An ‘oasis’ inside Iran’s holy city
Shenaz Kermali; 25/9/08
Jamia Tuz Zahra is Iran’s largest women’s seminary and houses 800 of its 3,000 local and international students Deep within the theological heartland of Iran lies the city of Qom, also known as the “Shia Vatican”. Situated 100km southwest from Tehran, the city is reknowned for its seminaries, or hawzas, which are home to about 60,000 clerical students who come from across Iran and elsewhere to train in everything from religion and jurisprudence to modern political thought and the Greek Classics. While many of the female students attend the hawza solely to attain the status of Aalima (a senior preacher), some also choose to take courses as part of a ‘gap year’ before beginning university. Zahra Merali, a 21-year-old Kenyan Muslim, has been living and studying at Jamia Tuz Zahra, Qom’s largest women’s hawza, that houses 800 of its 3,000 foreign and local students.
See: http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/iran/2008/2008/09/ 2008922143119456556.html
Iran steps up policing of Islamic dress - report
Iran has doubled the number of police assigned to its more than yearlong crackdown against women flouting Islamic dress codes, Kargozaran newspaper said on Wednesday. The daily gave no figures but the report, as well as remarks made by a police official to Reuters on Wednesday, indicate the authorities’ determination to press ahead with the longest clampdown against “immoral behaviour” in recent years. The latest campaign began in mid-2007. Such strict codes were tightly enforced in the early years after the 1979 Islamic revolution but in more recent years campaigns have tended to last just weeks or months at most. “The crackdown on non-Islamic hijab [Muslim veil] will continue until the society is clean of any immoralities,” Kargozaran quoted a police statement as saying. The dress code requires women to cover their hair and wear long, loose clothes to disguise the shape of their bodies.
See: http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=10963
Tags: Iran, Womens Rights