I’ve been struggling to find the right words to speak on what’s going on in Iran. I am a Muslim woman. After 9/11, I watched the world become a severely uninhabitable place for Muslims overnight. We grieved in silence, in private... our communities and identities shattered. I pretended I wasn’t Muslim for years and would lie when people would ask out of a fear of persecution and humiliation. My right to be Muslim was taken from me. This is something I still grieve. Of course Islamophobia predates 9/11 and the frustrating part of conversations about the Middle East is that there is always an orientalist twang to how we engage with these lands, these territories. When people talk about the subjugation of Muslim women they speak to it as an inherent quality of Islam, not an explicit tool for the workings of patriarchy. The violence that Muslims have faced categorically and systematically through US propaganda and warfare FOR DECADES is immense. Without interrogating how our faith has been entangled into a bid for power, how our people have been murdered by US invasion and manipulation, how our women and children have thus been subjugated to immense tyranny and terrorism that is a direct result and orchestration of the US... you can’t have Islamic fundamentalism without the US. What we are fighting for now is liberation. Which means the right to choose. Whether it be the right to wear or not wear a hijab; whether it be the right to an abortion or not. Right wing religious control looks different everywhere, so we must be united against oppression. This is a global fight for liberation and I stand behind all women fighting fascism and extremism across the world. I stand behind my sisters in Iran, as well as my Muslim sisters in India, Myanmar and Palestine who are also fighting for the right to life, the right to be. In 2018 I asked Shirin Neshat, herself in exile from Iran, who her favorite writer was. She was the first person who introduced me to Forough Farrokhzad’s work. I’ve been reading “Let Us Believe In the Cold Season” over the last few days closely praying in solidarity with all the women fighting for their lives in Iran. Rest in power Mahsa Amini 🖤🏹