First Person - RNZ producer Mahvash Ikram says the death of Mahsa Amini and the subsequent protests in Iran have made her think a lot about her choice to wear a religious head covering, and how it fills her with a sense of freedom.
A woman holding a sign that reads "I love my hijab" at a protest against Islamophobia, in Paris in 2019. Photo: AFP
This year I had a rather unpleasant encounter in a public car park. I backed my car into a four wheel drive. Luckily, the impact didn't feel strong enough to cause any damage, but the startled driver definitely needed an apology.
He wasn't in the mood though, shouting expletives he told me to get lost. And I happily obliged. His frustration was justified after all. But then I heard these words: "Maybe if you took that thing off your head you'd be able to see". I froze in my tracks.
I wear the hijab.
I noticed hot angry tears welling up in my eyes, the voice in my head told me to be the bigger person and walk away, but I didn't want to. So I went back to him and politely asked if he realised what he had just said was racist and quite hurtful. To his credit, he apologised.
In that moment I felt empowered by my hijab, it is a taonga. And it's my right to choose what I wear and not to be judged for it.
Basketball player Asma Elbadawi in a photoshoot for her sponsor Adidas Photo: Supplied/ Adidas
I've been thinking about that car park incident a lot recently.
The death of Mahsa Amini and the subsequent protests have made me think a lot about my own choice to wear a religious head covering.
Every time I see images from Iran of women cutting their hair and burning their headscarves in defiance, I marvel at the contrasting worlds we live in.
The New Zealand police added a hijab to their uniform for those who wanted to wear it, in 2021. Photo: Supplied / NZ Police
Those women, Muslims like myself, are protesting not to wear the hijab. It's painful for me to watch them set their headscarves alight, and to them it's liberating.
In France, where the hijab is banned in government spaces, women are fighting for their right to wear it.
And strange as it may sound, I support both sides.
It is not ok to take choices away from women. How they dress is strictly their own business.
While restrictions on dress code thankfully do not exist in New Zealand, it is not unusual for hijab-wearing Muslim women to experience discrimination.
In February, RNZ reported the story of 18-year-old Hoda-Al-Jamaa who ended up in hospital with concussion after three people ripped her hijab off and beat her.
Protests against the hijab in Iran are not new.
But it was not until news broke of New Zealand social media influencers Topher Richwhite and Bridget Thackwray being released after four months of detention in Iran that our media has turned its attention to Iran.
Mahsa Amini died after being arrested in Iran Photo: Supplied
What is unfolding there is the build-up of years of tension between the hardline government and public.
The history of the hijab in Iran is embedded in politics, culture, and history, it just comes in a religious packaging.
In 1936, the first monarch Reza Shah introduced legislation forcing women to remove the veil in public.
During his reign, women are known to have worn the hijab as an act of defiance.
Following the Islamic revolution that toppled Shah in 1979, the new government advised women to start wearing an Islamic dress code in public. This sparked protests across the country.
Finally in 1983, the government declared it was a punishable crime not to wear a head covering in public.
For more than four decades, women in Iran have opposed a mandatory Islamic dress code.
While it is important to tell the story of what is happening there now, it is also crucial to understand the background of the current uprising.
The protests should not take away from the fact that there are women around the world, who choose to wear the hijab.
For us, it represents freedom.
* Mahvash Ikram is a senior producer for First Up
