Iranian Women Remove Hijab, Join 'Stealthy Freedoms' Facebook Campaign

A Facebook page called Stealthy Freedoms of Iranian Women was recently set up by London-based Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad. 

Describing the vision behind her page creation, Alinejad said:

This page does not belong to any political group and the initiative reflects the concerns of Iranian women, who face legal and social restrictions. All of the photos and captions posted have been sent by women from all over Iran and this is a site dedicated to Iranian women inside the country who want to share their “stealthily” taken photos without the veil.

An Iranian woman who posted her hijab-less photo on the page expressed her poetic sentiments by stating:

Feeling the wind blow through their hair is what all women of my nation are thirsty for.

This is Bam-e-Sabz, Lahijan. When we reached up there, I felt I did not have the feeling I probably must have had. At this point I figured out I yearned for taking my scarf off and breathe [sic] freely, without caring about the looks of the ones who do not even know how it feels when the wind dances through one’s hair.

I remove my scarf from my head whenever I have the opportunity to do so; as I know it is my right to have this little freedom.

Another Iranian woman wrote in her “Stealthy Freedoms” post:

Freedom is every person’s right! Freedom…happiness…colorfulness…is every Iranian woman’s right.

Freedom is a right; and rights are to be fought for and gained! As they are never offered to you. So we will attain it ourselves.

The campaign to ditch the hijab and obtain the secretive “stealthy freedoms” has accumulated over 168 thousand “likes” over the short ten days of its existence.

“I just want to give voice to thousands and thousands of Iranian women who think they have no platform to have their say,” Alinejad said of her Facebook page.

Iran’s last mass protest against the Ayatollah Khamenei’s Islamic theocracy, known as the 2009 Green Movement, was met with brutal repression and violence to stifle demonstrations. Government authorities, specifically the Ayatollah’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, took to the streets and quashed the demonstration while opening fire on unarmed fellow Iranian citizens.

Ever since the 1979 Revolution that installed an Islamic State in Iran, women have been required by law to wear the hijab.