A Persian poet and scholar who tore off her veil — and announced the dawn of a new religious age. 

In the 1840s, Táhirih became one of the first women to preach in public in Iran. As a leading figure in the Bábí movement — a precursor to the Bahá’í faith — she argued that revelation had not ended and that women should be free to study, speak, and lead. 

Her defiance of clerical and royal authority terrified the establishment. In 1852, she was executed in secret, her body buried in silence. Was Táhirih a prophet of liberation or a heretic undone by her own courage?

GUESTS:

• Professor Negar Mottahedeh — cultural critic and film theorist specialising in interdisciplinary and feminist contributions to the fields of Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University
• Raya M Hazini — doctoral candidate with her Masters from the Graduate Theological Union
• Dr Zara Moballegh — PhD from Tehran University, she’s now visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard Divinity School. 

This is the third episode of God Forbid's Religious Rebels, a six-part special series exploring the lives of spiritual revolutionaries who defied empires, reshaped traditions — and sometimes paid with their lives.