BBC – 10/4/22 – Iran protests: ‘The people will fight until they succeed’

This news story from the BBC gives the perspectives of three Iranian women about the recent protests for more women’s rights in Iran. They mention what protesters have faced, including being hit by batons or being shot, and how their local areas have changed since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in Tehran. It has ignited a new wave of people to fight for new rights and freedoms. One of the women even mentions taking off her hijab when walking right in front of the police’s eyes. For a lot of them, it seems like a new era in which the people will keep fighting until the regime gives in. In the context of our study of the Middle East, this news story gives an example of some of the contemporary conflcts that are rooted in historical debates about religion, culture, and society in the region. The BBC news story, relying on the direct accounts of three women, deviates from how many have characterized recent developments in Iran or the Middle East in general in which there are ‘oppressive’ or ‘tyrannical’ governments at the heart of a region that have always been ‘unstable’. Although we do not want to minimize the actions of the more authoritarian regimes or the stories of the people living there, as historians we have to be aware of using a biased or skewed lens, especially when the ‘Orientalist’ view has taken hold in Euro-American politics and culture for a long time.