Opinion | Smoking Poster-Girl Of Iran To Rowling's Rebels: Imagining Symbols Of Resistance

A young Iranian woman defiantly lighting a cigarette from a burning photo of Iran’s supreme Islamist leader Ali Khamenei gets captured on video and gets frozen in time to turn into a widely circulated

resistance poster.

British writer JK Rowling uses that very poster to post on X: “If you claim to support human rights yet can’t bring yourself to show solidarity with those fighting for their liberty in Iran, you’ve revealed yourself. You don’t give a damn about people being oppressed and brutalised so long as it’s being done by the enemies of your enemies.”

If you claim to support human rights yet can’t bring yourself to show solidarity with those fighting for their liberty in Iran, you’ve revealed yourself. You don’t give a damn about people being oppressed and brutalised so long as it’s being done by the enemies of your enemies. pic.twitter.com/eK3jjh3pD6

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) January 11, 2026

In the Harry Potter books, Rowling’s own characters Fred and George could have perfectly blended in today’s Iran. The Weasley twins unleashed chaos with pranks and fireworks before escaping Professor Dolores Umbridge’s tyrannical stint at Hogwarts. As rule-breaking underdogs from a poor family, they embodied exhilarating and joyous defiance against authoritarian control, just like those taking over the streets in Iran.

But there is more than fire and fireworks that tie the mundane world with the imagined. A sea of symbols connect the raging Iranian revolution with the fiction of one of its most prominent votaries, Rowling.

The theme of rebellion is constant in her books. Whether it is Dumbledore’s Army, a secret society comprising Harry, Ron, Hermione, and a group of Hogwarts students, to learn defensive magic; or the clumsy underdog Neville Longbottom pulling the Sword of Gryffindor from the Sorting Hat and slaying Voldemort’s serpent Nagini; or the house-elf Dobby’s defiance and sacrifice to save Harry and friends; the Potter books are peppered with rebellion which has parallels in the uprising of the suffering underdog — especially the poor and the middle class and those who feel claustrophobic in the Ayatollah-ruled Islamist morality-prison.

The Iranian protesters are as repulsed by the Islamic symbol on the national flag or the hijab, for instance, as Dumbledore’s side was by Voldemort’s Dark Mark.

Just as Dumbledore’s phoenix Fawkes which regenerates itself from ashes, the pre-1979 sun-and-lion flag drawn from symbols of ancient, Zoroastrian Persia has been reinvented across Iran.

And finally, just as Harry and his dear ones kept determinedly fighting against the death eaters and dementors even while getting maimed and killed, Iranians have kept fighting in spite of thousands being coldly executed or kept in custody.

As America and Israel prepare for fierce military action against Iran’s Islamist regime, it is to be seen if Voldemort’s fate becomes a premonition for things to come for Khamenei.

Abhijit Majumder is the author of the book, ‘India’s New Right’. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.