 Okay, welcome everybody to this special event this afternoon. I want to thank all of you guys for coming to join us on it, especially since it is so beautiful outside. The colors are bright, the trees are turning orange, there's no rain, but still you guys decided to spend an hour or so with us here on this very important event. So thank you very much for making the right choice to improve your lives in this sense. My name is Michael Leach. I am an assistant professor in the Department of Public Law and Governance at the Law School. I've recognized a few of the faces in the crowd, some of which I've subjected to a midterm exam a couple of days ago, so apologies for that, but thank you guys for coming anyway. As you came in, you might have noticed that there's a couple of cameras in the room just so you know not to freak out, but we are recording some of the speeches that we're going to be hearing at the beginning to be uploaded onto the Student General YouTube website. They are not pointed in any direction towards the audience and the Q&A session that we're going to be doing at the end is not going to be recorded at all, so don't worry about those there. Just to let you know. Okay, so on with today's event. Don't you sometimes feel like we are in a moment that is just filled with news? Maybe we've been feeling like this for the past two years, three years or so during the pandemic where it was just news became a part of our everyday life and even though the pandemic is sort of winding down in some ways, but not in others, that intensity of news is still with us. We have the war in Ukraine and we have Russia threatening the use of nuclear weapons for the first time in over half a century. We have an energy crisis. We have a global economic mess up which is a result of the pandemic that still has yet to be cleaned up. We have a massive inflation problem. China's economy is slowing down. Pakistan has been devastated by unbelievable amounts of flooding. Haiti is on the verge of collapse. Climate change is still a problem and we're just getting more and more aware of how much worse it is getting. The list goes on and sometimes it can be hard to choose what to pay attention to, what to focus our attentions on. But the reason we are here today is because something truly remarkable is happening in Iran right now and it all started because a 22-year-old woman named Masa Amini, who's not much older than maybe the same age as some of you in the audience here today, decided one day on September the 13th last month to wear her headscarf in a particular way when she left her home in Tehran and went outside in public. As we know she was arrested by the morality police, was beaten up and she died in custody with a heart after having suffering a heart attack. After she was buried in the city of Sakez, women throughout the country started to rip off their headscarves in solidary with Masa. And then they took to the streets to have their voices heard. These protests have swelled over time. Now they've turned into a massive nationwide call to do all kinds of things, some of which are even some people are even calling to bring down the government. Men and boys have joined the women and the girls who have been defying the government authorities for the past few weeks. As we've heard in recent days these protests have been met with violence, lots of violence, so much so that over 200 people now I think have been killed, over 20 of them have been children. Now this is not the first time that the Iranian people have taken to the streets in protest, but this time it seems different somehow from other times in the past and hopefully our guests who will be joining us might be able to illuminate a bit about how maybe this time it is different. But with the government in control of a lot of the media it is hard to know exactly what is happening, especially from our position here thousands of kilometers away. So this event today has been organized through Studium Generale, but it's a student-driven initiative which really has two purposes. We're here for two purposes. One, we're here to inform our university community of what is happening there, to inform us here of what's happening there. But secondly and perhaps most more importantly, the point of today is to reiterate this notion that universities are places where topics can and should be freely discussed, freely debated, illuminated and challenged and debated. We here at Tilburg have a great privilege that universities in Iran currently do not have, which is that we can host discussions about this topic and speak about it freely and safely in ways that our colleagues and our peers in Iran currently cannot. So it's in solidarity with them and as well as in solidarity with the courageous voices of women, girls, boys and men on the streets throughout Iran that we are here today to discuss what's happening over there. So our next speaker is Ammar please. The floor is yours. So do you hear me? Yeah, it's okay? Okay, good because I can ask. And it doesn't work you said, no? Okay, it works. Do you have it or not? Anyway, it doesn't work. Okay, let's start. Just thank you very much for being here. I want to answer to some questions. Maybe it's, you know, you know the context now. And so, but I guess that many of you think that, okay, who are Iranians? You know that it's a lot of things if you want to search for what they think and also some kind of questions nowadays that those people who are on the streets, are they really representing the population or is it maybe just some young people who are against, for instance, compulsory job or the regime or something like that. These questions that maybe you have heard or puzzling you. I want to tell you something about that. So if you just start searching, is there kind of our Iranians religion, religious, then you can see something like that. That's 99%, 99.8% of Iranians are Muslim, 95, Shia, 5% or something like that. And this is from the famous also Polster or Institute like Pew or others. Or if you just think, okay, what about the acceptance of theocracy in Iran, having a kind of a government, a regime ruling by the religious law? Again, a word value survey. These are some reputable institutes. Any of you maybe may work with them later on. And so they said that 78% thinks that political system governed by religious law is good or fairly good. And according to Pew Center, again, we have famous American one in 2012. 