Masih Alinejad is founder of the My Stealthy Freedom campaign against the compulsory hijab, a women’s rights activist, author and journalist.
Born in Iran, she was jailed at 18 for her writings against the Islamic Republic. She became a journalist at the ILNA news agency and at Hambastegi, a reformist newspaper where she exposed corruption among Iranian members of parliament. She later became a columnist for Etemad Melli, a daily newspaper founded by presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi.
She left Iran in 2009, escaping arrest after fraudulent presidential elections that saw the re-election of Mahmood Ahmadinejad. In 2014, she created the My Stealthy Freedom campaign to provide a platform for Iranian women to protest compulsory hijab rules.
In 2019, three of Alinejad’s family members were arrested by Iranian authorities for her activism abroad. In 2021, an Iranian plot to kidnap her from her New York home was foiled by American intelligence services. The following year, she narrowly escaped an assassination attempt orchestrated by the IRGC. In October 2025, two Russian mobsters involved in the plot were convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Among her many accomplishments, she is co-founder and President of the World Liberty Congress, and co-founder of United Against Gender Apartheid. After 8 years of leading Tablet, a political satire show on Voice of America, she now hosts The World According to Masih, a podcast exploring democracy, human rights, and the global struggle against authoritarianism.
Her activism and its personal toll are documented in the award-winning film Be My Voice (2021), directed by Nahid Persson Sarvestani. Her leadership has earned her prestigious honors, including Time Magazine’s Woman of the Year (2023), the Oxi Courage Award, the Washington Institute’s Scholar-Statesman Award. She was also the inaugural recipient of the Geneva Summit’s International Women’s Rights Award in 2015.
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