An Iranian monarchist who filmed herself pulling the headscarves off Iranians in London fled to Israel after UK police announced they were investigating her.
The woman allegedly responsible is an Iranian pro-Israel activist called Bahar Mahroo, who later closed her Instagram and TikTok accounts and claimed she found the videos online. However, a reserve image search found no sources for the video, other than her Twitter account.
There is no reason to believe that this woman is not herself a Muslim. Not all Muslims are in favor of head scarves. Iran was a Muslim country while the Shah ruled it too despite head scarves not being required in Tehran at the time. Is she a horrible person? Did she do something unconscionable? Absolutely. But I think calling her a racist for what she did when she could be Muslim herself is going a bit too far.
Rasicm does appear to be her motivation
Yeah I mean she seems to be frequently on pro-Israel protests, is a right wing supporter and an Iranian monarchist. Exiled Iranians are usually hardcore atheists and combining this with her political views and her ripping off hijabs off women’s heads I think this paints a pretty clear picture.
I’m honestly asking this- are they? I’ve never heard this before. Where did you get that information from?
Edit: I should add that I was fairly active in the atheist community in Los Angeles, which does have a large Iranian/Persian population, and I don’t remember them being prominent members of the community, but it’s been a long time now, so I might just be forgetting.
I grew up in Europe in a place with a lot of exiled Iranians and have a lot of colleagues/ university buddies from there. Have a friend still living in Iran as well. This is of course kind of anecdotal but I think in general it wouldn’t be a controversial take in European countries.
I think it’s also kind of implied because they were the losers of the revolution and more conservative/religious people just tried to keep their heads down. The Iranian regime sucks even by middle eastern standards but if you’re not opposing them you can kind of get by.
I’m not at all familiar with the American-Iranian community so it may be very different over there.
The same applies btw to the new wave of Turkish immigrants. Again very anecdotal but alone in my last workplace I had like 20-30 Turkish colleagues who came to the EU from Istanbul recently and I didn’t know a single of them who was religious. Not that it matters in this post but what I’m trying to say is that societies and migration are more diverse than how it’s portrayed in the media.
It’s definitely far more diverse. I’m sure there are very religious people who left Iran and also atheists. There is also a small but significant Armenian Christian community in Los Angeles that emigrated from Iran. Wikipedia tells me there are still Armenian Christians in Iran, which surprises me.
Ah you’re quick, edited something in still sorry about that.
Yeah I was also surprised, there’s also still Arab and Kurdish speaking people and a huge percentage of people actually are Azerbaijani not Persian.
It’s a cool country and I’d love to visit some day, just seems more difficult every year.
What is Muslim to you? This is a prime example for how western people see Islam as a race, and therefore people from Iran are automatically classified as muslim.
There’s a very good reason to believe that this woman is not a muslim, and that’s the whole purpose of the article: she’s harassing Muslim women for the sole reason that they wear a piece of clothing showing that they’re Muslim. That you are unable to recognize this as what it clearly is, anti Muslim bigotry, is revealing your own bias against Muslims.
I was going to write a substantive response to this, but since you’ve already decided that I think Islam is a race when I told someone else below that they were mistaking Iranians for Arabs just shows you don’t really care and want to berate someone.
Do you have any other reason than the woman being Iranian for your remark that there’s no reason to believe she’s not a muslim? You don’t, so my comment stands. You decided that she being Iranian is a good reason to assume she’s Muslim, despite the article saying she was attacking Muslim women. We both know why, so stop clutching your pearls and have look at your own assumptions.
Sorry, I’m not going to have a legitimate conversation with someone who called me a racist when I said nothing racist.
Also, we have a civility rule here and you have broken it twice now. Please do not continue.
You can hide behind whatever rule you’d like. I’ve been more civil in my replies than your remarks call for. And it’s pretty clear in my unedited comments for everyone to see. Knock yourself out with whatever rule you need to hide behind, in order to avoid having an honest look at your own beliefs and biases.
As I suggested at the beginning, what you are looking for is not a discussion, it’s a person to berate. All you do is keep proving it.
However, I will indulge you:
I could point you to multiple different posts I have made where I have shown that it is clear that multiple ethnicities of people in different parts of the world are Muslims and they practice Islam in different ways.
Those posts were in response to two misogynists claiming that Muslim women who did not wear headscarves were either sinners or not Muslims.
One of them also said Iranians are Arabs.
And yet rather than attack them for their misogyny and one of them for saying something that really is racist, you attack me for daring to suggest that maybe an Iranian woman is a Muslim because we don’t know what she claims her religion is right now.
Just amazing.
I’d stick around and wait for your criticisms of their posts, but you’ve latched on to hating me and once you’re on that hate teat, I know how hard it is to let go.
I don’t ‘hate’ you, you’re just a commenter on Lemmy. I pointed out the obvious bigotry in your assumption of the woman being Muslim because she’s Iranian, despite the article making it clear she was harassing Muslim women. And you have done absolutely zero to dispell that conclusion. Assuming that my criticism is ‘hate’ just makes it clear that you’re unwilling to examine your own ideas from a critical perspective. Criticizing the civility of my comments reinforces the same conclusion. I’ve been very matter of fact, criticizing the substance of what you’ve written. I haven’t made any personal attacks as far as I can see. But you just keep doing the holier than thou thing.
Pointing to other bigoted comments doesn’t change the bigotry in your assumption, it just points to even more bigoted assumptions. Yeah, yours is more nuanced, but a more nuanced bigotry doesn’t mean it’s not bigotry.
Again, you assumed an Iranian woman is Muslim despite the article making it clear she was being bigoted against other muslim women. Ask yourself why you made that assumption if not because in your view, Iranian=muslim.
I assumed nothing. What I said was this:
Lying about what I said in order to continue to berate me is not a good way to go about doing things and I do not advise you either lie or call me a bigot again unless you wish to take a long break from this community. Rule 5 in the sidebar is very clear:
You are engaging with neither good faith nor respect. And you will have one more opportunity to do so.
Incidentally, I literally talked about Iranian Armenian Christians in another comment, making your lie an extremely silly one.