66% think that it's a really good one. And so what's about the approval rate of the current president of Iran, Ibrahim Raisi, last year exactly, October 21, 2021. You see that Gallup is the famous Polster in the United States mentioned that 72% of Iranians support that. And so but the problem is that and then it's completely against the image that we can see nowadays over past the mountain Iran. And the problem is that they try to use some methods that they used in established democracies, free societies to ask people, what do you think about something that is extremely sensitive in Iran? You cannot ask people, do you believe in God or not? You cannot ask them about their religiosity. You cannot ask them, what do you think about the Islamic Republic? You cannot ask them about someone like him, who was the killer of 10, about thousands of people in ATs, that they know that. And in that time, he was the head of judiciary system. So and that's why you may have, you may see completely different picture. What we try to do in Gamman, that's no, I mentioned that three years ago, we started because I'm political scientist. I am comparative political scientist. And I understand and I see these numbers that it cannot be true in Iran, you know, that not only in Iran, also maybe in Egypt or some other countries, you cannot ask these questions, just call them on phone or just tick their doors and then ask them, what do you think about these things? We did another way. That's another issue. If you are interested, you can search in the website to see that about the methodology, all those things that things. We used anonymous way using social media, which is widely used in Iran in a kind of extraordinary way, 85% of Iranians using one of the famous social media WhatsApp or Telegram or Twitter or Instagram. So you can reach even people in living in small villages there using these kind of things. And you can make a way to ask them anonymously. They think that they can answer some sensitive question, but not they don't have any kind of footprint or that this they feel that it's safe. Based on that, you can see the picture of religiosity is Iran is very different from that big circle with one color that is Islam. You can see that you have Baha'i, you have Christian, you have 80s, you have Zoroastrian, you have a spiritual, some numbers we can discuss about that. But this is what Islamic regime didn't like to see. And you just in parenthesis, I should mention that there was a fight for a month in Wikipedia on the page of religion in Iran. You know that those people who are supporting the regime just try to because it was then after many years, those big circle with one color, it's once there. And then they started to just keep it and remove it and again put it. And at the end, they accepted, okay, we remove both pictures. And then they have just some numbers. I want to say that how it's something that they don't want to, that others see that there is a diversity in Iran. There is 80s in Iran. There is agnostic in Iran. It's about 30, one third of population who recognize themselves if they can be asked freely that they are Shi'a Muslim, for instance. It doesn't mean that Iranian not the believer. The same results show that 80% of Iranians believe in God. But I want to say that the picture is very different from what maybe you just can search. Again, and also we have understood that ask people that how have your religious beliefs changed during your lifetime? 50% mentioned that I went from being religious to non-religious. 50%, almost 50%. And this is something not strange if you live in Iran, if you just know the concept. And connected to something very relevant to the story of Mahsa Armenian whole revolution that we see about hijab. You see that about 60% don't believe in hijab. And when you ask about compulsory hijab, 72% are against compulsory hijab. These are numbers from 2020. This is the survey that we did. In that time, I remember that we ignored. Many Dutch magazines, newspapers, they just don't know. Come on. This is just exaggerated. This is from some people who are maybe just young generations. And nowadays, they see these numbers on the streets. And it took time that then they understood and know. And that's why for us it was not surprising because we thought that, okay, we know that what we did. And we know that methodology is okay. And someday these people will come out. And that's why you can see that they are now out. And this is not just some group of people or just some young generation. This is the question about the accepting bureaucratic system, having the Islamic regime in Iran. As you can see that 79% is what's World Value Survey, the reputable one showed. And when we ask it anonymously, 29% just want to have the Islamic regime. And then the question, okay, how these big names, World Value Survey, could not measure the reality? What they measure