Compulsive chastity in Iran: the citizen is a policeman and the authority incites the prohibition of vice
Karim Shafik - Egyptian journalist
11.04.2023
Daraj
The return of societal, parliamentary and political debates about the hijab, and the insistence of fundamentalist forces and the strong conservatism of its imposition, led the regime to promote a double and opportunistic discourse.
In conjunction with the Iranian regime's frantic moves to confront the rebellion against forced hijab, after an evasive period of calm following the growing protests that followed the killing of the Iranian Kurdish girl, Mahsa Amini, by the "morality police" patrol, repeated incidents of assault on girls, and violent crackdowns on shops and places that do not impose strict religious restrictions on women.
The growing incidents of assault were carried out by citizens without authority or powers, the latest of which was the brutal attack on a girl and her mother inside a market for not adhering to the compulsory hijab. This can be attributed to hostile religious propaganda promoted by clerics, societal mobilization against girls and women, and incitement to oppression, turning the citizen into a potential policeman to impose coercive chastity.
The return of societal, parliamentary and political debates about the hijab, and the insistence of fundamentalist forces and the strong conservatism of its imposition, led the regime to promote a double and opportunistic discourse.
The hijab is once seen as a legal issue that must be adhered to to achieve controls within any "legitimate society," in the words of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, in a deliberate confusion between "legitimacy" in its legal and constitutional sense, and "Sharia" in its religious sense, in disregard of the human rights disparity between them. Other times as a religious obligation, this radical discourse is promoted by the religious elite while softening any political pragmatism.
Fundamentalists in parliament pass the legislative structure that helps empower them politically, while representatives of the Wali al-Faqih in Iran's provinces and cities work to "whitewash" radical concepts and values through their societal incubators, through religious policies initiated by the head of the Planning Council for Friday Imams, Mohammad Javad Haj Ali Akbari.
Ali Akbari recently sent a "secret, detailed, and critical message" to the Iranian president, in which Friday imams demanded that the hijab be controlled, and launched an attack on the "enemy" who aims to transform the hijab from a cultural issue to societal polarization, and then a political challenge, to dismantle and collapse what he described as the "revolutionary front."
The latest incident will not be the end of the end as Iranian women renounce the forced hijab law, but events pave the way for a worse scenario, likely to be "the confrontation has just begun."
The citizen is free from vice
There are solid blocs among the conservative forces in Iran, lined up in the face of those who are out of obedience to the "guardian of the jurist", especially since the feminist movement managed to squander the capital of the symbolic regime, demanding a break with its guardianship policies, and out of the circle of submission in an effort to end authoritarian control.
The failure of the Iranian authority to achieve practical results using traditional repressive policies is accompanied by a new approach that seeks to mobilize societal forces to clash with opponents of the mullahs' policies. This was evident in the hidden support that provides protection to these "new Mutawa'a", the Interior Ministry's statement said after the recent incident, which affirmed "the support of (the ministry) for all those who command virtue and those who forbid vice."
"The judiciary, officers (police) and other relevant agencies will confront the few violators of sanctities and will not allow attacks on the sacred identity of Iranian Muslim women," the interior ministry statement said, adding that videos documented cases of violence in which these "citizens who command virtue and forbid vice" targeted unveiled women.
Hossein Shariatmadari, editor-in-chief of Iran's Kayhan newspaper, which is close to the office of the Iranian Supreme Leader, criticized the Interior Ministry's statement as "late" and "ambiguous." He also hinted at collusion or hypocrisy, the circumstances and dimensions of which he did not disclose, by the Ministry of Interior towards this case, describingthe ministry's position as "two-faced."
"As several months pass since the brazen phenomenon of taking off the hijab, the question is whether this delay (the issuance of the Interior Ministry statement) has acceptable reasons," Shariatmadari said.
"The issue of the hijab has turned in recent years into one of the axes of the enemy's cognitive war against the people," the Interior Ministry statement said, pointing out that anti-hijab campaigns, including "White Wednesday", "Girls of Enghelab Street" or "No to the compulsory hijab", "failed and have never been able to undermine the will and determination of Iranian women and girls to preserve their Islamic identity".
