"Another post showed a mother with her daughter. "The beautiful seaside in Kish [Island]," the younger woman wrote. "We strolled on the rocks and experienced the cool breeze flowing through our hair. Is this a big request?" A young woman from the city of Fuman, in the northern province of Gilan, sent a picture of her in the woods. "I took this picture stealthily in the spring," she wrote. "It makes me feel happy." Another young woman was pictured unveiled just next to a big billboard in Tehran' Yas sports complex asking women to respect the Islamic hijab. Alinejad told the Guardian she had been bombarded with messages and pictures since launching Stealthy Freedoms of Iranian Women. "I've hardly slept in the past three days because of the number of pictures and messages I've received." Alinejad said she did her best to verify that the pictures were sent from genuine accounts and asked people for permission before publishing them, but did not reveal their full names. "I have no intention whatsoever to encourage people to defy the forced hijab or stand up against it," she said. "I just want to give voice to thousands and thousands of Iranian women who think they have no platform to have their say." Alinejad said she was not opposed to the hijab – her mother is veiled – but she believed people should have the freedom to choose. Alinejad, who is from Ghomikola, a small northern Iranian village, said the hijab was part of her daily life until she left Iran in 2009. "For 30 years I wore hijab in front of my dad. It took time for me to be able to come out and tell people I prefer to have no hijab, that I want to be myself," she said. "Iran's state television is only showing one side of society, only the people with hijab. It gives no airtime to people who have a different voice, who have a different lifestyle."
Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. ---George Orwell
