TEHRAN, Iran — It has only been three weeks since Iran held landmark parliamentary elections, yet several controversies have already arisen over remarks made by both an incoming female lawmaker and a veteran member of parliament. Meanwhile, the qualifications of two Reformist candidates, one of them a woman, have also been challenged.
The first controversy erupted when Parvaneh Salahshouri, a sociologist who successfully ran on the Reformist ticket in Tehran, denied remarks about the mandatory Islamic veil in Iran attributed to her by Viviana Mazza, a correspondent of the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera. In an interview with Mazza, Salahshouri had said, “It is our primary right to choose [whether to wear the Islamic veil] … the time will come [when women won’t have to wear it if they don’t want to]. … It is a hard process to have the right choice.” When asked whether it will one day be a choice for Iranian women to wear the Islamic veil, Salahshouri responded, “Of course, it is the process of development.”
