Iran: Female Student Arrested in Dress Code Protest
Iran: Female Student Arrested in Dress Code Protest
The Facts
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. Video recordings showed authorities taking away the woman in a car.
Previously, personnel of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' paramilitary force reportedly ripped her headscarf and clothes for wearing "inappropriate clothes" in class. State-run Fars news agency said security personnel had "calmly" talked to her.
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 Mahsa Amini's death sparked the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, and women continue to resist the mandatory hijab law. Despite intensified pressure and harsh new legislation, they persist, reclaiming their bodily autonomy in cities and rural areas alike, showing that Iranian society has evolved far beyond its restrictive laws.
The West paints Iranian women as oppressed by hijab laws while failing to address its own flawed perspectives. It 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 to the same domineering approach Western media condemns abroad. True solidarity would mean acknowledging the complex socio-political and cultural roots beyond the hijab.
