Masih Alinejad is an Iranian journalist, author and women’s rights campaigner. She hosts “Tablet,” a talk show on Voice of America’s Persian service.

On July 17, Instagram restricted my access. I still don’t understand why.

What did I do wrong? I still don’t know. Instagram didn’t initially offer any explanation. I might guess that my offense was giving voice to the voiceless in Iran. My 7 million followers on Instagram make for a powerful platform.

On July 12, Iranian women had staged a day of action to challenge the Islamic republic’s National Day of Hijab and Chastity, set up to reinforce the country’s harsh law on forced veiling. Over the next days, I posted many videos on my social media feeds showing women defying the regime’s official dress code.

There were confrontations between these women and the morality police and security forces. In one video from July 16, a hijab-wearing woman films a bareheaded woman on a bus, warning that she will send the recording to the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Another woman on the bus films her in return.

“I know you are filming me now to send it to Masih Alinejad. She cannot do anything to me. But the Revolutionary Guards will destroy you,” says the traditionally attired woman. One of the other female passengers retorts, “I’ll send my video to the whole world.” Other passengers stop the bus and push out the veiled harasser. (The woman who refused to wear the hijab was later arrested.)

That video — which I shared — went viral on social media; it was viewed 2.5 million times on Instagram and more than 1 million times on Twitter. It shows how many women are resisting forced Islamization.

A day later, I suddenly received a message from Instagram informing me that it had restricted my access: “We limit how often you can do certain things on Instagram to protect our community.” For a full day, I wasn’t able to use Instagram Live. There was no further explanation or appeals process. “Tell us if you think we made a mistake,” the note concluded, offering two options, “Tell us” and “OK.”

So I clicked on “Tell us.” I got a pop-up window that said: “Thank you, your response has been recorded.”

That was it.

(Asked to comment, an Instagram representative said the restriction “was placed on Masih’s account incorrectly because of a technical issue,” explaining that the platform automatically issues restrictions “when our systems detect spammy behavior.” The representative added: “It is against our policies to take action on accounts at the request of the Iranian government.”)

Since launching the “My Stealthy Freedom” campaign (1 million followers) against compulsory hijab on Facebook and Instagram in 2014, I have been targeted by the Iranian regime for my activities. I spent months in multiple safe houses last year after the FBI foiled a plot by Iranian agents to kidnap me in New York and whisk me back to Iran. On all my social media platforms, I am targeted by cyberbullies, fake accounts spreading false narratives, and even troll accounts impersonating my page.

But now I also feel targeted by the social media platforms. Earlier this year, I met some fellow Iranians who said they couldn’t find me on Instagram. Odd but true! Despite my officially verified account and millions of followers, I was invisible to the network’s search engines. If you typed my name in the search box, more than 50 accounts popped up — but none was mine. (By comparison, when my husband, a Led Zeppelin fan, typed in “Jimmy P,” the verified account of Jimmy Page came up immediately.)

This was not some random glitch. To me, it seemed that someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make me unfindable on Instagram.

I managed to complain to Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Meta, which owns Instagram. The company fixed the problem after a week, but no one ever explained how it was possible for this to have happened in the first place. (The Instagram representative said there have been “instances where we’ve removed content from [my] account in error, mistakenly believing they broke our rules.”

I’m glad Instagram has admitted its mistakes. Technical issues happen; social media restrictions aren’t necessarily proof of censorship or nefarious influence. But there’s a troubling pattern here. Why did the system restrict my account right at the moment when I was about to promote a protest against compulsory hijab? If algorithms have the power to restrict accounts, can the Iranian regime game those systems in its own favor?

And then there’s the human factor. Many Iranians have been accusing Instagram and Facebook content moderators of deleting or censoring accounts that track the regime’s human rights abuses. In May, Iran International blamed Instagram for removing images of security forces beating protesters and firing tear gas into crowds.

Meanwhile, whistleblowers who had worked for Telus International, a company hired by Instagram to monitor content, claimed that Iranian agents have offered as much as $10,000 to delete and censor accounts (including mine) that report on human rights violations. (Telus International told the BBC that it believed the accusations were false “but that it took them very seriously and had launched an investigation into their merits.” In its statement to The Post, Instagram also said it has seen no evidence for the claims but is investigating as well.)

