{"id":8214,"date":"2017-07-12T19:27:57","date_gmt":"2017-07-12T17:27:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/?p=8214"},"modified":"2017-07-12T19:35:19","modified_gmt":"2017-07-12T17:35:19","slug":"iranian-women-spark-debate-by-defying-hijab-rule-in-cars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/2017\/07\/iranian-women-spark-debate-by-defying-hijab-rule-in-cars\/","title":{"rendered":"Iranian women spark debate by defying hijab rule in cars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: The Guardian<\/a>
\nBy: Saeed Kamali Dehghan Iran correspondent<\/p>\n

Judiciary and police insist a car interior is public space but more women are defying authorities by driving with \u2018bad hijab\u2019
\nA growing number of women in Iran are refusing to wear a hijab while driving, sparking a nationwide debate about whether a car is a private space where they can dress more freely.<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Obligatory wearing of the hijab has been an integral policy of the Islamic republic since the 1979 revolution but it is one the establishment has had a great deal of difficulty enforcing. Many Iranian women are already pushing the boundaries, and observers in Tehran say women who drive with their headscarves resting on their shoulders are becoming a familiar sight.<\/p>\n

Clashes between women and Iran\u2019s morality police particularly increase in the summer when temperatures rise. But even though the police regularly stop these drivers, fining them or even temporarily seizing their vehicle, such acts of resistance have continued, infuriating hardliners over a long-standing policy they have had a great deal of difficulty enforcing.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, has argued that people\u2019s private space should be respected and opposes a crackdown on women who don\u2019t wear the hijab. He said explicitly that the police\u2019s job is not to administer Islam. Speaking in 2015, Rouhani said: \u201cThe police can\u2019t do something and say I\u2019m doing this because God said so. That\u2019s not a police [officer]\u2019s business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many in Iran believe that private space includes the inside of a car, but judicial authorities and the police have opposed that interpretation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe invisible part of the car, such as the trunk, is a private space, but this does not apply to the visible parts of the car,\u201d Hadi Sadeghi, the deputy head of Iran\u2019s judiciary chief, said last week.<\/p>\n

His comments have prompted widespread reaction online, with one user posting a satirical picture showing a couple embracing in a car boot. Another user tweeted: \u201cThe police have said that only the boot is a private space… poor those of us who have a hatchback car [without a boot]… we don\u2019t have any private space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Local media often refrain from directly criticising the mandatory hijab, but the debate over what constitutes a private space has allowed newspapers and even state news agencies to publish articles reflecting views from both sides.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrivate or not private?\u201d asked an article carried by the state Irna news agency on Monday. \u201cThis is a question that has created a legal and religious discussion about private space within cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hossein Ahmadiniaz, a lawyer, told Irna that infringing on people\u2019s private spaces was like infringing their citizen\u2019s rights, arguing that it was up to parliamentarians to define the private space and not the police.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe law says that the space within a car is a private space,\u201d he said. \u201cThe government\u2019s citizen\u2019s rights charter [launched by Rouhani] also considers a car to be a private space and it is incumbent upon enforcers to respect that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bahman Keshavarz, a leading lawyer, wrote an article in the reformist Shargh daily, arguing that wearing a so-called \u201cbad hijab\u201d (loose hijab) is not a crime under Iranian law.<\/p>\n

Saeid Montazeralmahdi, a spokesperson for the Iranian police, disagreed. \u201cWhat is visible to the public eye is not private space and norms and the rules should be respected within cars.\u201d He also warned car owners against using tinted glass to prevent onlookers from seeing into the car.<\/p>\n

The debate is not only among liberal Iranians. Abolfazl Najafi Tehrani, a cleric based in Tehran, tweeted: \u201cPeople\u2019s cars, like people\u2019s houses, are their property and a private space and infringing upon this space will disturb people\u2019s moral security and will harm women\u2019s trust with the police.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yahya Kamalpour, a member of the Iranian parliament, said: \u201cThe space within people\u2019s cars is a private space and the police has no right to enter that space without a judicial order.\u201d<\/p>\n

The debate comes amid a growing rift between the government and the hardline judiciary that acts independently of Rouhani\u2019s government.<\/p>\n

Despite restrictions, women are increasingly active in Iranian society. It emerged on Sunday that Iran Air, the country\u2019s national airline, has for the first time appointed a female CEO. Rouhani is also under pressure from his voter base to nominate a record number of female ministers in his cabinet reshuffle next month.<\/p>\n

In a sign of slowly changing attitudes, Ali Karimi, a veteran Iranian footballer, on Monday called on the authorities to allow female fans to attend stadiums alongside men.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: The Guardian By: Saeed Kamali Dehghan Iran correspondent Judiciary and police insist a car interior is public space but more women are defying authorities by driving with \u2018bad hijab\u2019 A growing number of women […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8215,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[88,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-slider","category-womens-rights","country-iran","Documents-statements-multimedia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8214"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8218,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8214\/revisions\/8218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}