Salons In Iraq

An Iraqi woman cuts hair and waxes eyebrows in secret from her living room because making women look pretty can get a person killed in her Sunni-dominated Baghdad neighbourhood.

Extremists who believe it is sinful for women to appear beautiful in public have forced many beauticians to move their trade underground.

Two years ago Sunni and Shiite militants began blowing up salons. They killed several hair stylists/beauticians and forced others into putting down their scissors and makeup brushes for good, all in an effort to stamp out what they view as the corruption spread of Western culture.

In the past year, most beauty salons in the Shiite-dominated southern city of Basra went underground, as they did in the Sunni-controlled neighbourhood of Dora in west Baghdad.

The latest attack on a salon was December 13, in the city of Mosul northwest of the capital. The gunmen stormed the home of a woman who was running a beauty parlor out of one room. They killed her. Last year, extremists blew up 42 year-old Umm Doha's beauty parlor in west Baghdad after she did not heed their warnings to close shop.