Aldo Cazzullo (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
CWhat drives a man to beat a woman to death because she isn’t wearing a veil? The existence of a “moral police” alone would be enough to make the theocratic state of the ayatollahs a hateful regime. Even more so when the “moral police” kills.
Armita Garawand was just sixteen years old: she died after twenty-eight days in a coma. I have always been convinced that behind every violence there is fear, insecurity, a sense of inferiority.
Men have always been afraid of women. In particular, they are afraid of their freedom. Freedom to go out dressed as they want and love who they want. Honor killing and the crime of female adultery are two thousand years old, in Italy they were abolished years after the Second World War (honor killing only in 1981), and in other countries they are still in force.
Always and everywhere, the official motivation of the legislator is that children must be certain. But the real motivation is men’s refusal to get involved, to recognize women’s free choice.
Someone says: even our grandmothers wore the veil. The veil can be an identity and religious choice. But it can also become a sign of submission. Armita, just like Mahsa a year before her, was killed because she refused to submit.
We don’t know how solid the ayatollahs’ regime is. However, we know how many men are determined to mask their fear with violence. We know it well and it reminds us of it every news of femicide, which hides the inability to accept a “no” or an “enough”, a refusal or abandonment, and the claim to consider themselves owners of the woman’s body and soul. Which instead belong only to her. Not to the “moral police”.
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All articles by Aldo Cazzullo.
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