Chess player banned by Iran for not wearing a hijab switches to US

We hear a great deal about Muslim women in the West who are supposedly harassed and discriminated against for wearing the hijab. That may happen in some cases, although such claims have often been fabricated; in any case, such loutish behavior is never justified. But who is standing for women who are harassed and discriminated against, or worse, for not wearing the hijab?

Does anyone remember Aqsa Parvez, whose Muslim father choked her to death with her hijabafter she refused to wear it? Or Aqsa and Amina Muse Ali, a Christian woman in Somalia whom Muslims murdered because she wasn’t wearing a hijab? Or the Muslim woman in Italy who was raped and beaten by her husband, and forced to wear a burqa? Or the 40 women who were murdered in Iraq in 2007 for not wearing the hijab; or Alya Al-Safar, whose Muslim cousin threatened to kill her and harm her family because she stopped wearing the hijab in Britain; or Amira Osman Hamid, who faced whipping in Sudan for refusing to wear the hijab; or the Egyptian girl, also named Amira, who committed suicide after being brutalized for her family for refusing to wear the hijab; or the Muslim and non-Muslim teachers at the Islamic College of South Australia who were told that they had to wear the hijab or be fired; or the women in Chechnya whom police shot with paintballs because they weren’t wearing hijab; or the women also in Chechnya who were threatened by men with automatic rifles for not wearing hijab; or the elementary school teachers in Tunisia who were threatened with death for not wearing hijab; or the Syrian schoolgirls who were forbidden to go to school unless they wore hijab; or the women in Gaza whom Hamas has forcedto wear hijab; or the women in Iran who protested against the regime by daring to take off their legally-required hijab; or the women in London whom Muslim thugs threatened to murder if they didn’t wear hijab; or the anonymous young Muslim woman who doffed her hijab outside her home and started living a double life in fear of her parents, or all the other women and girls who have been killed or threatened, or who live in fear for daring not to wear the hijab?

“Chess player banned by Iran for not wearing a hijab switches to US,” by Leon Watson, Telegraph, October 3, 2017 (thanks to Vanessa):

A chess player banned from the Iranian national women’s team for attending an international competition without wearing an Islamic headscarf has joined the US team.

Dorsa Derakhshani refused to wear the headscarf, known as the hijab, during the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess tournament in February, and joined the U.S. national team.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has required women to wear the hijab in public places.

Dorsa’s registration has been altered on the world governing body Fide’s website and the switch to the United States Chess Federation confirmed by the president of Iran’s chess federation, Mehrdad Pahlevanzadeh.

Pahlevanzadeh added that she was not a member of Iran’s national chess team. “She played for Iran only one time in 2014,” he clarified….

At the February competition in Gibraltar, her brother Borna Derakhshani, also a chess player, was paired up by a computer against Israeli grandmaster Alexander Huzman.

Pahlevanzadeh later announced that Borna was banned from playing for Iran, and that Dorsa was also banned for not wearing the hijab at that competition….

Shohreh Bayat, the general secretary of Iran’s chess federation, said Dorsa was now studying in the U.S., according to Tasnim, another semi-official Iranian news agency.

“(Dorsa) Derakhshani has not become a member of the U.S. national chess team, she just changed her federation to the United States,” Bayat said.

Dorsa will join Nazi Paikidze-Barnes, the former US champion, who refused to participate in the Women’s World Chess Championship held in Tehran, Iran, in February to protest against the country’s hijab law that makes it mandatory for all women to wear hijab in public places….

Source: Chess player banned by Iran for not wearing a hijab switches to US