Last week, when security forces stormed the houses of the activist group Mothers for Justice, they warned members of the group to stop using Instagram to speak up about the killing of their children. That tells you everything you need to know about Instagram’s importance as a means for creating open discussion in Iran.

Social media gives ordinary people a chance to push back against the lies of authoritarian regimes such as Iran’s. Social media companies should not be doing the work of authoritarian governments. They should be helping to spread the truth.

washingtonpost

I am a woman of color. A woman from the Middle East, from Iran. I immigrated to the United States to be free. I know writing these words will make me politically incorrect in today’s media but I am going to write them anyway as they are the truth and the truth must be told.

“As a women who lived under Sharia law for 28 years, I am afraid of Islam.” There. I said it. 

This is what Middle Eastern women have been tiptoeing around in the #LetUsTalk campaign on Twitter in the past two weeks. It has been like walking on eggshells. Some women in our campaign are afraid to say these exact words because they work in academia and they are worried of being sacked. The journalist who initiated our campaign, Masih Alinejad who has 7 million followers on Instagram and three hundred thousand on Twitter has been shadowbanned on both platforms. 

Yet what we say is just the truth. We, the women, were forced to wear hijab starting at the age seven. We could not get education without wearing hijab. We would have been arrested, lashed, and prisoned if we didn’t wear hijab in public. We were not allowed to sing and dance. We could not travel abroad without the permission of our husbands. Our testimony was worth half a man’s. We inherited half of what a man did. We were not guardians of our children, only their fathers and grandfathers were. Yes, as a women I am afraid of Islam as it as inherently a misogynistic religion. I have experienced it first hand for 28 years and I am not the only one. Millions of women from the Middle East can share personal stories of oppression with you.

I have been told my experience is not of Islam but the extermists ruling in Iran. To those, I say listen to the women who suffered the same in Muslim communities in Canada and the US. Read Yasmine Mohammad’s story. Watch Unorthodox. Even though Unorthodox is about a Jewish woman in New York, she went through the same oppression that we Middle Eastern women did.

But, why does this all matter, you might ask. Because we see a trend to embrace hijab as a symbol of diversity in the West and we, the small minority who escaped Islamic countries are hushed with the excuse of Islamophobia.

As an American I cherish freedom of religion, free market and freedom of speech. I enjoy seeing people of different religions living peacefully together. I can see that as Christians build churches and send their followers to missions, Muslims build mosques and advertise hijab. Yet criticizing Islam has turned into a politically incorrect topic while I am free to criticize Christianity all I want.

February first is Hijab day. Hijab is a symbol. A symbol that women do not have the same freedom as men. It is a symbol of oppression. I know most people who use it as a symbol of diversity are well intended. But they are not well informed. After all, how many of them have worn a scarf for twenty years?

By Elnaz Sarbar

Elnaz Sarbar is a women’s rights activist based in California

By INNA SHEVCHENKO
Charlie Hebdo

This is the #MeToo of clothing harassment. Voices of Middle Eastern women living in the West—or not—who had to wear hijab—or still do—are rising. They claim that the Islamic veil is not a harmless trivial garment and even less a freedom for women. Hoping to be heard by some feminists who repeat like a mantra that the veil is a choice.

It all started as a new episode of intellectual cowardice and capitulation to accusations of Islamophobia. After the Canadian Medical Association Journal published a photo of children on its cover in which a little girl was wearing hijab, pediatric surgeon Dr. Sherif Emil sent a letter to the editorial team entitled “Do not use an instrument of oppression as a symbol of diversity and inclusion.” The doctor takes issue with the commonplace use of such images in Canada’s largest medical journal: “It has become ‘liberal’ to see hijab as a symbol of diversity and inclusion… Hijab, niqab and burka are instruments of oppression for millions of girls and women around the world who are not allowed to make a choice.” The National Council of Canadian Muslims called for the immediate removal of the text from the journal’s website. The letter was immediately removed and the editor in cheif apologized for making the doctor’s “wrong, hurtful and offensive” words public.

This time, however, the cowardice of some has revealed, in contrast, the bravery of many others. Many Middle Eastern women living in the West reacted to the incident, launching a major campaign on social networks and demanding that they be listened to on issues that affect their lives, such as the religious dress code. The #LetUsTalk campaign went viral within days.

