Kameel Ahmady is a British-Iranian scholar working in the field of social anthropology, with a particular focus on gender, children, ethnic minorities, and child labour.* Born in 1972 in Naghadeh, West Azerbaijan Province, Ahmady is also known for his research and activities in the fields of social science and harmful traditional practices (HTP). He is the coordinator and developer of more than 11 research study books and 20 scientific articles in Persian, English, Turkish, and Kurdish on subjects such as child marriage, temporary marriage, White marriage, female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), male genital mutilation (MGM), child labour and children's scavenging, LGBTQ+ social issues, and identity and ethnicity.
Ahmady holds a HND and bachelor's degree in printing and publishing from the London University of Communication and a master's degree in social anthropology and visual ethnography from the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. He has also completed specialised training and courses on politics in the Middle East, research methods, and empowerment at other universities in England. In 2017, IKWRO presented its annual award to Ahmady for his collection of research in the fields of gender and children at the London university of Law. Ahmady also won the World Peace Foundation's Literature and Humanities Award in 2018 at the Global P.E.A.C.E. ceremony hosted by George Washington University for his collection of works on social issues.
During his career as a researcher, Kameel has conducted several comprehensive and group-based research projects in the field in various parts of south-west Asia, including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey.
In mid-August 2019, media inside and outside Iran reported that Kameel Ahmady had been arrested by the security forces of the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A year later, in December 2020, he was sentenced to nine years and three months in prison and fined 600,000 euros on charges of collaborating with a hostile government, trying to divide Iran through scientific research, seeking "cultural changes" through research, collaborating with and implementing anti-government projects, conducting "subversive" research work related to social issues and minorities, promoting and supporting homosexuality in the form of scientific research, and several other charges. while released on bail of 500 million tomans in December 2020, Ahmady escaped through the western borders of Iranian Kurdistan and went to Britain.
Biography Kameel Ahmady was born in 1972 (1351 in Iranian calendar) in the bilingual city of Naghadeh in West Azarbaijan province, Iran and grew up in the mostly monolingual city of Piranshahr in the same province. He grew up in a middle-class Kurdish family.
During the Iranian Revolution, when Ahmady was a boy, Kurdish groups had joined the struggle to end the rule of the Shah. They wanted greater autonomy for Iran's Kurdish minority. However, after the Revolution, the new Islamic regime rejected that demand. A conflict erupted between government forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, which lasted for years and left thousands dead.
In an interview on the BBC's "Witness History", Ahmady stated that, as demands for autonomy grew, his town became the scene of bitter ethnic fighting, which led his family to flee and become refugee in various villages, never returning to his home town.
Due to the political changes in Iran between 1979 and 1985, Ahmady received his primary education in various schools in Naghadeh, Gerd Ashvan village, and in town of Piranshahr and in three educational systems – the Imperial Government (the Shah), the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI), and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Later, he completed his secondary education in Moqbli, Marufi, and Mohammad Rauf schools in Piranshahr and Naghadeh towns. Finally, during the internal conflicts and Iran–Iraq War also due to his unwillingness to study in the education system at that time, after being repeatedly failed and rejected, he dropped out of school and continued his education by home-schooling himself.
In his interview with the BBC, Ahmady stated that he was arrested and tortured in his teens due to his political activities. During the internal political tensions and the military conflicts between the Iranian Government and Kurdish political parties and after the war between Iran and Iraq, he decided to migrate from Iran to Britain to continue his studies. During that time, he lived and studied in England.
After immigrating to England, Ahmady was able to obtain his undergraduate degrees, Higher National Diploma (HND) and BA in printing and publishing and environmental economics London University of Communication, a constituent college of the University of the Arts AW (UAL) in 2002. In 2005, he obtained his master's degree (MA) in social anthropology and visual ethnography from the University of Kent in Canterbury. He went on to complete specialised courses related to Middle Eastern politics and research methods at other universities in London.
