How did it begin?
Although the protest in Iran against mandatory Hizab for women became a matter of global attention after custodial death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022, the movement has a history behind it. The current spate of women protest in Iran began on 16 September after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin arrested by the morality police for allegedly flouting the sharia-based law. Over the following weeks demonstrators burned their head coverings and shouted anti-government slogans. After Amini’s death, a growing number of women have not been wearing headscarves, particularly in Tehran’s fashionable north.
In fact this movement in Iran is not of recent origin. This reminds Girls of Enghelab protests against the compulsory hijab in Iran, part of the wider Iranian Democracy Movement. The protests were inspired by Vida Movahed, an Iranian woman known as the Girl of Enghelab Street , who stood in the crowd on a utility box on Enghelab Street (Revolution Street) in Tehran on 27 December 2017 during the 2017–2018 Iranian protests who tied her hijab, a white headscarf, to a stick, and waved it to the crowd as a flag. She was arrested on that day and was released temporary on bai a month later, on 28 January 2018. Other women later re-enacted her protest and posted photos of their actions on social media. These women are described as the “Girls of Enghelab Street” and the “Girls of Revolution Street”. A similar but more intense protest flared up after Amini’s death.
Estimates of death and suffering
Oslo-based non-governmental organisation Iran Human Rights estimated in December that in the recent protests at least 448 people had been “killed by security forces in the ongoing nationwide protests”. UN rights chief Volker Turk also said that 14,000 people, including children, had been arrested in the protest crackdown.
Solidarity of Celebrities and sports persons with the movement
The campaign of arrests did not spare even sportspeople, celebrities and journalists. But the movement continued. During the FIFA World Cup 2022 match Iran team defied the customery of singing national anthem before the match with England. This was for showing solidarity with women movement against mandatory headscarves. This protest attracted the attention of the world on the protest of Iranian women. Later Sara Khadem competed at the FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan in the last week of December, without the hijab. Later film star Mitra Hajjar was detained at her home.
Indications of reforms by the government
As it seemed that Women in Iran were unstoppable and many men also came out favouring their protest against mandatory headscarves the Iranian authorities said on December 4, 2022 that they would review the decades-old law that requires women to cover their heads. Iran’s attorney general Mohammad Jafar Montazeri“Both parliament and the judiciary are working of whether the law needs any changes.”
President Ebrahim Raisi subsequently said Iran’s republican and Islamic foundations were constitutionally entrenched. “But there are methods of implementing the constitution that can be flexible.” This is an indication of possibility of flexibility on the issue. The hijab or headscarf became obligatory for all women in Iran in April 1983, four years after the Islamic Revolution that overthrew the US-backed monarchy.
Background
Before the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979 (during the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran), the hijab was not compulsory, though some Iranian women during this period wore headscarves or chador. After the 1979 Islamic revolution, the hijab gradually became compulsory. In 1979, Ruhollah Khomeini announced that women should observe Islamic dress code; His statement sparked demonstrations, the International Women’s Day Protests in Tehran, 1979, which were met by government assurances that the statement was only a recommendation. Hijab was subsequently made mandatory in government and public offices in 1980, and in 1983 it became mandatory for all women.
In the Islamic law of Iran imposed shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution, article 638 of 5th book of Islamic Penal Code (called Sanctions and deterrent penalties) women who do not wear a hijab may be imprisoned from ten days to two months, and/or required to pay fines from Rls.50,000 to Rls.500,000 . Article 639 of the same book says, two types of people shall be sentenced one year to ten years’ imprisonment; first a person who establishes or directs a place of immorality or prostitution, second, a person who facilitates or encourages people to commit immorality or prostitution.
Looking forward
It remains a highly sensitive issue in a country where conservatives insist it should be compulsory, while reformists want to leave it up to individual choice. In July this year Raisi, an ultra-conservative, called for mobilisation of “all state institutions to enforce the headscarf law”. In September, Iran’s main reformist party called for the mandatory hijab law to be rescinded. The Union of Islamic Iran People Party, formed by relatives of former reformist president Mohammad Khatami have demanded that authorities “prepare the legal elements paving the way for the cancellation of the mandatory hijab law”.
The opposition group also called for the Islamic republic to “officially announce the end of the activities of the morality police” and “allow peaceful demonstrations”, it said in a statement. Iran accuses its sworn enemy the United States and its allies, including Britain, Israel, and Kurdish groups based outside the country, of fomenting the street protests which the government calls “riots”.
The moral police of Iran are not only being seen as retrograde and brutal, but also making the belief stronger that Iran’s ruling dispensation is authoritarian and non reformist. The Iranian society is also blamed for sustaining medieval levels of patriarchal control on women. It is better course for Iran government not to take the protests as west sponsored and consider it as a matter of ego. Reforms for the sake of granting liberty to women and allowing reforms in the decades- old law on mandatory headscarves would raise the image of Iran rather than diminishing it. And the biggest loss to Iran is that the present protests and moral policing is being used as a pretext to put sanctions on the country just like allegations of Iran’s secret enrichment of nuclear elements to the refinement level that would help the country to make a nuclear bomb. Iran denies it and says that as a sovereign nation it has right to develop nuclear power. Hardliners also argue that Iran has rights to develop deterrence against any threat of war. The West is taking Iran’s suppression of women’s movement as not only violation of human rights but also also as an anti-democratic measure.