SPEAKER_00: TED Audio Collective.
You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm your host, Elise Hu.
Scores of women in Iran have been undeterred in the face of confining rules for how they should live and behave. In her 2023 talk from the TED Immigrant Diaspora Iranian event, creative producer Golriz Lucina offers lessons from the poet and mystic Tahirih for us to stand up against injustice, even if justice doesn't come until long after we're gone.
After a sponsor message.
TED Talks Daily is brought to you by Progressive, where drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average. Quote now at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates national average 12 month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary.
Support for TED Talks Daily comes from Odoo. If you feel like you're wasting time and money with your current business software or just want to know what you could be missing,
then you need to join the millions of other users who switched to Odoo. Odoo is the affordable all in one management software with a library of fully integrated business applications that help you get more done in less time for a fraction of the price.
To learn more, visit Odoo.com slash TED Talks. That's O D O O dot com slash TED Talks. Odoo, modern management made simple.
SPEAKER_01: The history of HIV and AIDS is the history of people who were told to stay out of sight and who refused. Gay men, but also injection drug users, women and, yes, children who contracted the virus. Join us for the series Blind Spot, The Plague in the Shadows. How much pain could have been avoided had we paid attention sooner? And what lessons could we have learned from History Channel and WNYC Studios? Listen wherever you get podcasts.
SPEAKER_02: It is not an unusual sight in Iran.
A large conference attended only by men.
After all, women are to be hidden from public view, kept uneducated, silent, powerless.
It is within these strict confines that a young woman, eyes bright with possibility for a more just and equitable world, bravely steps into this gathering of men.
With her veil removed.
Her face is uncovered, an act considered blasphemous.
Just the presence of this woman alone sends shockwaves through the crowd.
She declares that the time has come to break away from antiquated traditions and step into a new era of human consciousness
in which every person is free to choose their own path.
Soon after, she is imprisoned, charged with spreading corruption on Earth and sentenced to death.
This woman was Tahirih, a poet, a mystic, a champion for human rights.
Now, this story may sound like a recent headline from Iran, but it actually took place nearly 200 years ago in 1848.
When I look at my birthplace of Iran today, I have to ask, what's changed?
Have we made any progress?
I see Tahirih's fate being replayed in the lives of other courageous women who at this very moment are choosing nonviolent means, such as speaking out and removing their hijabs to proclaim their freedoms.
And tragically, just like Tahirih, their lives and the rights they are defending are being stamped out and suffocated.
It's easy to feel hopeless.
It's easy to feel defeated.
Yet within their stories and within hers, I do see progress.
I see powerful lessons about what it means to believe so deeply in the transformation of society
that we dedicate our lives to laying down the building blocks of a better world, a world we may not even live to see.
Tahirih's life is an example of being undeterred by our limitations and our constraints.
In an arranged marriage since the age of 14 and with three children,
Tahirih still used whatever tools she had within her means, her words, her actions, her poetry,
to encourage all of those around her to abandon the suffocating scripts that they had inherited for their lives
and to independently investigate the truth for themselves.
She was met with hostile opposition, abuse and imprisonment.
Yet Tahirih was unflinching in her efforts, fixing her eyes on a horizon line of justice and freedom for all.
Through Tahirih's actions, we understand the power that sacrifice has in awakening a collective consciousness.
Though much of her writing and her poetry was destroyed after her death, her legacy could not be extinguished.
So many hearts were transformed by the teachings that she spread,
and the seeds of possibility that she planted for equality and freedom are now bursting through the soil of Iran, as evidenced in these brave, youthful, female-led protests that erupted following the tragic death of Massa Zina Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman who died in police custody after being arrested for improperly wearing her hijab.
Now, today, when I hear that rallying cry, woman, life, freedom,
I can't help but hear Tahirih's last words before she was executed,
taken in the middle of the night and strangled with her own scarf.
She said,
You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women.
You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women.
Tahirih's legacy invites each of us to consider what is fueling our own activism. Her words and actions, though radical and upending, were not born out of bitterness or hatred or fueled by self-interest.
It was Tahirih's deep love for humanity that propelled her forward.
And therein lies our challenge.
Can we stand up against oppression and injustice while deeply rooting our thoughts, our words, our actions in compassion and love?
Tahirih's life teaches us that we must act with urgency and conviction while recognizing that we may not live to see the fruits of our efforts.
We cannot expect immediate gratification in our pursuit of justice because the transformation of society is a multigenerational endeavor.
So what can we do? We can take Tahirih Tahirih's trailblazing example, and in every moment we too can bravely try to make it happen.
And in every moment, we too can bravely choose to do the next right thing, knowing that we are planting seeds that will grow into trees, under whose branches future generations will find justice and peace.
I want to end with a poem of Tahirih's translated from its original language of Farsi.
Not only because it feels like it could have been written today in light of all the conflicts we are witnessing with broken hearts all around the world,
but also because she offers us a clear and poignant call to action at a time where we might be asking ourselves what we want our legacy to be.
Let warring ways be banished from the world.
Let justice everywhere its carpet throw.
May friendship reconcile ancient hatreds.
May love grow from the seed of love we sow.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you. PRX
