Angels Die Too

“They killed my angel,” says the mother of the young Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, after she was killed following her arrest by what is known in Iran as the “Guidance Patrol”!
Amini was arrested on September 13 for not complying with the “dress code imposed on women.” She was pronounced dead on September 16.
The testimonies of eyewitnesses conflicted with the official statement of the state investigation. While witnesses reported Mahsa being hit on the head during her arrest, and the Bandar Abbas Medical Authority confirmed ear-bleeding, the official investigation announced that the cause of death was heart failure. As proof, the state published surveillance camera images showing Mahsa at the “Disciplinary Center” talking to an enforcement agent, taking a few steps, then collapsing on the ground. The family rejected the government’s story and stated that the published images had been taken out of context and went on to bury their Angel amid protests in several Iranian cities.
We are not here to adopt a story or reject another. Rather, let us delve into the matter to its very core. Shall we undertake a simple exercise? Let’s select some phrases from the above-written piece of news and make a sentence:
.
The Guidance Patrol in Iran arrested Mahsa Amini for not complying with the dress code imposed on women and then drove her to a disciplinary center. Mahsa was pronounced dead three days later.

Regardless of the cause of death, isn’t that sentence stomach-turning? Does it not refer to a patriarchal structure carrying out criminal behavior against women? Some think that people need guidance, so they appoint themselves in charge of them, for and against them. Then they decide to invent rules on how to dress and impose them on women and create a “guidance” police force, transforming “guidance” from an act of advice to an act of coercing within the so-called centers of discipline. Guide, discipline, coerce, and kill! We are, therefore, talking about a fatal power inflicted by men on women, no matter how many stories are told or how many investigative bodies are established. That is a preliminary conclusion.
Let us go on with our exercise. Let’s make Mahsa Amini a man and create an alternative sentence:

The Guidance Patrol in Iran arrested Muhammad Amini for not complying with the dress code imposed on men and then drove him to a disciplinary center. Muhammad was pronounced dead three days later.

Does the new sentence have a different impact on the same reader, man or woman? Let’s reflect on our feelings for a moment.
As a result of this exercise, we may find that the authoritarian patriarchal approach is so pervasive in our minds that it leads our conscious thoughts and actions from the depths of our subconscious. Every man who thinks himself free reads this sentence and feels some indignation is a man whose subconscious may be governed by an old, buried patriarchal approach. Every woman who considers herself free reads this sentence and feels some easement is a woman whose subconscious may be governed by a similar system. That is a second conclusion.
Our journey to liberation requires a long look into the mirror every morning.

We have talked a great deal about patriarchy on several previous occasions, the fact is that it haunts our daily lives so violently, and we may find it to be a guilty party in every tragedy societies suffer across the globe. The West, which thinks of itself as “the free world” (compared to another world it considers to be unfree) is never far from the patriarchal system, and it pursues a system that may be more racist than any other ruling system. Let us not deviate from the topic of the event (ie, the murder of the young woman, Mahsa Amini), so let’s ask some questions, shall we? Why did Western media choose to focus on Mahsa Amini’s Kurdish ethnicity? Why does the West list Amini’s murder and shamelessly ignore the killing and arrest of women and children in Palestine every day and every hour? Why does this media ignore the sentence of Maryam Al-Sayed Tarab to death by stoning for adultery in the White Nile State in Sudan? Do you remember Abu Ghraib prison? And that dreadful thing in Guantanamo? What about the law criminalizing abortion in the United States, for example, and what about allowing the marriage of minors (and minors) there (44 US states allow child marriage until now)? Is there any need for more questions?

We do not believe the West in its claim to care for the women of Iran and empower them in the face of the patriarchal regime ruling there, and we hardly believe it in anything. There is nothing worse than killing women on charges of not observing the “good veil” or on charges of adultery but exploiting their death for colonial interests. The two verbs are one. There is nothing worse than imposing the veil on women but forcing them to take it off! The two verbs are one of a single, patriarchal, authoritarian approach.

Almost two years ago, the French President announced the intention of the French state to confront what he described as “Islamic isolationism” that seeks to “build a parallel system and deny the republic,” announcing the outlines of the draft “anti-separatist tendencies” bill that specifically targets “political Islam,” according to Macron’s claim. The name of the law was later changed to “The Law for the Promotion of Secularism and the Strengthening of the Values ​​of the Republic.” In the title, the bill appears attractive, but in the content, details expose the French legislator’s intention to restrict the Muslims of France through several articles, including specifically the gradual prohibition of women from wearing the veil. The French Senate recently approved amendments specifically to the dress of Muslim women, and the Lille court issued a decision banning veiled female lawyers from representing their clients in courts in northern France, a decision that sets a precedent that the rest of the French regions may adopt.

This is the same France in which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed in 1948, which states in Article 18 of the following: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change their religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest their religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” Are those who have signed this declaration bound by it today? Like any other international law, it is applied only when the interests of states dictate its application. And interests are governed by power.

A country like France, which claims, on the one hand, to fight for women’s freedom in Iran and in the world, on the other hand, grants itself the right to decide the types of dress that women must adhere to and seeks to impose it by force of law. The patriarchal system is one, only the angles differ! A religious patriarchy that interprets religion in a patriarchal way and subjugates women, and a modernist colonial patriarchal system that believes in removing women’s clothing to liberate them. This is also oppression that ignores women’s freedom to choose their faith and the way they dress. The great calamity is that whoever decides about a woman’s life does not ask her opinion. Is this not the same principle of “guidance” that is applied in Iran? Where is the woman’s voice in that and what about her right to represent herself in the way she sees fit for her, whether based on faith, belief or a desire to express an idea? As if it were the destiny of women in different cultures to turn into a cultural symbol or a standard by which to measure the progress of political beliefs and ideas. This transforms women from being human to being simple objects. Is there a greater “evil” than that? Dehumanizing a person is a satanic act that contradicts the essence of the heavenly messages.
On the day Jesus walked carrying his cross, a bloody scourge and crowned with thorns, he was followed and accompanied by women, Mary the Mother, Mary Magdalene and her sister Martha and others we do not know. Those angels ascended the way to Calvary more than two thousand years ago, and those angels are still today ascending that path every day and carrying a thousand crosses every second, because a few men who have mastered the interpretation of the religious and legal texts in a manner appropriate to their masculinity, have decided so.

That must change, but it will not change through prayer, but rather with work, determination, and perseverance. It changes when we begin seeing through the heart, and its ability to comprehend God that no book can contain. Might this poem by Sheik Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi serve as reference to the men of this world:

My heart has grown capable of taking on all forms.
It is a pasture for gazelles,
An abbey for monks.
A temple for worshipers, Kaaba for the pilgrim.
It is both the Torah and the Quran.
Whichever the route it takes,
Love is my faith. Love is my religion.

Where do men stand from all that?
Religion is love. Universal and all-inclusive. As for men (at least the ones who put themselves in charge), they have chosen to prove to their creator as they stood before him, judged in his name, and rose against him that they were capable of killing Angels.