On December 10, Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. It was her husband, the exiled journalist and writer Taghi Rahmani, and her two children who collected the award on her behalf, since Mohammadi is imprisoned in Evin prison, in Iran, for denouncing the oppression of women in her country and for defend human rights.
It is evident that, for many years, the revolution in Iran has had a woman’s face. A revolution that, since September 16, 2022, when Mahsa Amini was murdered at the hands of the morality police for supposedly not wearing the veil properly, has become an unprecedented movement that has achieved, in addition to crossing borders and also become a revolution in the diaspora, appealing to a large number of Iranian men, who have finally joined the demands of women. The veil revolution is, therefore, a global movement.
Narges Mohammadi is one of the many names that appear in this collective work that allows us not only to understand the origin and characteristics of the Woman Life Freedom movement, but also to get closer to the complex history of Iran and reflect on the future of the revolution and the country. Coordinated by Marjane Satrapibased on an initiative by editor Sophie de Sivry, the work brings together an important miscellany of voices and styles that build a polyphonic mosaic of stories, grouped into three parts to achieve a more structured reading.
Three voices, those of the political scientist Farid Vahid, the reporter Jean-Pierre Perrin and the historian Abbas Milani, offer us, through their brief but rigorous texts, a three hundred and sixty degree vision of this revolution, with a hopeful look at the future of Iran. They are joined by an important cast of cartoonists, especially from the French bande dessinée, such as Sfar, Trondheim, Rabaté or Catel (among many other names) who, through comics and illustration, help us understand the implications of this movement social and political to the non-Iranian audience.
Sometimes, with countless injustices ravaging the world, we run the risk of movements as important as the veil revolution ending up being left out of the media spotlight. Therefore, more than a year after the assassination of Mahsa Amini, the publication of this work certainly seems essential so as not to forget the daily struggle of Iranian women and men. A work that, without a doubt, leaves us a powerful message: on September 16, 2022, the murder of Mahsa Amini lit the spark of a revolution and nothing and no one is going to stop this fire.