آزادی های یواشکی زنان در ایران means, I believe, ‘Stealthy Freedoms of Iranian Women’. We covered their Facebook campaign here Ostensibly, in a country where it is illegal for a woman not to have her head covered (in temperatures that sometimes reach 40C), some women are taking photos of themselves hijab-free and posting it on social media. The Washington Post’s coverage of the campaign is here. What shocks and surprises me about this blogging lark is that occasionally it takes twists and turns I could never have anticipated. Since our original post on the topic I’ve received two separate IMs from women who have determined to show their support. Let me caveat this post by saying it’s Second Life and I cannot verify that the correspondents are Muslim or even female, but I have no reason to doubt at least part of their authenticity, as their IP addresses match the locations they claim to be in. And, of course, as it’s SL, not wearing a hijab isn’t exactly an earth-shattering revelation. ‘I use SL’, writes one, ‘precisely because it does offer some freedoms that the society I live in don’t offer. I can walk by myself, without a male chaperone. I can show off my hair. I can do as I wish!’ Having checked our view-stats, I can see that of the Top 40 nations to view SLN, five may be considered to be Islamic countries where certain perceptions of women hold sway. But one of my correspondents rejects the notion that we should be quick to attach any linkage to religion. ‘Where I live it’s not about the religion, it’s about the culture. Of course, religious reasoning is sometimes applied to justify the culture, without there being any religious background for it.’ Being pixellated-naked was a step too far for our correspondents, both of whom read SLN regularly. ‘I don’t think that’s for me, even in Second Life, but I discovered your blog through some other website and I do look at it regularly, more for the idea that you provide coverage of the ways in which women are oppressed. While posing naked was a step too far, one readily agreed to pose, as she does daily in SL, without her head covering or leggings. ‘This is the thrill of Second Life. It’s ‘look! I have hair, I have legs!’. I can be someone else…no…I can be closer to the real me in SL than I can in RL. In a way, SL reflects the real me and RL reflects a false me. SL reaches out to people in a way that I think Linden Labs don’t even comprehend. Sadly it is expensive for me to buy all the clothes I want, and I am careful how I transact with credit card. Maybe, sometime, Linden Labs can address this matter. For now, my clothes are often free group gifts. But I can be free and happy in Second Life in ways I am not in real life!’.

Another correspondent freely posed without a hijab, in support of the ‘Stealthy Freedoms’ campaign.

Ella

I’m only half-apologising for us drifting away from SL naturism a bit recently, on the basis that indulging in naturism is a decision made freely to follow a specific lifestyle path. We have a choice to do so or not. We have a choice to strip off on the beach or not. We have a choice to turn away if we discover a beach is naturist or not. No one is forced to do anything they don’t want to do. I guess the argument could be made that there are the famous ‘nude police’ at locations like Arnaoutchot, where beach users are gently reminded to strip before going onto the beach. Some people might suggest that this means there’s no choice. Look, we have limited naturist locations on the plages and playas, and the right for them to exist has been hard-fought. We don’t ask for much. On the flip-side of the coin, even as a naturist, I’m expected to dress up for the textile beach, and textile beach users might, theoretically, fight hard (including police and legal action) for their rights to see me or anyone else covered up. So it’s a quid pro quo. We have our naturist beaches, you have your textile beaches, and there is largely a harmony about that.

As a result I’m quite firm on people being given the right to make their own free choices, not have ‘choices’ imposed on them.

Naturists are laid-back, friendly, and well attuned to allowing people to make their own choices, from that public nude debut to piercings, tattoos or whatever else becomes part of the naturist agenda. ‘Work away’ is the over-arching call. ‘It’s your choice’.

I would be militant where the erosion of naturist rights are concerned, particularly when long-established naturist beaches are placed under threat or our right to be naked in our own property is threatened. I do this all the time on the rare occasions that the weather is good enough, and I would be appalled if, like the lady in the second link, I was filmed doing that with the subsequent film then handed to the police. How dare someone do that without, themselves, facing prosecution for voyeurism!

Of course, I live in a rural area, with a large, secluded garden, so the chances of that happening are reduced to almost nil, and I’m entirely sensible about how I dress in the garden anyway. But it seems that there needs to be constant vigilance to ensure our human rights aren’t being infringed. We still need to fight and take action to ensure basic human rights are maintained.

And so I return to the issue of Meryam Yeha Ibrahim, currently jailed in Sudan for ‘apostasy’. The mad-mullahs of Sudan, no different from the mad-mullahs of Iran, Pakistan or any other -an, have decreed that for converting from Islam to Christianity (a charge she denies, claiming to have been raised Christian, and thus not in the arena of changing religion) she faces death by hanging. Heavily pregnant, they have now opted to delay her fate until her as yet unborn child is two years old. This is the ‘humanity’ involved, the freedom to choose involved, in many parts of the world.

The Koran says “Allah will not give mercy to anyone, except those who give mercy to other creatures.” The Koran says “When Allah created his creatures He wrote above His throne: ‘Verily, my Compassion overcomes my wrath.”

I don’t apportion any blame to Islam, per se, or to the many, many Muslims who do leave peaceable lives with piety and respect. But I do not have anything other than contempt and disdain for the ‘religious leaders’ who corrupt the word of Islam’s Holy Book for their own ends.

Isn’t it time that these idiotic clerics started practicing what they (literally) preach?

Ella.