Dying for the Hijab
Western Feminism's Moral Collapse in the Age of the Acceptable Massacre
8 March 2026, marked International Women’s Day (IWD). The official UN theme for this year’s IWD is “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls.” While the BBC offered special programming across its platforms throughout the weekend, and other mainstream media similarly virtue-signalled, in their allegiance to Israel, they ignored the grotesque reality of the human rights abuses of women and girls by the US and Israel.
On IWD in Gaza, Palestinian children lost their mothers to bombings, and mothers lost their daughters and sons. In Iran, the US-Israeli attack involved joint airstrikes on Iranian cities, the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and several other Iranian officials, along with civilian casualties. On the first day of the conflict, 168 primary school girls and their teachers were killed in a “double tap” bombing operation. In the following days, a women’s gymnasium and at least a dozen hospitals, including a maternity hospital and neonatal unit, as well as other health facilities, were struck. Humanitarian groups warned of the war’s impact on Gaza and the worsening humanitarian crisis for women, children, and men after Israel closed all crossings into Gaza and blocked humanitarian aid when it attacked Iran.
Niz Mhani, an NHS hospital consultant and advocate for peace and justice in Palestine, says that if a primary school in Tel Aviv were bombed and 160 little girls were killed, the BBC, CNN, and all other news outlets would be covering it “wall to wall, 24/7, and we would know every one of their names.” He comments, “Some children matter more than others apparently...”
Over the past two and a half years, the killing of thousands of Palestinian women and children by “the most moral army in the world” has served to normalise violence against women and children, paving the way for the latest violations of international law and war crimes. As Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls, predicted, the genocide has desensitised the West, even as we claim to be defenders of women’s and children’s rights. James Elder, the UNICEF spokesman, agrees. The killing of children didn’t immediately capture the mainstream media’s attention, indicating that “something fundamental has shifted…if a child can be killed and it doesn’t feel like a loss for all of us, then I think we’ve lost more than we realise.”
International Women’s Day
In the UK, IWD saw the disturbing spectacle of the Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, using Palestinian girls dressed in traditional costumes as a social media prop. She claimed that “Tackling the global emergency of violence and abuse, boosting women’s political and economic participation, and unlocking the potential of girls everywhere will now be at the heart of UK foreign policy.” As Home Secretary, Cooper banned Palestine Action as a terror group at the behest of the Israeli lobby and tried to silence thousands of protesters who oppose the genocide and support peaceful direct action by charging us with offences under the Terrorism Act 2000. Cooper has served in and defended a government that has armed the Israeli genocide of Palestinian girls and then shamelessly used Palestinian girls living in the UK to bolster her feminist credentials. Shame on her!
In a refreshing contrast to such self-serving mendacity, Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish Prime Minister, used IWD to point to its many hypocrisies. Sanchez is proving to be an exception among European leaders, the overwhelming majority of whom serve as supplicants to Trump and Netanyahu’s lawlessness. During a recent event, part of broader celebrations in Spain honouring women’s struggles globally, he criticised narratives that portray attacks on Iran as efforts to advance women’s freedoms. He argued that such claims mask other geopolitical interests. He said:
We cannot accept invoking freedom when it’s convenient and forgetting it when it gets in the way. The rights of women and girls, the freedoms of peoples, should never be cut short to launch a war that serves other interests, a pretext to bomb another country […] I’ll say it loud and clear: if we truly believe in the freedom of Iranian women, the answer cannot be more violence; it has to be more diplomacy, more support for those fighting from within, and of course, more international law.
Manuela Bergerot, a Madrid Assembly Member, said, “This is how the right defends the rights of Iranian women – by celebrating the murder of 160 girls.” She insists it is precisely because she is a feminist that she is opposed to the attacks by the US and Israel. “The right is describing the attacks as magnificent news for feminism, cheering on a war that will bring instability and chaos to us all.” Irene Montero, a Spanish MEP, also declared:
No woman has ever been freed by American bombs or illegal aggression. Not in Syria. Not in Iraq. Not in Lebanon. Not in Afghanistan. And it will not happen in Iran either. We are fed up with our rights, our bodies, and the violence women suffer being used as excuses to justify illegal bombings and imperialist aggression. All year long, they call us ‘woke’ and blame us for everything. But when they want to sell their oil wars, their wars for money, their colonial and imperialist wars, suddenly they use women’s rights as their justification.
