Araz News: An anonymous team of brainy Iranian app developers have come up with a solution to help fashionable Iranians, particularly girls and women, avoid running into trouble with the Islamic Republic’s morality police (“Ershad”).

Ershad’s mobile checkpoints which usually consist of a van, a few bearded men and one or two women in black chadors, are deployed in towns across Iran and appear with no notice.

Since the foundation of the Islamic Republic in a bid to promote the Islamic values the country’s law enforcement forces have actively tackled those who refuse to observe the Islamic dress code accepted by authorities. Over the past several years in a bid to intensify the move, Iranian rulers decided to deploy “Ershad” mobile checkpoints across the country including public entertainment venues and exhibition centers.

Ershad personnel have a very extensive list of powers ranging from issuing warnings and forcing those they accuse of violating Iran’s Islamic code of conduct, to make a written statement pledging to never do so again, to fines or even prosecuting offenders.

The non-commercial “Gershad” Android app allows ordinary citizens to stay alert and see the locations of the “Ershad” checkpoints.

The app is user-driven – it shows an Ershad checkpoint only if a sufficient amount of users identify the same map location, thus reducing the risk of getting the wrong location.

The alert on the map will gradually fade out when users decrease the number of the submitted data for a particular location.

By-Trend