My father was executed by terrorists. His fight was never just about the Islamic Regime in Iran—it was about a global jihadist system that terrorizes women

My father, Jamshid Sharmahd, taught me what true feminism looks like. Not just in slogans or speeches, but in courage. In sacrifice. In choosing to speak when silence is safer.

He raised me to be strong. To resist oppression in all its forms. To never look away.

He also knew something many in the West still refuse to confront: the oppression of women under radical Islamist regimes is not confined to one country. It is global. It is coordinated. And it is growing.

My father spoke out about that. Loudly. Bravely. And it cost him his life.

He was a German-American journalist and activist, and one of the fiercest critics of the Islamic regime—a regime built on gender apartheid, where women are considered half of men, and where girls are beaten, imprisoned, and killed for daring to show their hair.

He wasn’t just a critic of the regime in Iran—he understood the broader pattern. He exposed how jihadist regimes and networks reinforce each other across borders, how they use fear and violence to control women, suppress dissent, and silence journalists. He believed the struggle for women’s freedom was inseparable from the fight against radical terrorism.

And so they targeted him.

In 2020, Islamic regime agents abducted my father from Dubai in a cross-border kidnapping. They smuggled him into Iran, held him in solitary confinement, and subjected him to years of psychological and physical torture. He was denied legal representation, denied due process, and ultimately sentenced to death under the charge of “corruption on earth”—a sweeping accusation used to justify executions of dissidents.

In October 2024, after years of international inaction, they killed him.

I am his daughter, Gazelle Sharmahd, and I will not be silent.

My father’s death is not just a tragedy. It is a warning. The same extremist ideology that murdered him is the one that killed Mahsa Amini. It is the ideology behind Boko Haram's kidnapping of schoolgirls, the Taliban’s return to Afghanistan, ISIS’s sex slavery, and Hamas’s use of rape as a weapon of war. It is the system that wages war on women’s bodies and calls it divine.

This is not just about Iran. This is about a global jihadist movement that views women as threats when they speak, objects when they don’t, and targets when they resist.

That’s why I launched the #CutTheRope campaign. It’s a call to action—against executions, against terror, and against the impunity with which authoritarian and Islamist regimes kill their critics. The international community must act—not just with words, but with consequences. Diplomatic engagement without accountability has only emboldened this violence.

Western governments cannot claim to stand for women’s rights while turning a blind eye to regimes that murder women—and the men who fight for them.

My father deserves a burial with dignity. But this isn’t just about laying him to rest. This is about standing up—for truth, for justice, and for every woman whose life has been shattered by radical terror masquerading as religion.

We must stop pretending this is a distant issue. We are all implicated. And we are all responsible for what we choose to tolerate.

So I ask: will we speak up only after another journalist is killed? Another girl is executed? Or will we act now?

Not just for my father.
Not just for me.
But for every woman whose freedom is seen as a threat.

The time to stand is now.