Flora’s Friday Film They Call Me Muslim contained a documentary style that called attention to the problems associated with social enforcement in both Paris and Tehran. In Paris, a teenage girl named Samah is forced to take off her hijab while in public school. Our protagonist in Tehran, code-named “K”, is a woman forced to do the opposite, wear her hijab at all times in public places. The film discusses with each side the problems associated with these different types of enforcement, and show the toll taken upon the persons and their families.

More than anything else that caught my attention through the film was the ability for two completely different governments that were forcing opposite policies on their populations to accomplish the same thing. The fact that both governments enacted policies that, in a very one-sided manner, condemned other ways of life in order to eliminate differences amongst their populations surprises me. Regardless of opinions associated with what may or may not be the correct way of doing things, in this case in concern with the question should women wear hijabs, there is a much more fundamental question of human decency being left out. How does any government have the right to enforce a way of life on its peoples? Forcing women to either remove or wear hijabs commits the same act, as forcing our opinions on others in most cases of such severity is nothing less than tyrannical. The film dances with this concept over and over again, using both protagonists from both cities to exemplify how the argument is not at all about the hijab, but the question of who has the right to determine who wears it and who does not.