Iran International
Conflicts between vigilantes and women defying hijab in public occur almost daily now while authorities including the President insist on enforcement of rules.
There has been a torrent of comments by clerics and hardliners in recent days against women who ignore hijab rules, while thousands appear in public without a headscarf. As regime vigilantes are encouraged to stop women and admonish them, another serious conflict is brewing in the country.
A video from the CCTV of a convenience store in Shandiz near the religious city of Mashhad went viral on social media Friday that showed a man dumping a large tub of yogurt after an argument on the head of a ‘hijabless’ woman and her mother, who was wearing a headscarf.
The man, apparently a member of the Revolutionary Guards’ Basij militia, had been carrying out his Islamic duty of “calling to virtue and forbidding wrong”. Local authorities said Saturday the man was arrested for disturbing public peace and insulting the women. Officials said that carrying out the duty of hijab enforcement should remain limited to verbal warnings only.
Both women were also arrested for defying hijab rules and the owner of the business was given a warning for allowing violation of the hijab law on his premises.
Dr Mohsen Borhani, a professor of criminal law at Tehran university, who was recently sacked for criticizing the regime after the execution of four young protesters, argued in a tweet Friday that even according to Islamic Sharia and laws, carrying out the religious duty of calling to virtue and forbidding wrong should never go beyond a verbal warning.
Attacking people and their property or violating their dignity and rights are criminal acts and victims have the right to self-defense according to Article 156 of the Islamic Penal Code of Iran, Borhani, a well-known religious scholar, wrote.
Moderate Muslims, including some clerics, have also been critical of hardliners intimidating women to impose the hijab.
“This was not a tub of yogurt that was thrown on a girl’s head. It was bigotry and a putrid sludge crammed into the head of the yogurt-thrower over the years,” reformist politician and cleric Mohammad Ali Abtahi who served as vice-president under Mohammad Khatami in late 1990s and early 2000s protested in a tweet.
‘Hijabless’ girl in Gonbad-e Kavous, a rather conservative city in northeastern Iran
In July 2022, after weeks of harsher measures on the streets, President Ebrahim Raisi ordered all government entities to strictly implement a “chastity and hijab” law approved by the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council under hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005. He insisted again today, Saturday, that women should abide by the hijab rules.
“Chastity and hijab are religious matters and all pious Muslims stress on its necessity. Hijab protects the individual and the society from all harms and deviations,” he said, adding that since there is a law, even those who say they do not believe in hijab must abide by the rules. “Women and girls have shown that they abide by the law and will continue to do so.”
In the past four decades women generally demonstrated their opposition to compulsory hijab by making their headscarves smaller and letting their hair cascade on their shoulders from under it or making their tunics tighter and trousers shorter, wearing colorful clothes and putting on make-up.
Authorities referred to these women’s hijab as ‘bad’ or ‘improper’ and called them ‘bad-hijab women’.
It was only in 2018 that some women in Tehran and other larger cities began to wear their headscarves on their shoulders rather than their heads wherever they could. Now many are not even carrying a headscarf in their bag to use if they get into trouble. They are referred to as ‘hijabless’.
Defiance of hijab rules as a form of civil disobedience has hugely grown across the country after the death the 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Amini in custody of morality police in mid-September. Many believe that there is no sign ‘hijabless’ women will allow to be bullied again into wearing the hijab.
Speaking to Rouydad24 news website, Emam referred to the divides among Iran's conservatives and said unlike the conservative camp, reformists are united under an umbrella organization, the Reform Front, and there is no major dispute among them.
However, as one of the closest political figures to Iranian reformists de facto leader former President Mohammad Khatami, Emam acknowledged that there is in fact a divide among the reformists over how to approach next year's parliamentary elections.
He said some reformists are keen to take part in the elections despite the fact that the regime did not allow them to run for parliament or the presidency in 2020 and 2021. On the other hand, he said, some reformists believe that the camp should boycott the elections. However, he claimed that the divide among the reformists is not serious, and they are standing united in the Reform Front.
This comes while nearly all Iranian politicians who have talked about restoring people's trust in the political system in the aftermath of six months of nationwide protests, have suggested that the regime should facilitate political participation and allow reformist candidates to run. Nonetheless, Iranians who took to the streets in protest against the regime made it clear in their demonstrations that they no longer trust reformist or conservative politicians and parties.
