Meanwhile in Iran

Police in Iran’s capital have arrested 29 women accused of being “deceived” into joining protests against a law that makes wearing the hijab compulsory.

Women across the country have been protesting by climbing onto telecom boxes, taking off their headscarves and waving them aloft on sticks.

Although women in Iran have fought against the hijab for nearly four decades, the new wave of protests has grabbed more attention and sparked a debate rarely seen before over personal freedoms.

Police in Iran’s capital have arrested 29 women accused of being “deceived” into joining protests against a law that makes wearing the hijab compulsory. Women across the country have been protesting by climbing onto telecom boxes, taking off their headscarves and waving them aloft on sticks. Although women in Iran have fought against the hijab for nearly four decades, the new wave of protests has grabbed more attention and sparked a debate rarely seen before over personal freedoms.

[...]

Soheila Jolodarzadeh, a female member of the Iranian parliament, said the protests were the result of longstanding restrictions. “They’re happening because of our wrong approach,” she said, according to the semi-official Ilna news agency. “We imposed restrictions on women and put them under unnecessary restrains."

[...]

Iran’s prosecutor general, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, described the protests on Wednesday as “childish”, “emotionally charged” and instigated “from outside the country”.

Masih Alinejad, a US-based journalist and activist, started the White Wednesdays campaign in May 2017, encouraging women to wear white headscarves or take them off in protest at the rules.

[...]

[S]he works for the US government-funded Voice Of America service, she has received no funds for either of her campaigns.

[...]

“The Iranian police announced in 2014 that they’ve warned, arrested or sent to court nearly 3.6 million women because of having bad hijab, so these arrests are not new, if people are protesting it’s exactly because of such a crackdown,” she told the Guardian.

  The Guardian

I hope these women are able to win this small freedom to choose, and that they don't have to suffer much for it. It's as heinous for them to be forced to wear any type of garment if they don't want as it is for countries in Europe to make it illegal for them to wear it if they do.

Reminder: Iran, before US support of the corrupt and dictatorial Shah led to an uprising that brought religious fanatics to power in the 80s, was quite modern socially.  That's an oversimplification, of course, but at the root of much of the strife in the Middle East is US meddling and manipulation.  Then we get to blame the Middle Easterners for always being in strife.  The old saw about how they've been fighting each other for centuries isn't accurate.  You could say the same about Europe with about as much accuracy. 

And, this kind of shit doesn't help anything: