Celia Taghdiri

Celia Taghdiri says she’s been fascinated by Tahirih since childhood. A heroine in the Middle East, Tahirih championed women’s independence and democracy in the mid-1800s. Her views and actions led to her death.

“Tahirih was my role model when I was in my teens. I’m going to hold her up as a role model for my daughters,” says Ms. Taghdiri, who came to the United States in 1979 from Iran and lives in Vista, Calif., just north of San Diego, with her husband and daughters, 3 and 5.

Many women in Iran, including Ms. Taghdiri’s mother, are named Tahirih. It’s also a popular name for Baha'i women throughout the world. Fittingly, the Tahirih Justice Center in Falls Church, Va., provides pro bono legal services, and social and medical service referrals to immigrant women and girls who are fleeing from gender-based violence and persecution.

Tahirih was a follower of the Babi religion, the precursor to the Baha'i Faith. Whereas Ms. Taghdiri was born into the Baha'i Faith, Tahirih was born into the Muslim religion. Growing up, she questioned why women were forced to wear a veil and were considered second-class citizens.

At one point, Ms. Taghdiri writes in New Moon, Tahirih asked her uncle, “Oh, when will the day come when new laws will be revealed on Earth? I shall be the first to follow these teachings and give my life for my sisters.”

After studying the teachings of the newly established Babi religion, with its principles of the oneness of humankind and equality of the sexes, Tahirih became a Babi, to the dismay of her family.

“She was brave enough to fight for women’s rights at a time and place where women were treated lower than dirt, says Ms. Taghdiri. She was a real crusader, lecturing throughout the Middle East to empower women.”

When news traveled that Tahirih removed her veil at a Babi conference in the summer of 1848, the Persian government thought she had gone too far and put her in jail. When she refused to recant her views about the equality of women, she was ordered put to death. That same summer, the first Women’s Rights Convention took place in New York.

Even with the advancements made by women in the West since then, girls still need a role model like Tahirih, Ms. Taghdiri says.

On execution day in August 1852, Tahirih put on an “elegant white silk dress as if she were attending a wedding,” Ms. Taghdiri writes. She was led to a garden, where she spoke her last words: “You can kill me, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women.”

Tahirih was strangled with her own scarf. Her body was thrown down a well. She was 35, had three children and a husband who had divorced her because of her convictions.

"With all the freedom we have here," she says, “we can take good advantage of our liberties and help those in other parts of the world who don’t have these freedoms. Because of Tahirih, who took the road never traveled, we can improve conditions for all humanity.”