“I intended to assault her, she resisted, I killed her.”

 

 #Femicide_in_Islam_and_Islamic_Thought

 “I intended to assault her, she resisted, I killed her.”
This is part of the confession of a man accused of murdering Maryam Aghababaei, a young woman from Shahrekord; a woman who disappeared after requesting a Snap (online taxi) and whose body was found a few hours later in a mountainous area.

 

The marks of the claws on the defendant’s face are all that remain of her struggle to survive.

But the issue is not just a murder. It is a government issue that has been talking about “women’s safety” for years, but it sees safety only in controlling women’s bodies, not in controlling men’s violence.

In Iran, there is a law for women to cover up, there is surveillance for their presence on the street, in universities, in the gym, and even on the internet, but when it comes to sexual violence, rape, or femicide, the law suddenly becomes vague, ineffective, and silent.

In addition to all this, the issue of safety in online taxi apps has also been ignored for years. Many international platforms, such as Uber, have, after years of public outcry and pressure, added features such as an emergency button, instant route sharing, more thorough background checks on drivers, the ability to record audio during trips, and more robust systems for handling harassment reports. But in Iran, women are still often riding in cars that only know the driver’s name and license plate without any real security measures. Companies like Snap cannot simply express regret after every disaster; women’s safety should be a serious part of these platforms’ responsibilities, not a temporary response after murder and assault.

Maryam’s murder is a stark reminder of the fact that in Iran, women are always required to be “careful,” but no institution is required to guarantee their actual safety. Every time a woman is killed, the same advice is repeated: don’t go out alone, don’t take a taxi, don’t trust anyone. But no one asks the system why women must constantly resort to survival strategies in order to survive.

When the law does not see violence against women as a structural crisis, femicide and sexual violence become news for a few days, a few hashtags, and then forgotten.