Iranian Policeman Rebuked For Refusing To Enforce Mandatory Hijab Rule
New Age Islam News Bureau
15 February 2023
• Fatima Haidari, Forced To Flee By Taliban, Now
Offers Virtual Tours of Homeland
• Latifa Bint Mohammed Witnesses ‘She Wins Arabia’
Initiative to Empower Women Entrepreneurs
• Top Iran Chess Player Sara Khadem Exiled For
Refusing Headscarf
• Dalia Mahmoud Acts as Prosecutor at Court in A First
For Egypt
• Finn Rosa Lappi Appointed As Coach of Saudi Women's
Football Team
• Woman Rescued Alive In Turkey, 222 Hours after
Devastating Earthquake
• US Special Envoy Rina Amiri Discusses Employment,
Education of Afghan Women in Doha
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/iranian-enforce-hijab-rule/d/129112
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Iranian Policeman Rebuked For Refusing To Enforce
Mandatory Hijab Rule
Representative Photo: In
the past few months, Iranian rights activists have urged women to publicly
remove their veils, a gesture that would risk their arrest for defying the
Islamic dress code. (Photo: Reuters)
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13 February 2023
TEHRAN, Iran — An Iranian police officer has been reprimanded
after he did not enforce the country’s dress code requiring women to cover
their hair, local media reported Monday.
A video was widely shared on social media in recent
days, showing a police officer in the western province of Kermanshah telling a
woman that he did not consider the hijab, or headscarf, to be compulsory for
women.
“This lady wants to go out in this outfit… it’s none
of my business,” the officer is heard saying in response to a woman asking him
to confront another woman for not wearing the hijab.
“After a thorough investigation… the officer was
summoned… and received the necessary warnings and training,” the Tasnim news
agency said Monday, citing a statement from the police of Kermanshah province.
The incident comes against the backdrop of a
nationwide protest movement triggered by the September 16 death in custody of
Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old ethnic Kurd who had been arrested for an alleged
breach of the same dress code for women.
Hundreds of people, including security personnel, have
been killed and thousands arrested during the protests, which the authorities
often describe as “riots.”
Since the start of the protests, women have
increasingly been seen without the hijab in public places, in many cases
without eliciting a reaction from the police.
But in January, local media reported that the police
had resumed enforcement of hijab-wearing in cars, with violators receiving a
text message warning from the police.
Source: Times Of Israel
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Fatima Haidari, Forced To Flee By Taliban, Now Offers
Virtual Tours of Homeland
Fatima Haidari , The
24-year-old worked as a tour guide in Herat before fleeing.
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February 15, 2023
Milan: Forced to flee by the Taliban, Fatima Haidari
now offers virtual tours of Afghanistan from her new home in Italy -- with the
proceeds funding secret English classes for women there.
From her student flatshare in Milan, Haidari leads
cyber-tourists around the western Afghan city of Herat, using Zoom to show them
the grand mosque with its glazed tiles, the citadel and the bustling bazaar.
The 24-year-old worked as a tour guide in Herat before
fleeing when the Taliban took power in August 2021, and is now studying
international politics at Milan's Bocconi university.
But she remains passionate about showing outsiders the
beauty of her country, even if few tourists currently dare visit.
"When you hear about Afghanistan, you think of
war, terror and bombs," Haidari told AFP in the little kitchen she shares
with four other students.
"I want to show the world the beauty of the
country, its culture and its history."
Organised through British tour operator Untamed
Borders, the events draw people from Britain to Australia, Germany and India.
A third of the money goes towards secret English
classes for young women back in Afghanistan.
The Taliban have imposed harsh restrictions on women
since returning to power, including closing secondary schools and universities
for girls and women.
Haidari herself faced insults after becoming the first
female tourist guide in Afghanistan.
Local religious leaders accused her of "doing the
devil's work", particularly when accompanying men, while boys threw stones
at her in the street.
'The power of our pens'
Haidari is passionate about education, after battling
her whole life for access to books.
Growing up in the mountains in the central region of
Ghor, the youngest of seven children, her parents made her look after the
sheep.
"I would take the sheep out to graze by the river
where the boys had school and secretly listen to their lessons," she
recalled.
"As I didn't have a pen, I would write in the
sand or in clay."
When she was 10, her impoverished family moved to
Herat, where they could not afford to send her to school.
For three years she worked at night on home-made items
such as traditional clothes, to raise enough money to pay for classes and text
books.
