Top Tweets for #KIppa

Promoting the hijab means becoming complicit in discrimination. FIFA’s statutes claim to oppose all forms of discrimination, whether based on race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Yet when it comes to women, gender discrimination is not only tolerated—it is celebrated and promoted in the name of culture. A seven-year-old girl whose parents have imposed the hijab on her—a tool used to control and suppress women—deserves our compassion, not to be displayed as a symbol to celebrate. I know this from personal experience. When I was seven years old, Khomeini’s regime forced me to wear the hijab. Millions of Iranian women and I have lived with the humiliation of being told that we must cover ourselves so that men can feel comfortable. We reject that oppression—at the risk of our lives. Your indifference to the suffering of millions of girls forced into the hijab reflects an indifference to the gender discrimination and gender apartheid imposed by the islamic ideology behind this symbolic garment—an ideology of control, inequality, and oppression. Nothing destroys universal human rights more than cultural relativism. She is only a seven-year-old girl. Let her live.