them? Who are those who say that 79%? They understood also that fund. But logically, we just control for those who supporting the regime. You know that the red one is just the sample of those who are affiliated themselves with one of the political orientations of the regime. They call it reformists or principalists or conservatives. Where you just control for them, then you see that you can even replicate the number of big pollsters. Because those people just can't say what they think. Others who are against the system, they cannot say what they think. Because then they would be punished. So, and also another question, comparing with the approval rate of the president. As I said, that 72% Gallup showed. But anonymously, when you ask 20% just confirm Ibrahim Raisi. And this is something in line with what you can see on the streets. So, and as I mentioned, the main issue is that in Iran for many years, those apologists, let's say scholars in even the governments, they try to have a different picture in Iran. In Iran, you have just reformists or principalists. And maybe there are some against the regime, but it was not true. And that's why we can see about 60% person wants to have a kind of regime change. And this is what we try to say that. Because you know that regime change was a kind of dirty word for many years. We want to say that regime change is not something that the United States or Western countries should want or not for Iran. Iranians want, and you should just recognize that one. And they know that why they want the regime change. As Laden mentioned, they try to reform the system for 25 years. They voted for this, the bad versus worse or something. It didn't work. And that's why they decided to change the regime. And that's why you see that all the slogans nowadays on the streets are against the regime. It's not something about the doing the reform or not any chance against the sanction or something. And as the last one also, maybe this is one something that you have heard that Iranians are against the United States. You have heard about that death to America, death to Israel. We asked also those regime chance that what's the popularity of the oceans. You can see 73% are against death to America, which is a very formal regime's propaganda that Iranians against America or even Israel. You see that 65% of Iranians against that one. You know that? So I want to say that the situation is something like that. If you can measure people, attitudes, you can see completely different. And I want to say the answer to the last question. Those are on the streets. Are they representative of the, let's say, the majority? Yes. As you can see that the majority of Iranians wants regime chance. The majority of Iranians are rejecting compulsory job. The majority of Iranians are against having kind of, you know, that the Islamic regime or the intervention of the religion. And the majority of Iranians have a kind of diversity. It's not something to say that they want the Islamic regime. They want, for instance, the kind of, you know, the compulsory job or something like that. So I hope that this can maybe give some new evidence that maybe the reality is different. And that's why sometimes you see that people are surprised by seeing what's happening in Iran. Thank you very much. Great. Thanks a lot. Next guest is Claudio. Please take the floor. We welcome Claudio. So good afternoon. My name is Claudio. And I'm very glad to be here today, because I used to live here. I graduated here in Tilburg. And I did my thesis on speaking jihadi women that were invested on Facebook to find their process of mobilization, recruitment of other women. One of the things that I always loved about this university was and is the motto, understanding society. So when Anna approached me to do this conference, I was thinking, okay, what does my research bring together with what's happening in Iran? And that's one of the things that I think we always should search for, the ways that we can get close to other countries, to other geographic locations, and above all, to other thoughts. So with due distance, with due respectful goals and use of violence, I would like to make a parallel between my research and what we are discussing here today. So these will be our topics of discussion that I will try to fly by. And we start with my own research. So as we have heard, I did about jihadi women involved online on Facebook. And one of the things that I was most focused on was discovering their agency, their power to create, their power to manifest their identity that was focused on themselves as females and not against male, not against other stereotypes. So that was my focus. And when I was doing that, I was interviewing these women. I was in contact with these women. I end up doing that visualization that you see there. So the points that you see in pink are women. As you can see, this is the Spanish jihadi Moroccan network. This is the network that was responsible for the Paris and Brussels attacks to give you two direct examples. And these women have very important roles, but they were never on the radar of any investigation of any academic research because they were women, they were considered. And as you can see there, their degree of centrality was very high. They were close to the power. And as you can see there in my explanation, they were actually key players. They were five, but in between them, they were responsible for the radicalization and the recruitment of several women, well, thousands of women that they had in their power on their Facebook account. So continuing our theme of searching for circumstances where data can be informed by parallel