Yesterday, in the second round of Group B of the World Cup group stage, Iran played Wales, and Iran beat their opponents 2-0. But the most striking focus of the ball was before the start of the game – will Iran still use silence during the national anthem to support the protest movement of women in their country demanding the removal of their headscarves, as they did in the last game?
But unfortunately, this time, the Iranian players collectively sang the national anthem, and although many players obviously sang very perfunctory, they sang it anyway.
In response, the fans erupted into huge boos.
But at this time, the director very meaningfully cut the camera to the Iranian fans in the stands. So the whole world saw that Iranian fans, especially many female fans, were crying for this scene.
I think we have reason to blame the Iranian players for something, because nobody has the right to ask people to be brave all the time, because you don't know what they're up against.
As Iranian star Sardar Azmoun frankly said, refusing to sing the national anthem at the World Cup may cause these players to be kicked out of the national team or even disqualified from playing in Iran, and the "warning" arrest of Ali Daiyi, a football star who speaks for women, before the start of the World Cup, proves that he is true - some Iranian players are likely to suffer similar punishments after returning home.
And with the exception of a few top players who play for foreign clubs, most of the Iranian players still have to return home after the World Cup, and to make a living playing in this highly regulated country, there are some things they have to bow their heads.
So, while Azmoun himself said, "I am willing to sacrifice all this for a hair of Iranian women." "But no one else is eligible, they really all lost their lives for a hair for a woman, and each player has to make his own choice.
And as long as one person on the team opens his mouth for fear of punishment, silent protest is no longer a team act, it becomes a personal act for which the silent person is responsible for himself, and when the camera sweeps over their silent faces, they face a sudden increase in pressure, and the danger of being endlessly reckoned for the rest of their lives. This pressure is too much.
Iran's silence for women in the World Cup, daring to do it once is already rare and we are not qualified to ask them to be brave all the time. No one can ask others to be brave all the time.
But at this moment, I suddenly wanted to talk about another group of people in the game - Iranian female fans who were as brave as the Persian men on the field.
Yes, after watching the two games of the Iranian team, do you feel a little novel? In this World Cup, it seems that overnight, Iranian female fans suddenly became the most beautiful scenery.
Many Iranian female fans came to watch the game, and many more of them bravely took off their headscarves during the game. And the director and photojournalists from various countries also seem to be particularly fond of giving these girls shots.
So the world suddenly remembered something that had been forgotten for a long time - it turned out that before she was required to wear a headscarf every day when she went out, Persian girls were so beautiful and moving.
But you may not know what Iranian female fans have paid to recreate this beautiful day...
At the 2006 Berlin Film Festival, an Iranian film caused a sensation and eventually won the Silver Bear Award. It has a very football name - "Offside".
The film is a striking reminder that women in Iran have not been allowed to watch games in any stadiums since 1981. The film tells the story of how 6 Iranian girls overcame many difficulties to watch a football game, and women pretended to be men, but were finally arrested by the morality police, which is both tragic and absurd -
Tragically, these girls really gave too much to watch that game.
To say absurd, it is that the two sides are so poor and tossed so much, it is just for the girl to go to a football game!
But what no one expected was that more than ten years later, this story actually staged a more tragic, "movies dare not shoot like this" reality version -
In 2019, Tehran girl Sahar Khodayari was spotted and arrested by morality police while lining up to enter a football match for trying to dress as a man to watch a football match.
Probably to curb the women's rebellion, which was already intensifying at the time, and to kill chickens and monkeys, Iranian courts sentenced her to six months to two years in prison for "performing unsacred acts in public places without a headscarf" and "insulting government officials."
And Hassar is also fierce, and during the trial, he chose to set himself on fire directly in front of the courthouse to protest this injustice.
Hassar eventually died due to ineffective rescue, and her death caused a great international shock - under the pressure of huge international public opinion, FIFA finally issued an ultimatum to Iran, demanding that Iran must guarantee the right of its own women to watch. Otherwise, the Iranian team will not participate in any World Cup qualifiers, and will be directly judged to be ineligible to play the World Cup! If you don't allow women to watch, then your men don't play football.
Under intense pressure, the Iranian government was eventually forced to back down, first allowing some senior government officials and female family members of players to watch the tournament wrapped in rice dumplings during a World Qualifier in October of that year. Then there is the opening of a special women's table, and the moral police escort (surveillance) throughout the whole process... In short, exactly forty years later, Iranian women have finally regained the right to watch football matches because of the martyrdom of a young girl.
