An Iranian woman tore off a cleric’s turban after he publicly berated her for not wearing a hijab in Tehran’s Mehrabad airport in an act of protest that will alarm the regime.
The confrontation took place when the cleric berated the woman in the waiting lounge as she searched for her husband.
All women in Iran must conceal their hair with a headscarf and wear loose-fitting trousers under their coats while in public but a growing number have appeared in public without head coverings.
After being criticised about her uncovered hair, the woman swiftly removed the cleric’s white turban and wrapped it around her head as a makeshift headscarf to make a point.
“Oh, Iranian men, I s— in your honour,” she shouted, seemingly in response to the men watching the scene unfold without coming to her aid. “That’s it, that’s it, I want this … Where is my husband? Where is my man?”
It comes at a tense time in Iran, with the regime significantly weakened by Israel’s war with Hezbollah and the fall of key ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
Mashregh News, a media outlet close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence organisation, claimed on Monday that the woman in question had “psychological issues”.
She was arrested following the incident but was later released “with the consent of the complainants”, according to the media outlet.
In November, a female student at a university in Tehran stripped to her underwear in an act of protest after being harassed by campus security officers over her hijab.
She was then branded mentally ill and transferred to a psychiatric hospital where she attempted to escape from a quarantine ward but was blocked by security forces before being “handed over” to her family. She has not been seen in public since.
In 2023, four Iranian psychological and psychiatric associations criticised the Islamic Republic’s actions in “abusing psychiatry and psychology” to suppress opponents of mandatory hijab.
Source » yahoo