Newspaper headscarf: "Regarding the wearing of the veil, there will be no compulsion". Photo from the author.Last month, pictures of a young girl wearing a headscarf made with a newspaper pattern spread through the Iranian social media. The girl is in fact the niece of Iran's jailed Green Movement leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi, but that was not the reason why the picture went viral. The newspaper pattern on the scarf was the front page of the newspaper that printed the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's pledge in 1978 as its main headline: "Regarding the wearing of the veil, there will be no compulsion".Iranian women didn't have to fight for their rights before the 1979 Islamic revolution. The Pahlavi kings, with their outlook for modernising Iran, handed them a degree of emancipation. Under the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty, Reza Shah, unveiling was enforced, public co-educational primary schools were established, family law was modified and women's schools were quickly developed in spite of a bitter resistance by the Shia clergy who threatened to burn down the schools. During the Pahlavi reign, for the first time since the Islamisation of Iran by the invading Arabs, women once again became active part of the society.
Under the second Pahlavi king, these rights were extended; women could vote and stand as candidates in elections and they took up official positions, including in the cabinet and in the administration.
As with anything that you don't have to fight for, you may not appreciate it much until it is taken away from you.