I know that in the eyes of many Chinese people who pursue "more is better than less", this story is simply bizarre and two-way:
First of all, what is the purpose of the Iranian government to ban women from watching football games? ——You said that you are fundamentalist, neither the original religious texts nor the current laws write this article. Why is it so serious?
That Iranian girl Hassar seems to be too—isn't it just watching a game? Can't you watch TV at home? You have to go to the site. If you are caught, you will admit it, why did you give such a good life for such a thing?
However, if you analyze the logic carefully. It will be found that this kind of needle point to wheat between the two sides is actually an accumulation of necessity.
First of all, from the Iranian government's side, in fact, when the Islamic Revolution of 1979 first took place, the ban on women was still not so harsh. After all, Iran was the most modern country in the Middle East at that time and had the most contact with the world, and some people within the "Islamic Revolution" believed that restrictions on women should be made mild, at least to give some space to the already civilized Iranian urban women.
But in the process of implementation, they soon discovered that this "moderation" could not be achieved at all.
Because the demand to rob women of their right to speak, not allowing women to show their thighs, arms, and hair to others, and even not encouraging them to show their heads in public, this appeal is unreasonable and contrary to human nature. For Iran's urban women, when no other public event can be seen or heard, they gather on the football field to make their voices heard. And for Iranian men, which man has lived in that environment for a long time and does not want to see more beautiful women?
So soon, female fans became more eye-catching on the pitch than the ballgame, and Iran's football stadium became a faint home for enlightened opponents of the "Islamic Revolution".
Then in order to maintain their rule, the Iranian authorities can only further increase the restrictions and simply deprive all Iranian women of the right to watch!
So women were not allowed to watch the game, and this strange excess, which was neither written in religious texts, nor explicitly written in the law nor stipulated in the prohibition, appeared and was unassailable for nearly 40 years.
Ridiculous? Ridiculous. Is it reasonable? Plausible.
From this matter, we will find a law - a kind of forcibly promoted discipline and taboo, often the more unreasonable, the stronger the "diffusion".
The reason is simple, because these prohibitions always try to deny and restrict some kind of humanity, and human nature cannot be canceled. Human nature is like water, if you don't let it flow out of this hole, it will inevitably find another path and spray it out with stronger water pressure. In the end, if the manager is not willing to relax the control, he must seal all the relevant holes that can be imagined.
Dayu his father liked his real name.
Therefore, women are not allowed to watch football games, and this seemingly bizarre rule, in the end, must be as unquestionable and unshakable as the supreme religious dogma held by the Iranian government. Because it is the inevitable result of this logic coming to an end.
On the other hand, the so-called "of a thousand miles collapses in the anthill", when a discipline and taboo that violates human nature has to be loosened in a certain detail, the bankruptcy of the entire system is not far away.
You see, the Iranian government is currently allowing female fans to watch the game, because they find that as soon as this opening is opened, there are really endless problems, and you can't stop the next chain reaction -
You allow women to go to qualifiers at home, so do you want to allow them to go abroad to the World Cup?
In a tournament like the World Cup in Qatar, without the restraint of the moral police, can you still control these women from taking off their headscarves?
Will Iranian female fans who take off their headscarves make their own expressions? What if they kill a horse gun and support the domestic turban movement in the arena?
What do people in Iran think when they see women making this expression?
Will the Iranian players participating in the competition respond to the demands of female fans by refusing to sing the national anthem?
All this is happening now. Iran's restrictions on women, and even its entire theocratic system, are in danger of a little collapse and a total failure.
So the headscarf that wraps around Iranian women is tight and encompassing, but it is also fragile and torn.
In this World Cup, the "silent tears" of Iranian male players and female fans, and the chain reaction that these plots will continue to trigger, were actually burned when the girl Sahar ignited.
Of course, the premise of all this is that someone needs to be brave, like Sahar to act as the child who poked the "emperor's new clothes", and even more need someone to respond, need a silence from the man on the field, a few lines of tears from the woman in the field, to do the same brave follow.
"God can save us only if we can save ourselves." This is what is said in "Uncle Tom's Cabin".
Yes, just as in the field, only teams that are willing to play hard deserve to win. Outside the arena, only those who sacrifice all consciousness for "a hair", those who do not give in in the face of aggressive unreasonable taboos, deserve to win freedom.
After forty years of being tightly wrapped, in these short ninety minutes, the Persian girls were finally able to take off their headscarves.
To this end,
That fire, that life, that silence, that roar... They have given too much.
Therefore,
This tear, this victory, this cheer, this freedom... They deserve it.
Freedom is never gratuitous, God saves the self-helper.