Iranian President Tweets Uncovered Photograph of First Woman to Win Fields Medal

[JI7]

<Iranian president Hassan Rouhani congratulated Field Medal winning mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani by tweeting a uncovered photograph of her, in a move likely to be seen as a strong political statement.

Mr Rouhani’s tweet, posted last night, showed 37-year-old Iranian-born Mirzakhani wearing a headscarf in one photo (as required by Iranian law) and without in another.

Although women are legally required to wear a hijab in public in Iran, in recent months there has been a flickering online campaign by younger generations to wear lighter, more transparent and looser hijabs – if at all.

Mrs Mirzakhani was born in Tehran, completing her undergraduate maths degree at Sharif University before moving to the United States in 1999 to study at Harvard.

She has previously defended Iran’s education, stating: "I should say that the education system in Iran is not the way people might imagine here," she told Clay Mathematics Institute. "As a graduate student at Harvard, I had to explain quite a few times that I was allowed to attend a university as a woman in Iran.">



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iranian-president-tweets-uncovered-photograph-of-first-woman-to-win-fields-medal-9668001.html

[msongs]

1. so why is it that men are not required to wear head scarves? nt

[JI7]

2. that's what men like Rouhani want to know also

[tblue37]

3. Orthodox Jewish women also cover their heads, as women

also did in Christian countries at one time, and in many societies in the more distant past.

One Orthodox Jewish woman I knew told me that they recognized that men found their hair sexually alluring.

One Catholic priest told me that a woman's hair was her "glory" and should therefore always be covered in church. That comment is actually be in the New Testament, in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.

When I was a child my family attended an Episcopalian church, and we always had to wear either a hat or a chapel veil in church.

Nuns used to wear habits that covered as much of the hair and body as a chador does.

Look at images of the Virgin Mary. She is covered and so is her hair--again, as much is covered as is for a woman wearing a chador.

"Respectable" woman remained mostly covered up in many "civilized" Western societies during many eras until quite recently.