Azadeh Moaveni:Headteachers have been told to release girls one by one after school, in order to discourage gatherings and make it easier to spot any gestures of protest, and 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.
Serious stuff continues to happen in Iran.
I did not realize that the hijab provided a handhold on women for people other than the government:
In her town – like many of Iran’s rural areas, it is more conservative than Tehran – she’s often scolded in public by tiresome old women for showing too much hair, even though she covers her hair by choice. Mandatory hijab, in her view, encourages the controlling tendencies not just of the state, but of parents and relatives at home, and strangers on the street.