HOW ‘BRAVE’ IS IT TO TARGET WOMEN?

As the war against Iran by USA and Israel intensifies, I am struck by a disturbing narrative gaining traction in some circles: the glorification of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, as “brave” and even as a “martyr”,  comparing him to saintly revered figures in Islam who were champions of humanity and justice – attributes sadly lacking in Khamenei. In certain Muslim spaces, the rhetoric goes further — claiming that any confrontation with the Iranian regime is somehow a war against Islam itself.

Let us be clear: a regime that brutalizes its own women cannot cloak itself in the language of faith.

According to the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada Al-Nashif, at least 975 people were executed in Iran in 2024 — the highest number since 2015. Nearly a thousand lives extinguished in a single year. Is this bravery?

Even more chilling is the surge in femicide. In 2024 alone, 179 women were reported killed, many in so-called “honour” crimes — often for the simple act of seeking divorce or refusing a forced marriage. Women punished for autonomy and showing a speck of hair: girls murdered for choice. (These figures don’t include unarmed civilians, women and children killed in the recent uprising under instructions from the Supreme leader – some say the figures are as high as 40,000)

Of the 125 journalists prosecuted last year, 40 were women — many of them reporting on human rights abuses and women’s rights. Silencing women who speak truth to power is not resistance. It is repression.

During the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, human rights organizations and the United Nations documented widespread sexual violence used as a weapon against detainees — women, men, even children. Agnès Callamard, Secretary-General of Amnesty International, stated that Iranian intelligence and security forces used rape and other forms of sexual violence to “torture, punish and inflict lasting physical and psychological damage” on protesters, including children as young as 12.

Sexual violence as state policy. Is this the “courage” we are being asked to admire?

And let us not pretend this terror is contained within Iran’s borders.

Here in Canada, Iranian dissidents — particularly women — have been targeted by regime-linked actors, likely connected to Hezbollah. 

Goldie Ghamari, a Canadian politician and activist who represented the riding of Carleton in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 2018 until 2025 revealed that an Iranian-linked hacker group placed a $250,000 bounty on her head. Threats circulate online against those who dare to support democratic change in Iran.

The shadow of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps stretches far beyond Tehran.

The murder of Iraqi-born women’s rights activist Yanar Mohammed, who founded the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, sparked global grief. She was remembered as courageous. She defended women from honour killings, trafficking, and extremist violence. That is bravery.

I know these threats personally. I, too, was targeted by the IRGC last October. When authoritarian regimes cannot silence women with prison walls, they attempt to silence them with fear.

So I ask: where are the voices of solidarity?

Where are the statements from our political leaders — from Prime Minister Mark Carney, from women in Parliament, from our feminist organizations? Where is the moral clarity?

Our Minister of Foreign Affairs — herself a woman entrusted with global leadership — remains silent.

Silence, too, is a choice.

On International Women’s Day, we celebrate resilience and empowerment. But empowerment cannot be selective. We cannot champion women’s rights at home while averting our gaze from women imprisoned, violated, and executed abroad.

True bravery is not found in missiles or martyrdom narratives. It is found in the Iranian girls who remove their hijabs in defiance. In the mothers who demand justice for executed sons. In the journalists who continue to write under threat of imprisonment.

And in every woman — in Tehran, in Toronto, in exile — who refuses to be silenced.

That is courage.