Hijab: The “First” and One of the Islamic Republic’s Key Challenges
The head of the Islamic Republic’s Center for Women and Family Research has described hijab as one of the “first challenges of the system,” stating that if the government retreats on this issue, it must also concede on “other matters.” Iran’s government has shown it is unwilling to back down when it comes to women.
MohammadReza Zibaei-Nejad, head of the “Center for Women and Family Research,” delivered remarks on the history of feminism in Iran at a meeting held on Saturday, May 20 (May 9), discussing “the role of feminist activists in the hijab situation in Iran.” Although he briefly touched on the pre-revolution period, this clergyman’s remarks focused on the struggles of women activists during the four decades since the Islamic Republic was established in Iran.
He apparently followed the internal debates within the feminist movement in Iran well and referred in his remarks to many prominent figures of women’s rights activists in Iran and their views. Of course, here and there with expressions that ultimately distort these debates and end in favor of what is called mandatory hijab; meaning that apparently some of the feminist movement in Iran had no opposition to mandatory hijab.
He correctly states in this speech: “The first challenge of the Islamic Revolution after its victory was the hijab.” A challenge that has continued for 40 years, imposing heavy costs on both the government and opponents of the hijab, but unlike other challenges, it has still not forced system officials to retreat or change course.
“Something Is Not Right”
MohammadReza Zibaei-Nejad began his review of the history of the struggle over hijab with Ayatollah Khomeini’s historic decree and women’s historic protests against it: “Imam Khomeini reminded [people] on March 5, 1980, at Faizieh that women should go to the workplace with Islamic hijab.”
A decree that sounded the first alarm bell for women and led to the first widespread protests by women in the Islamic Republic against it. This movement continued for several days with ups and downs and was ultimately dispersed by the cudgels of “Hezbollah thugs.” Imposing mandatory hijab in all public places and streets, however, took two years. The head of the Center for Women and Family Research attributed the protests of that time to “monarchist supporters and some Marxist women” and limited them to that. The protesters, however, were women from different groups and urban classes; they were female employees, teachers, students, and of course left-wing feminists.
The speech by Ayatollah Khomeini to which Zibaei-Nejad refers was at the Faizieh School in Qom and in protest of the “liberal” policy and manner of the Bazargan government. In part of this speech, Ayatollah Khomeini said: “As I have been told [the ministries] still have the same form as in the time of tyranny. In an Islamic ministry, there should be no sin. In an Islamic ministry, women should not come naked…”
With continued pressure, insults, and suppression, women stopped going to university, offices, the job market, and the political scene without hijab, and for a while preferred the headscarf to “hair exposure.” But women’s protests against mandatory hijab continued in various forms and never gave the Islamic Republic the impression that it had escaped the consequences of this challenge.
The head of the Center for Women and Family Research attempted to prove in his remarks that the driving force behind protests against hijab came from outside and across borders. He refers to campaigns such as the One Million Signatures Campaign, which began with several specific demands to change women-hostile laws in the Islamic Republic, and claims that the founders of that campaign had no problem with mandatory hijab.
Although no movement similar to the women’s protests on March 8, 1978, occurred in Iran in the past forty years, resistance to hijab gradually took on dimensions far broader than the realm of access of “left-wing feminists,” “monarchist women,” and “supporters of neoliberalism,” and women’s movement activists in general. This resistance made its way into the basements of homes. It found its way into the minds of young girls from religious and traditional families; in the form of coats that became increasingly tighter and shorter, headscarves that became smaller and looser and fell off the shoulders with every movement, dyed hair, heavy makeup, and shades of red, purple, and… screeching violet in protest against officials’ codes.
A kind of going without hijab appeared in large and small cities that was much more difficult to control for the Basij and military forces of the Islamic Republic than suppressing women at the beginning of the revolution. The struggle against mandatory hijab developed within society long before it took on a symbolic form as the movement of girls on Revolution Street.
MohammadReza Zaeri, a journalist and one of the fundamentalist clergy, said in September 2014 at a meeting held to discuss his book titled “Lifestyle”: “That girl who does not wear hijab is someone who was born in this system, went to kindergarten in this system, went to elementary school in this system, went to middle school, took the entrance exam, and then came to university. She did not come from Mars, nor did global imperialism send her. She watched our own television, so it is clear that something is not right with our work.”
Referring to the fact that in Iran even followers of other religions are forced to comply with regulations that the Shiite government in Iran has made mandatory, he said: “Even if the other party is Armenian, we want to forcibly put a headscarf on her, put a chador on her, etc. These are sensitive issues. I believe that mandatory hijab in the country has been wrong from the beginning. That is, we forced a sublime value that people should have pleaded for (like parents in a house wanting to force their desired food on their child).” He later became prohibited from the pulpit and was never invited to speak on any television program. In 2018, the Fararu website quoted him as saying: “The reason was that in previous years I said that although hijab is necessary in religion and obligatory by Islamic law, mandatory hijab did not come in religion.”
“Children” Raised in the Heart of the Islamic Republic
In summer 2018, Eqtesad Online reported under the headline “Statistics on Improperly Dressed Women According to the Parliamentary Research Center” that: “In recent months, the report of the Presidential Strategic Research Center on hijab was released and sparked a wave of news and analysis about the state of hijab and improper dress in the country.”
The summary of this report was that “the Parliamentary Research Center, by examining research conducted in recent years on hijab and improper dress in the country, concluded that 70 percent of society has improper dress from a religious perspective, and the most likely scenario that fits the current situation is ‘overlooking,’ because other scenarios such as decriminalization or stricter enforcement regarding hijab could both lead to an increase in improper dress.” In other words, the collection of discussions and analyses reached the conclusion that the mandatory hijab policy in the Islamic Republic had failed. An important point in the Parliamentary Research Center’s report was that “the younger the age, the more improper dress.” In other words, the further the Islamic Republic has advanced, the more it has failed.
Police Resistance to Prevent Official Non-Hijab in Iran
In early June 2013, on the eve of the presidential election that led to Hassan Rouhani’s election, Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, the then-commander of the police force, said at the “National Conference of Officials and Representatives of Hezbollah Supporters”: “If the police do not persistently resist the attacks, non-hijab will become official in Iran.” He criticized the “promotion of Western lifestyle in national media” in which even “religious women” appear as experts instead of “rejecting Western lifestyle” and encourage this lifestyle.
He divided the protestors against “improper dress” into four categories; the first group being political protesters of the Green Movement, the second group being “prostitutes,” the third group being “models” who advertise clothing manufacturers’ and sellers’ products, and the fourth group that he called “neglectful.” In these same remarks, he admits that “the police, apart from the support of the Hezbollah nation and the Supreme Leader and some religious authorities, have no other backing or moral support. Even many Friday prayer leaders have changed their priorities from the issue of culture, modesty, and hijab.” He warns: “Making up for every step of our retreat in this arena will be almost impossible.”
Even the Islamic Republic’s neighbors and even its allies in the region have different behavior regarding women’s hijab. According to women’s activists, if the Islamic Republic acted like them, perhaps the number of women in Iran who would not wear hijab would be less than this.
But the head of the Center for Women and Family Research reached a similar conclusion to the former police commander in his Saturday remarks and, citing the words of the Islamic Republic’s leader, said: “If we give up on hijab, our situation will be much worse than Islamic countries and Turkey, because political debates will also be raised, and the country with the highest percentage of Shiites is the Republic of Azerbaijan, where homosexual meetings are held. If we also give up on hijab, we must also go along with other issues.”
Source: DW
