Prior to 1979 there are pictures of young women at universities in Iran that are barely indistinguishable from pictures taken at any North American campuses. Then came the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the rejection of all things western and a particularly hard clampdown on what women wore. This is the advent of the widespread use of face covering. It was political and not religious. The continued insistence that is religious and is an affront to religious freedom is simply wrong.