She managed to persuade her parents to allow her to go
to university in Herat, where she began studying journalism in 2019.
"They wanted me to become a perfect housewife.
But I didn't want to follow the same path as my two sisters and face an
arranged marriage," Haidari said.
In September last year, she joined around 20 refugee
students welcomed by Bocconi University in Milan.
'Buried alive'
Wearing a black headscarf and leather gilet, jeans
tucked into her boots and her laptop in a bag on her back, she looks like any
other student on campus.
But she never forgets the plight of women back home.
"They are confined to the house, it is as if they
are locked in a prison or in a grave where they are buried alive," she
said.
Haidari is a member of Afghanistan's minority Hazara
community, Shiites in a majority Sunni nation who have been targeted by the
Islamic State (IS) group.
When the Taliban arrived, she was warned by the local
tour operator she worked for that she might be a target, and fled.
Leaving Afghanistan was traumatic. At Kabul airport,
there were desperate scenes as thousands of people tried to get a flight out.
"The Taliban were hitting the crowd with
Kalashnikovs, bullets were whizzing by my ears and a young girl collapsed dead
next to me. I thought I was in a horror movie, but it was real," she
recalled.
She was unable to get onto flights to the United
States and Poland, but got on a plane to Rome.
She still dreams of returning home "to set up my
own travel agency and hire women as guides".
But "as long as the Taliban are in Afghanistan,
it is no longer my home," she said.
Source: ND TV
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Latifa Bint Mohammed Witnesses ‘She Wins Arabia’
Initiative to Empower Women Entrepreneurs
14-02-2023
DUBAI, 14th February, 2023 (WAM) -- H.H. Sheikha
Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Chairperson of Dubai Culture and
Arts Authority and Member of the Dubai Council, and Makhtar Diop, Managing
Director of the International Finance Corporation, witnessed the “She WINS
Arabia” event to support female entrepreneurs in the Middle East and North
Africa (MENA) region.
The event was held as part of the World Government
Summit taking place in Dubai from 13-15 February.
“She WINS Arabia” seeks to support the growth and
success of women-led startups in the MENA region by offering advice,
mentorship, and finance.
Currently, women entrepreneurs in the MENA region face
significant barriers, with only 4 percent of formal enterprises being
majority-owned by women. Lack of access to finance is a significant barrier for
women entrepreneurs. Just 6 percent of VC capital goes to women-led startups
due to a lack of female representation in the venture capital industry. Only 5
percent of VC investors in the region are women.
Co-led by the International Finance Corporation and
the World Government Summit, the “She WINS Arabia” initiative is specifically
designed to address these barriers and provide support to women entrepreneurs
in the MENA region. The initiative aims to enhance the skills of women
entrepreneurs, build the capacity of fund managers to support them, and
establish connections between these two groups to promote growth and success.
Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed said, “Women
entrepreneurs in the MENA region have enormous potential and must be equally
involved in the empowerment and development of our economies. As a society, we
must break down the barriers that prevent women from realising their full
potential and provide them with the resources they need to succeed. Dubai is a
global hub of entrepreneurship that has always welcomed innovators and
dreamers, and through initiatives like She WINS Arabia, we are working to
create a more inclusive and supportive environment for women entrepreneurs so
that they can drive economic growth and create positive change for themselves,
their families, and their communities.”
H.H. Sheikha Latifa attended the “Dream Big – Creating
the Next Arab Female-Led Unicorn” panel discussion and also participated in the
passing of the “She WINS Arabia” torch from the previous year’s winner, Samira
Owaynat, Founder of AskPepper, to the youngest participant of “She WINS Arabia
II”, Guadaluna Chaer, Co-founder of Luxeed Robotics, as a symbolic gesture of
support and encouragement.
“As women, we have the power to shape the future and
make a difference in the world. They have the ability to turn their dreams into
reality and make a lasting impact, and it is my belief that the future of
female entrepreneurship in the Arab world is bright,” Sheikha Latifa said.
Following the success of last year’s initiative, which
supported almost 80 women entrepreneurs and more than 20 fund managers, “She
WINS Arabia” is expanding its reach to assist an even larger number of
startups. The initiative has brought together over 100 women entrepreneurs from
15 different countries in the region to discuss their innovative ideas and
drive disruption in key sectors such as fintech, e-commerce, health-tech,
ed-tech, and software.
