Guilty of encouraging moral corruption
Two years in prison for taking a scarf off her head.
An Iranian woman who publicly removed her veil to protest against a mandatory hijab law has been sentenced to two years in prison, prosecutors say.
The woman, who has not been officially named, was found guilty of “encouraging moral corruption”, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi said.
Because a woman who refuses to wear a heavy scarf covering her hair and ears and neck is “encouraging moral corruption.” Women’s hair must be all but radioactive.
More than 30 Iranian women have been arrested since the end of December for publically removing their veils in defiance of the law.
Most have been released, but many are being prosecuted.
Women showing their hair in public in Iran are usually sentenced to far shorter terms of two months or less, and fined $25.
Oh a mere two months imprisonment for not wearing a scarf. How liberal.
Iranian law, in place since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, stipulates that all women, Iranian or foreign, Muslim or non-Muslim, must be fully veiled in public at all times.
But the zeal of the country’s morality police has declined in the past two decades, and a growing number of Iranian women in Tehran and other large cities often wear loose veils that reveal their hair.
In some areas of the capital, women are regularly seen driving cars with veils draped over their shoulders.
Dolatabadi said he would no longer accept such behaviour, and had ordered the impound of vehicles driven by socially rebellious women.
The prosecutor said some “tolerance” was possible when it came to women who wear the veil loosely, “but we must act with force against people who deliberately question the rules on the Islamic veil”, according to Mizan Online.
No freedom of or from religion for them.
So much for the claims that all Muslim women prefer to wear headscarves because it’s so liberating. I’ve never known a liberating wonderful thing that has to be enforced with laws and punishment.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for Western ‘progressives’ to notice or mention the event. They’re too busy fawning over Farakkhan.
That so few feminist organisations or individuals are willing to tackle this head on is discouraging.
However, SOME do, and that’s encouraging.
It’s an issue, though, that far too few address on IWD.
Why is it so much easier to sweep this under the rug than to state plainly that, while we in the West are proud to live in countries where women can choose to don these forms of dress, we are just as proud (and will fight just as hard) to make sure they can doff them, as well?
I’m not particularly proud to live in a country where women can “choose to” put on a hijab. I get that it’s probably better than the coerciveness of the alternative, but I don’t really find it a source of pride, because it’s not a genuinely free choice. Hijab is considered a “religious obligation” by many, and that’s an idea that rules out free choice. There’s an irony embedded in the idea of “choosing” to be bound by perceived “religious obligations,” and especially so when those religious obligations are inherently sexist and/or misogynist.
It’s sad how few “religious obligations” are about welcoming the stranger and helping the besieged and embracing the exile compared to the many that are about policing women and other inferiors.