Niavaran

Women in Iran have been posting pictures of themselves after 'stealthily' taking their hijabs off in public, in a country where it is illegal for a female to leave the house without wearing a headscarf under Islamic law. Over 150 photos have been posted to the Stealthy Freedoms of Iranian Women Facebook page which has amassed more than 140,000 likes since it was created just a week ago by the Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad. Ms Alinejad, who left Iran to pursue her studies in the UK in 2009, told The Independent the page began when she posted a photograph of herself driving down a road in the country without wearing a headscarf.
The image was captioned with: “Hijab is being forced on women not only by the Morality Police, but also out of consideration for family, through wanting to keep a job and because of fear of judgment from others." "I wrote that I had experienced all of these pressures too," she explained. "I was sure that most Iranian women who don’t believe in the forced hijab have enjoyed freedom in secret, [so] I asked them if they wished to share this moment of stealth freedom." The response she received shortly after starting the page was "staggering", something she feels "delighted" at, but not surprised by.

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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