Iranian Chess Player Explains: I Will No Longer Participate in the Game of Mandatory Hijab

Mitra Hejazifar, an Iranian chess player who was expelled from the national team for removing her hijab during international competitions, called the mandatory hijab for women a “restriction” rather than “protection”.

This statement by Ms. Hejazifar stands in stark contrast to the Islamic Republic’s propaganda, which has consistently promoted mandatory hijab for women as “protection” rather than a “restriction”.

The chess player wrote in an Instagram post that since the age of six and within her family environment, she has been “obligated to observe hijab” and was even introduced as “a role model for others”.

She wrote that she also expressed this point in an interview with a French newspaper.

Recalling memories from when she was nine years old competing for the national team abroad, she added that over the years she continued “a pattern that had embedded itself deep in her mind”, and now realizes how she “was drawn into the game desired by others since childhood” and without knowing it, she had been turned into a “puppet”.

Mitra Hejazifar wrote that after years, she has decided “no longer to have any role in creating and perpetuating this horrible germination and will not participate in the game where we love hijab and have no problem with it”.

She described mandatory hijab as “a clear symbol of discrimination” in which “women are considered second-class”.

Ms. Hejazifar added in part of her discussion posted on her Instagram account that mandatory hijab “creates a multitude of restrictions for a woman and deprives her of her basic rights. Is this protection? I say unequivocally, no, this is only and solely a restriction”.

Mitra Hejazifar competed in the world rapid and blitz championships hosted in Moscow without Islamic hijab against her opponents.

After 18 years of bringing honor to Iran’s national team, the head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Chess Federation announced that this athlete “will have no further place in the national team”.

The refusal of a female national athlete to observe hijab while competing in world championships was the first time such an act occurred in the Islamic Republic system.

Mitra Hejazifar, who is the Asian chess champion, earned the title of Woman Grandmaster in 2015 and has a collection of world and continental titles from childhood to adulthood.

Source: Radio Farda