A Nobel for Iran’s Mother Courage
Narges Mohammadi’s peace prize is a recognition for the thousands of women in Iran who are associated with a non-violent struggle for equal rights
Narges Mohammadi, the Nobel peace prize laureate of 2023, has been one of Iran’s foremost human rights activists for nearly two decades. She was arrested 13 times, convicted five times and sentenced to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes, on charges of plotting and spreading propaganda against the Iranian regime. After completing her engineering studies, Mohammadi joined Defenders of Human Rights Centre, a non-governmental organisation created by Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003. Mohammadi is currently lodged in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran.
Mohammadi’s battles against enforced hijab and the death penalty made her a prime target of Tehran. The harsh and repetitious imprisonments have deprived her for a long time, the company of her parents, husband, and children. Her husband, Taghi Rahmani, 63, a writer and activist who was also jailed in Iran, today lives in exile in France with their children — the family has not been together since the children were toddlers. Despite all her sufferings in and outside Evin prison, Mohammadi has refused to bow to the regime, which has turned her into a figure of moral courage and political resistance against the authorities in Tehran. As such, her struggle has been a great inspiration for many young women, who have been fighting the systemic and brutal violation of women’s rights in Iran. Recently, Mohammadi wrote about the resilience of the Iranian women on her Instagram page: “In my opinion, these women are the true, although agonising, freedom and justice seekers who carry unattributed burdens, and to whom we owe our gratitude.”
Undoubtedly, the story of Mohammadi is representative of the struggle of Iranian women for civil rights. For decades, women like Mohammadi have spearheaded Iranian civil society’s non-violent movement for democracy and equal rights. Ironically, Mohammadi’s struggle for justice and liberty has mostly been from behind bars — she has even managed to organise protests and sit-ins in the courtyard of the notorious Evin prison.
To understand better the struggle of Mohammadi and others like her in Iran, we should take a step back and look at the long process of the movements that Iranian women have led for dignity and social justice since the first days of the theocratic regime in Tehran. Millions of Iranian women continue to speak and organise against the regressive social norms imposed by a theocratic legislation dating back to 1979. These women, coming from different age-groups and social backgrounds, have led the fight for a change of morals in Iranian society. For the past 45 years, they have been the steady voice for equal rights and social change. The Iranian regime, unfortunately, has responded with violence, election frauds, lies, corruption, imprisonment, and murder to suppress the just demands of these women.
From the demonstrations against mandatory veiling on March 8, 1979, less than a month after Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Islamists captured office, to the Green Movement of 2009 against the fraudulent re-election of Mahmood Ahmadinejad, the 2017 and 2018 urban protests that spread to 140 cities around Iran, and the more recent urban protests following the death in custody of Mahsa Jina Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, practically every year Iranian women have organised non-violent protests demanding equal rights. The State has sought to put them down with violent crackdowns or extended imprisonments, like in the case of Mohammadi.
The fact is the young population in Iran has grown exponentially in the four decades after the revolution. Urbanisation and the rapid expansion of university education have produced new sociological actors in Iran, mostly women, who have become agents of dissent and change. Even though the Iranian revolution of 1979 morphed into a semi-totalitarian regime, women continued to dream of opportunities in politics, and social and cultural life.
The most significant action of the new generation of women activists in Iran, including Mohammadi, was the 2006 campaign, “One million signatures for the repeal of all discriminatory laws against women in Iran”. From acid attacks on women in the streets of Esfahan in 2014 to the 2022 demonstrations against the hijab, Iranian women’s mobilisations have continued to cause significant social and political tension in Iran. It comes, therefore, as no surprise that, even as the world was discovering Narges Mohammadi after the announcement of the Nobel prize, a teenage girl, Armita Garawand, was attacked by the Iranian morality police in a Tehran metro. Later, she slipped into a coma and is currently admitted to the intensive care unit of a military hospital in Tehran.
The Nobel peace prize to Narges Mohammadi is not merely a recognition of her personal courage, but it is an acknowledgment of all those unknown, voiceless women in Iran who want change. It is also a prize for those forgotten women in Iran who were harassed, and even killed, by a patriarchal government and society. It is a prize in the memory of Mahsa, Nika, Sarina, Hadis and many others, who were killed last year by the Iranian security forces.
Narges Mohammadi will most probably not be able to receive the Nobel Peace Award in person, but her voice will certainly be heard across the globe now. That voice will continue to inspire Iranian women, and other oppressed women around the world.
Ramin Jahanbegloo, a dissident Iranian philosopher, is director, Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Nonviolence and Peace at OP Jindal Global University. The views expressed are personal
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