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Snapshot 5:Mon, Nov 4, 2024 3:20:33 PM GMT last edited by Vandita

Iran: Student Arrested for Stripping off in Dress Code Protest

Iran: Student Arrested Afterfor Stripping tooff Protestin MoralDress PoliceCode HarassmentProtest

Above: An Iranian family walks together along a street in the historical city of Tabriz on Oct. 17, 2024. Image copyright: Morteza Nikoubazl/Contributor/NurPhoto via Getty Images

The Facts

  • A female student Saturday stripped to her underclothes outside a Tehran university in apparent protest against being harassed by Iran's moral police who reportedly ripped her headscarf and clothes. Video recordings showed authorities taking away the woman in a car.Iranian authorities on Saturday arrested a student who stripped to her underclothes outside Tehran's Islamic Azad University in an apparent protest against the country's strict Islamic dress code.

  • Personnel of the voluntary Basij paramilitary force — reportedly a part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a US-designated terrorist group — harassed the woman for flouting Iran's dress code. State-run Fars news agency said security personnel had “calmly” talked to her.Previously, personnel of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' paramilitary force reportedly ripped her headscarf and clothes for wearing "inappropriate clothes" in class.


The Spin

Every day, Iranian women demonstrate extraordinary courage by simply choosing how to dress, knowing they risk arrest, violence, or worse. Two years after Jina Mahsa Amini's death sparked the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, women continue to resist the mandatory hijab law. despiteDespite intensified pressure and a harsh new "hijab and chastity" bill. They face this oppression not just from the government, but also through fines imposed on businesses that serve them and the impounding of vehicles that transport them. Yet they persist, reclaiming their bodily autonomy in cities and rural areas alike, showing that Iranian society has evolved far beyond its restrictive laws.

The WesternWest narrative on Iran's dress code controversies exposes a familiar hypocrisy: it paints Iranian women as oppressed by hijab laws while failing to address its own restrictive policies. WesternIt media often presents the hijab as the sole symbol of Iranian women's struggle, reducing their calls for autonomy to an "anti-Islam" stance. Yet, in France, Muslim women are banned from wearing hijabs, a stark parallel ofto the same control Western media condemns abroad. True solidarity would mean respecting women’s right to choose — whether veiled or unveiled — and acknowledging the complex socio-political roots beyond the hijab.


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