The killing of women and girls in Iran, under the pretence of defending women’s rights, demands international condemnation. If IWD is to have any meaningful purpose beyond propaganda for war, politicians must speak out and identify Israeli aggression for what it truly is—violence against women and girls. Currently, Spain is the only country taking a principled, humanitarian-rights-focused stand, setting an example of the behaviour expected of leaders who claim to uphold civilisational values.
Dying for the Hijab!
Memes of women in bikinis clubbing the late Ayatollah are now circulating online. Gender-critical feminists undoubtedly object to portraying women’s freedom as the freedom to appear almost naked in public and to sexually objectify themselves for the male gaze. However, they also participate in a discourse in which women’s right to choose what to wear is prioritised over other human rights principles. For many, the hijab is fetishised, as they make freedom from it a non-negotiable human right that, unbelievably, seems to surpass the right of Iranian girls and women not to be killed.
The most celebrated, outspoken gender-critical feminist is the author J.K. Rowling. She has described the “unspeakable bravery” of Iranian women murdered for refusing to be constrained and controlled by men. Iranian women are indeed brave. Under Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, they are legally required to wear the hijab in public. A prominent feminist movement in Iran opposing the mandatory hijab laws has grown stronger in recent years through organised protests and acts of civil disobedience, especially since 2022, following the death of Mahsa Amini in so-called “morality police” custody. Protests sparked the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, where women led nationwide demonstrations, burning hijabs, cutting their hair in solidarity, and chanting slogans against women’s oppression and the regime’s policies. This has, thankfully, led women, particularly in Iran’s cities, to move freely in public without the hijab. If left to their own devices without colonial intervention, this relaxation might have gained momentum.
Netanyahu has repeatedly referenced the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement as evidence that women in Iran are waiting for Israel as their saviour. As Reem Alsalem points out, these statements serve only one purpose: not the liberation of women but justifying further military interventions and the killing of women. Since 7 October, 2023, Israel has illegally attacked at least five other countries alongside Palestine, where women and children have been indiscriminately killed. She states that the “terrifying truth” is that the televised genocide in Gaza has made the killing of women and girls everywhere seem normal. She asks, “Where do we go from here”?
Jean Hatchett, a “feminist” who has achieved some notoriety on X, including for her belligerent support of Israel, for example, says she is “disgusted” by UK feminists who “wrote about, talked about, and campaigned on Iranian women’s rights” who are now against the war. She proclaims: “Oh, you fucking purist twats. You disgust me. Your hard-left brains fell out. ‘Only Woman, Life, Freedom’? What? The fucking words will free them? I fucking despair. Let’s build a new feminism.”
In January 2026, mass protests erupted in Iran, initially peaceful and driven by economic grievances fuelled by extensive sanctions imposed by the US over many years. These protests eventually devolved into riots, ostensibly against the Iranian theocratic regime, as claimed by the US and Israel, leading to thousands of deaths, including those carried out by Iran’s security forces. Others were cautious, arguing that the riots were not entirely spontaneous but were externally orchestrated by Mossad and other foreign agents aiming for regime change, and that the death toll was significantly inflated.
Rowling criticized those who did not actively support the riots: “If you claim to support human rights yet can’t bring yourself to show solidarity with those fighting for their liberty in Iran, you’ve revealed yourself. You don’t give a damn about people being oppressed and brutalised as long as it’s being done by the enemies of your enemies.” Presumably, by “your enemies,” Rowling means Israelis, and by their “enemies,” Rowling means Iranians.
