Large demonstrations have been taking place in Iran since the death of Mahsa Amini on September 16. The death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who died on September 16, three days after she was arrested by vice squads for improperly wearing her veil, seems to be the origin of this wind of protest, but it is also the context of the election of the ultra-conservative Ebrahim Raïsi as President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, fueling the anger of the demonstrators.
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“We must not caricature the movement and believe that it is a war of atheists against the religious, no, it is a fight for freedom,” estimated Farid Vahid, director of the Jean Jaurès Foundation’s Middle East Observatory, on Tuesday , October 4th in Le Talk de franceinfo on Twitch. We can say that Iranian society as a whole is much less religious and religious than, paradoxically, before the Iranian revolution. [de 1979, ndlr], at the time of the Shah. But neither should we caricature by believing that there is a religious war in Iran.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said on Twitter that the young woman’s death “broke the heart” of Iran, “but what is not normal is that some people without evidence or investigation are making the streets dangerous, burning the Koran, headscarves removing veiled women, setting mosques and cars on fire.” According to him, “many women in Iran do not wear the veil perfectly and are strong supporters of the Islamic Republic”.
For Farid Vahid, Iranians practice “less and less.” “They have veiled women in Iran who oppose the veil,” he continues. It is still a very corrupt regime due to the instrumentalization of religion. I went to school in Iran, prayer is obligatory, everything is obligatory, it inevitably repels people.