Chapter 5: What Context Changes
After October 7, when the war in Gaza entered a new and devastating phase, mass protests spread across cities around the world in support of Palestine. You may have been there yourself, or you may have seen the images online: crowds filling streets, voices rising together, keffiyeh wrapped around shoulders and faces. For many, the keffiyeh is a gesture of solidarity, a visible way of standing with people who are suffering in Gaza.
I was present at many of those protests. I shouted “Free, free Palestine” for hours and yet I never wore a keffiyeh. Why? It is complicated, but let me try to explain.
I am Iranian. And as long as I can remember, Palestine and its “freedom” have been among the most repeated slogans of the regime that governs my country. For decades, the Supreme Leader has spoken endlessly about Palestine, about duty, about resistance, often while wearing a keffiyeh himself. This is a regime built on dictatorship, sustained by an extreme and rigid interpretation of Islam, a system that has ruled through fear, violence, and control. For me, that image is not neutral. It is traumatic.
Does seeing people wearing it during protests make me not participate? Not at all. I believe Palestinians are facing violations and it has been acted against their fundamental human rights so the least I can do is to show up, protest, and support them. Do I wear a keffiyeh? No! It does not mean what it means to many Western activists, and it never has.
Right now, my country is once again under fire. People have taken to the streets, openly expressing their hatred toward those in power and their refusal to accept it any longer. Since Thursday, January 8, protests have spread, followed by a familiar response: the internet was shut down, civilians killed, violence unleashed. Despite the blackout, some limited footage is available online. In one widely shared video, a mosque is shown burning, an image that quickly became controversial. Those who lack the broader context see this and assume it is an attack on Islam itself. This interpretation could not be further from the truth.
For forty-seven years, this regime has killed, tortured, flogged, imprisoned, and silenced its people using manipulated and extreme interpretations of Islam. The mosque that was burned was not a sacred refuge, but an institution aligned with the regime, shaped by its corruption and violence. In the eyes of those protesting, it was not God’s house, but an extension of power.
The truth is rarely simple.
Is refusing to wear a keffiyeh a rejection of Palestinian human rights? No.
Is burning a regime-backed mosque an act of Islamophobia? Not if you understand the history behind it.
I stand with Palestinians and their right to dignity and freedom. I also carry the scars of a regime that has used a religion as a tool of oppression. These realities coexist, even when they seem contradictory from the outside.
This may sound unreal, but at this very moment there is a regime in Iran that commits human rights crimes while hiding behind Islam. What it preaches is not faith; it is control. And what Iranians are resisting is not religion itself, but a specific, weaponised version of it, carefully constructed to sustain a dictatorship.
You, as a non-Iranian who do not share the same state of mind, may not approve every decision they make but who knows what you would do if you were in their place? Some realities cannot be explained in headlines. They can only be lived.
