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Many years ago when my father worked in Saudi Arabia, we would visit him regularly for a few weeks every year. The first time I went, I witnessed the so called morality police who would enforce all kinds of rules as they went out and about. It was done in the name of enforcing what they defined as Islamic norms of public behaviour, and amongst many things my mother made sure that even though we went out covered, we didn’t speak or laugh too loudly. I thought about this on hearing that Iran’s so called morality police have returned to the streets after Iranian authorities began a new campaign to force women to wear the headscarf in public. The country’s clerical rulers continue to view the hijab as a key pillar of the Islamic revolution when mandatory veiling was presented as a religious requirement. And in Afghanistan, Taliban officials are shutting down around 3,000 beauty salons in Kabul. Beauty salons, one of the few female-dominated industries, a place where women can work, a place where they still have a possibility to meet outside the home, a place of small joys. The UN Human Rights council reports that depression and suicide in Afghanistan are widespread, especially among teenage girls who’ve been prevented from pursuing education. As the states’ ideological stance hardens, women and girls gradually lose any control they have in their lives. The desire to remain visible, breathe greater freedom, to be your own person, has become a defining struggle especially under regimes which remove civil liberties under the guise of religious values. We in the west rarely use the language of modesty or sin or debate whether a woman’s choice of dress is a reflection of her faith and devotion to God. We would quite rightly find it shocking that the state has any control over how we dress at home or in public. But despite these huge cultural shifts it seems that sexism and discrimination whether explicit or implicit, in our own societies, continues to deny so many women the opportunity to realise their potential. Because even though we may acknowledge that women’s rights are human rights, too many cultures make women the bearers of tradition, force them to carry the heavy burden of what is deemed as sinful and shameful behaviour. There is much rage and little tenderness. It’s a way of not only keeping women subordinate but questioning their very humanity and value in society. A far cry from the sentiment of those scholars like the 13th century Persian poet and Sufi, Rumi who wrote that 'woman is a radiance of God’.