, traditional practicing Muslims.

Even those have completely, separated, detached themselves from the state altogether. And for me, this is something that is not against Islam. This is about Islam, for sure. But it’s not

It’s against political Islam. It’s against religious ideology. Yes. And I think, one of the most important forces behind this are the, are the practicing Muslims themselves who don’t want to be identified by this regime and the way that, it spoils and manipulates religion in, you know, to serve violence,

nobody can predict. I think last year this time we could not predict what will happen in two weeks. This is how fast moving changes in a place like Iran. but I’m extremely optimistic about what has happened over the past year. today, uh, the Iranian singer Mohammed Yarrow, he was, was detained as we, we have this session holding this session.

I think it’s important to mention this because,a male singer coming

forward from within the Iranian, the Iranian borders and, and singing a song, inviting and encouraging, and hailing Iranian women for their bravery and courage, and then immediately getting arrested. I think it really just, metaphorizes the situation we are in very well, how art and how literature, how words are still very much inspiring, but also threatening, you know, to the core of the regime and how that can, move and mobilize people. And if you open social media, it’s all, all over social media, you see his pictures and, notes of, solidarity.

and sort of support coming from different people inside and outside Iran for this, for this singer. And I think this is where we are today. It’s extremely inspiring and moving to see how art and literature is still at the very core of this.

[02:03:36] Nahid Siamdoust: Mm hmm.

[02:03:37] Fatemeh Shams: and how women are the main engine and force of change.

And I really hope the world changes its frame by world. I mean, those groups that are really genuinely fighting for freedom and social justice to see what Iranian people Are seeing today. I think that is that that is something that needs to change. And I think that is our responsibility as academics to try to change that framework of thought about Iran

[02:04:07] Nahid Siamdoust: Mm hmm.

Thank you so much, Fatemeh Jan. Yes, and, um, Mehdiyar Rohi, of course, published the song Take Off. I mean, he says, Musarito Varda, right? That’s the main refrain of his song. And,. I’m, I, I’m trying to figure out if I should go to Shahla Jan or Nasreen Jan. Who wants to go first and who wants to have the last word?

[02:04:26] Nasrin Rahimieh: I

[02:04:27] Shahla Talebi: would not want to be the last word because

[02:04:30] Nasrin Rahimieh: Oh, gosh,

[02:04:31] Shahla Talebi: for me, to be honest, so there are a couple of things. So first of all, I mean, who knows what’s going to happen in 10 years, but there, there are worse scenarios and there are good ones.

So

[02:04:41] Nahid Siamdoust: hmm,

[02:04:42] Shahla Talebi: the worst one, I don’t want it. I hope and really hope that we don’t see something like China.

[02:04:49] Nahid Siamdoust: mm hmm,

[02:04:50] Shahla Talebi: Where it gets just keep it keeps using on the one hand neoliberal measures at the same time violence to basically keep the society in this kind of limbo situation. But it keeps going. So, I really hope that that doesn’t happen. My hope is that the resistance and the movement sees itself Less about when it’s going to overthrow more about what is experiencing, learning and accomplishing in a sense of really being able to nurture and nourish, and kind of leave life as, as a constant resistance, but also resistance as life itself.

Is that right? Meaning that the fact that you are living and keeping hope and joy and dance and an art and,friendship, all that is part of what this movement is really about wanting, having experienced so much of these different periods and seeing so many similarities The reality is that when you have high hopes of something, accomplishing something in a short period, the way in the beginning we were saying, Oh, Aban is the last month or

this,

[02:06:12] Nahid Siamdoust: hmm,

[02:06:13] Shahla Talebi: that has its setback in, in, in, kind of losing hope in ways that are dangerous. For individuals, because I’m thinking about individuals, I’m thinking about every person behind the person who loses the eye, the person who is injured, the person, you know, so all these people, the families who have lost people, who have lost their loved ones. So the most important thing for us and for people in Iran is how to continue a conversation, continue creative work together, the labor of love and, and, and life in a way that keeps it, keeps a different kind of revolutionary imagination, constantly experimental on a daily basis. And that’s something that I think is really important for us because to think that we’re going to overthrow this government has, I mean, when we say why they didn’t back up, they actually first, there were some groups within them, fractions within them, which were considering the possible, but they know that this generation and these people have gone through enough to know What they are really trying to get, the kind of life they want to live, it’s not possible for this government to give.

