Colourful Hijabs, Cropped Coats, Jackets And Loose Shirts: Conservative Iranian Women Revamp Hijab Rules
New Age Islam News Bureau
05 January 2025
• Colourful Hijabs, Cropped Coats, Jackets And Loose Shirts: Conservative Iranian Women Revamp Hijab Rules
• N.Y.C. Woman Charged After Allegedly Leaving 'Very Cold' Baby in Tote Bag on Imam's Doorstep
• Tourists Allegedly Mock Muslim Woman Dining In Burqa, Dubai Police Begins Investigation
• Visit Afghanistan, Land Of Culture, Cricket And Women Closeted In Their Own Homes
• UN Deputy Chief Pledges Unwavering Commitment To Defend Afghan Women’s Rights
• Gaza Women’s Long Wait For Deliverance
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/hijab-rules-conservative-iranian-women/d/134246
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Colourful Hijabs, Cropped Coats, Jackets And Loose Shirts: Conservative Iranian Women Revamp Hijab Rules
BitaGhaffari
05-01-2025
Noura, a 30-year-old Iranian woman raised in a religious household, wore a head-to-toe black veil known as a chador from a young age. Not any more.
At a fashion event in northern Tehran late last year she wore a long-sleeved white shirt under a toe-length navy vest with her hair fully covered by a white, pink and blue scarf: not an outfit traditionally associated with conservative Iranian women. But Noura was there in search of the latest trends to blend her faith with her interest in fashion.
Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, women have been required to wear chadors or loose-fitting over garments known as Manteaus as part of a compulsory dress code. But norms have changed dramatically since 2022 when mass protests against the treatment of women rattled the regime, with a growing number of young urban-dwellers rejecting headscarves altogether.
Aside from those opting for outright defiance, however, are conservative women like Noura who — far from the frontline of political protest — have taken to wearing colourful hijabs, cropped coats, jackets and loose shirts in a sign of how women are pushing for more freedom even within the regime’s patriarchal strictures.
This demand for more designs and vibrant colours for conservative Iranian women’s wardrobes has given rise to a growing industry of designers and models, particularly in large cities like Tehran. Hijab bloggers also shape trends on social media, with some designing outfits and make-up styles for religious occasions.
Mahsa Mahmoudian, 33, a fashion designer and model in the capital, said that production of “old-style manteaus” had declined steeply. “Many conservative women are instead looking for cropped coats and long skirts,” she said, adding that there was growing demand for “colourful fabrics with intricate rhinestone designs and sparkly accessories”.
Iranian authorities, concerned about political stability amid economic distress, have so far welcomed the move towards more stylish Islamic dress, including issuing permission for fashion shows. They have also sought to expand other personal freedoms on offer, such as by lifting a ban on WhatsApp and Google Play last month.
Demand for greater autonomy helped lead to the election in July of reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, who came to power on a promise to remove hijab patrols from the streets and end violent detention of women.
“Iranian society has entered a new era wherein the rules governing social life are evolving,” FaribaNazari, a sociologist based in Tehran, said. “People, irrespective of gender, social class and religious beliefs, are adapting themselves to this new era.”
The turning point, Iranians say, was the demonstrations that erupted in 2022 after Mahsa Amini, a young woman detained for allegedly violating hijab rules, died in custody — an event that prompted even many conservative women to express their anger.
But, even as the regime has tentatively accommodated some limited liberalisation, hardliners have nonetheless sought to crack down on women who defy the hijab outright.
Almost every week, leaders of Friday prayers across the country pledge a zero-tolerance approach, while the state-run Tehran Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice said in November it was launching a “clinic” to offer “psychological and counselling services” to women declining to wear the hijab.
Sogand, 28, had her car seized by police in Tehran last summer because she flouted hijab rules while driving. She was also stopped from having her licence plate number changed at a government office because her hair was uncovered, and since then has carried a scarf in her handbag “just in case”. To her, shunning the hijab is “not about protesting” but “exercising my personal choice”.
MPs and the powerful Guardian Council last year passed the Hijab and Chastity Law, which threatens cash fines and jail terms for those who violate the dress code. Pezeshkian said in December, however, that his administration was not prepared to implement the new law and warned it could “undermine national solidarity”.
Even those hijab-wearing women who have sought more fashion options have met with disapproval from some conservatives. FarzanehKasebAhadi, a religious studies teacher in Tehran, said these trends ran against the “chastity and simplicity” behind the hijab.
