Iran authorities announce morality police campaign forcing women to wear hijab
Iran Police Command spokesman Sardar Saeed Montazerul-Mahdi announced on Sunday that the country’s morality police would resume notifying and detaining women who are not wearing a hijab—an Islamic headscarf—in public, 10 months after the death of Mahsa Amini sparked nationwide protests. The 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested by the Tehran police on September 14, 2022 for [...]
Iran announces public surveillance to enforce religious dress code
Iranian authorities Saturday announced the installation of surveillance cameras in various public locations to identify and penalise women who defy the national religious dress code by not wearing a hijab. The number of women publicly resisting Iran’s dress code has spiked following protests arising from the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the course of [...]
UN official urges Taliban authorities to withdraw ban on women working in NGOs
UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) head Ramiz Alakbarov Monday called for a reversal of the decision to ban women from domestic and international NGO humanitarian jobs, in a meeting with Economy Minister Qari Din Mohammad Hanif in Kabul. On Saturday, the Minister of Economy (MoE) issued a directive prohibiting domestic and international non-governmental organizations [...]
The UN Economic and Social Council (ESC) Wednesday voted to remove Iran from the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). Of the 54 current ESC members, 29 voted in favor of removal, 8 voted against and 16 abstained. Iran was to serve its term from 2022-2026. In early November, the US promised to [...]
On September 16, 2022, Iran’s Basij Resistance Force, a volunteer paramilitary organization that operates under the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, arrested Mahsa Amini for her refusal to comply with the country’s headscarf requirement, an alleged breach of its public morality code. Reports surfaced that the Basij severely beat Amini for resisting an officer’s insults, after which Amini [...]
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) Thursday ruled that workplace bans affecting religious wear do not amount to discrimination under certain circumstances. A Muslim woman, referred to as L.F., brought a discrimination claim against a company called SCRL based on the Belgian General Anti-Discrimination Law. SCRL refused to consider L.F.’s internship application [...]
India state court temporarily bans hijab in educational institutions
The Karnataka High Court issued an interim order on Thursday temporarily restraining all students in the state, “regardless of their religion or faith,” from wearing Bhagwa (saffron shawls), scarfs, hijab, religious flags or the like in classrooms until it issues a judgment on the merits on five petitions submitted by female Muslim students of Government [...]
India dispatch: Karnataka school hijab ban provokes litigation, intimidation by Hindu majority
India Staff Correspondent Sambhav Sharma reports on a prohibition against Indian Muslim school girls wearing hijabs at a state-run school in Karnataka State that has prompted litigation and now violence in a country gripped by a rising tide of Hindu nationalism. He files this for JURIST from New Delhi. The High Court of Karnataka is [...]
European Court of Justice rules headscarves can be banned at work
The European Court of Justice ruled Thursday that employers can forbid their staff from wearing visible symbols of religious or political belief, including headscarves, in order to present an image of neutrality. The Court decided on the matter following referrals from the Labour Court of Hamburg and the Federal Labour Court of Germany, which had [...]
French Muslims are in the process of reconciling with the Fifth Republic of France, established with the 1958 Constitution, which declares France to be a secular state. In the past thirty years, secular issues have fractured social order as Muslim women, born and raised in France, wish to wear the hijab (headscarf) in schools and [...]
