|
Trending Topics
|
Source: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n21/azadeh-moaveni/diary
Report from the Tehran Protests
(London Review of Books-UK) Azadeh Moaveni - Five weeks into the protests that erupted across Iran, the floundering Iranian authorities thought it would be a good idea to put up a massive poster in central Tehran depicting dozens of eminent Iranian women as supporters of the mandatory wearing of the hijab. Within hours, several women demanded their images be removed. Overnight, the billboard vanished. While more than two hundred people have been killed since the protests began in mid-September, the demonstrators have reason to celebrate. On the streets and in daily life, they have defeated the state's mandatory hijab policy, which is often described as the key pillar of clerical rule. Last month, I watched girls in central Tehran walking around with their hair showing, impressed by their ease and fearlessness. Morality policing lies in ruins. In Tehran, the nightly confrontations have spread into the northern areas, a sign that a less economically battered class is now also participating. In girls' schools, headteachers have been told to remove the austere pictures of the revolution's founders from classrooms, so that the girls can't tear them down and stomp on them while their friends film them on their phones and upload the videos.