Leading player urges contenders to look beyond hijab law, to the boost contest would give women’s sport in country

One of Iran’s most respected chess players has hit back at calls to boycott next year’s women’s world championship in Tehran over rules about the wearing of the hijab.

A number of chess players, including the US women’s champion, Nazí Paikidze, have called for a boycott of the February 2017 games over concerns that they will have to comply with the Islamic republic’s compulsory headscarf law.

But Mitra Hejazipour, a woman grandmaster (WGM) who won the 2015 Asian continental women’s championship, told the Guardian on Friday that a boycott would be wrong and could undermine hard-fought efforts to promote female sport in Iran.

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This article was written by Saeed Kamali Dehghan for The Guardian on Sep. 30, 2016. Saeed Kamali Dehghan is a staff journalist with the Guardian. He has previously written from the Iranian capital, Tehran. He is now based in London and was named 2010 Journalist of the Year at the Foreign Press Association awards.