“Wearing heavy make-up or putting on clothes that reveal body shape, in the name of hijab style, is misleading,” she said, accusing some designers of “doing it for financial gains”.
The hijab was a totemic issue in Iran even before the Islamic revolution. In 1936, the monarch Reza Shah introduced a shortlived ban on women wearing veils as he sought to introduce western-style modernisation.
The country continued to encourage western fashion under the four-decade reign of his son Mohammad Reza Shah but left women free to wear the hijab if they wished. The 1979 revolution reversed that with its mandatory Islamic dress code.
Ahadi, the religious studies teacher, said the hijab was “Islam’s social rule” to regulate public conduct. “Today, those who are opposed to hijab constitute a small minority,” she said.
Nazari, the sociologist, believed that the societal changes were irrevocable, however. “If the assumption is that society will go back to before the 2022 [protests] . . . I don’t think that is going to happen,” she said.
To hijab-wearing Noura, respecting women’s dress choices was important — even if she had no desire to stop wearing headscarves herself. “We need to be mindful of the evolving social norms,” she said. “Many women not covering their hair is the new normal. My family is even grateful that I am still keeping my hijab.”
Source: Www.Ft.Com
https://www.ft.com/content/cf1887d2-356d-4e45-bcd2-57782f5ba70d
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N.Y.C. Woman Charged After Allegedly Leaving 'Very Cold' Baby in Tote Bag on Imam's Doorstep
By Brenton Blanchet
January 4, 2025
New York Police Department vehicle (stock image). PHOTO: GETTY
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A New York City woman has been charged after allegedly leaving a baby on an imam's doorstep in the Bronx.
A spokesperson for the New York Police Department confirmed to PEOPLE that Delfina Galvez, 26, was arrested on Monday, Dec. 30 and now faces charges of abandonment of a child, reckless endangerment (first degree) and acting in a manner injurious to a child after allegedly leaving a female infant outside of a residence in the Bronx on Sunday, Dec. 29.
Surveillance footage, shared by CBS News New York, shows a woman apparently carrying the child in a tote bag on Reverend James A. Polite Avenue before appearing in the frame again without the bag. The outlet identified the woman, later revealed by police to be Galvez, as the baby's mother.
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Mamadou Hafiz Jallow, who was at a mosque down the street when the infant was left at his doorstep, told CBS News New York that his "next-door neighbor" called him to let him know that there was a baby crying at his door.
He then rushed home and called 911 after bringing the baby inside. Jallow, who said that he is known as an imam and has led prayer for three years at the mosque, detailed that the baby was "very cold" when he discovered her. "When I opened the blanket, I see a little baby, blinking their eyes and shaking their fingers," he said.
While Jallow said his work "may be the reason" that the infant was left at his door, he added that he didn't know why the baby was left at his residence.
The infant was later taken to Jacobi Medical Center via an ambulance and, per the NYPD, was listed "in stable condition. She "remains in the care of hospital staff" as of this past week, the NYPD added.
According to the NYPD, Galvez lives near the location where she allegedly left the infant. Per New York laws, as cited by CBS News New York, newborn babies can be left at hospitals, police stations and firehouses with no criminal charges filed.
Source: People.Com
https://people.com/woman-charged-after-allegedly-leaving-very-cold-baby-on-imam-doorstep-8769275
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Tourists allegedly mock Muslim woman dining in burqa, Dubai Police begins investigation
By Mahipal Singh Chouhan
Jan 05, 2025
Tourist's viral video filming a burqa-clad woman in Dubai sparked outrage and police investigation.(X/@ALMKRIA)
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Tourists in Dubai faced backlash after filming a woman in a burqa without consent. The viral clip sparked outrage, with police launching an investigation.
A 13-second video making rounds on social media has sparked outrage and cultural debate in Dubai. The video captures a woman dining in a restaurant, reportedly in Dubai, as the camera briefly pans to another table where a woman in a burqa—an Islamic face-covering veil—can be seen eating. The clip also features laughter from the person behind the camera and the woman being filmed, though the context of their conversation remains unclear.
The video, shared on the platform X (formerly Twitter), has amassed over 2.6 million views, igniting intense online discussions and calls for accountability.
The incident has triggered complaints, with many tagging local authorities and demanding legal action against the tourists involved. The UAE, known for its strict adherence to Islamic traditions, enforces laws prohibiting the filming of local women without their explicit consent.
Responding to the growing outcry, Dubai Police issued a statement in Arabic: "Thank you for contacting Dubai Police General Command. The matter has been transferred to the relevant authority to take the necessary measures."
