Air France’s demand that female crew wear veils in Tehran backfires and is withdrawn
Eight years after international sanctions forced Air France to abandon its route from Pairs to Tehran, the airline this month prepared to resume its regular flights and sent a list of instructions to its female flight crew.
Pants and loose tunics were to be worn on all Iran-bound flights, and women were instructed to cover their hair in any public place.
Since the Islamic revolution of 1979, women in Iran are obliged to cover their hair. It is a punishable offense for any woman to be caught in public with her head exposed.
In militantly secular France, the veil has been prohibited in public places. It is a punishable offense to cover one’s face in public for religious purposes.
Welcome to the clash of cultures, circa 2016.
The women of Air France were not amused. Françoise Redolfi, a union representative, demanded that women have the right to refuse to work the Paris-Tehran route.
In a radio interview she said, “We are forced to wear ostentatious religious signs. This choice should be left to the women. They should have a right to say whether they do or do not want to fly this route.” The airline quickly backed down.
The controversy only grew when, asked about the hijab, French Minister for Women’s Rights and Families, Laurence Rossignol [1], said “of course there are women who choose it…There were American negroes who were in favor of slavery.”
What Air France executives probably did not know is that the brouhaha came as a welcome blast for the ladies of a stealthy but growing Iranian campaign against the veil.
#mystealthyfreedom [2], a protest movement started by the exiled Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad [3], now has 971,326 adherents, mostly women who post pictures of themselves, in Iran, out of headgear. Their symbol is a silhouette of a woman exuberantly waving a scarf aloft, far above her head.
Speaking with The Media Line, Mona Eltahawy, the author of Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution and the one of the foremost voices on women’s rights in Islam today, said “These cyber-based protests are a reminder of the importance of the so-called virtual world – which is as real as the “real” world, it must be remembered – as a platform otherwise unavailable to the marginalized and disenfranchised, who in this case are women fighting back against what I call the trifecta of misogyny: the state, the street and the home.”
It began when Alinejad posted an image of herself with and without a hair covering.
When the mutiny of the Air France staff became public, the women of #mystealthyfreedom wrote, “We are calling on all female tourists visiting Iran to come and support the refusal of stewardesses working for Air France to wear the veil on flights once they are in Iran. We are also asking them to support My Stealthy Freedom Campaign.”
Accompanying their plea was the cartoonist Shahrokh Haydari [4]’s image of an unhappily kerchiefed plane entitled “A Hejab for Air France.”
“As a sign of support, here is what you can do: when you visit our beautiful Iran, you can take a photo without the compulsory headscarf as a sign of protest and send it to this campaign.”
A representative of Air France’s flight crews responded, “AF female flight crew are upset about being imposed a certain uniform on board ( no dresses, just pants and a tunic) and about having to wear a veil once in Iran as well as not being allowed to smoke or associate with male crew members in a familiar way. No woman should be told how to dress or how to behave.”
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And an international movement was born.
“Even if the airline just sends men,” Eltahawy said, “it will still be a reminder that the women flight attendants staged a legitimate protest and that they refuse to abide by a modesty culture that Iranian women courageously oppose via for example #mystealthfreedom.”
Maryam Nayeb Yazdi, a human rights activist, posted a sweet father/daughter shot with flowing carnelian locks, reading “ [6]A father’s message from Iran: I fully support my dear daughter’s freedom to choose her dress #mystealthyfreedom [7].”
@ETori [8]posted with a hijab-wearing friend and man not her father:
An even more audacious contributor posted an image of herself receiving a happy kiss.
Not all cybernauts were thrilled. Babak (Bobby) Rahrovani [9], born in Shiraz, now living in Montreal, posted that “The west are being hypocrites. When you go to their lands they want you to assimilate and follow their culture but they won’t do the same when it comes to another culture. True intolerance.”
But the women are not to be deterred.
A tweeter named Parisa posted [10]”No to forced hijab, let’s smile and be ourselves #mystealthyfreedom [7]” accompanied by a joyful image taken on a beach in what appear to be yoga pants, belly in view, hair flowing.
Pascale Berrie, a French woman, posted a grateful tweet turning many suppositions on their head, in which she said “Iranian women support the Air France stewardesses. Our fragile liberty. #homage #mystealthyfreedom” accompanied by a photo of a woman holding either end of what appears to be an elegant Burberry scarf far behind her head.
An unnamed poster from Iran:
The images transmit a triumphant feeling of liberation from strictures.
In recent days, hijab-wearing women have sprung up in support of their more secular sisters.
Images of Iranian women protesting against the obligatory headscarf are not completely new, though they are new for the generation now in cybernetic revolt.
Meir Javedanfar, who teaches Iranian studies at the InterDisciplinary Center in Herzliya, told The Media Line that “Iran is a majority conservative society, and if democracy ever comes to Iran I think most people would want to have the option of hijab, but the question of forcing people is becoming an issue.”
The Iranian government, he said, does not take this type of the protest quietly. “They absolutely see it as a threat,” he said. “They see it as open defiance to their authority.”
In Iran, he explained, the growing secularization is being called the “Andalusiation” of Iran, after Andalusia, the old Islamic territory in Spain, in which religious laws became more and more lax until it became easy for the Spanish queen to take over, and, in 1492, kick the Muslims out.
In 1979, the Iranian photographer Hengameh Golestan captured images of 100,000 women protesting the headscarf on the day before the law making wearing one compulsory went into effect.
In recent days, the brave women of Iran have taken a new step, posting brazen videos [12] of them walking openly in Tehran, in daylight hours, their hair exposed.
“Women’s defiance is seen as an absolute threat by the Iranian regime,” Javedanfar said. “It is taken much more seriously than street crime, for example. The authorities respond much more immediately. ”
Around the Middle East, women in the past year have begun demand rights not as a rejection of their cultures, but within their frameworks.
In the past year in Saudi Arabia, a few women drove their own cars down streets, a crime.
Among orthodox Jewish women in Israel, a revolt against their disenfranchisement from positions of religious authority has taken root, to a certain extent inspired by Muslim Israeli women who hold the position of Qadis, religious judges.
“Women are fed up of that trifecta of misogyny, especially when that trifecta is upheld by a toxic mix of religion and culture and a modesty/purity culture that is a burden on just girls and women,” Eltahawy says. “Feminists from all faith backgrounds are fighting back and sending a clear signal to the men who’ve taken for granted their ownership of religion that god does not belong to them.”