It seems that the supervisory mechanisms and strict legal provisions in Iran to legitimize violence against girls rebelling against the hijab, by the parliament and the government, do not seem sufficient in the face of the growing protests since September 2022, in addition to the spread of the phenomenon of girls going out without the hijab, in practice, which surprised the government during the recent holidays, specifically Nowruz. Thus, the regime seeks societal mobilization to create a soft ground around the protests and weaken their continuation.
The brutal attack on a girl and her mother in the city of "Mashhad", which was carried out by a man who entered into a violent contact with them, ended with throwing their heads with a milk can, and then an arrest warrant was issued against the three parties, which is not the first of its kind, but coincides with direct and continuous incitement by state institutions and agencies. Especially the Iranian judiciary, which stressed the need to prosecute women who oppose the obligation to wear headscarves and prosecute them "without mercy."
The beginning of the confrontation
Iranian journalist Daoud Heshmati writes that the latest incident will not be the end of the day as Iranian women renounce the compulsory hijab law, but rather that events pave the way for a worse scenario, likely to be "the confrontation has just begun."
The head of the judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ajei, threatened to prosecute non-veiled women "without mercy or compassion for them," and considered this behavior as "hostility to our values" in the "Islamic Republic," and continued: "If the violations are arrested, the judiciary will decide on the matter, and will prosecute everyone who has a role in these cases, from a causative to a collaborator and accomplice." "Taking off the hijab contradicts public chastity and the principles of Sharia and law," he said, adding that "the enemy supports taking off the hijab" in Iran.
The opinion of the Iranian president is hardly different from what the head of the judiciary said, as Raisi stressed that the hijab is "a religious necessity and a divine and Quranic command," noting that "it is a legal obligation and following the law is agreed upon by all," stressing that "everyone must abide by the hijab and chastity." "Our daughters and women, once again, by adhering to the hijab will show their commitment to the law and religious necessities."
The deputy head of the cultural body in the conservative Iranian parliament, Bijan Nobawah, stressed the need to deal with the issue of the hijab with "firmness", "comprehensive approach" and "decisive", taking into account that there are about 32 parties responsible for the issue of "chastity and hijab", all of whom have failed to achieve positive results.
"The person who commits this mistake is necessary and knows that the entire system is watching him and will punish him," the MP said, pointing out that if "the removal of the hijab and the adoption of emotional behavior are not comprehensively and resolutely confronted, the violators of sanctity will exceed this limit, and then we will witness more nudity and violation of sanctities."
The Iranian leader accused the "enemies", as he described it, of being behind the spread of the phenomenon of non-hijab, and said that "the enemy is working according to a plan and we have to confront this in a calculated and programmed manner. Taking off the hijab is forbidden legally and politically."
He continued: "Many of those who take off the hijab if they knew what is the policy behind this act of what they did," considering that the protests erupted after the killing of Mahsa Amini "conspiracies by enemies," accusing them of "exploiting the issue of women to provoke chaos and affliction. Some at home were deceived, obeying the external enemy and traitors living abroad and raising the slogan of women's freedom."
Warning with the tongue is everyone's responsibility
As a result, the regime's new and radical turn towards the imposition of the hijab investigates many means of coercion, legal, or mobilization, by managing violence by mobilizing members of society as "lone wolves" and cells working for the regime, which operates with the mentality of far-right organizations.
In addition to the Iranian regime's efforts, other pressures it exerts on the people include the rejection of citizenship rights, which occurred in the announcement of the ban on providing services to non-veiled women, and publications with the same content also spread in schools, universities, hospitals and means of transportation. According to the Tehran metro operator, a warning plan was launched under the title: "Warning with the tongue is everyone's responsibility," as well as the formation of "chastity and hijab" headquarters in the metro.
A statement issued by Iran's Ministry of Education earlier this month stipulated that educational services be provided only to female students who wear the hijab. The ministry will refuse to "provide educational services to a limited number of female students who do not abide by the rules and regulations of dress codes in schools." With the start of the new Iranian year, the president of the Free Islamic University of Iran, Mohammad Mehdi Tehranji, in an official statement, asked to confront what he considered "violating behaviors, including taking off the hijab" inside the university, and said that "this is the demand of the majority of students."