When a reporter pointed out that an apology by Iran's conservatives would be an unprecedented political act in Iran, Emam said "not only the conservatives, but all the three powers of the government who are responsible for the current situation and the people's dissatisfaction by furthering non-competitive elections and bringing about the country's worst economic crisis and its international isolation should apologize to people."
Emam further made it clear that "the Judiciary, the parliament, the executive body, the Guardian Council and the Assembly of Experts share responsibility for the current crisis and should be accountable before the nation."
He added that the current situation is the price the government is paying for ignoring the reformists and pushing them aside from the country's political arena.
While Emam is asking for an apology, Javad Hosseini-Kia, a conservative lawmaker has said that members of parliament are prevented from impeaching President Ebrahim Raisi’s ministers in the light of the worsening economic situation.
"Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf stops impeachment motions and stresses that it is not an expedient move," he told local media.
He added that the people have serious complaints about the performance of the ministers of economy, housing and industry because of their inefficiency and failure to stand by the promises they made to the nation when the Raisi administration took office in 2021. He also blamed the Planning and Budget Organization for most of the country's economic problems.
On the other hand, Vice President for Parliamentary Affairs Mohammad Hosseini denied any problem between the government and the parliament, and added that lawmakers lack any motivation to impeach the ministers. Hosseini claimed that there have been only two calls for impeachment during the past 18 months.
However, the senior Raisi aide acknowledged that "there are still several impeachment motions in progress, but we have to wait for due legal process. However, I have talked with the lawmakers who initiated these motions, and it appears that they no longer have any motivation to continue the effort."
The Islamic fasting month of Ramadan has coincided with Iran's extremely popular Nowrouz New Year Holidays this year but instead of fasting and praying as they are expected to do, many people seem to be determined to enjoy the holidays after months of violently suppressed protests. They want to show the government they have not been subdued.
Iranian holiday makers have been sharing videos of themselves dancing and making merry -- on the streets, at the beach, in shopping malls or in parks – in different parts of the country, even some very conservative areas, despite the unwritten ban on dancing in public that can get them into the trouble with the authorities.
Holiday makers watching a girl dance at the beach in Reyshahr in southern Iran
In most videos shared on social media, women are dancing with bare heads and not on their own but with men in the middle of a circle of clapping and cheering onlookers which make their defiance even more biting to the hardline religious and political establishment.
Quite often, the performances, particularly in crowded streets and shopping malls, appear to be very spontaneous with the dancers quickly disappearing into the crowds within a few minutes in flash mob style.
Most onlookers, as videos show, appear to be very happy and supportive of the dancers. In a few cases, they also chant “Woman, Life, Freedom”, the signature slogan of the 2022-23 protests, besides encouraging the dancers with clapping and singing along, and even showering them with money.
Girls dancing at a shopping mall in Jolfa, a small town in East Azarbaijan Province
In a few cases police has intervened to stop the performances and disperse the crowds. Weary of sparking fresh protests, authorities have shown some tolerance but at the same time tried to scare people into submission by shutting down some hospitality businesses while hardliners have complained that authorities are not taking sufficiently strong preventative action.
Police dispersing a crowd cheering a singing man and another who was dancing at Isfahan’s historical bridge during Nowrouz
In the tourist city of Amol earlier this week, the attorney general ordered a holiday resort to be shut down for women’s bareheaded dance in public in the month of Ramadan.
Similarly, the attorney general of Hamedan, Hassan Khanjani, ordered a café near the Ganjnameh Achaemenid inscriptions in the mountain outside the city to shut down. The café had “planned” music and dance programs for the visitors, he said, adding that two people were arrested in this connection for “encouraging others to depravity and moral corruption.”
Flash mob on a street in Karaj, 50km to the west of the capital Tehran
Hardliner ex-lawmaker Hamid Rasaei highlighted the videos of young girls dancing near Achaemenid inscriptions in Mount Behistun in the province of Kermanshah and protested to the ministry of cultural heritage and tourism for not acting to stop such infringements.
“Over 9,800 were martyred in Kermanshah province [in the Iran-Iraq war]… so that these places can be sensible places for families and to improve people’s historical understanding, not a place of dance,” Rasaei who likened the dance of a few young girls, who even had headscarves on, to “cabaret dancers” before the Islamic Revolution of 1979.