After university, Ahmady began his fieldwork-orientated and anthropological studies, and research in different regions of Asia, the Middle East, Africa. Most of his research in recent years, which is carried out in teams and fieldwork based, has been done in connection with the Middle East, Kurdish studies, Iranian culture and social issues. He has published and coordinated research studies on a variety of topics, such as a travel guide to Kurdistan of Turkey, the self-immolation of women in Iraq, child marriage and child labour in Iran, the situation of LGBTQ+ peoples in Iran, investigations of so-called "White marriage" (cohabitation), temporary marriage, ethnicity and identity (5 major ethnic groups in Iran) and research into male circumcision (MGM) also comprehensive studies on female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) in Iranian Kurdistan and the south of Iran. He has published several field-research team work books and articles in English, Persian, and Kurdish.Ahmady, Kameel 2009: Another look at east and southeast Turkey. GABB Publication, Diyarbakır.Ahmady, Kameel Et al 2020: Forbidden Tale (A comprehensive study on lesbian, gay, bisexuals (LGB) in Iran). AP Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany.Ahmady, Kameel Et al 2021: House with Open Door A comprehensive research study on white marriage (cohabitation) in Iran. Mehri Publication, London-UK.Ahmady, Kameel Et al 2017: An Echo of Silence (A Comprehensive Research Study on Early Child Marriage (ECM) in Iran). Nova publishing, USA.
Arrest In August 2019, on his return to Iran from a UN conference in Addis Ababa on human rights, and while he was researching ethnicity and identity among five major cohorts of Iran, Ahmady was arrested by security forces in Tehran. He believes he was taken by the Revolutionary Guards partly due to his research work, but also because Iran was looking for British assets to seize in reprisal after the British Marines helped seize an Iranian ship, Grace 1, off the shores of Gibraltar on 4 July 2019.
The ship was suspected of breaching EU sanctions by taking oil to Syria. The infamous judge Abolqasem Salavati of the Islamic Revolutionary Court formally charged Ahmady with trying to secure socio-cultural changes in the Islamic Republic by allegedly conducting "subversive" research related to social issues, such as lobbying to raise the age of child marriage, promoting homosexuality, trying to divide Iran through scientific research, sending false reports to the human-rights rapporteur of the UN, and several other charges. He was sentenced to nine years and three months in prison and fined 600,000 euros.
He was interrogated and kept in solitary confinement for more than one hundred days by the IRGC in the infamous Ward A section of Evin Prison in Tehran. Although under supervision, Ahmady was then temporarily released from prison on bail. When his appeal was quashed and his sentence confirmed by the Supreme Court, he managed to leave Iran, escaping through the mountains, and return to England.
Research fields Given his background in anthropology and ethnography, Kameel Ahmady has made numerous trips to various parts of the world such as North Africa, Europe, south-west Asia, and the Middle East to conduct research and carry out participant observation. Since Ahmady was born and raised in the Kurdish regions of the western provinces of Iran, and because of the culture and religion of his region, he and his teams conducted some of his earlier anthropological and ethnographic research in those regions.
As is common in social science research, most of Ahmady's work are connected with one another and most of his research topics were determined by the available field data.
Conformity and resistance in Mahabad The field research for this book, which was also Ahmady's university project, began in May 2006 in West Azerbaijan province in north-western Iran – the southern part of this province (also referred to as "Kurdistan" also Mukriyan), in the town of Mahabad. The work was undertaken in cooperation with the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (Kanoon Fakri o Parverashi Kodek o Nojavan). Photographic, textual and interview data were collected during a three-month period working with children and young adults as well as members of staff at the centre, parents, and local leaders.Ahmady, Kameel 2021: Conformity and Resistance in Mahabad (Media Consumption, Conformity and Resistance: A Visual Ethnography of Youth in Iranian Kurdistan). Scholars Press, Netherlands.
The initial aim of this research was to examine the factors that shape a sense of belonging and place among young people in Mahabad, a town on the north-western periphery of Iran. Ahmady wanted to look at their consumption of local, national, and transnational forms of media and how these influenced their views of events and their local environment, and the ways they choose to narrate these. He used reflexive visual methods, asking them to take their own photographic pieces dealing with themes they saw as relevant to local current events and their places within these. The works they produced were then placed in a week-long public exhibition in Mahabad, where further data were gathered from a guest book of reactions to the event and observation notes taken at the time.
The work produced by the participants shows the multiple and sometimes competing forces at work in the lives of young people in Iran, where idealised images about "The West" serve to challenge or reinforce their own senses of place. Conventions of media and popular culture "story telling" – that is, the discourses used to describe current affairs and social conditions on satellite television from Asia and Europe, in films, in print media such as newspapers, and in vernacular trends – shaped not only the choice of themes that were prioritised by the young people, but also the ways in which they viewed those themes and their relevance to their lives. Particularly with respect to issues of gender, there appears to be a strong desire for more public debate, but an ambivalence about the role of hybrid influences as positive or negative. Additionally, local forms of identity based on Kurdish resistance to a dominant nationalism are sometimes discernible, as is the overarching context of recent global events drawing Iran into direct political confrontations with Western powers.