The futility of oppression in Iran

Tuesday, September 27, 2022 | 270 Views |

Caption: A protester holds a portrait of Mahsa Amini during a demonstration protesting her death at the hands of Iran's morality police PHOTO: AFP

Sometime between June and July of 1848, at a conference in the city of Bedasht, in the Semnan Province of Iran, a Babi poet and revolutionary named Fatimih Baraghani Tahirih dared to appear unveiled in front of 80 men.

Tahirih lived during the Qajar Dynasty, when women were ignorant, illiterate, and kept hidden from the public gaze – a milieu marked by totalitarianism, dogmatism, and unquestionable patriarchy in its most severe forms.

Tahirih's intellectual abilities, eloquence, poetic talents, insatiable curiosity, and unwavering courage made her one of the rarest women of her time – a result of the wishes of her father (an Islamic scholar of Qazvin) to educate his beloved daughter within the confines of his own library. Tahirih's audacity to do the unthinkable – her fearless action of presenting herself to her male companions without her veil – may have been a rude awakening for many who were unwilling to.

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