Source: WAM
https://www.wam.ae/en/details/1395303128873
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Top Iran chess player Sara Khadem exiled for refusing
headscarf
February 14, 2023
LONDON — When one of the world’s most promising chess
players, 25-year-old Sara Khadem, decided to play at an international
tournament without her headscarf, in solidarity with the protest movement in
Iran, she thought a warning would be the worst that would happen to her.
Instead, she can’t return to Iran — there are arrest
papers waiting for her, and she now lives in exile in southern Spain, with her
husband and one-year-old son.
She and her family asked the BBC not to reveal her
precise location; their worry is that there may be repercussions even thousands
of miles away from Iran.
Women in Iran are required to wear headscarves in
public, even when abroad. But a few are choosing not to, in support of the women
and girls spearheading the protests inside the country, following the death in
custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September.
One of them, the climber Elnaz Rekabi, was forced to
recant and it is unclear what her situation is, now that she is back in Iran.
Sara Khadem said there was a slow evolution of her
decision to play in the tournament in Kazakhstan in December last year without
her headscarf. The contestants only wore them in front of the cameras, and she
felt that was hypocritical.
Given the sacrifices being made by the women and girls
on the streets of Iran, some of them risking their lives, it was the least she
could do, she said.
Had she considered joining the demonstrators herself?
“Yes of course,” she replied. But her young son, Sam, held her back. She said:
“I have responsibilities to him, and I thought perhaps I could use my influence
in other ways.”
Sara Khadem has been playing chess competitively since
she was about eight years old. This is not the first time she has fallen foul
of the Islamic Republic’s strict codes of behavior.
In 2020, a Ukrainian plane which took off from Tehran
airport was shot down by, as it turned out, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Corps, killing 176 people. It was three days before the authorities admitted
their error.
Sara Khadem said on social media she was planning to
leave the national team. She did not mention the flight — nevertheless, she was
forced to sign a confession saying she did not mean anything political by her
post.
The next time she went to the airport, her passport
was confiscated. She thought her career was over.
Now that her life has changed utterly, does she have
any regrets? Without hesitation she said no. “I miss my family, but I would not
say I regret the decision. I still represent Iran, and I am Iranian, and the
people of Iran still see me as Iranian.”
It struck me that she does not regard herself as
political, though she acknowledges that so much in Iran is political.
She said, “I’m not an activist, and I don’t have any
messages for people risking so much. The people who are protesting in the
streets are inspiring to me and so many others.”
Her husband, Ardeshir Ahmadi, is a film director and
Internet show presenter, who has also had direct experience of being on the
wrong side of the Islamic Republic.
A documentary film about hip hop resulted in him being
beaten and imprisoned for three months. The decision which led to their exile
was a joint one.
She has been able to stay in Spain because of the
golden visa rule, which allows anyone who buys a property valued at half a
million euros (£442,000; $536,000) to gain residency.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez invited Sara Khadem to
meet him. The day turned out to be bittersweet.
“It was on that day that I was issued with arrest
orders at home. So I had mixed feelings: I was appreciated in this country —
and in my own country, where you have achieved lots of success, you get arrest
papers.” — BBC
Source: Saudi Gazette
https://saudigazette.com.sa/article/629818
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Dalia Mahmoud Acts as Prosecutor at Court in A First
For Egypt
February 14, 2023
Female prosecutor Dalia Mahmoud represented Egypt’s
top prosecutor Hamada al-Sawy on Sunday at the criminal court – the first time
in Egypt’s history.
Mahmoud covered a case involving the premeditated
murder of a lawyer in Kerdasa, Giza, using an automatic rifle.
During her pleading Mahmoud said that the murder of a
lawyer represented an offense towards an integral part of the structure of justice,
and demanded the death penalty be applied on the defendant.
She explained the facts of the case and reviewed the
evidence brought against the defendant.
Mahmoud concluded her pleading by referring to the
honor of representing the prosecution, as she is the first woman in Egypt to
stand in “this solemn position”,.
Female members of the Public Prosecution will give
more pleadings at courts in the coming period.
Source: Egypt Independent
https://egyptindependent.com/woman-acts-as-prosecutor-at-court-in-a-first-for-egypt/
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Finn Rosa Lappi Appointed As Coach of Saudi Women's
Football Team
February 14, 2023
RIYADH — The Saudi Arabian Football Federation
appointed Finn Rosa Lappi Seppala as coach of the women’s national team, to
succeed German Monica Stubb, who will serve as a technical director of the
Women’s Department.
