By Quinn Delamater
Masih Aliejad grew up in a country where she was taught to shout “Death to America!” Decades later, she is a citizen of the republic she was taught to hate that she credits for saving her life from her homeland.
“I love America, and I am ready to sacrifice my life for America to protect America from the most barren regimes over time,” Alinejad proclaimed at the Concerned Women for America annual summit over the weekend. “And I want to tell you, do not apologize for your love for this country, because this is the dream of millions of people living under authoritarian regimes to have a country to protect them, to protest, to challenge, to speak up, to stand up against tyranny.”
Alinejad, a journalist and human rights activist from Iran, escaped to the United States and became a citizen in 2019 — but has since survived multiple kidnapping and assassination attempts on her life.
In 2021, the Iran regime attempted to kidnap Aliejad from the United States to move her to Venezuela, and then back to Iran, reported the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The following year, the regime tried to kill her outside of her home in Brooklyn, New York, according to U.S. law enforcement. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed a plot by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp to assassinate Alinejad as well.
Her crime? Speaking out for freedom and equality.
In 2014, Alinejad started My Stealthy Freedom, a campaign against women being forced to wear a hijab in Iran. She says while American women watch episodes of “The Handmaid’s Tale” from the comfort of their homes, Iranian women are living it: “My sisters, your fiction is our reality in Iran. Your fiction is our reality in Afghanistan.”
“Women are not even allowed to sing. Forget about singing. Women are not allowed to speak in Afghanistan under Taliban,” Alinejad continued. “This is called Islamism. Women receive lashes. Women are not allowed to travel abroad without men, without their husband or their male relative.”
Under Sharia law, Muslim women experience abuse and are stripped of fundamental human rights. Author Nonnie Darwish describes Sharia law in her book, “Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law”: “A Muslim woman who commits adultery is to be stoned to death; unmarried girls who have sex must be flogged; women’s testimony in court is half the value of a man; women get half the inheritance of a man; there is no community property between husband and wife; if a woman is killed, her indemnity money is half the indemnity money of a man.”
Darwish goes on to describe that a specific interpretation of Sharia law includes the practice of female castration “in order for the man to make sure her sexual appetite is suppressed.” The woman also “needs her guardian’s permission for marriage or else it is void; she needs her husband’s or male relative’s permission for travel; she must cover all her body except her face and hands.”
Recently, Islam has been gaining more widespread attention and popularity. “Increasingly, more and more Western women are joining Islam under this pretense of enlightenment or empowerment,” pointed out Reagan Conrad, host of “Reported by Reagan.” “They seem to have no difficulty condemning Christianity. Christianity is patriarchal, biblical marriage is oppressive. Christian modesty is controlling. But introduce an ideology under which women are forced to cover themselves.”
“They’re denied education. They’re married as children. They’re equated to animals. They’re legally subordinate to men and even killed for minor offenses,” Conrad emphasized. “And suddenly that outrage goes quiet because that ideology is Islam. Now, many, even who follow the teachings of the Quran don’t even fully grasp all that it teaches.”
Alinejad called on the crowd of young women to use their voices and influence for good. “You have the opportunity to stand up against tyranny in the Middle East. So, join the women of Iran and Afghanistan against gender apartheid. …We are witnessing another form of apartheid, which is called apartheid against women, and we need to speak together to bring the wall of this apartheid regime down.”
Quinn Delamater is a reporter for The Washington Stand.
This article originally appeared here.
