{"id":1272,"date":"2018-07-09T14:25:16","date_gmt":"2018-07-09T14:25:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1272"},"modified":"2018-07-09T14:29:20","modified_gmt":"2018-07-09T14:29:20","slug":"women-in-iran-are-dancing-to-protest-the-arrest-of-a-teenage-instagrammer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1272","title":{"rendered":"Women in Iran Are Dancing to Protest the Arrest of a Teenage Instagrammer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/iransos.com\/en\/photo\/2011\/m\/maede-hojabri.jpg\" width=\"402\" height=\"487\" \/>2018-07-08 &#8211;\u00a0Time &#8211;\u00a0By\u00a0LAIGNEE BARRON\u00a0&#8211; Iranian women are dancing in public and posting videos of themselves online to protest\u00a0the arrest\u00a0of a teenage Instagram star.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Maedeh Hojabri gained a large social media following for her dancing videos. To the tune of Western and Iranian pop and rap music, the teenager bopped and twirled in her bedroom without wearing the compulsory Islamic headscarf or hijab.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><!--more-->In Iran, women are required to cover their hair while out in public, and dancing with the opposite sex is prohibited unless it is in front of immediate family members, according to the BBC.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Hojabri appeared on state television Friday and confessed to violating moral conventions, in what activists say was a forced appearance. She was one of several people recently detained on similar charges before being released on bail, the Associated Press\u00a0reports.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cIt wasn\u2019t for attracting attention,\u201d she said, according to the\u00a0<em>Guardian<\/em>\u2018s translation. \u201cI had some followers and these videos were for them. I did not have any intention to encourage others doing the same \u2026 I didn\u2019t work with a team, I received no training. I only do gymnastics.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Hojabri\u2019s account has since been suspended, but social media users have been sharing her videos.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">With hashtags that translate as #dance to freedom and #dancing_isn\u2019t_a_crime, Iranian women, many also without the mandatory hijab, have started posting their own videos in support of Hojabri.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In an\u00a0Instagram post\u00a0translated by the\u00a0<em>Guardian<\/em>, blogger Hossein Ronaghi wrote, \u201cIf you told people anywhere in the world that 17 and 18-year-old girls are arrested for their dance, happiness and beauty on charges of spreading indecency, while child rapists and others are free, they would laugh! Because for them, it\u2019s unbelievable!\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Iranian authorities have previously cracked down on dancing. Last August, six people were reportedly arrested for\u00a0Zumba dancing.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In 2014, six Iranians, three men and three unveiled women, received\u00a0suspended sentences\u00a0of one year imprisonment and 91 lashes for a video that showed them dancing on Tehran\u2019s rooftops to Pharrell William\u2019s song \u201cHappy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2018-07-08 &#8211;\u00a0Time &#8211;\u00a0By\u00a0LAIGNEE BARRON\u00a0&#8211; Iranian women are dancing in public and posting videos of themselves online to protest\u00a0the arrest\u00a0of a teenage Instagram star. Maedeh Hojabri gained a large social media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1272"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1274,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1272\/revisions\/1274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}