Iran is in the midst of a series of spontaneous nationwide protests sparked by the death of a young woman shortly after she was detained. Iran has already experienced such waves of protests. .
Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman from a small town in Iran’s Kurdistan province, was visiting the country’s capital, Tehran, when she was arrested, in front of her brother, by the so-called morality police (gashte ershad or “orientation patrol”) for her “inappropriate” clothing. According to Tehran police, it was her arrest that Amini “suddenly” developed “heart problems” and was rushed to hospital, where she later died. (His circle of family vehemently denies allegations that he had a pre-existing condition before his arrest. )The indisputable facts undermine the government’s claims of legitimacy: A healthy young woman died while in custody by a police force committed to enforcing legislation that the vast majority of Iranians oppose or blame for.
The blatant evidence that a woman’s failure to cover a few strands of hair may infringe on her right to safety, life and liberty has shocked Iran’s conscience, adding among those who might adhere to the state’s concept of an “Islamic hijab” but oppose the obligatory hijab: wear it anyway. Cries of “Woman, Life, Freedom” have echoed in Iran since Amini’s death.
Iran is in the midst of a series of spontaneous nationwide protests sparked by the death of a young woman shortly after she was detained. Iran has already experienced such waves of protests. .
Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman from a small town in Iran’s Kurdistan province, was visiting the country’s capital, Tehran, when she was arrested, in front of her brother, by the so-called morality police (gashte ershad or “orientation patrol”) for her “inappropriate” clothing. According to Tehran police, it was her arrest that Amini “suddenly” developed “heart problems” and was rushed to hospital, where she later died. (His circle of family vehemently denies allegations that he had a pre-existing condition before his arrest. )The indisputable facts undermine the government’s claims of legitimacy: A healthy young woman died while in custody by a police force committed to enforcing legislation that the vast majority of Iranians oppose or blame for.
The blatant evidence that a woman’s failure to cover a few strands of hair may infringe on her right to safety, life and liberty has shocked Iran’s conscience, adding among those who might adhere to the state’s concept of an “Islamic hijab” but oppose the obligatory hijab: wear it anyway. Cries of “Woman, Life, Freedom” have echoed in Iran since Amini’s death.
Iran has already had public controversies over the mandatory hijab. But those protests mark a significant shift: the first time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that a wide variety of parties and civil society organizations have brazenly called for an end to compulsory hijab legislation or for police patrols to be commissioned. with enforcing legislation. The factor has also elicited reactions from a wide variety of prominent political and devout figures, celebrities and athletes.
The protests are the first middle-class protest motion to emerge in Iran since the Green Movement after the widely contested 2009 presidential election. But there are differences between the two.
First, in terms of size: there is no indication that the existing protests have come close to the number of others who took to the streets in 2009. In addition, the 2009 protesters were of legal age, while the existing protagonists are mostly young. “They usually belong to the younger generation that has probably only heard of the Green Movement. They would have been young or teenagers at the time,” sociologist and reform activist Mohammadreza Jalaeipour told me. “They are fearless, direct and brave, but also angry,” he added, “they are not monarchists. They need freedom and democracy.
A distinctive feature of the existing protests is the presence of very young women on the front line. In many protests, women appear to outnumber men and appear to be afraid of being seen without hijab, even in the presence of security forces.
There have been clashes between security forces and protesters, and several protesters have already been killed. But the crackdown was not as severe as during the last circular of protests against emerging gas costs in November 2019. The full diversity of Iran’s security apparatus has not yet been deployed, though that may change. In fact, the government has already begun circulating about journalists and political activists, among others. (Jalaeipour, who had been a vocal critic of the mandatory hijab law, was among those arrested. )Access to the web as well as social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Instagram have also become limited.
While existing protests were triggered and conducted through frustrations over mandatory hijab, protesters are also channeling other pent-up grievances toward Iran’s ruling elites, such as mismanagement of an economy reeling from U. S. sanctions. A crisis of political legitimacy exacerbated by the legitimacy of the June 2021 presidential election and the increasing suffocation of civil liberties.
As evidenced by the outburst of public outrage unleashed by Amini’s death, her case is perceived not as a remote incident but as the tip of an iceberg of injustice, humiliation, indignity and oppression felt by countless Iranian women intercepted through so-called orientation patrols. accused of enforcing Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code: refusal to conform to the state’s conception of “Islamic hijab” in public spaces is an offence punishable by flogging, imprisonment or a fine.
