When Human Rights Become a Trend
Hypocrisy today is not limited to one nation or one religion; it stretches across the Arab world, the Islamic world, the Christian world, Europe, and America. Many people claim to defend human rights, but in reality most of them defend trends, slogans, and whatever topic brings them attention, followers, and fame. When Gaza is mentioned, outrage becomes loud, emotional, and theatrical. Celebrities give interviews, influencers flood the internet with hashtags, and everyone suddenly becomes a humanitarian hero. But very few are willing to speak honestly about how events began or about the civilians on all sides who suffered.
When the topic changes to Iran, the loud voices suddenly fall silent. Iranian women have been beaten for showing their hair, students have been shot in the streets, teenagers have been arrested, tortured, and executed, and families have buried their children after protests. After the death of Mahsa Amini, the regime answered with bullets, prisons, fear, and executions, yet most of those who scream loudly about other causes quietly looked away because Iran was not “fashionable” in the media and did not bring the same attention.
Celebrities and internet personalities play a major role in this selective outrage. Even figures who are supposed to focus only on children’s education — such as Miss Rachel — step into politics and speak strongly about some causes while completely ignoring others. If someone decides to enter politics and human rights discussions, then they must be consistent. The same voice that speaks about Gaza or Israel should also speak about Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan, and every place where people are oppressed. Selective compassion is not compassion; it is branding and performance.
This silence did not begin yesterday. It goes back to the very start of the Islamic Republic. Ayatollah Khomeini created a regime built on repression, ideological control, executions, and the export of revolution instead of building a free and dignified society. Under Ayatollah Khamenei, this system became even more brutal: crushing protests, censoring voices, jailing journalists, torturing activists, expanding security forces, and using religion as a tool to control every aspect of life. The history of the Islamic regime is filled with political prisoners, forced confessions, disappearance, censorship, and punishment of anyone who dares to think differently.
The Arab world, which loves loud slogans, has also shown painful indifference. Sudan is bleeding in silence: cities destroyed, markets burned, families starving, women assaulted, hospitals shut down, and millions displaced by a war of power between armed factions. Yemen suffers famine and disease, Syria carries mass graves and displaced families, Libya lives in chaos, and yet outrage is always selective — it appears only when cameras and headlines demand it.
Beyond the Middle East, injustice continues across the world. In Myanmar, Rohingya Muslims were burned in their homes, raped, killed, and driven from their land. In China, Uyghur Muslims face detention camps, forced labor, and systematic erasure of identity. In many African countries like Sudan and Nigeria, massacres, kidnappings, and hunger continue with barely any global attention. The pattern repeats everywhere: if suffering is not profitable or politically useful, it is ignored.
Even in places thought safe, violence and injustice can strike. On Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, during the Jewish festival of Hanukkah in December 2025, a terrorist attack targeted a public celebration. Two gunmen opened fire on the crowd, killing around 15 people and injuring dozens, including children and a Holocaust survivor. The attack shocked the Jewish community worldwide, yet reactions from broader media and public figures were slow and limited. One Muslim bystander, Ahmed al‑Ahmed, intervened heroically to stop further killings, showing that courage and humanity do not depend on religion, while the silence of many others revealed how selective outrage still dominates global attention.
The bitter truth is that many people today do not truly care about justice. They care about image, ideology, and visibility. They defend some victims loudly and abandon others completely. Their morality changes according to politics, trends, and social media algorithms.
At the end of all this, I say clearly and without hesitation: thank you to the Jews who truly cared about Iranians, supported Iranian women, spoke out against the crimes of Khamenei, and stood with the victims of the Islamic regime when many Arabs and many others chose silence. A few Arabs also showed courage, but only a few. Those who stood with Iranians did so not for popularity, but out of genuine humanity, and that deserves deep respect.