MADRID, July 26 (Reuters) - An Iranian chess player who moved to Spain in January after she competed without a hijab and had an arrest warrant issued against her at home has been granted Spanish citizenship, Spain said on Wednesday.
Sarasadat Khademalsharieh, better known as Sara Khadem, took part in the FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships held in Kazakhstan in late December without the headscarf that is mandatory under Iran’s strict Islamic dress codes.
Laws enforcing mandatory hijab-wearing became a flashpoint during the unrest that swept Iran when a 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, died in the custody of the morality police in mid-September.
The 26-year-old has told Reuters she had no regrets over her gesture in support of the protest movement against her country’s clerical leadership.
Spain’s official gazette said the cabinet approved granting Khadem citizenship on Tuesday “taking into account the special circumstances” of her case.
I guess she’s a Spanish chess player now. And that’s how brain drain works.
A very gifted programmer I met from Iran had to do the same. Originally from Iran, he wanted to marry a girl from Myanmar. This was forbidden for some reason so they said “fuck it, let’s go to where there is loads of tech jobs”. I was working in the Netherlands at the time when I met them. He’s now flourishing in the open source software space over there. Brain drain 100%.
Actually there is no problem to marry someone from a different country. The problem is you cannot marry with a non-muslim person, so he/she should accept Islam first. 😟😄 weird like many other rules! I don’t know if other religions have such restrictions or not, I would be happy to hear if someone knows.
The problem is you cannot marry with a non-muslim person, so he/she should accept Islam first.
I’m a muslim and as far as I know, there’s no law that forbid you to marry non-muslim. There’s many muslim clerics or saints who are marry a non-muslim in history of Islam.
But to do that, first you need to have a really strong faith so your partner in future will slowly understand and accept Islam by her/his own will. The common understanding that seems to not marry a non-muslim by many muslims because is not an easy path to have a relationship with different faith. Especially family and tradition on both side.
The most common cases about this are men muslim married a woman non-muslim. On the opposite, is very rare cases that happen in history of Islam. Some (fiqh) law by clerics forbids woman muslim to married a men non-muslim, and some allowed that with requirement the woman need to have a strong faith first.
I have many friends who’s their parents married with different religion (islam and christian, islam and shinto, islam and confucius). I admit is not an easy path than married with same religion as far I can see in my own cases, but I respect their choice…
When this story appeared last year, my first thought was:“Well, I hope she plans on never going back to Iran”
Glad to see she is safe.
And another person who couldv’e helped Iran move past its issues leaves.
Yeah, while I am happy for her and wish nothing but the best for her, is this really going to change anything back home? How many other women have the means and training to do what she did? I guess the one thing this does is highlight to the rest of the world how terrible things are in Iran, but I’m under no illusion that this is going to improve the lot of oppressed women in Iran. They might be even more restricted from attending overseas competitions.
I don’t know why she would be responsible for changing anything in Iran?
She made a statement to highlight the atrocities in a terrible country and it put her in the crosshairs. This is the same thing as putting on your oxygen mask before you help others while on a plane.
She isn’t responsible, and I hope that was clear in my original statement. What I’m saying is agreeing with the sentiment in the original post that rather than lending support to the problems faced back home, it might conversely make things worse.
It’s not her prerogative at all, just a sad observation.
First of all, if she went home she would’ve just been arrested, how does that help anyone? And second, why’s it on her to move Iran past it’s issues? Good on her for her brave protest and good on her for not going back and choosing to do more with her life than end up a martyr in an Iranian prison.
I would say it’s the other way around.
The way to “help” Iran is for more people to leave. Significantly more, basically anybody with two brain cells to rub together. Leave only the most assinine idiots behind and then they can run their own country into the ground hardcore but they no longer affect anyone with it as everyone else has left.
Basically, Iran has to cease to exist in its current form. By burning itself out. This is incidentally the same way we could move past idiotic religious believes in the first place.
I would say that what you say makes sense but it doesn’t really work super well in practice. I’ll give the best example. North Korea. We have choked them on food, energy, medicine etc. For going on 70 years now. They are still a cancerous blight on the world. With nukes. Sure I guess the argument could be made that they stay inside north Korea and keep to themselves though.
Well, good. Hope things are smooth sailing from here!
