Iranian Women Stick to Pre-Islamic Festival

TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian women play ball during a picnic marking ancient festival of Sizdeh Bedar, or public picnic day, at the end of thirteen-day Iranian New Year holidays, outside the northeastern city of Esfarayen, Iran, Sunday, April 1, 2012. Iranians flocked to parks and orchards to mark Sizdeh Bedar, an ancient festival that predates Islam and goes back thousands of years to the time when Zorastrianism was the predominant religion of Persia. Although the hard-line ruling clerics of today’s Islamic Republic have discouraged many pre-Islamic rituals, they have failed to put Iranians off the Persian New Year, or Nowruz, and its ending celebration of Sizdeh Bedar. <AP/Newsis>

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