Iran’s protests: What you need to know

Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, known as Jina in Kurdish, died in police custody in September 2022, which sparked a rallying cry of a new movement in Iran that has been led by female activists. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s morality policearrested her for violating Iran’s required veiling law by not wearing the hijab in adherence with government standards. In their New York Times opinion piece titled “Big Tech Should Support the Iranian People, Not the Regime,” Mahsa Alimardani, Kendra Albert, and Afsaneh Rigot write that “Mahsa Amini died, but that hashtag #MahsaAmini lives on.” 

Despite extensive censorship from the Iranian government in restricting its citizens’ internet access, Twitter and other social media platforms have held a significant responsibility in spreading information within the country and to the world about protests against the oppressive treatment of women and government retaliation in response to those protests. After an image of Amini appeared on Twitter that depicted her lying unconscious, with tubes connected to her mouth, 160 million tweets shared the hashtag #مهسا_امینی (#MahsaAmini in Persian). 

Although the protests broke out seven months ago, Iranians are still protesting. Furthermore, Iranian authorities last week executed three men in connection with the Mahsa Amini protests. 

The U.S. lifts sanctions

The U.S. previously held sanctions that discouraged technology companies from serving Iranian citizens, which restricted their options to technologies controlled by the state. However, these sanctions were loosened, prompting the authors to call out Big Tech. They argue these companies should provide their moderation and engineering teams with greater contextual awareness to establish direct communication channels with activists. 

By emphasizing the importance of transparency and flow of information, Alimardani, Albert, and Rigot reveal that their demands for tech companies are rooted in empowering the activists of this women-led movement to act on their own agency, thereby rejecting the notion that Muslim women must wait for external help to “save” them. 

Twitter and Meta’s responsbility

The authors write that an initial step for Twitter is to turn #MahsaAmini into a hashflag, custom emojis specific to Twitter that boost a particular hashtag. Although it is a simple tweak, they believe that the hashflag’s status will “make it less likely that misleadingly similar hashtags for #MahsaAmini will divert attention.” 

They worry that similar hashtags–either the result of typos or an intentional effort from pro-government or government-owned accounts–will reduce engagement with the actual hashtag. This change would empower the activists by enabling them to better disseminate information, mobilize other citizens, and draw attention to protest efforts. It also reflects that the activists have an active role to play–rather than a passive one–in fighting for a just world against an oppressive regime.

Arguing that “Meta’s Persian-language content moderation … has harmed users’ rights,” the authors are also concerned with deeper, algorithmic changes at companies like Meta, which owns two of the most used applications in Iran (Instagram and WhatsApp). 

The authors write that during the initial protests, Instagram flagged 1500Tasvir, a protest documentation network, and other similar accounts as spam because of the amount of content they were posting to the platform. Alimardani, Albert, and Rigot contend that “removed posts and blocked access become a matter of life and death in these contexts.” They write it is crucial for social media platforms to enhance their ability to quickly respond in situations outside of English-speaking circumstances. The changes that the authors call for seek to provide direct communication lines to protesters, thereby protecting them. 

However, this protection is not paternalistic. Improving content moderation policies does not imply protesters are inferior and need help from a Western entity. Rather, Meta’s lackluster content moderation policies, which obstruct the free flow of information, threaten the safety and lives of Iranian citizens. Thus, urging Meta to fix these internal issues is a natural response. 

The notion of “saving” Muslim women

When placed in conversation with Lila Abu-Lughod’s Do Muslim Women Need Saving?, Alimardani, Albert, and Rigot’s opinion piece sheds valuable insight on how the Iranian protests fit into the greater discourse of “saving” Muslim women. In her book, Abu-Lughod highlights that Islam is not the reason for the “suffering” of Muslim women. Furthermore, through different interviews with Muslim women, she reveals that a monolithic perspective on Muslim women is inaccurate, as there are so many women in the world following Islam experiencing different conditions. Her interviews also draw attention to the political, economic, and structural factors that contribute to the poor living experiences of certain Muslim women. 

“It is problematic to construct the Afghan or Muslim woman as someone in need of saving. When you save someone, you imply that you are saving her from something. You are also saving her to something. What violences are entailed in this transformation? What presumptions are being made about the superiority of that to which you are saving her?” 

Applying these questions to Alimardani, Albert, and Rigot’s article reveals that while the authors ask Western technology companies to support Iranian citizens, their article does not suggest that the activists or Muslim women need “saving.” Asking Big Tech to improve information flow and transparency reduces violence inflicted onto citizens. Also, asking technology companies for help does not insinuate that they are superior. Instead, it demonstrates that Big Tech companies are failing their responsibility to provide quality services to their customers, namely Iranian citizens. Additionally, by targeting technology companies, Alimardani, Albert, and Rigot shift the discourse on the Iranian protests away from the trope of veiling. Highlighting Big Tech’s complacency and shortcomings reveal that the violence inflicted upon the Iranian people are a result of an oppressive government, not Islam. 

Although the opinion piece does not perpetuate the narrative that Muslim women need saving, addressing Big Tech’s problems is a short-term solution to a long-term issue. The dress code might be the most noticeable form of discrimination against Iranian women, but it is only one component of the larger systemic discrimination they experience. In envisioning a better world for Iranian women, one must look beyond the immediate conflict and toward structural changes that support their political, economic, and social advancement. 

Further reading

• Mit Tech Review: Big Tech could help Iranian protesters by using an old tool
• NYTimes: Big Tech Should Support the Iranian People, Not the Regime
• Axios: Exclusive: Lawmakers call on tech companies to aid Iranians
• Harvard University Press: Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

Link to original article published 5/23/2023

Note: This article was adapted from an essay I wrote for my Islam and Colonialism class, where I had to find an instance of Muslim women being “saved” and apply the insights of an author we read to that situation.