Author: Sina Nasiri

Iranian Police Arrest Woman for Improper Hijab

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 Taliban, Afghan women’s worst nightmare

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...

Iranian Blogger jailed since 2013 for Blasphemy

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 ...

Honor Killings in Iran

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...

Gay man brutally murdered by family in Iran

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...

Two Iranians on Trial for Blasphemy

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 ...

Flogging to honor Ramadan

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...

Iranian women protest the obligatory hijab

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...

Islamic Indoctrination in Iranian Schools

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...

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