“In Iran I was told if I don’t wear hijab, I get kicked out from school, I get jailed, lashes, beaten up, and kicked out from my country. In the West I’m told, sharing my story will cause Islamophobia. I’m a woman from Middle East and I am scared of Islamic ideology. Let us talk.” It is with this tweet that the famous Iranian activist against the mandatory hijab, Masih Alinejad, reacted to the censorship of the doctor’s letter. With these words, accompanied by a childhood photo of herself wearing hijab, she inspired an avalanche of similar confessions. Her tweet was liked by more than 30,000 people and the hashtag #LetUsTalk began to spread.

“I used to secretly remove my hijab just to feel the air in my hair. This ideology stole my life,” tweeted an exiled Saudi woman, Rana Ahmad. “Another day in Germany, where I walk under the sun without this hijab that makes me feel like a second-class citizen, like I did when I was in Saudi Arabia…,” wrote another exiled Saudi woman, Loujain. “In Yemen, I was forced to wear the hijab at the age of six and the niqab at the age of thirteen, and when I decided to take it off, half of my family abandoned me, and then when I took off the hijab and the abaya, I lost everything,” confesses Basma Nasser, who now lives in France.

Hundreds of similar stories are now being posted and shared on Twitter, contradicting both the defenders of Islamism, who stage Islamophobia trials, and some Western feminists, who have blindly adopted the mantra “hijab is a choice.”

To be honest, I didn’t expect my message to create such a wave around the world,” Masih Alinejad confessed to Charlie. This time it’s not just Iranian women speaking out. I see how this campaign has united many women from Muslim countries or Muslim communities in the West. All these stories are full of pain. We are trying to make the rest of the world understand that we, the women who have lived under Sharia law, are the ones who know the most about Islamic ideologies and that we have the right to be afraid of all the brutality we have suffered. I have the right to tell my story!”

They want to be able to tell their stories without being accused of Islamophobia.

But they also want to be heard by Western feminists, many of whom have taken up sexist religious rules of modesty and disguised them as symbols of “empowerment”. “#LetUsTalk is aimed at Westerners, especially feminists, asking them to stand in solidarity with women oppressed by Islamic law,” another Iranian woman, who resides in France, Aghdas Khanoom (pseudonym), tells Charlie. “I have been silenced in my country, and now in the free world. And it is even more painful.” A sentiment also shared by Shammi Haque, a Bangladeshi journalist exiled in Germany: “I decided to participate in this campaign in the hope that Western feminists would understand our pain and suffering, that they would understand what the veil/hijab really means and stop promoting it. In the name of diversity or to protect minorities, German feminists are blinded by their privilege.” Basma Nasser, a Yemeni student exiled in France, also insists that “there are some political currents in France that consider hijab as a choice and see it as an Arab culture, which is not true; how can we say that hijab is a ‘personal choice’, if there are no other options, if rebellion against hijab is a crime in many countries.”

And while in the West rebellion against hijab is not a crime under the law, confessions posted via #LetUsTalk reveal that many women do not experience hijab as a “choice” in Western countries either. “I converted to Islam when I was 28. I fully accepted all the rules and practices. Hijab was never an option. I never questioned it until the end of my marriage, when I started to take it off sometimes when I was alone. When my husband found out, he told me it was grounds for divorce,” tweets Deborah from the UK. “In Canada, I was forced to wear hijab at age 9, the niqab at age 19. I was disowned and threatened with death because I choose what I wear on my body,” says Yasmine Mohammed, who escaped a forced marriage and became a women’s rights activist. She points out that in the West, women in Muslim communities can be forced to cover themselves not by law but by devious methods, “including being told that only whores don’t cover themselves and being threatened with burning in hell for eternity.”

Indeed, while Iranian women continue to be imprisoned for removing their hijab, while Afghan women resist the Taliban who are once again erasing women from public space, in the West we are busy promoting the wearing of hijab, in fashion, in advertising, and in the media, all the while patting ourselves on the back for our tolerance… And Middle Eastern women in the West who dare to speak out against the dress code of modesty are silenced by the Islamists on the right, and by the “progressives” on the left. Let them speak!

CHARLIE HEBDO