The ubiquity of cycling is one of the reasons for less pollution in the air and less traffic. Many people take up cycling and use it to go large distances. Among the cyclists are a large number of women. Women’s cycling, on the other hand, has been a divisive subject among religious groups and others in recent years. In general, issues with women’s sports in Iran have always been linke...
The posting of a video depicting the inhumane treatment of a girl by Iranian police has sparked a social media storm. The video shows the woman being arrested, as police used a hook and tools for hunting animals to get the struggling woman into a police van. Women have seen this type of behavior on the streets numerous times. Only one of the many thousands of encounters makes it onto social media....
The world was stunned by the Taliban’s quick conquest of Afghanistan. Afghan citizens’ concerns and disappointments, particularly among women and girls, are indescribable. They fear being pushed back into their homes, stripped of their access to education, work, and community, and returned to the scenario of two decades before. Girls were forced to study in secret during the Taliban...
Soheil Arabi is an Iranian blogger, with a wife and a child, who has been imprisoned since 2013. It all began on November 7, 2013, when Soheil and his wife, Nasrin Naeemi, were arrested by the Revolutionary Guards for publishing content on his Facebook page. His wife was released after a few hours, but he was incarcerated for two months and kept in solitary confinement before being transferred to ...
A father stabbed his 16-year-old daughter many times in an honor killing in Iran. The murder of this teenage girl, whose identity was announced as Shakiba Bakhtiar, occurred on Sunday, July 4th, according to a human rights website. The girl’s father, according to the report, stabbed her to death multiple times on the pretext of her late return from the bazaar. This is only the latest in a se...
LGBT rights activists have reported the killing of a young gay named Alireza Fazeli Monfared in Ahvaz, Iran. This 20 year old Iranian man was allegedly murdered, or beheaded according to some reports, by the family members in the southwest province of Khuzestan in Iran. According to reports from Iran, Alireza Monfared was murdered earlier this month by his brother and cousins after they learned he...
On April 23, the death sentence of two prisoners who are being held in Arak prison in Iran on the charge of Sab-Al-Nabi was announced. According to Islamic law in Iran, anyone who insults the Prophet of Islam or any of the Prophets, Shi’ite Imams, or Fatima (Muhammad’s daughter) is regarded as Sab-Al-Nabi and Article 262 of the Islamic Penal Code states, anyone who commits Sab-Al-Nabi ...
In June 2017 and according to the state-run ILNA news agency, officials in Iran’s northwestern province of Qazvin sentenced 20 people to flogging for eating outside during the fasting month of Ramadan, and the decision was carried out the same day. Iran Human Rights (IHR), based in Norway, has condemned the flogging, calling it torture and a breach of Article 5 of the Universal Declaration o...
In early December 2017, Vida Movahed, known as ‘the Girl of Enghelab Street’ stood on a Junction box in Tehran’s Enghelab Street without a veil and lifted her white scarf to protest compulsory veiling. This protest, which was followed by her detention, is one of Iran’s most well-known anti-forced veiling demonstrations. From that day forward, other girls in the same place, as well as o...
In certain societies, children are indoctrinated in religious values and beliefs and there is an effort to instill unshakeable truths such as God’s existence. Religion, in fact, has a major influence on education and the school system in a number of Middle Eastern countries. However, Iran, as a Middle Eastern republic, is an outlier. Education as a political tool While the 1979 Islamic Revol...
Iranian Adulterers Sentenced to Death
The Supreme Court of Iran has affirmed the decision of Branch 11 of the Tehran Criminal Court, which found a married man and woman guilty of “adultery” and condemned them to death. Last year, a young woman went to the police station to complain about her husband’s contact with another young woman and to show videos of her husband’s interaction with her. With this man and wo...