You have to wonder what (and whether) world chess officials were thinking when they decided to have next year’s women’s world championship in Tehran, where the Islamic Republic commands all women to wear the headscarves that its interpretation of Islamic
You have to wonder what (and whether) world chess officials were thinking when they decided to have next year’s women’s world championship in Tehran, where the Islamic Republic commands all women to wear the headscarves that its interpretation of Islamic law requires.
Nazi Paikidze, who grew up in the former Soviet republic of Georgia and now plays as an American, announced she would refuse to participate.
Paikidze expressed her position in terms of her own rights and as a refusal to support the oppression of Iranian women. Both are good reasons. No one should be required to submit to laws such as the compulsory hijab as a condition of participating in a global competition. And such submission could be construed as condoning the tyranny that imposes that law on its citizens.
The question is not the hijab; the question is freedom. Those women for whom the hijab is a genuine expression of personal faith have every right to wear it. But no one has the right to impose it on women who do not believe in it.
If, somehow, the chess players can go to Iran without having to wear the hijab, that might be a crack in the Islamic Republic’s oppressive regime.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