They know that the moment that they back up, they themselves said very directly that they’re not going to be what the Shah did. In

their view, the Shah didn’t fight enough, didn’t stand. Back off, the moment that it was back off, it was, the hill broke up for them.

[02:07:58] Nahid Siamdoust: mm

[02:07:59] Shahla Talebi: See, it shows how people are strong and, and, and, and how they have really put pressure on them. And I think living and enjoying life and remembering the ones who have passed away for their lives, which is what people have been doing nowadays

[02:08:18] Nahid Siamdoust: hmm, mm hmm.

[02:08:18] Shahla Talebi: and imagining the best and knowing that this imagination is itself a source of resistance and is resistance. I think for me is the best scenario.

[02:08:29] Nahid Siamdoust: Right, thank you so much, Alojan. I kind of want to bring another context in, but I think I’ll leave it for now because we’re in such a sort of wonderful, dynamic realm of, cherishing. all the, the ways in which just what’s been happening on the ground itself has been so fruitful and momentous rather than, focusing on, there is, of course, an economic aspect to all of this.

And the U. S. is both the regime and the U. S. are, culpable of making life impossible for, Iranians. But, if we just leave the economic aspect out of things, I think then, this, this imaginary, Certainly takes flight. Nasty and John, you are, you will have the last word. What are, what are, what do you foresee for the next 5 10 years?

[02:09:15] Nasrin Rahimieh: I think that this movement, however, it morphs and transforms itself will be ongoing. I had a conversation two or three months ago with Parvin Ardalan. And she was one of the co founders of the One Million Signature campaign. I really wanted to get a sense from her as someone who was so involved on the streets at that particular moment. And she gave me a lot of hope because she Um, depicted a kind of trajectory for, as someone who had herself grown up, after the revolution and found it, found herself, needing to fight for basic rights of women. She said something quite compelling and she said, We, it’s as if we have always known that the Islamic Republic is misogynistic, but now no one is willing to let them get away with it. So even Iranian men, as many have, many of our wonderful collaborators here have mentioned, are part of A movement, because there’s no longer a separation between, oh, are you on this side or that side, whether you’re a man or a woman. Um, so I see a continuation, and I also anticipate a lot of twists and turns, because I don’t think regimes come down, merely because of their desire to, okay, I give up now. I think that Iranians themselves, have shown that they have incredible resilience. I separate myself from Iranians living in Iran. My wishes for them are, of course, one thing, but their resilience has given me so much. to think about and to hope for. I do, I have, my one wish that I have is that the, some of our, benighted, diaspora Iranians butt out. And let Iranians

run this movement

I live for the day that I will see Iranians liberate themselves in whatever forms and shapes they choose. I see a generation that is giving me at every turn, reason to believe. In a bright future to come when I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone can predict that.

[02:11:48] Nahid Siamdoust: Wow, thank you so much. I think those are really wonderful words to end on. Um, thank you so much for sharing your insights with our listeners. And I think it’s just important to hold on to all of this thinking as we’re going through these times, because, you know, as a, as a scholar of Iran, I find myself often thinking, well, what, what did they really think at that moment in time, rather than what the historians wrote afterwards.

And sometimes we have those sources. Sometimes we don’t, we’ll have. Plenty on this, on this movement and I’m really pleased about that. Thank you so much all again. for being here today.

[02:12:23] Nasrin Rahimieh: Thank you,

[02:12:23] Manijeh Moradian: Thank you.

Nahid.

[02:12:24] Shahla Talebi: you for having

[02:12:24] Nasrin Rahimieh: Thank you.

[02:12:54] Nahid Siamdoust: You were listening to an episode of Women, Life, Freedom, All In on Iran, broadcast to you from the University of Texas at Austin. I’m your host, Nahid Sianbdoust. Until next time, zhenjian azadi, zan zendegi azadi.