Masih Alinejad

Masoumeh "Masih" Alinejad-Ghomi (Persian: مسیح علی‌نژاد‎, born 11 September 1976) is an Iranian journalist author, political activist, and women's rights activist. Contracted by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Alinejad currently works as a presenter/producer at VOA Persian Service, a correspondent for Radio Farda, a frequent contributor to Manoto television, and a contributing editor to IranWire.

Alinejad is well known for her criticism of Iranian authorities. She now lives in exile in New York City, and has won several awards, including a human rights award from UN Watch's 2015 Geneva Summit for Human Rights, the Omid Journalism Award from the Mehdi Semsar Foundation, and a "Highly Commended" AIB Media Excellence Award.

In 2019, Alinejad-Ghomi sued the Iran government in a U.S. federal court for harassment against her and her family. She released a book in 2018 called The Wind in my Hair that deals with her experiences growing up in Iran, where she says girls "are raised to keep their heads low, to be unobtrusive as possible, and to be meek".

Career

Alinejad was born as Masoumeh Alinejad, but uses the first name "Masih" (Persian for "anointed" or "Messiah"), which is the title of Jesus of Nazareth in Islam and Christianity. Alinejad was politically active from a young age, and was arrested in 1994 for producing leaflets critical of the government. She began her career in journalism in 2001 with Hambastegi daily, and then worked for Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA). Papers, including Shargh, Bahar, Vaghaye Ettefaghiye, Ham-Mihan, and Etemad Melli, have also published her articles. During the sixth and seventh parliament, Alinejad was the parliamentary reporter. In 2005, she wrote an article suggesting that government ministers had claimed they received pay cuts; they were actually receiving considerable sums of money as "bonuses" for everything from serving religious duties to ringing in the New Year. The article generated lots of controversy, and led to her dismissal from parliament.

In 2008, she wrote a highly controversial article in Etemad-e Melli daily, called "Song of the Dolphins", where she compared Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's followers to hungry dolphins that make sounds and perform entertaining acts to grab a morsel of food from their trainer. Some people regarded the article as very offensive towards the president and the people, and eventually, Mehdi Karroubi, the director of the paper, had to apologise for the article.

In the summer of 2009, during her stay in the United States, Alinejad tried very hard to have an interview with Barack Obama; however, she was refused the interview, although she had been granted a visa based on this interview. Her visa expired, and she had to return to England. While in the United States, she participated in some Iranian protests, and delivered a speech in San Francisco, where she said, addressing the government authorities of Iran, "We have trembled for thirty years, now it is your turn to tremble". Her interview with Voice of America was shown together with parts of the videos she had made, called "A Storm of Fresh Air". In 2010, she and a group of Iranian writers and intellectuals established the "IranNeda" foundation. After the presidential election in Iran in 2009, she published a novel called A Green Date.

Alinejad graduated from Oxford Brookes University with a degree in Communications Studies.

My Stealthy Freedom

In 2014, Alinejad launched My Stealthy Freedom (also known as Stealthy Freedoms of Iranian Women), a Facebook page that invites Iranian women to post pictures of themselves without a hijab. The page quickly attracted international attention, and has garnered hundreds of thousands of likes.

In 2015, the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, which is run by UN Watch, gave her its women's rights award for "giving a voice to the voiceless and stirring the conscience of humanity to support the struggle of Iranian women for basic human rights, freedom, and equality".

Alinejad has said she is not opposed to the hijab, but believes it should be a matter of personal choice. In Iran, women who appear in public without a hijab risk being arrested.

Voice of America Television Show

Since 2015, as a contractor for the Voice of America (Persian Service), Alinejad has hosted a weekly 15-minute primetime show called Tablet, produced by Saman Arbabi. "With original video from inside Iran, Tablet profiles ordinary citizens and connects them with Americans through short interviews on common themes illustrating both similar and different experiences. The program also has a weekly "timeline report", tracing the development of issues such as the international women’s rights movement and relations between Washington and Tehran", the press release states. In July 2019, Iranian officials warned that anyone sending videos to Alinejad faced up to 10 years in prison. Musa Ghazanfarabadi, the head of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, told Fars News that those sharing protest videos with Alinejad could be imprisoned for up to a decade under laws relating to cooperating with an enemy of the state.

Activism

Chess championship boycott

In 2016, Alinejad launched a boycott campaign against the 2016 women's chess world championship, held in February 2017 in Tehran, Iran. The campaign was incited by Nazí Paikidze, a Georgian-American chess player. Paikidze refused to attend world championships in Tehran because according to Iranian law, the players had to wear hijabs. Alinejad supported the act, and co-wrote an op-ed with Asra Nomani in the Washington Post.

Meeting with Trump administration officials

In February 2019, Masih Alinejad met with top Donald Trump administration official Mike Pompeo. US State Department Deputy Spokesperson Robert Palladino said Secretary of State Pompeo "thanked Ms. Alinejad for her bravery and continued dedication". Alinejad said they met for 35 minutes, and said "Many Iranians want an end to the Islamic Republic".

Journalist Azadeh Moaveni has argued that the Trump administration has exploited Iran's feminist movement, and specifically named Alinejad as a prominent leader.

Arrest of family members

On 23 September, Islamic Republic security forces arrested three of Alinejad's family members as retribution for her women’s rights activism, according to Amnesty International. Alinejad’s brother, Alireza Alinejad, was arrested in Tehran, while Hadi and Leila Lotfi, brother and sister of her former husband, Max Lotfi, were all arrested in the northern city of Babol by officials from the ministry of intelligence.

Views

In a debate with Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour on CNN, Alinejad said: "It's important if you care about human rights, women's rights, you cannot use the same tool which is the most visible symbol of oppression in the Middle East and say that this is a sign of resistance [in the United States]."

Alinejad has been accused by some Iranians of feeding Islamophobia by focusing on the hijab, calling it the symbol of oppression, and occasionally identifying herself as an anti-hijab activist within right-wing circles. She rejects accusations of Islamophobia, but insists that it is the Sharia of Islam which scares her and it is Sharia laws which cause Islamophobia.

Alinejad has called European female diplomats "hypocrites" and has repeatedly attacked them for wearing a scarf during missions to Iran.

After the Christchurch mosque shooting in March 2019 in New Zealand, Alinejad criticised the county's prime minister Jacinda Ardern for wearing a hijab in sympathy and respect to the Muslim victims. She said she "felt that you are using one of the most visible symbols of oppression for Muslim women in many countries for solidarity, and it also broke my heart”. Her movement, which protests against the compulsory hijab in Iran, has attracted thousands of women.