These binary views of being ‘for or against’ Israel are echoed by other so-called ‘liberal’ figures in the public eye, who are often insensitive to the erosion of women’s rights in different ideological contexts. Rob Rinder, a barrister and TV personality, for example, once infamously interviewed India Willoughby, a heterosexual male and father, on LBC Radio in 2021, who, in middle age, began to claim he is truly a woman. Rinder asked Willoughby whether it was when he was “a little girl” that he first realised he was “female”. However, with the Iran conflict, Rinder now claims to care about women’s rights. He says, “Modern Iran has women who refuse to bow. If Israel or America are your excuse to abandon Iranian women, you stand with their oppressors.”
Which feminist does not support Iranian women protesting against hijab enforcement? The double standards that feminists and their allies use are that Israel can do whatever it wants, commit any crimes it chooses, and have any weapons it desires (including nuclear weapons), but Iran, Israel’s latest target for expansionism and dominance, should not retaliate. This does not promote the freedom of Iranian women and girls. To counter Rowling’s claim, it appears that she and other “progressives” who are silent about Israeli violence care little about violence against women and children, as long as the violence is committed by “the friends of their friends.”
Let Palestinian and Iranian Women Speak!
On IWD, there are 72 Palestinian women political detainees in Israeli prisons who have suffered severe human rights violations. Palestinian women prisoners describe raids, beatings, and strip searches. They spoke out: “Soldiers forced us to lie face down, walked over us, tied our hands, and dragged us across the yard.” In Iran, women are bravely protesting in their thousands, crying out in support of the armed forces, commemorating the martyrdom of Ayatollah Khamenei, and demanding revenge for the violence rained down upon them.
The women protesting in the streets are just as educated as Western women. For those unaware, since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iranian girls and women have received high-level education on a par with men, and now they outnumber men in university admissions, including at the prestigious University of Tehran. Whether feminists like it or not, for many Iranian women, the hijab is a symbol of resistance against Western imperialism. Today, Revolution Square in Tehran is fully packed with women and men gathering to show loyalty to the new Iranian leader, Mojtaba Ali Khamenei, and to condemn the ongoing Israeli-American aggression as Western colonialism.
Dr Setareh Sadeqi, an assistant professor of World Studies at the University of Tehran, discusses the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and her freedom as a woman in Iran. She explains how his assassination has energised the Shia masses and unified Iran in a fight for its national integrity and survival. Samira Mohyeddin, a feminist Iranian-Canadian academic and documentary filmmaker, notes that there are more Iranian diaspora members against the war than what the media or the aggressive pro-war middle-class diaspora community claims. No rational person, she states, would celebrate the bombing of their own people. The Iranian diaspora supporting Israel does not reflect the majority of the diaspora, and they may someday regret welcoming “these monsters” into their country.
In conclusion, a new, right-wing form of feminism is rising from the ruins of what was once a thoughtful feminism that challenged patriarchal power and institutional capture and control. Today, feminists can be found among the free speech advocates – those members of the cultural elite who support free speech as long as it does not oppose Israel. They are also aligned with the Brexiteers, who, having campaigned on Britain’s sovereignty, are now subservient to the US and Israel and spread the idea that Islam is to blame for Britain’s moral decline. Feminists are moving toward the Reform Party or the Conservative Party, whose leaders are hawks willing to devastate thousands of Iranian women and children.
When feminists choose not to speak out against US and Israeli atrocities, they ignore the universal principles promoted on IWD—justice for all women suffering violence, regardless of their religious, ethnic, or social backgrounds. If the world ever regains sanity, I anticipate a moral reckoning. Women and men will look back on this period not just as a shameful chapter in women’s rights history but as a time when feminist principles were so perverted that, in the name of women, feminists allied with warmongers as “sisters in arms.” A world based on the idea that Israel’s “might makes right” is a recipe for endless conflict and death, with women and children as the main victims. Let’s hope that such feminists do not succeed in leading us all—whether we wear a hijab or not—into World War Three.
 | A guest post by
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A clarion call for a feminism that moves beyond virtue signaling into robust resistance for all women and children. Thank you, Heather!