‘Western feminists are worse than useless for Iranian women’

As many as 30,000 protesters may have been killed by Iranian security services earlier this month, on 8 and 9 January alone. This was an unprecedented display of brutality, even by the standards of the Islamic Republic. Even more striking still has been the muted response in the West. Anti-government protesters are fighting for freedom, democracy and against religious tyranny. Many of those bravely battling against the regime are women, desperate to overthrow harsh Islamic strictures, including forced veiling. So where is the solidarity from Western ‘feminists’ and ‘progressives’?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali – founder of the AHA Foundation – joined Brendan O’Neill on The Brendan O’Neill Show to discuss the Islamic Republic’s oppression of women and why so many in the West are turning a blind eye to it. What follows is an edited version of their conversation. Watch the full thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: What is it about women that terrifies Islamist governments so much?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Our bodies. There is all this mystification surrounding the female body, of sex and sexuality, of stories that were told over centuries before science and Enlightenment thinking became mainstream. Even in Europe, women were seen as ‘witches’, as devious.

All this is far more pronounced in Islamist theology. There is this acute terror of female anatomy. You’d be surprised by the amount of time these cultures spend deciding which parts of the body a woman is allowed to leave uncovered, and which parts she isn’t. The most fanatical Islamists – like the ones that rule over Iran – have come to the conclusion that absolutely everything has to be covered.

Back in the 1980s, I remember being part of discussions where supposedly ‘moderate’ Islamists would say ‘you should be able to bare the hands, face and feet beneath the ankles’. Then counter-theologians came along and said even that much might be triggering for men. ‘Triggering’ in this context means men would lose control of themselves sexually and experience a fitna – an overwhelming temptation – that forces them to jump these women. ‘It’s the eyes, it’s the lips, it’s the forehead’, people would say to justify the face being hidden. Then it became the sound of her laughter, her scent, the tap-tap of her heel on the pavement. In countries like Saudi Arabia, women have to wear gloves in the 35-degree heat. They walk around in the sweltering heat like tents on legs. All of this has been justified in the name of ‘protecting’ women and protecting society from the disorder they might unleash.

In such cultures, the idea prevails that women must be limited early – stopped from conjuring insatiably high libidos with that sexual magic or witchcraft, or whatever it may be – by marrying her off as soon as possible. When Khomeini came to power in Iran, he legally changed the age of marriage to nine years old. From a Western moral perspective, that’s institutionalising paedophilia. There can be no doubt that this regime and its Islamist narrative is pure evil.

However, on the flipside, what I find really fascinating about Iran is how the Iranian men stand with their women. This means women can actually go out and protest, organise, reject and subvert these restrictions with the help of Iranian men. I think of Iranian men as really brave and honourable. Fathers stand with their daughters, husbands stand with their wives, brothers and cousins and nephews stand with their female relatives against the regime, against its oppressive ideology. When you look at the Middle Eastern diaspora, the most emancipated, educated and balanced women are Iranian.

That is why it’s so jarring to see these crazy white liberal feminists in the West spewing hatred against men. Iranian women look at that and think, ‘That’s not feminism’. They’re not fighting for the right to mistreat men in Iran, but against a brutal regime that wishes them harm. You cannot possibly achieve that without the help and protection of men.

O’Neill: What kind of calculation are Western feminists making when they decide certain women are not worth defending?

Hirsi Ali: Well, what is certainly not going through their minds is the victims. Victims of grooming gangs, victims of female genital mutilation, victims of Islamic regimes – the Western liberal feminist isn’t sparing a second thought for these girls.

When I first came to the Netherlands in 1992, I witnessed just how emancipated women were, how powerful and equal and free they were. I was so impressed. I asked everyone how this came about, and they told me it was because of feminism. So I started out falling in love with the idea of feminism. I thought feminism was a great thing.

However, not all things are as they first appear. I started to look back into what we call feminism in the modern era, which is really very different from those early narratives. Philosophers of the 18th century were thinking maybe it was time to send girls to school, to offer them higher education, perhaps give them the right to vote and treat them equally before the law. But when I look at today’s feminism, all I see is a branch of the identity-based agenda, which women are being used to advance. The so-called feminists who are putting pussy hats on and protesting Donald Trump’s inauguration aren’t fighting for anything meaningful.

At the same time, much of the progress our predecessors fought for is now being undone. Women-only spaces, rooms where you could go and not feel ogled by men, places as intimate as toilets, changing rooms and hospital wards – they’re now being opened up to men pretending to be women. And there’s lots of ‘feminists’ who have nothing to say about it. More than that, they actively participate in the denigration of womanhood. They demonise and cheapen things that were once sources of joy, like marriage and having children. Lots of women who grew up with those narratives have now turned their backs on partnership and motherhood entirely. That is why I do not like Western feminism. They have made feminism impossible for me to cherish any longer.

O’Neill: What have you made of the cautious response from the broader left to the recent uprising in Iran?

Hirsi Ali: An emancipated, truly liberated Iran is not in the interest of the people who call themselves ‘progressives’. Iranians want a functioning economy that’s based on a growing market economy – a capitalist model. They’d like to work with Israel, America and other Western countries. They’re fighting for individual rights. They’re fighting for the rights of women. They’re fighting for all the things that progressives purport to fight for, but actually want to destroy. They care about family, about schools that transmit knowledge and wisdom instead of identitarian politics. There are also hundreds of thousands of Iranians who are converting to Christianity, which simply does not fly with people on the left today. They hate all of that.

So no, they’re not going to stand with the people of Iran – the same way they’re not going to stand with those Venezuelans who oppose Maduro, or Muslims suffering under the CCP in China, or Jews in Israel who are surrounded by enemies who wish to see them wiped out.

To Islamists and even many leftists, the human being is worthless. The ends justify the means. So if the Iranian regime is killing a lot of people – which it is – while simultaneously advancing an agenda they approve of, they’re at peace with turning a blind eye.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was talking to Brendan O’Neill. Watch the full conversation below: