FREEDOM IS NOT A CRIME
Shaparak Shajarizadeh with Rima Elkouri
(Plon, 304 pages, 2020)
In 2018, Shaparak Shajarizadeh was sentenced to two years in prison and eighteen years of probation for removing her hijab in public on a street in Tehran. How did Shaparak, a self-described ordinary mother who had never planned on being a women’s rights activist, become a leading figure in the Girls of Revolution Street protest campaign? From her childhood in Iran to her painful exile in Canada, through the traumas of arrest and incarceration, Freedom Is Not a Crime tells the story of her extraordinary life—the life of a modest yet courageous hero who simply decided one day that she could not let other women fight for her convictions.
Born in 1975, Shajarizadeh grew up and came of age in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian revolution. The arrival of the new leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, inaugurated a period marked by increased restrictions on women’s freedom and independence, the most visible expression being the severely enforced mandatory hijab law. Shajarizadeh married young, and the unraveling of her marriage coincided with her growing unease about and revolt against the oppressive conditions faced by her peers.
She soon became involved in the White Wednesdays movement, where men and women posted pictures of themselves dressed in white to protest the violence of the compulsory hijab. And like Vida Movahed, the “Iranian Rosa Parks,” Shajarizadeh too started showing up on Tehran street corners, standing bareheaded while waving her white veil on a stick—images that went viral on social media and were relayed abroad by the New York–based journalist Masih Alinejad. Shajarizadeh was arrested three times, and imprisoned twice, the last time in the presence of her young son during a vacation to Kashan in central Iran. After going on a hunger strike, and with additional help from her lawyer, Shajarizadeh was released on bail. But this time she decided to leave the country. After a frightening border crossing into Turkey, she found asylum in Canada.
In simple and heartfelt words, Shajarizadeh retraces her journey from a middle-class housewife who simply did not like the obligatory headscarf into a political prisoner beaten and thrown into solitary confinement. Her testimony also brings to life the many Iranian women who inspired her and helped along the way, and who continue to share in her struggle to this day—in particular, her lawyer, a prominent human rights advocate and women’s rights defender named Nasrin Sotoudeh, recently sentenced to thirty-eight years in prison and 148 lashes.
Throughout the book, Shajarizadeh shares the inner conflict she experiences between the defense of her ideals and the danger to which she has exposed those closest to her. She helps us understand how ordinary the path to activism can be, as well as the personal costs that come with it. As co-author Rima Elkouri has stated, “I often find women to be the great forgotten ones of history, especially those of the Middle East who are often portrayed as victims. Whereas in fact there are a lot of women like Shaparak. "
Shaparak Shajarizadeh is a former Iranian political prisoner and well-known women’s rights activist. She became a leader in the Girls of Revolution Street and White Wednesday civil disobedience movements protesting against the compulsory hijab laws. She was named by the BBC as one of the 100 most inspiring and influential women in the world in 2018. Today, Shajarizadeh lives in Canada where she works as a Senior Fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. In February 2020, she was awarded the Geneva Summit International Women’s Rights Award by an international coalition of twenty-five human rights organizations for her efforts in defending women’s rights in Iran.
Rima Elkouri is a Canadian journalist and author. Winner of the Jules Fournier Prize of the Superior Council of the French Language of Quebec, she covers issues related to women’s rights around the world, focusing on the aftermath of the Arab Spring in the Middle East, the movement #MeToo in Canada, and the migration crisis in Europe. In 2014, she published the collection Pas envie d’être arabe (I Don’t Want to Be Arab, Somme Toute editions), which brings together her best work created between 2000 and 2014. She has also collaborated on several collective works.