(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson was criticized for proposing to implement an official Hijab Day on Iranian activist Mahsa Amini’s birthday, according to Breitbart.
Ironically, the day is supposed to honor the item that got the woman killed in the first place.
Anderson, a Democrat, gave a speech on Thursday in front of the City Council chambers, during which she advocated implementing Hijab Day to honor Amini, who was murdered by the Iranian regime for not wearing the Muslim head covering the right way.
Amini’s death caused protests against the Islamic fundamentalist regime’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, across Iran and the world.
“For the past few weeks, people of good conscience a month or so from around the world have joined in the protest, the thousands across Iran demanding justice for Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish–Iranian woman who died after three days in custody of Iran’s notorious morality police after being accused of not properly covering her hair,” Anderson said.
“These protests in the heart of Iran have featured brave women burning their scarves and cutting their hair in the face of arrest, abuse, and in some cases, even death to show their solidarity with Amini’s family and their will for freedoms and access to a joyful life absence of suppression from an oppressive state,” she added.
Despite the fact that Iranian women are getting killed because they don’t wear a hijab properly, Anderson suggested that the head-covering was a form of female empowerment.
“I, an African woman, wear my scarf and put it in a bun. It’s simple. Mahsa Amini said, ‘I’ll just wrap it around. It’s not a big deal, it’s just a scarf,’” she said. “You see, whether I wear it or I don’t, it’s my choice.”
On social media, people condemned Anderson’s Hijab Day proposal.
“Such a declaration is unfathomably callous. The hijab has been a tool used by the Iranian regime to subjugate and control women, stripping them of their most fundamental rights,” one user wrote in an email to Anderson, Breitbart reported.
“By labeling Mahsa’s birthday as Boston ‘hijab’ day, you are using the very tool used to not only control but also murder women to—perhaps inadvertently—deflect the subject away from the crux of this movement and back towards religion. Please don’t make such a reprehensible mistake.”
Another Twitter user suggested that this is a slippery slope: “Holy s**t, what next, do we honor the f**king taliban on 9/11?”
Pro-Israel activist Emily Schrader also shared her thoughts.
There are literally no words to express my disgust with this obscene slap in the face to every single woman in Iran and every single woman who fled a Muslim country because of sexist persecution
As an American, Im ashamed and I’m sorry#mahsaamini #FreeFromHijab #IranRevoIution pic.twitter.com/t8f94AhJ8J
— Emily Schrader – אמילי שריידר امیلی شریدر (@emilykschrader) October 20, 2022
“This is a brazen slap on the face of every single Iranian woman and every single woman who fled from an Islamic country because of harassment and gender discrimination because of hijab,” she wrote. “As an American, I feel ashamed and sorry.”
Nahayat Tizhoosh, a journalist and producer with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, responded to Schrader’s tweet by suggesting that Anderson was using the occasion to showcase her own virtue-signaling rather than to commemorate the slain rights activist.
“Thousands of Iranian women have been burning their hijabs, cutting their hair and protesting against compulsory veiling,” she said. “Which part of this resolution has anything to do with Mahsa Amini?”
