Masih Alinejad

Masih Alinejad is an Iranian-American journalist, author, and women's rights activist, best known for founding the #MyStealthyFreedom and #WhiteWednesdays campaigns — viral movements in which Iranian women removed their hijabs in public in defiance of the Islamic Republic's mandatory covering laws. She was born in a village in northern Iran and worked as a journalist in Iran before going into exile in 2009 after criticizing the government. She has since lived in the United States, where she continues to document the Iranian regime's treatment of women. In 2021, the US Department of Justice charged Iranian intelligence operatives with plotting to kidnap her from her Brooklyn home. She is the author of The Wind in My Hair (2018). She documents that the hijab in Iran is not a free religious choice but a legally enforced requirement backed by imprisonment, lashing, and expulsion from school and work.