Millennial Perspectives
As I write this, women in Iran are throwing their hijabs in to bonfires. These widespread protests began when 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died while in the custody of Iran’s so-called “morality police”. They had taken her in to custody for allegedly breaking hijab rules.
Meanwhile, women in both India and Quebec are fighting for their right to wear a hijab. Quebec’s Laicity Act became law in 2019 and banned some civil servants (teachers, police officers, government prosecutors) from wearing religious symbols at work. In Karnataka (a state in southwest India), their high court ruled that wearing a hijab is not essential to Islam, as Muslim students fought for the right to wear the headscarf in school. The issue is now being argued in their supreme court, with a verdict coming before October 16.
Back to Iran. Women are cutting their hair, throwing away and burning their hijabs, and yelling “Death to the dictator”. Protestors, which include some men as well, have taken to the streets. It’s all being filmed, and it’s all over the news. Because of the growing activist movement online, Iran has made the alarming move of shutting off the internet in areas of Tehran and Kurdistan, and blocked access to Instagram and WhatsApp. They don’t want people to encourage each other online by sharing video of hair-cutting, hijab-burning, and other forms of protest.
Let’s take ourselves back to Canada, where a so-called freedom convoy spent three weeks in January and February harassing residents of Ottawa in the name of “freedom”. Some referred to it as the trucker convoy; the two organizers of the original fundraising campaign were not long-haul truckers. Many of the convoy participants were not truck drivers, and 85% of long-haul truck drivers in Canada were already vaccinated against COVID-19. Approximately one third of Canada’s roughly 180,000 tractor-trailer drivers are immigrants, some coming from countries where they truly had no freedom.
The generally anti-vaccine people who participated in the convoy had a number of incoherent reasons for doing so, and demands that varied wildly. The main Ontario organizer stated, “We have a group of constitutional lawyers that have been working with our team”…”We’re getting the rest of our signatures and we’re having them compel the government to dissolve government.” Confederate and pro-Trump flags were flown. Money poured in from American donors. Action4Canada sent vehicles and members to join the convoy. That particular group promotes beliefs such as the conspiracy theory that Bill Gates wants to use the COVID-19 vaccine to implant microchips in people.
The president of the Canadian Trucking Alliance, the spokesman for Canada’s West Coast Trucking Association, and trucking union Teamsters Canada all spoke out against the convoy. They pointed out that there are real issues for truckers such as wage theft, bad roads and a lack of restrooms; not the vaccine mandate. Convoy participants did not discuss those issues. They did, however, compare mask mandates (a provincial issue) to the Holocaust. Public health measures such as mask and vaccine mandates were put in to place because over 45,000 Canadians have died of COVID-19. People did not have to wear masks or get vaccinated, but lost certain privileges if they didn’t, so that they wouldn’t endanger society.
So, what are these freedoms that these mainly white men (and some women) were seeking, as they let loose in the streets of Ottawa, financially able to do so for three weeks?
The Human Freedom Index (HFI) is an annual report that evaluates the state of human freedom in 165 countries and territories around the world. It encompasses personal and economic freedom, then merges the two into a single value called “human freedom.” The countries with the highest HFI scores are considered to be among the freest countries in the world.
The 2021 Human Freedom Index report combines 82 different indicators to quantify the degree of freedom in these countries and territories. Each of the indicators examined fits into one of 12 meta-categories. The 12 Categories of the HFI are Rule of Law; Security and Safety; Movement; Religion; Association, Assembly, and Civil Society; Expression and Information; Identity and Relationships; Size of Government; Legal System and Property Rights; Access to Sound Money; Freedom to Trade Internationally; and Regulation. The HFI gives each country a score from 0 to 10, with 10 representing the most freedom and 0 representing none.
In India, where in some areas women are fighting for the right to wear their hijab, the score is 6.39. They rank #119 in the world in terms of freedom. In Canada, where a “freedom convoy” occupied a city for three weeks for no coherent reason, the score is 8.85. Our personal freedom is a 9.4; our overall score is dragged down a bit by our economic score being an 8.06. We rank #6 in the world for freedom.
What’s in the news right now isn’t even necessarily about the hijab. It’s also about Roe v. Wade. It’s about a woman’s right to choose for herself; to make decisions about whether or not to wear a hijab or go through the forever life-altering experience of pregnancy and childbirth, and perhaps raising a child they don’t want and can’t afford. Without fear of prison and violence and death.
Unlike not wearing a mask or not getting vaccinated, these women’s private decisions don’t spread a disease that has killed 6.53 million worldwide. Perhaps the freedom convoy will join the Canada-wide protests being held in solidarity with Iranian women. Or perhaps they’ll stand up for women in Quebec who can’t wear their hijab at their place of work, or for women in Karnataka who can’t wear theirs in school. Or maybe the freedom convoy will hold demonstrations to demand that American women have the right to choose whether or not to become mothers.
But I haven’t heard anything like that from them, have you?