However, not all reactions were critical. One netizen questioned the severity of the backlash, writing, “While it’s inappropriate, isn’t this reaction a bit excessive?”
Another user emphasised the importance of education over punishment, stating, “Tourists should be informed about local laws to avoid such incidents.”
Source: Www.Hindustantimes.Com
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Visit Afghanistan, land of culture, cricket and women closeted in their own homes
Catherine Bennett
5 Jan 2025
Having denied Afghan women jobs, education and free movement, ordered them to be totally covered, banned them from parks, removed their critical healthcare and silenced them with a ban on audible speech, the Taliban have plainly reached the point where the joy of torturing half the population has to be balanced, like any sensible exercise in mass persecution, with the needs and enjoyment of the male and free.
What, for example, to do about windows? Doubly enraging to the ruling obsessives, in that they offer female slaves the pleasure of daylight as well as allowing non-residents occasional evidence of their existence, these openings do, on the other hand, benefit the women’s male owners and their sons.
To immure or not to immure? Solomon-like, the Taliban’s supreme leader has now banned windows only on walls that overlook areas where women are still, by domestic necessity, allowed outside. Until such time as Afghan women can be kept – for sex, breeding and housework – perpetually underground, the latest edict stipulates that new buildings should not have windows from which “the courtyard, kitchen, neighbour’s well and other places usually used by women” are visible.
Last week the Taliban government’s spokesman confirmed on X that, to men like himself, even a fully covered woman with, say, an erect mop, is a sexual stimulus too far. “Seeing women working in kitchens, in courtyards or collecting water from wells can lead to obscene acts.”
If, as occasionally seems the case, the Taliban do consider opinion in the outside world, they appear again to have been correct in thinking that a further inventively ghastly addition to female misery is unlikely to provoke – to a point that sheds an unhappy light on priorities in many ostensibly enlightened jurisdictions – a meaningful reprisal.
The windows edict, for instance, is still not sufficient evidence of the Taliban’s gender apartheid for the English cricket authorities to want to cancel their match against the Afghan cricket team in Lahore next month. Cricket stands firm, too, against the urgings of women’s organisations explaining that gender apartheid in Afghanistan is as egregious as the racial apartheid that once made the ICC end fixtures with South Africa’s team.
Ecstatic street celebrations after the Afghan cricketers reached the World Cup semi-finals last year confirmed that international cricket is such an important source of pride to male Afghans that, by gifting it, fellow participants remove a valuable means of influence. As for the Afghan team’s coach, Jonathan Trott, the former England cricketer, if that job does not put him in contact with the misogynistic thugs captured in the brilliant fly-on-the-wall documentary Hollywoodgate, it’s only because he has never visited the country since he took the job (in 2022, after women had already been banned from schools and the workforce) as the team play home matches in exile in UAE. But maybe, courtesy of the team’s patrons, Trott still gets to hear some of the Taliban-style bantz recorded in Hollywoodgate: “An uncovered woman is like an unwrapped chocolate.”
No less valuable for the Taliban, as they continue to disregard the UN’s feeble reminders that women are human too, is their collaboration with foreign companies equally keen to revive Afghanistan as a tourist destination. To judge by online reviews, visitor numbers to Afghanistan having soared since 2021, the torture of the female half of the population has yet to come near race apartheid as a tourism inhibitor, such that vacationers show awareness their leisure choice might be considered despicable. On the contrary, the Taliban are often presented in some itineraries and comments in an attractive light, for having made Afghanistan safe. Unless, of course, you are an Afghan woman. UN officials have reported a “sharp increase” in women’s attempted suicides, directly attributed to female despair in the face of Taliban repression.
Specialist travel companies, if they even allude to gender apartheid, are in some cases adopting euphemisms that suggest that the Taliban’s continually intensifying attack on women’s human dignity is one of those fascinating cultural differences, like living in a tent or a team game with a dead goat, that makes adventure holidays so rewarding. The country’s very troubles, without going into who suffers at whose hands, only testify to the visitor’s personal taste for authentic, challenging travel.
Campaigners once headlined a factsheet dissuading visits to South Africa “Apartheid is no holiday”. It is now. Richard Bennett, the UN’s special rapporteur on Afghanistan, has concluded that the Taliban’s deprivations of human rights and their enforcement “may amount to crimes against humanity, in particular the crime of gender persecution”. But the very nature of that persecution, by erasure from public life, assists apparent attempts at normalisation by specialist travel companies, who urge visitors to “see beyond the turbulent current era and experience a beautiful country with a rich cultural history”. Although it would have been richer still, obviously, if the Taliban hadn’t blown up the Buddhas of Bamiyan, in 2001.