The return of societal, parliamentary and political debates about the hijab, and the insistence of fundamentalist forces and the strong conservatism of its imposition, led the regime to promote a double and opportunistic discourse.
In conjunction with the Iranian regime's frantic moves to confront the rebellion against forced hijab, after an evasive period of calm following the growing protests that followed the killing of the Iranian Kurdish girl, Mahsa Amini, by the "morality police" patrol, repeated incidents of assault on girls, and violent crackdowns on shops and places that do not impose strict religious restrictions on women.
The growing incidents of assault were carried out by citizens without authority or powers, the latest of which was the brutal attack on a girl and her mother inside a market for not adhering to the compulsory hijab. This can be attributed to hostile religious propaganda promoted by clerics, societal mobilization against girls and women, and incitement to oppression, turning the citizen into a potential policeman to impose coercive chastity.
The return of societal, parliamentary and political debates about the hijab, and the insistence of fundamentalist forces and the strong conservatism of its imposition, led the regime to promote a double and opportunistic discourse.
The hijab is once seen as a legal issue that must be adhered to to achieve controls within any "legitimate society," in the words of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, in a deliberate confusion between "legitimacy" in its legal and constitutional sense, and "Sharia" in its religious sense, in disregard of the human rights disparity between them. Other times as a religious obligation, this radical discourse is promoted by the religious elite while softening any political pragmatism.
Fundamentalists in parliament pass the legislative structure that helps empower them politically, while representatives of the Wali al-Faqih in Iran's provinces and cities work to "whitewash" radical concepts and values through their societal incubators, through religious policies initiated by the head of the Planning Council for Friday Imams, Mohammad Javad Haj Ali Akbari.
Ali Akbari recently sent a "secret, detailed, and critical message" to the Iranian president, in which Friday imams demanded that the hijab be controlled, and launched an attack on the "enemy" who aims to transform the hijab from a cultural issue to societal polarization, and then a political challenge, to dismantle and collapse what he described as the "revolutionary front."
The latest incident will not be the end of the end as Iranian women renounce the forced hijab law, but events pave the way for a worse scenario, likely to be "the confrontation has just begun."
The citizen is free from vice
There are solid blocs among the conservative forces in Iran, lined up in the face of those who are out of obedience to the "guardian of the jurist", especially since the feminist movement managed to squander the capital of the symbolic regime, demanding a break with its guardianship policies, and out of the circle of submission in an effort to end authoritarian control.
The failure of the Iranian authority to achieve practical results using traditional repressive policies is accompanied by a new approach that seeks to mobilize societal forces to clash with opponents of the mullahs' policies. This was evident in the hidden support that provides protection to these "new Mutawa'a", the Interior Ministry's statement said after the recent incident, which affirmed "the support of (the ministry) for all those who command virtue and those who forbid vice."
"The judiciary, officers (police) and other relevant agencies will confront the few violators of sanctities and will not allow attacks on the sacred identity of Iranian Muslim women," the interior ministry statement said, adding that videos documented cases of violence in which these "citizens who command virtue and forbid vice" targeted unveiled women.
Hossein Shariatmadari, editor-in-chief of Iran's Kayhan newspaper, which is close to the office of the Iranian Supreme Leader, criticized the Interior Ministry's statement as "late" and "ambiguous." He also hinted at collusion or hypocrisy, the circumstances and dimensions of which he did not disclose, by the Ministry of Interior towards this case, describingthe ministry's position as "two-faced."
"As several months pass since the brazen phenomenon of taking off the hijab, the question is whether this delay (the issuance of the Interior Ministry statement) has acceptable reasons," Shariatmadari said.
"The issue of the hijab has turned in recent years into one of the axes of the enemy's cognitive war against the people," the Interior Ministry statement said, pointing out that anti-hijab campaigns, including "White Wednesday", "Girls of Enghelab Street" or "No to the compulsory hijab", "failed and have never been able to undermine the will and determination of Iranian women and girls to preserve their Islamic identity".