Although the article in question and the state discourse on compulsory hijab are imbued with devout overtones, governing women’s bodies is rooted in worldly rather than non-secular aspirations: political power. It was in the early years of the 1979 Islamic Revolution that the faith and devout symbols like the hijab were militarized in an effort to purge rival revolutionary factions from politics.
More than four decades after the Islamic Republic embarked on the Sisyphus business of bureaucratizing a very narrow definition of Islamic morality, with an almost obsessive focus on how women look in public, the obligatory hijab and the establishments established to enforce it have at the point of the fact failed to force the state interpretation of the “Islamic hijab” on Iranian women.
Instead, this usurpation of women’s freedom has sown resentment in the hearts of millions of Iranian women and their families, resentment not only toward a dehumanizing law, but also toward the state as a whole. Countless videos are now circulating on social media showing the humiliating routine way Iranian police mistreat women in vans before taking them to detention centers to be “guided” and “educated. “Such encounters are stressful and condescending at best, and fatal brutality at worst.
It is also counterproductive. In the face of such repression, women’s voluntary adherence to the state’s ideal hijab has not increased, but has declined particularly in recent decades, something that even the government blatantly acknowledges. Support for hijab law and morality policing is even less than public compliance. Even among the small number of women who adhere to the strict interpretation of the state of Islam, compulsory hijab and morality policing do not enjoy broad support.
President Ebrahim Raisi, who earned a reputation as a conservative while overseeing the judiciary, seems to acknowledge this discontent. He advised in last year’s presidential race that he would end women’s clothing patrols. In fact, there is now transparent evidence that he was aware that any close arrangement with the patrols risked squandering the election.
Iran’s leaders occasionally boast, and rightly so, that they have been able to protect Iranian citizens from external security and military threats, such as the Islamic State and the country’s regional rivals in an unstable region. But Amini’s death has shown that while Iran’s government elites insist on defending the anachronistic revolutionary relic of the necessary hijab, the state’s appointments with its citizens will continue to deteriorate. As long as the state deems locks of hair to be valid grounds for depriving a woman and her entire circle of family members of a sense of security, their public legitimacy will be in jeopardy, and Iran’s political status quo will be on the brink of the security abyss. Crisis of its own manufacture.
That is why the Iranian ruling elites would do well to make concessions on the hijab factor, if not for the intelligence of the Iranian people, at least for their own intelligence. It remains to be seen whether the existing protests will lead to the total abolition of the compulsory hijab and the monitoring of women’s dress. But they have already achieved what would have been unthinkable not so long ago. Now, it will be more costly for the Iranian government to punish women for anything that the vast majority of Iranians do not offend, let alone a crime.
Sajjad Safaei is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany. Twitter: @SajjadSafaei0
Commenting on this and other recent articles is only part of a foreign policy subscription.
View comments
Join the verbal exchange on this and recent foreign policy articles when you subscribe now.
View comments
Follow our comment guidelines, stay on topic, and be courteous, courteous, and respectful of others’ ideals. Comments are closed seven days after the publication of the articles.
The default username was generated with the first and first initial usernames of your FP subscriber account. Usernames may be up to date at any time and must not involve other offensive language.
Tendency
By registering, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and get special Foreign Policy benefits.
Get the full experience.
CHOOSE YOUR PLAN
Your advisor of the maximum global stories of the day. Delivered from Monday to Friday.
Essential investigation of the narratives that the geopolitics of the continent. Delivered on Wednesday.
Unique compendium of politics, economy and culture. Delivered on Friday.
The latest news, research and knowledge from the country each and every week. Delivered on Wednesdays.
Weekly on progress in India and its neighbors. Delivered on Thursday.
Weekly update on what motivates U. S. national security policy. U. S. Delivered on Thursday.
An organized variety of our long readings. Delivered on Wednesdays and Sundays.
Summary of the night with our favorite stories from our editors of the day. Delivered from Monday to Saturday.
A monthly summary of the most productive articles read through FP subscribers.
By registering, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and get special Foreign Policy benefits.
Registered
Only FP subscribers can ask questions for FP Live interviews.
Only FP subscribers can ask questions for FP Live interviews.
By registering, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and get special Foreign Policy benefits.
Registered
Only FP subscribers can ask questions for FP Live interviews.
Only FP subscribers can ask questions for FP Live interviews.