Rosa has previous experience, as she started her
football career with Helsinki team and won eight league championships and five
cups in 13 years, before moving to Anderlecht, Belgium.
She then moved to the United States, where she played
for Miami Gladiers, before ending her career with AC Milan, where she decided
to retire in 2005.
After Rosa’s retirement, she went to training, as she
worked with a number of Finnish teams, in addition to her work as a lecturer
for training courses accredited by the European Football Association, and she
also worked as a coach for the under-23 Finland national team and Honka team in
the Finnish Premier League.
In addition to assuming the position of assistant
coach of the first Finnish national team, she also obtained the PRO training
license from UEFA.
In her new position, Monica Stubb will work on
developing the women’s football system by creating a structure for national
teams, youth groups and local championships.
During her training period for the national team,
which lasted for a year and a half, Stubb supervised the first performance
experiences, as she received more than 700 players in Riyadh, Jeddah and
Dammam, and led the national team in 7 matches, during which she recorded 4
victories, two draws and one defeat, and achieved the title of the international
friendly tournament that was held last month in Dammam.
The member of the Board of Directors of the Saudi
Arabian Football Federation, who supervises the Women’s Department, Lamia Bin
Bahian, confirmed her satisfaction with what Monica achieved with the national
team during the founding period of the national teams, noting that she
contributed to the development of women’s football.
She said: “We made history together, but we look
forward to achieving more successes thanks to the generous support of our wise
leadership towards women’s football, and we now aim to provide Monica with the
opportunity to expand her position to help us achieve the remarkable growth and
full potential of women’s football in the Kingdom”.
Bahian welcomed the Finnish coach Rosa Labbi,
considering her presence a great addition to women’s football, and her
remarkable presence in the friendly tournament contributed to the speedy
completion of the contract, wishing them success in their new mission. — SG
Source: Saudi Gazette
https://saudigazette.com.sa/article/629830
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Woman rescued alive in Turkey, 222 hours after
devastating earthquake
15 February ,2023
A 42-year-old woman was rescued alive in Turkey’s
Kahramanmaras on Wednesday, 222 hours after the devastating earthquake that
struck Turkey and neighboring Syria on February 6.
Source: Al Arabiya
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US Special Envoy Rina Amiri Discusses Employment,
Education of Afghan Women in Doha
By Nazir Shinwari
The US special envoy for Afghanistan's women, girls
and human rights, Rina Amiri, said that nothing gives her more hope than seeing
Afghans take the lead in expanding chances for employment and education for
their people back home and in refugee settlements.
Amiri said on Twitter that she had discussed
supporting Afghan women, girls, and boys with the deputy foreign minister of
Qatar and the Education Above All Foundation in Doha.
“There is nothing that gives me greater hope than
engaging Afghans leading the charge in expanding education & work
opportunities for compatriots back home & in refugee communities. Many of
these leaders lost everything overnight less than two years ago,” Rina Amiri
tweeted.
Meanwhile, female students asked the Islamic Emirate
to open schools and universities to girls.
Hasina Motasem, a student at the Faculty of Islamic
Studies at Kabul University, became concerned about her future when the
universities were closed to women.
"Schools, educational centers and universities
are closed to girls, which is an unknown fate for girls. It is not known what
will happen to them in the future, they ignored half of society,” Hasina said.
Some university professors and students said that the
current government should not bar female students.
"Reopening schools and universities for Afghan
females would not only solve an internal problem, but it is also a positive
step for a good relationship with the nations of the world and the
international community," said Fazl Hadi Wazin, a university lecturer.
"We ask the Islamic Emirate to open the
university to girls, this is our right, Islam has given women the right to
education,” said Atefa Moatasim, a student.
Previously, Mullah Abdul Salam Hanafi, the second
deputy prime minister, stressed the need to strengthen educational
institutions, during a seminar for academics at universities.
"If we claim that we are doing this and that to
our country, it is all a dream and a delusion if we don't first improve and
update both the quality and quantity of our educational systems. In such a
situation, we would never be able to achieve that,” said Abdul Salam Hanafi,
the Prime Minister's Administrative Deputy.
In a recent decision, the Islamic Emirate banned
female students from taking the final medical exam.
Women's education at private and public universities
in the country was suspended by the current government nearly two months ago.
Source: Tolo News
https://tolonews.com/afghanistan-182059
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