Now the Taliban are themselves advertised by one company as a delightful cultural attraction. One past Safarat excursion, for instance, offers “a good chance to have a chat with members of the Taliban who will accompany us on the walk”. Or else.
If no women can contribute, being banned from chatting, it could not be clearer from reviews on TripAdvisor and elsewhere that many current holidaymakers require, for whatever reason, even less encouragement to overlook human rights anomalies than did visitors to apartheid South Africa. In contrast to earlier tourists, or idiots, seeking to know the “real” USSR, real Third Reich, or real South Africa, reviews from Afghanistan suggest that zero evidence of contentment on the part of the subjugated is now required for a rewarding trip.
In the 1980s, it’s true, tour operators were not only mocking sanctions but the ANC, the Anti-Apartheid Movement, vigorous UN leadership and the UK government’s “voluntary ban” on South Africa tourism, reflecting “the strong opposition in Britain to the principles and practice of apartheid”. Women in Afghanistan are still waiting.
Source: Www.Theguardian.Com
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UN deputy chief pledges unwavering commitment to defend Afghan women’s rights
by Mujeeb Rahman AwrangStanikzai
05-01-2024
UNITED NATIONS — Amina Mohammed, the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, reaffirmed her “unwavering” commitment to defending the rights of Afghan women and girls, citing their systematic deprivation under Taliban rule.
“Women’s and girls’ rights in Afghanistan continue to be under constant attack,” Ms. Mohammed wrote on social media. She added that the rollbacks this year had gone even further, depriving Afghan women of dignity and basic freedoms. “We will not give up. My commitment is unwavering to defend their rights in Islam.”
Since the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan in 2021, women and girls have faced sweeping restrictions. They are barred from secondary and higher education, excluded from most jobs, and face severe limitations on their freedom of movement.
Human rights organizations and experts, including Richard Bennett, the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, have described the Taliban’s policies as “gender apartheid” and “gender persecution.”
Last September, Canada, Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands announced plans to pursue legal action against the Taliban at the International Court of Justice (I.C.J.), alleging systematic gender discrimination and apartheid. This would mark the first case brought to the I.C.J. specifically on the grounds of gender discrimination.
The proceedings could set a significant legal precedent. However, some experts caution that the initiative is not a comprehensive solution. An analysis by Just Security, a publication focused on security and democracy, warned that the effort “may undercut obligations that require both the Taliban and the international community to act now to stop the abuses of women in Afghanistan.”
The organization also expressed concern that the case could set a “bad precedent” for how states use international law to address gender discrimination in countries beyond their own borders.
As conditions for Afghan women worsen, the international community has struggled to respond effectively. Advocates have repeatedly called for sustained pressure on the Taliban to reverse their policies, while also ensuring that Afghan women and girls receive the support they need to rebuild their lives.
Source: amu.tv
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Gaza women’s long wait for deliverance
By LalitaPanicker
Jan 04, 2025
Women on the frontlines of peace work continue to raise their voices against the impunity of unbridled power and senseless violence
As the new year begins, hopes that it will bring succour to the women and children of Gaza have been dashed. For the women, it has been a continuum of deprivation, degradation and despair. Various estimates suggest that at least 150,000 pregnant women have been left to their own devices with no medical care to ensure their health or that of their unborn children. They have little food, hardly any safe shelter, no drinking water or sanitation, and things are getting worse. Whatever food is available is hardly nutritious. UN figures say at least 38,000 adolescent girls and 8,000 pregnant women could be facing famine which means that when born, the babies will be low birth weight and the mothers will be at grave risk.
Meenakshi Gopinath, director, Women in Security Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP), says, “The differential needs of women and children must be addressed through gender-responsive humanitarian aid and psychosocial support services catering to the specific requirements of women heads of households, pregnant women, women with disabilities, women with chronic ailments, orphaned children and child detainees.” AkashleenaChakrabarti, programme officer, WISCOMP adds, “Despite the overwhelming challenges, the tireless efforts grassroots women-led organisations and countless women serving as frontline responders — leading relief and care work midst looming despair — are rays of hope and courage.”
Source: Www.Hindustantimes.Com
https://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/gaza-women-s-long-wait-for-deliverance-101736002469382.html
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URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/hijab-rules-conservative-iranian-women/d/134246