A woman in the Tehran airport – not wearing the mandatory headscarf – confronted a cleric and removed his turban. She placed it on her own head like a scarf, and said to the man “So you have honor now? You claim to be a Shia of Ali?” She is searching for her husband Navid: “What did you do to my husband?”.
The date and cause of the confrontation aren’t clear. The video circulated online earlier this year. At the time, Iranian state-linked accounts tried to dismiss it saying it was years-old but it was not. The state regularly tries to frame acts of disobedience as mental disturbances as well. She was also derided as a “Mossad agent.”
Here the woman took the cleric’s turban – a badge of authority and sanctity – as her headscarf, subverting traditional power relations (‘your symbol will now cover me, on my terms’).
At Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport, a woman boldly confronted a cleric who questioned her for not wearing a hijab.
she took off his turban and wore it as a scarf in defiance. pic.twitter.com/H9GFxzZKub
— Lakshay Mehta (@lakshaymehta08) October 19, 2025
Women have been engaged in heightened disobedience over mandatory headscarfs following the the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of religious morality police following her arrest for not wearing a hijab in September 2022. Crackdowns on women who defy hijab laws in airports have been on the rise as well.
- The head of airport police in Tehran has stated that women not wearing hijabs could not fly.
- Similar announcements and threats have been made at Iran’s second-busiest airport in Mashhad and at Fasa Airport.
In summer 2024, Iran shut down the Turkish Airlines office in Tehran because staff there weren’t complying with hijab laws.
State news reported that the woman was detained and released with the cleric’s consent, but that hasn’t been independently verified.
Since then, Iran adopted an even tougher “Chastity and Hijab” law in late 2024 (the ‘Family Protection through Promoting the Culture of Chastity and Hijab’ law) with enhanced surveillance and draconian penalties. Implementation was officially paused due to backlash but sporadic enforcement continued.
That woman is courageous. Over there, she could get killed for this. This is yet another example of why we do not want a theocratic dictatorship anywhere. Hope she can get out of there, relocate to a free-er society.
Replace “could get” with “will be” or even “has been.”
@Denver Refugee — Hope not, but, probably so. I’d argue, she she now has a valid claim to ‘refugee’ status, elsewhere, under international law, if anyone would actually follow and support human rights, anymore. And, to those that seek to do a (wealthy, white, male, straight, conservative) nationalist Christian (Nat-C) version of this to the USA, no, we do not want ‘morality police’ here, either. Separation of church and state; freedom of and from religion are literally the First Amendment of our U.S. Constitution.
Here is what awaits us n NYC and MN
@inos — Not at all, but nice try.
A courageous woman. What I find so surprising and sad about Iran is such a lack of courageous men willing to stand up for the courageous women.
@1990
I am the guy you love to ridicule in the comments here. I am a conservative, white pickup driving WASP.
I have no idea where you get the idea of the Christian right wanting a morality police and prefer not to get into some senseless debate about it. The right and the left can call each other names all day but for what?
The real issue in the west, as it relates to this topic, is the exact opposite of the morality police. Several liberal western democracies are banning bourkas and hijabs. The left argues that woman don’t really have the right to choose to wear them. I guess if you are in an arranged marriage to your cousin, it might be hard. The right is fearful of the overall loss of their Judeo-Christian heritage. Hopefully this never comes to the US and if it does the Supreme Court stands up for the freedom of religion. We should be thankful and cherish the freedoms we have in the US. Stories like the one above are horrible but can also remind us of how blessed we are here.
@Mak — For real. There was some hope thanks to the large-scale, nationwide protests that erupted in late 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini, under the banner of “Woman, Life, Freedom,” but unfortunately, those have largely subsided due to a severe government crackdown on them. Reports are that hundreds were killed and tens of thousands arrested during the protests, and the use of the death penalty against some protesters has been carried out. Horrifying.
Ironically, at least for those who don’t follow history, it was the socialists who enabled the Islamists to take power and repress the country.
@Common Sense — Uh, no, the lead up to the Iranian Revolution in 1979 was far more complicated than that, and you should know better.
The Shah (the Iranian monarch before then, backed by the US) was autocratic and repressive. As with most kings, there was rampant corruption, economic disparity, unemployment, and inflation. Ayatollah Khomeini was a religious zealot who mobilized an opposition (just because some of his supporters were ‘workers’ doesn’t make it a socialist revolution…), and ultimately they ousted the Shah.
Let’s be clear, Iran is not a socialist country; they are a theoretic dictatorship with a mixed economy. Still bad (mostly because of the theoretic dictatorship), but not socialist.
In the increasingly islamicized UK she would definitely be imprisoned for a hate crime.
Good to see most of us come together on this one, although I think she would be entitled to Asylum as compared to Refugee status.
The main Socialist was Jimmy Carter using what characterized a Socialist at that time.
I agree about asylum but leaving Iran may be difficult.
@Jack the ladd, @jns — Fine as to the nuance between refugee versus asylum, but, let’s get real, it’s the same general idea of getting this individual to safety.
And, @jns, c’mon muh man, Carter was a small ‘s’ socialist, as was his boy, Jesus Christ, back in the day; yet, neither were literal ‘members’ of an official organization of ‘Socialists.’ You (and others) apparently enjoy using such terms as pejoratives. And, as I said above, unless you want others to start calling supports of #47 ‘fascists’ it’s probably not ‘correct’ to be lobbing these charged words around. You do you, though. Just an idea. Speak your mind regardless of whatever I say. I’m just a guy who likes this site. Whatevs.
@Ron Mexico — No, the UK is remains a relatively ‘free’ society, where everyone can practice their own religion and customs or none at all, so please stop with the lies and hyperbole. Around just 6% of the UK practices Islam (per recent census there); it is laughable for you to suggest that country, of all countries, is ‘Islamicized.’
@1990: You missed what I wrote. I wrote that the Socialists teaming up with the Islamists to overthrow the Shah led to what Iran is today. Once the Islamists have no need for the socialists they will purge them the same way they did then.
If you don’t learn from history you are bound to repeat it. Don’t ignore the warning signs and wait until it’s too late.
@Common Sense — You ignore what I write all the time. While some workers clearly supported that dictatorship, it was the religious zealots (and other circumstances) that caused that coup.
Yes, dictators, regardless of their ideologies, use others to obtain and keep power, indefinitely. We all should be against dictatorship. I still believe and support self-governance, various forms of direct and representative government, and a relatively ‘free’ market, with reasonable ‘common sense’ regulations, as I just replied to you in the other post (Air India topic).
Most of us agree more than we disagree, believe it or not.
@L737 — Sometimes it feels like we’re doing the Futurama bit from the episode ‘A Head in the Polls’ about candidates Jack Johnson vs. John Jackson (literal clones): “It’s time someone has the courage to say… ‘I’m against those things that everybody hates!’ …now, I respect my opponent, he’s a good man, but quite frankly, I agree with everything he just said!” However, they differed on some ‘key issues’… “I say your 3 cent titanium tax goes too far… and, I say, your 3 cent titanium tax doesn’t goes too far enough!” (Naturally, they both lost to Richard Nixon by one vote.)