Iran: Struggle over dress code Expert opinions on Caliber.Az

In Iran, a parliamentary commission has approved tougher penalties for violating the mandatory hijab law. The law will now be submitted to the Guardian Council, composed of representatives of the Islamic clergy appointed by Ali Khamenei and lawyers.

According to CNN, the bill consists of 70 articles that would impose much larger fines and long prison terms for women who refuse to wear the hijab. Under the new package of laws, the prison terms would be up to 10 years and the fines would increase thousands of times – up to 360 million Iranian rials ($8,515). The bill also toughens penalties for celebrities and companies that violate the law and envisions the use of artificial intelligence to identify female dress code violators.

In modern Iran, there is a law requiring all women to cover their hair and neck. The law is enforced by the “morality” police, and violators are also identified through street camera footage.

The tougher legislation was a response by Iranian authorities to the protests that erupted in the country after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. She died after being detained on charges of improperly wearing a hijab.

Amini's family claimed she was beaten to death by security forces. Protests with slogans against police violence were violently suppressed. At least 500 people have been killed and tens of thousands detained during these actions. Several protesters were executed. However, even after the protests ended, many women in Iran continue to resist the requirement to wear the hijab.

The tougher legislation was a response by Iranian authorities to protests that erupted after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. She died after being detained on charges of improperly wearing a hijab. Amini's family claimed she was beaten to death by security forces. Protests with slogans against police violence were violently suppressed. At least 500 people have been killed and tens of thousands detained during these actions. Several protesters were executed. However, even after the protests ended, many women in Iran continue to resist the requirement to wear the hijab.

What will happen next? Will society submit to the regime's tightening measures, or will it turn into a new wave of protests and mass disobedience? Do the majority of Iranian women feel they have the right to decide for themselves whether to wear the hijab or not or are they, in fact, a minority?

Prominent experts, specialising in Iran, shared their opinions on these issues with Caliber.Az.

The problem is that in Iran it is impossible to freely conduct sociological surveys on the topic of wearing hijab, says Lana Ravandi-Fadai, associate professor of the Department of Modern East and Africa at the Russian State University for the Humanities, senior researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

"It is officially believed that since the vast majority of Iran's population is Muslim, it follows that the vast majority of girls and women support wearing the hijab. But we do not know the real statistics of women's attitudes towards hijab. It is safe to say that in fact, in large Iranian cities, in areas where the morality police do not reach, many women either wear the hijab very loosely and carelessly or do not wear it at all. This shows that the secularisation of public consciousness is rapidly underway, at least in the big cities of Iran," the associate professor says.

This does not mean that all of these women have drifted away from Islam. They may still believe in the existence of God in their souls, but they may hold modernist views of religion and not consider themselves obliged to observe certain rules, including the rule of wearing the headscarf. However, the state cannot abolish the mandatory hijab because the authorities fear that most urban women will refuse to wear the hijab at all, the scholar believes.

"This will mean that one of the main pillars of the regime's ideology [i.e., the claim that 'people have become much more religious since the Islamic Revolution’] will be shaken dramatically - and thus the future of the regime will become more precarious. Reacting to the spreading liberties in wearing the hijab, the ultra-conservative government has decided to further increase the penalties for refusing to wear the hijab in order to create the impression that absolutely all Iranians are deeply religious Muslim women," Ravandi-Fadai said.

Whether mass protests will resume will depend on a number of factors, primarily economic stability, she said.

"If oil revenues go up sharply, society will tolerate new restrictions. It is quite possible that there will be individual protests, but not as big as there were last year. If the economic situation worsens - then we can expect widespread protests, where slogans about freedom of dress will be next to economic demands," the researcher believes.

Dr. Vladimir Mesamed of the Asia and Africa Institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem says that indeed, the issue with women's dress code restrictions in Iran is very serious.

"Such points are dealt with at the highest level there. This is evident in the Iranian press as well. For example, on August 22, Fars news agency wrote that the topic of hijab is a matter of top priority for the current Islamic government.

If you look at the latest law on this issue, it was considered for almost a month in the Assembly of the Islamic Council, in the Iranian parliament. And it has grown many times during the review period, now there are many articles, and 20 new clauses related only to the observance of the Islamic dress code.

The issues of restrictions show the morality of the system and so they are seen as part of the basis of Islamic governance. One should not think that Iranians can sacrifice a lot here, not to consider it important,” he said.

According to him, the top leadership of the IRI realises that there are also many opposing opinions on this issue. Even top figures of the regime are among them. For example, the first liberal president of Islamic Iran, Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, who was in office from 1997 to 2005, is very serious about this issue.

 He said that there are many people in society who don't recognise the hijab rules, and if we don't take their opinion into account, it will undermine the foundations of the regime. And now, these days, similar voices are being heard again.

For example, on August 21, one of the most prominent ayatollahs, Qumi, spoke in favour of taking into account that quite a few people in the country have discarded the hijab, especially since last September. Therefore, he said, the issue of tougher penalties for abandoning the hijab could have very serious consequences.

"Recently, the Iranian press has written that this issue has gone beyond the narrow limits in which it was previously located. Now many organisations there are already depriving many companies of their work licenses, closing enterprises and institutions whose female employees do not comply with the rules of wearing the hijab.

On August 21, it was reported that Tabriz University’s Faculty of Culture has introduced a rule that female students can leave the dormitory for only 1 hour a day at.  In this regard, Iran Press News writes that these requirements are stricter than even the restrictions in Iranian prisons.

Therefore, it is understandable that Iran will try to resolve this problem. After all, preparations are now underway there [much written about it in the press] for the anniversary of the situation with the women's protests. Soon it will be one year since the death of Mahsa Amini. In this connection, protest activity may seriously increase," Mesamed believes.

In general, the refusal to wear hijab in Iran has become quite widespread in the recent period, but if the new law ‘On Hijab and Chastity’ is introduced, it is clear that its new requirements will cause fear among a certain part of people,” the expert states.

"Although, there are many women who are no longer afraid to protest. At the same time, we should keep in mind that the law is very tough. It has one last stage left to be reviewed by the Supervisory Board, which is made up mostly of conservative figures in the legal system, and it will pass.

So, I think it will encourage many women to return to religious observance. There are already so-called chastity patrols on the streets. But in any case, the experience of months of fighting for the dignity of women, for the removal of restrictions, will influence, I think, the future of the country," the scholar concluded.