Image copyright Facebook Image caption One of the pictures that's been circulating along with pro-headscarf poems online

"Don't let others poke their nose into my business," one of the poems reads. "Don't let those who have no headscarf to speak about mine."

Campaigners against a crackdown on the Muslim headscarf or hijab have taken to verse to protest in Uzbekistan - and several of the poems have hundreds of likes and shares on Facebook.

"Photoshop a headscarf on your own picture instead of criticising me / completely cover your hair and ears / Know that it's normal for women to wear a hijab / if you don't wear it, don't speak about mine," one verse reads. Another poem criticises women who wear jeans and make-up and lauds "Islamic clothing" over European style garments.

The hijab is not officially forbidden in Uzbekistan, however there have been a number of recent reports that police are detaining women who wear the headscarf and questioning them until they agree to remove it. TV programmes and state-sponsored films have been portrayed Muslim headscarves as "foreign" Arab clothing. Formal and informal restrictions on the hijab are common in Central Asian nations, which include several authoritarian states and large Muslim populations.

Governments in the region are concerned about a rise in Islamism and a growing threat from Islamic State - the think tank International Crisis Group says around 4,000 people from the region have joined IS.

While opposition news outlets and foreign news websites, including the BBC, are frequently blocked inside Uzbekistan, social networks don't face the same restrictions and are becoming magnets for dissent, although overall numbers using Facebook, Twitter and the Russian-language VKontakte inside the country are still relatively small. One estimate earlier this year put the number of Facebook users at about 360,000, or just over 1 per cent of the population.

Blog by Mike Wendling

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