It seems that the supervisory mechanisms and strict legal provisions in Iran to legitimize violence against girls rebelling against the hijab, by the parliament and the government, do not seem sufficient in the face of the growing protests since September 2022, in addition to the spread of the phenomenon of girls going out without the hijab, in practice, which surprised the government during the recent holidays, specifically Nowruz. Thus, the regime seeks societal mobilization to create a soft ground around the protests and weaken their continuation.
The brutal attack on a girl and her mother in the city of "Mashhad", which was carried out by a man who entered into a violent contact with them, ended with throwing their heads with a milk can, and then an arrest warrant was issued against the three parties, which is not the first of its kind, but coincides with direct and continuous incitement by state institutions and agencies. Especially the Iranian judiciary, which stressed the need to prosecute women who oppose the obligation to wear headscarves and prosecute them "without mercy."
The beginning of the confrontation
Iranian journalist Daoud Heshmati writes that the latest incident will not be the end of the day as Iranian women renounce the compulsory hijab law, but rather that events pave the way for a worse scenario, likely to be "the confrontation has just begun."
The head of the judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ajei, threatened to prosecute non-veiled women "without mercy or compassion for them," and considered this behavior as "hostility to our values" in the "Islamic Republic," and continued: "If the violations are arrested, the judiciary will decide on the matter, and will prosecute everyone who has a role in these cases, from a causative to a collaborator and accomplice." "Taking off the hijab contradicts public chastity and the principles of Sharia and law," he said, adding that "the enemy supports taking off the hijab" in Iran.
The opinion of the Iranian president is hardly different from what the head of the judiciary said, as Raisi stressed that the hijab is "a religious necessity and a divine and Quranic command," noting that "it is a legal obligation and following the law is agreed upon by all," stressing that "everyone must abide by the hijab and chastity." "Our daughters and women, once again, by adhering to the hijab will show their commitment to the law and religious necessities."
The deputy head of the cultural body in the conservative Iranian parliament, Bijan Nobawah, stressed the need to deal with the issue of the hijab with "firmness", "comprehensive approach" and "decisive", taking into account that there are about 32 parties responsible for the issue of "chastity and hijab", all of whom have failed to achieve positive results.
"The person who commits this mistake is necessary and knows that the entire system is watching him and will punish him," the MP said, pointing out that if "the removal of the hijab and the adoption of emotional behavior are not comprehensively and resolutely confronted, the violators of sanctity will exceed this limit, and then we will witness more nudity and violation of sanctities."
The Iranian leader accused the "enemies", as he described it, of being behind the spread of the phenomenon of non-hijab, and said that "the enemy is working according to a plan and we have to confront this in a calculated and programmed manner. Taking off the hijab is forbidden legally and politically."
He continued: "Many of those who take off the hijab if they knew what is the policy behind this act of what they did," considering that the protests erupted after the killing of Mahsa Amini "conspiracies by enemies," accusing them of "exploiting the issue of women to provoke chaos and affliction. Some at home were deceived, obeying the external enemy and traitors living abroad and raising the slogan of women's freedom."
Warning with the tongue is everyone's responsibility
As a result, the regime's new and radical turn towards the imposition of the hijab investigates many means of coercion, legal, or mobilization, by managing violence by mobilizing members of society as "lone wolves" and cells working for the regime, which operates with the mentality of far-right organizations.
In addition to the Iranian regime's efforts, other pressures it exerts on the people include the rejection of citizenship rights, which occurred in the announcement of the ban on providing services to non-veiled women, and publications with the same content also spread in schools, universities, hospitals and means of transportation. According to the Tehran metro operator, a warning plan was launched under the title: "Warning with the tongue is everyone's responsibility," as well as the formation of "chastity and hijab" headquarters in the metro.
A statement issued by Iran's Ministry of Education earlier this month stipulated that educational services be provided only to female students who wear the hijab. The ministry will refuse to "provide educational services to a limited number of female students who do not abide by the rules and regulations of dress codes in schools." With the start of the new Iranian year, the president of the Free Islamic University of Iran, Mohammad Mehdi Tehranji, in an official statement, asked to confront what he considered "violating behaviors, including taking off the hijab" inside the university, and said that "this is the demand of the majority of students."
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