The Mahsa Movement and the Feminist Uprising in Iran

Monday, April 28, 2025 | 11:00 am – 1:00 pm

Zoom Registration:

https://ucla.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_iPW7un5RTfySMm-7Eicfrg

This book talk will focus on a social movement that brought new characteristics to the fore, not only in Iran, but also in the Muslim world. It was probably the first genuine, global, and extensive feminist movement in Iran ever, and perhaps in the Muslim world. This is not to deny that women have played a significant role in social movements in many Muslim countries since the nineteenth century. But within these movements, women were not in the vanguard, did not become the main actors, did not express their feminist demands in clear opposition towards the powers that be, and men did not follow them en masse. The anthropological characteristics of the Mahsa Movement (or the Movement “Woman, Life, Liberty”) are analyzed throughout this book in what seems to be its major characteristic, namely rejecting the Islamic Regime’s machoistic ideology of martyrdom and proposing instead a culture of Joy and Happiness, in which women play a central role, notably by freeing their body from the yoke of the imposed veil.

About the Speaker

Farhad Khosrokhavar is a retired professor at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France. His academic interests are in social movements in Iran, mainly after the Islamic Revolution; the Arab Revolutions of 2010–12; Jihadism in Europe with a particular focus on France; and philosophical foundations of social sciences. He has published around 40 books, mostly written in French and English, with translations of these works appearing in many other languages including Italian, German, Spanish, Kurdish, and Arabic. He has also authored around 100 articles in French, English, and Persian, with German, Italian, Spanish, Arabic translations. He was a Rockefeller Fellow (1990), a Yale Visiting Scholar (2008), and a Harvard Visiting Scholar (2009). His most recent books include: Le nouveau jihad en Occident (2018); Jihadism in Europe, European Youth and the New Caliphate (2021); Iran, La jeunesse démocratique contre l’Etat prédateur (2023); and Revolt Against Theocracy, The Mahsa Movement and the Feminist Uprising in Iran(2024).