Because the future is female…

Like there are two Indias there really are two Iransmdashalthough itrsquos fair to suggest there are two lsquoevery placersquo depending on how richpowerful you are and what you can get away with anywayBut no the lsquotwo Iransrsquo seem a special case Given the first thing you notice as you enter its capital Tehran as I did over a decade agomdashis witness how dramatically distinct a society can be from the state that governs it It feels unique By the state I mean Islamic clerics who rule with the ironhand of religion relegating their subjects behind an iron curtain Being a man the other men you meet in Tehranmdashmajority of them young walking around ruins that used to be nightclubs oncemdashseem entirely pluralisticsecular if not atheists interested in fun females and footballTheyrsquore equally obsessed with the Internet deeply curious to establish connect with the outside world As I could tell with my host Ali whorsquod taken days off from work to give me company and was in tears when we finally bid goodbye at the metro These Persian Muslim men I noticed make it a point to identify themselves as separate from ArabsWhat about the incredibly stylish women besotted by shoes and designerlabel headscarves in publicmdashto make peace with blackuniformed lsquomoral policersquo on streets Guys tell you they wear lsquothe pants at homersquomdashthe patriarchal term for whorsquos the boss when staterules canrsquot applyAlso more women than men attend college and from advertisements on streets they appear totally into martial arts as wellmdashin every sense merely reflecting the generations before themHow did the present state come to be All arrows point to the peoplersquos selfdirected Iranian Revolution of 1979 which was a nationwide movement to dislodge the USbacked Shah of Iran While the economy was tanking their ruler was seen to be reveling in the riches By all accounts this mass uprisingmdashled by Leftists liberals and what sounds like an oxymoron IslamicLeftistsmdashhad little to do with religionOnly the person they replaced the Shah with as a consensus candidate was the Shia cleric Ayatollah Khomeini exiled in Paris to eventually establish the Islamic republic He publicly offered representative democracy returning power to the people and for himself a life of quiet retirement Which isnrsquot how it quite panned outAnd that may well be true regardless for when you mix religion with politicsmdashall that remains then is religion A societyeconomy is further doomed I guess if religion trumps rights of humans itselfmdashunless yoursquove found oil under your feet noFor all of the dynast Shahrsquos faults he offered Iranians personal freedomsmdashhardly ever interfering with what they wore read sang wrote serenaded etcThe Islamic dictatorship over a monarchy reversed that Years of music archives were destroyed Step by step censorship in all aspects of life put in placemdashstarting with the hijab and dresscode for women introduced only for the workplace first in 1981As the Persian masterdirector Majid Majidi told me the Iranian Revolution also miraculously brought forth the lsquoIranian New Waversquo in cinemamdashwith filmmakers figuring alternative ways to express their humanism instead ldquoUntil people began to watch films from Iran they felt it was a harsh place Their views changed drastically Fanatics have nothing to do with IslamrdquoThis artistic response on the face of it was apolitical in the sense of leaving the state alone And thatrsquos because Majidi a devout Muslim himself still sees Iranrsquos culturalreligious nationalism as a passing phase ldquoGovernments come and go People remain Films unlike newspapers donrsquot get stale in a week Cinema is made for generationsrdquoOnly that all religious fundamentalisms while elementally competing against each other appear to unanimously agree on one thing the lower status of the woman still Where was the brave pushback against such unhinged politicoreligious power ever going to come fromIt was just so many women I observed at the protest headquarters in Cairo Egypt much after the Arab Spring in 2012 Likewise the faces of the leaderless socialmedia led antiCAA protests in New Delhi 201920 were women tooUnsurprisingly ones in Iran to also boldly say theyrsquove had enough of the moral policemdashresponsible for the death of a suburban woman Mahsa Amini because she wasnrsquot wearing her hijab right at the Tehran metroUnaccounted hundreds have died in the antihijabprochoice protests since Thousands arrested Internet restricted WhatsApp Instagram bannedBut Irsquove been surrounded by Iranian women still casually swiping chatting with them over days since How On lsquotravel mode in Tehranrsquo on a dating app Given no defiance can be greater for a country where a woman canrsquot even be physically alone in the same room not even in office with a man whorsquos not her relativeYou travel across this digital world under the radar of sartorially liberated Persian women in chillingpartybikini pixmdashwith bios that read ldquoMy life my rulesrdquomdashyou know somethingrsquos gotta ultimately snap in the unsustainable semischizophrenic chasm between their private lives and expectedly public selvesldquoThe situation is bad My country just wants to kill peoplerdquo Mitra name changed 37 tells me ldquoWhatrsquos the futurerdquo I ask Mitra She drops a prayer emoji I do the sameMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper