TEHRAN - The book "Tanoor Doosti" authored by Zeinab Karimi, asserts the importance of ‘Hijab’ for teenagers in an innovative piece with the purpose of safeguarding the Iranian cultural identity.

The book targets teenage readers with a storyline about Hijab and its effects on day-to-day life, with the author skillfully developing a relationship with readers by presenting Hijab as a blessing which teenagers need to appreciate.

With an emphasis on the restrictions placed on Muslim women in France, the author makes a comparison between the living conditions of Muslim women in Iran and abroad and refers to the policies of European governments in preventing the spread of the Hijab culture.

Karimi dwells in the teenage world, with a text written in a language familiar with the youth while distancing herself from any stereotypes and instead of raising issues based on logical instances in an individual’s daily life. An excerpt from the book reads:

“It is said that when a person has a blessing, most of the time he/she does not know its value, for example, if the rain always falls on time and the sky is always sunny when needed, and the winters are full of snow and the summers are always full of blessings, then we will never be able to understand the purpose of droughts or floods, and so we will never be able to appreciate the constant rain or the adequate sunshine and we will not be grateful for them.”

Following the logic of her narrative, the author impulses the reader to be alert to the fact that wearing hijab in Iran is a blessing that can be easily practiced and with a reference to the Goharshad Mosque massacre in which Iranian King Reza Shah killed over 2000 innocent people for protesting against his westernization policies and the banning of Hijab, the author writes:

“We have never been beaten and insulted for wearing a headscarf or wearing a chador. Now imagine how for years in this country, women, and girls were stripped of their headscarves, beaten and humiliated only because they wanted to maintain their hijab”

Karimi makes the argument that due to the restrictions placed on wearing Hijab, for many years Muslim women in this country were not allowed to leave their homes and even barred from attending schools or universities: “Imagine now that you are reading and flipping through this book, in another country like France, a girl is banned from going to school and continuing her education because of her hijab. What would you say to her?”

Qadr Velayat Publishing Institute has made the book "Tanoor Doosti" available in a thousand copies for distribution.