situations, I came to this one that says me a lot. My son is here in the audience. He has been with me basically all field works that I did in all jihadi hotspots. So he's a little familiar with the subject for the good or not. We'll see. This is an homage meant by a jihadi mother to her son. This was one of the most famous Spanish jihadis at that time. And it's also, again, with due parallels with the violence acknowledgement that we don't have to bring into the subject of the Iranian women in the sense that they are the victims, the objects of not the perpetrators. There's something in between these lines that we can already understand. One is as our previous speaker spoke about the question of the Muslim retirement and in this case about motherhood. So motherhood is one of the aspects that I think that female online can fabric their own identity, their own agency. And there are several cases my colleagues will be more informed to tell you about how mothers organize themselves also online to support the Iranian movement. So these are the commonalities that I could identify in between these women. So what do they have in common? What do they have that makes them in terms of social movements be efficient, have their agency producing real results? If we want later, we can discuss them better. But above all, I'd like to focus on the fact that we already mentioned the tailor question, the veil question. And above all, the oppressing and how they want to escape it. And how they have to escape it by recurring to online platforms. Why they find they'll safe haven there. So already our speaker spoke about it. So we speak here of one of the circumstances that can indeed change what we are seeing, how their agency online can actually bring real results in real life. So we speak about the generation Z or as they refer to in around the 80s because of course of difference of the calendar. And how these women that were involved in social media platforms became not only the face, but also the name of the movement here. We already spoke just before how the people are divided in terms of platforms. Our focus should be Instagram if I would can suggest in terms of platform that we should be something interesting for you to, for example, the research on because that's another thing to try to speak directly with this be with these individuals that want to make a difference in the world that we live. And that's what I try also to do to have empirical data to have direct contact with the other graphic that you can see something that sometimes data has to shock us has to, you know, to take it out of comfort zones. And this is one of them. How we can relate social media use with the arrests. So how much did we have in percentage according to what we use what results in terms of prison. The other thing that I found it very interesting in this case also was on Facebook the jihadi women were using it to sell goods to make their own business that business would finance their logistics into the jihadi networks again parallels apart how women in Iran are using for example Instagram in order to create their own agency through economy through their own self sufficiency which is something that is very important for in this specific case women that live that have a high education degree but yet don't have a possibility to have a real job. And another thing that for example Nancy Hartstock spoke about is when we are constructing agency we have to construct also our autonomy our resources and if you think about Giddens for example he said once you have the resources it's not enough you have to do something with them you have to have agency to drive them you have to have agency to make them create again what Nancy Hartstock also referred to agency creating solidarity and that's also the difference that some of the speakers already mentioned how is this solidarity being visible across the country and how this can indeed bring the change. So the girls online have been interrupted many times but they continue to stream they continue to post what they think it's important to manifest their will to change and to reform and one of the things that they do very smart if you want them in a very intelligent way is that they bring what they are streaming to the streets and vice versa there's a continuum there's a coherence there's a frequency that if you are looking to the digital results it's very important to keep the momentum to keep the the structure shaking if you want and these are some of the results that they are achieving with their work they are being able above all to make it a global protest a global audience engage with their content and to finalize I would like to I saw this one and I thought it was very a very good example of what we are dealing here with and the other good example that I think is that and our speaker already mentioned it when the egg cracks from the outside it's broken but when the egg cracks from the inside it's a birth and I think it's exactly what is happening here the system is cracking from the within and it's cracking with a power that has no fear that was also something that I could see in the jihadi women they have no fear they needed to change something in the perception of the globe of themselves and this is what we see here the need to create a new order the need to create a new system that is based on what these women think as individuals more than as women they think of themselves as individuals and if you want to go back to our data they are creating it on social media they are creating it with a fabric that will be if you want will cast a shadow bigger than the shadow into the regime that they are living in so thank you