Hijab re-emerges as flashpoint with Iranians demanding change

One lunchtime last week, Nasim went into a Tehran restaurant where most of the female diners were wearing their hair uncovered – an increasingly common trend in Iran’s big cities despite the country’s strict Islamic dress code. Then a family entered, one member in the full-length chador worn by conservative women.

“Everybody looked at her and some at our table discussed whether we should force her to remove it,” said the music teacher (36). “None of us did anything, but the family felt a lot of pressure with the way others looked at them.”

The restaurant scene highlights how more than a month of mass protests across Iran has made the issue of women’s clothing – for decades an issue politicised by the country’s rulers – one of the main flashpoints in demands for radical change.

It underlines the speed with which the Islamic republic’s long-held values, which give women little or no choice but to cover up in public, have come under pressure as they push back against the strictures, a trend that threatens to increase tensions between liberals and conservatives.

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Demonstrations broke out in the middle of last month following the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini (22), after her arrest in Tehran for not fully observing the country’s strict dress code. This makes the hijab – which in Iran means a combined outfit of headscarf plus clothing that covers the body and that can include the chador – mandatory for women.

Events quickly spiralled into the worst social unrest in years, with mass protests across the country resulting in the deaths of at least 144 people, according to rights group Amnesty International. Other young women were caught up in the chaos, including Nika Shakarami (17), who her family says was killed during the protests, adding to the anger. The demonstrations erupted again this week as mourners marked 40 days since Amini’s death.

[ Iran protests: Thousands gather to mourn girl killed in crackdowns ]

The intense anger unleashed by her death encouraged more women – particularly the young – to uncover their hair in a show of defiance, at least in the country’s large cities, observers say. The regime, for now, has largely turned a blind eye as it struggles to contain the protests.

The events of the past month have left some conservative women feeling they are now the odd ones out. “People behave as if they’ve never seen a chador in their life or as if it’s the symbol of the Islamic republic. It’s not,” said Fatemeh, who wears a black chador when she goes out but now fears harassment.

“Any Iranian woman must have had a mother, a grandmother or at least a great grandmother who wore the chador. We can’t deny our history,” said the 31-year-old, who runs a catering business.

The chador has been worn for hundreds of years in Iran. Predating the arrival of Islam in the seventh century, it was worn by women in what was then Persia at least as long ago as the third century, according to Iranian historians.

Morteza Motahari, a then senior cleric, argued in his 1968 book On The Islamic Hijab, which became a leading reference for Iran’s leaders, that in ancient times, the female dress code was more severe than under Islam.

But in recent decades, the issue of women’s clothing has become politicised, with religious and secular leaders deploying it as a symbol of their ideologies.

Liberal Iranians see the chador as a sign of backwardness. When Iran’s king Reza Shah Pahlavi, who ruled from 1925-41, decided to modernise an overwhelmingly traditional and religious society, he banned veils and empowered the police to forcibly snatch the chador and face coverings from women’s heads.

[ How two teenagers became the new faces of Iran’s protests ]

His son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi continued the modernising policy, although he lifted the ban. During his reign women were able to socialise outside their homes, attend university, drink alcohol in clubs and bars and vote in national elections.

But large swaths of society, notably in rural areas, remained unaffected, with women marrying early, remaining illiterate and venturing out only in the chador.

When the Islamic republic swept to power in 1979, the changes were rolled back and the hijab became one of the defining images of the theocratic regime. It became obligatory for women in 1983, with violations punishable with up to 74 lashes. Later, jail sentences and fines replaced flogging.

Many liberal Iranians now struggle with what to think of the chador in particular: should they respect a style of dress with a long tradition and worn by many for deeply held religious and cultural reasons, or reject what they see as a symbol of theocracy?

A demonstrator at a recent anti-regime protest in Tehran experienced this conflict when a woman in a chador joined the crowd, initially assuming she was a regime spy. “But she chanted slogans like ‘death to the dictator’, as we did,” she said. “Then I respected her. She seemed genuine and her chador was her personal choice.”

Even before Amini’s death, women were pushing back against the compulsion to wear the hijab, say observers, for example wearing scarves loosely. Although the authorities generally ignored such infractions, women risked random enforcement by the morality police.

A combination of wider literacy – with educated women less likely to comply with the dress code – and the influence of celebrities was encouraging women to ignore the rules, according to a 2018 study by Iran’s parliamentary research centre.

Many Iranians have long been angry that the regime puts so much energy into controlling what women wear while failing to curb corruption, an inflation rate that stands at 42.9 per cent and youth unemployment of 23 per cent, observers say.

Mohsen Ghanbarian, a clerical scholar in Qom Seminary, the largest Islamic seminary in Iran, recently warned that the issues of the hijab and social justice were intertwined. If a woman was obliged to follow a certain dress code, she should be certain regime officials did not violate other Islamic rules, he said, according to the Mobahesat website, a religious news service.

But Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a cleric and former reformist vice-president, warned of the potential for the demands for change to split society.

Religious groups, who see the hijab as an essential duty in Islam, had not yet hit back strongly at the protests, he said. But “if the more secular groups decide to harass women with chador in the streets”, he added, “there could be clashes”. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022