Driving by the “Rally for Iran” outside the Texas Capital over the weekend gave me a glimmer of hope that things might be different this time. Of course, I may be naively optimistic. But if a crowd in Austin, Texas – home to a tiny Iranian population and 7000 miles from Tehran – assembled in solidarity with the Iranian protesters on a Saturday night (and a UT home game underway), something big is going on.
Here's a collection of things that grabbed my attention:
Ayaan Hirsi Ali on, What Western feminists can learn from Iran
“…the current protests are a unique, and uniquely inspiring, phenomenon. Nowhere else in the Muslim world — and I mean, literally, nowhere else — would we see what we are seeing right now in Iran: men and women, together, standing up for each other, the men demanding justice for the regime’s murder of a woman who dared to let her hair show. It bears repeating: the men of Iran are standing alongside women as they burn their hijabs.”
-Ayaan Hirsi Ali
This piece in the Jewish Journal poignantly humanizes the plight of women in Iran and offers some reasons why the world is so repulsed by the murder of Mahsa Amini.
Ingenious artwork can be found across social media @Iranianpopart on Instagram is particularly good. Below are a few samples of work I’ve come across.