by Marvin Ramírez
Iran is burning — not because of a foreign war, but because of a national uprising against a religious dictatorship that has driven the country into economic, social, and moral collapse. What began as protests over the collapse of the national currency has turned into an open rebellion against a regime that uses religion as a tool of total control.
For two weeks, demonstrations have spread across the country. In response, the government has done what it always does when it feels threatened: cutting off the internet, blocking phone lines, shutting down media outlets, and unleashing brutal repression. The regime wants the world not to see what is happening. It wants to kill in the dark.
But the truth is leaking out.
Iranian women are being beaten, arrested, and killed for daring to demand the most basic thing: freedom — the freedom to choose how to dress, how to speak, how to live.
The scale of the crackdown is becoming clear through testimonies that manage to escape the blackout. Faranak Amidi’s, an Iranian-American woman living in Los Angeles, wrote on her Facebook account this morning:
“I am in contact with protesters in Tehran via Starlink. They are reporting a heavy security presence and a high number of killings and arrests. Two protesters told me they have seen people being killed by snipers.”
These are not isolated disturbances. This is a state firing on its own people.
And this is where the uncomfortable question arises:
Where are the feminists?
In Iran, women are not asking for corporate board quotas or inclusive language. They are fighting not to be imprisoned, beaten, or executed for defying religious rules imposed by armed men.
Commentator Elisabet Ortega captured this hypocrisy with brutal clarity on her Instagram account:
“How curious, isn’t it? Women imprisoned for not wearing a veil, beaten for protesting, murdered for wanting to be free — and suddenly the feminist left falls silent. No signs, no hashtags, no demonstrations. It must be that when the oppressor is not Western, feminism takes a break. Because when an Islamist regime controls a woman’s body, it’s no longer ‘sexism,’ it’s called ‘cultural context.’
And it’s very simple: either you defend women’s freedom always, or you are not a feminist — you are selective. Freedom does not belong to any ideology.”
The silence is deafening.
The same movements that flood the streets in the West when a politician says something offensive disappear when women are being murdered by a theocratic regime. Because this time, the oppressor is not a Western man — it is an Islamist system, and that seems to make many activists uncomfortable.
In Iran, religion is not a private belief. It is a tool of power. It controls the currency, the police, the courts, and daily life — and above all, it controls women’s bodies.
Iranian women are confronting a real system of religious enslavement. They are risking their lives in the streets while the world’s loudest gender-equality movements look the other way.
That silence speaks louder than a thousand speeches.
Because if feminism only defends women when it is politically convenient, then it is not a liberation movement — it is a selective ideology.
The women of Iran are paying in blood.
And the world that claims to be “progressive” is watching in silence.
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HlH8p0tvOo.
