“An Iranian bike-sharing firm has provoked fury after customers noticed it was not offering services to women and they were unable to register on its app.” Reports surfaced that the app, “Bdood, based in the capital of Tehran, had faced pressure from the police and prosecutor-general’s office to stop offering services to women or be in danger of having to shut.”
Tehran is “notoriously congested and polluted,” and Bdood was implemented to offer an easier alternative transport mode.
Women bicycling is deemed to be haram (forbidden under Islam), according to a web page on the Ayatollah Khamenei’s site, but it is not illegal. It has however, been banned in Iran’s third largest city, Isfahan.
Women riding bikes is a topic of division in Iran. Three years ago, the daughter of “a prominent cleric and former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani spoke out in favour in women riding bicycles and motorbikes,” showing that opinion in Iran is divided on the issue.
The understandable outrage over the Bdood app is just another issue to which feminists worldwide should be bringing notice, but instead, many of these feminists are busy backing the so-called “right” of Muslim women to wear the hijab in the West. They have limited knowledge about women’s rights in Islam, and care about Muslim women even less.
“Iranian bike-sharing app sparks outrage after refusing women service,” by Maya Oppenheim, Independent, August 21, 2019:
An Iranian bike-sharing firm has provoked fury after customers noticed it was not offering services to women and they were unable to register on its app.
There have been reports Bdood, based in the capital of Tehran, had faced pressure from the police and prosecutor-general’s office to stop offering services to women or be in danger of having to shut.
The Centre for Human Rights in Iran, a New-York based organisation that documents rights violations in the country, tweeted: “The Tehran prosecutor has forced Iran bike-sharing company Bdood to block women from using their bikes.
“This screenshot shows women being rejected when they declare their gender on the app. Religious officials say women riding bikes in pubic is ‘sinful’, but many do anyway.”
One user warned others on Twitter about the saga – claiming the bike-sharing company had been “banned” from offering its services to women.
“If the story is true, I’m never going to use Bdood again,” another critic said.
While there are no laws which forbid women from riding bicycles in public, prominent hard-line clerics in the country have ruled it is “provocative” and consequently goes against Sharia law.
The prosecutor in Isfahan, Iran’s third-largest city which is known as the city of bicycles due to its many cycling lanes, announced women had been banned from cycling in public in May…..