This is Iran, these are the folks with whom we are making deals.
Tehran (AFP) – An Iranian women’s football team will be minus its captain at the Asian championship in Malaysia next week after her husband invoked his right under Islamic law to bar her from travelling.
Mehdi Tutunchi, himself a sportscaster, said his wife Niloofar Ardalan could not lead out the national team at the September 21-26 championship in Nilai, because it coincided with their seven-year-old son’s first day at school.
Ardalan went public to plead her right to represent her country at the first women’s tournament of futsal — a form of five-a-side football — organised by the Asian Football Confederation, in a case that captivated Iran’s social media.
She appealed for a change to the law, in force since the Islamic revolution of 1979, that bars women from leaving home, let alone the country, without the permission of their male guardian.
“I wish authorities would pass a law for sportswomen so we can defend our rights in these circumstances,” Ardalan told Iran’s NASIM news agency.
“As a Muslim woman I wanted to raise the flag of my country, I wasn’t going there for fun.”