Hashtag fights the obligatory hijab rule in conservative Iran
Beirut: Before she begins her Wednesday morning, Iranian activist Masih Alinejad spends hours sifting through scores of videos and photos sent to her of women in Iran wearing white headscarves or white clothing as part of a growing online protest.
To campaign against the obligatory wearing of headscarves-or hijabsAlinejad last month encouraged women to take videos or photos of themselves wearing white and upload them on social media with the hashtag #whitewednesdays.
“My goal is just empowering women and giving them a voice. If the government and the rest of the world hear the voice of these brave women then they have to recognise them,” Alinejad said.
Under Iran’s Islamic law, imposed after 1979 revolution, women are obliged to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes for the sake of modesty. Violators are publicly admonished, fined or arrested. A report by campaign group Justice for Iran in 2014 found, over 10 years more than 30,000 women arrested over the hijab law.
The #whitewednesdays campaign is part of a larger online movement started three years ago by Alinejad, a journalist who has lived in self-imposed exile since 2009.
She has received death threats since her campaigning started. She created social media platforms and a website called My Stealthy Freedom where women in Iran take photos of themselves without hijabs to oppose Iran’s dress code.