Photo taken at the Azadi stadium in Tehran during the Iran-Brazil volleyball match. Female Iranian supporters dressed up as Brazilian supporters in order to enter the stadium.

UPDATE (Monday, June 23) : Fifty women were arrested for trying to enter a stadium to watch a volleyball match in Tehran on Friday.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

Though most of the world is fixated on football right now, in Iran, people are more focused on volleyball. The Iranian national team, which has been playing very well, is drawing crowds in Tehran. The public is made up entirely of men, since the religious police forbid Iranian women from entering the stadiums. Some of them, however, have found creative ways to get in.

Iran is ranked twelfth in the world for volleyball, and its team has made huge progress over the last decade. Since May 30, the team has been taking part in qualification matches for the Volleyball World League, which brings together the 28 best-ranked teams in the world.

Female fans forced to stay outside the Azadi stadium.

However, these sporting events are only for male eyes, since the “morality police” — a special police force that seeks to fight “moral corruption” and to combat those who violate Islamic law — have been systematically preventing women from attending volleyball tournaments since 2005. However, this prohibition does not apply to foreign women.

On June 15, Iranian women took advantage of this exception to steak into the Azadi stadium to watch the Iranian team play the world champion, Brazil. Some of them confirmed to the official Iranian press agency that they had managed to enter the stadium by wearing Brazilian jerseys and by asking for help from the Brazilian families that had come to watch the match. According to journalists from the agency, about a dozen women managed to sneak past the morality police.