This week on 60 Minutes, correspondent Lesley Stahl met Masih Alinejad, an Iranian activist dwelling in Brooklyn who has been focused by the Iranian regime for encouraging girls in Iran to cease sporting headscarves. Protests over hijab legal guidelines took maintain in Iran in fall 2022 after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died whereas within the custody of Iran’s morality police. Amini had been arrested on the cost of sporting a hijab improperly.
In Brooklyn, Alinejad’s activism has made her a goal of the Iranian regime. As Stahl was interviewing her in regards to the menace towards her life, Alinejad introduced up one other topic: Stahl’s interview with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in 2022, throughout which Stahl lined her personal head.
Masih Alinejad: I used to be livid once I noticed your interview as a result of I used to be like, “Why?”
Lesley Stahl: When you noticed me interviewing Raisi and I used to be sporting the scarf, the veil, you have been upset.
Masih Alinejad: Please do not get mad at me.
Lesley Stahl: I’m not mad at you, I’m not mad at you.
Masih Alinejad: I used to be indignant.
Lesley Stahl: But I feel you need to inform us. You have been indignant at me.
Masih Alinejad: Oh, thanks a lot, really, for giving me the chance to say that. Because a whole lot of journalists and feminine politicians, they do not even get it, why I used to be upset, why I used to be indignant. And can I say one thing? You’re the one one really asking me this query. Because the remainder, they do not even need to hear individuals like me that why, why I used to be indignant. Because look, I misplaced every thing in my life.
They are dictators. You have to present the platform to girls in Iran. You have to listen to them. By giving platform to Ebrahim Raisi and sporting hijab, you are legitimizing some of the barbaric legal guidelines, obligatory veiling. One of the clerics in Iran informed me on air, ” Who are you? How dare you to say no to obligatory hijab?” So clearly if you end up sporting hijab within the title of respecting the regulation of the land, they’re utilizing this to place extra strain on us.
Lesley Stahl: But you recognize, do not you, that if I had mentioned, “I’m not going to put on the hijab, even right here in Iran,” that they’d’ve mentioned, “Well, you do not get your interview then.”
Masih Alinejad: And then you definately could–
Lesley Stahl: It places us on this troublesome place. And, after all, we did debate it. It’s not as if it wasn’t a problem that we perceive.
Masih Alinejad: Exactly. No, really you probably did an amazing job by difficult him. But that is what dictators are actually good at, placing girls towards girls, by forcing you to put on hijab and telling me that, “Look, even I compelled this highly effective lady to put on a hijab.”
Lesley Stahl: I didn’t really feel, in my coronary heart and in my thoughts, that what I used to be doing was an act towards girls.
“You need to determine whether or not you your self are an activist and also you need to make an announcement, otherwise you’re a journalist and also you need to do the interview,” Stahl informed 60 Minutes Overtime. “And I positively fall within the second class. I feel there’s a lot worth in going to a spot, interviewing officers, that if the value for that’s to place that scarf on — regardless that I’m against it — I’d nonetheless need to get the interview, convey it again and put it on 60 Minutes, which is what we did.”
The video above was initially revealed on November 12, 2023. It was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and edited by Sarah Shafer Prediger.
