Iran and the 'veil'

Harry's Place, Persepolis (still catching up). I have to reply to this.

I couldn't help thinking about the segment of "progressive" opinion who seem more concerned with the right of Muslim girls and women to wear the hijab to school in Europe than with their right not to wear it in Iran and elsewhere in the Islamic world.

I do care about both, but there are those, especially in France, who seem to think that not allowing women to wear the head scarf somehow compensates for them being forced to wear it in other countries.

Again I have to agree with the words of Tariq Ramadan, I  'would neither force a woman to wear a head scarf nor force her to remove one.'

Specifically on Iran, I would not want to go into the realms of the neo-cons and talk about mullocracy and regime-change or lump Iran into the 'axis of evil'. As a matter of practical policy, I have to come down on the side of the 'realists' and say that it is urgent to deal with, and isolate, the nuclear issue. The crisis there continues, though with no coverage on domestic news services in the UK (radio and TV, I mean).