The story of the veil in Iran .. The legacy of the Shah and the police of the turbans

Special - Al Jazeera Net

The hijab is not only a phenomenon or a social or religious issue in Iran but has been controversial for 83 years after it was banned by the first Pahlavi Reza Shah by passing a law in January 1936 that requires Iranians to remove their headscarves.

This sparked angry reactions at the time that continued until the abolition of the law under the reign of his second Pahlavi son Mohammad Reza in 1944. After the advent of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, the veil returned to the political front again; after the instructions of the founder of the revolution that women wear the hijab Outside their homes.

The imposition of hijab
After the revolution it was not easy to impose the veil on women who were not used to wearing it before, some of them were supporters of the revolution on the Pahlavi system, so took the veil many years, and came in two stages, in 1981 and 1983.

In the second, it was limited to government institutions and departments. In the second, it became mandatory outside the home for all women, when the non-veiled penalty law, which ranged from ta'azir, to a fine of up to $ 20, , According to article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code.

Types of hijab
The law states that the penalty applies to all women who do not wear the legitimate hijab. However, in practice it has been applied only to those who go beyond the customary hijab in Iranian society, which has become somewhat acceptable to the Iranian authorities after its widespread spread.

The aforementioned customary hijab, which is classified as an illegal hijab, is divided into Iranian social studies into: (the normal bad hijab) and (the unusual bad hijab).

The first type is the most widespread in Iran today, according to the latest official statistics published by the Research Center of the Iranian Parliament on 20 pages in July 2018, 60-70% of Iranian women respond to the customary hijab, most of them wearing the first type, of which 10-15% classifies their headscarves As "the extraordinary bad" that sometimes shakes public modesty.

In its report, the Center asserts that 30-40% of Iranians are wearing the Islamic veil, which is considered the best chador by Iranian Shi'a scholars.

The views of women
It is clear from these data that the proportion of those who adhere to the religious veil, whether chador or other, is about 30% in Iranian society, and that two thirds of Iranians do not adhere to it and wear the customary hijab.

Al-Jazeera Net met on the streets and markets of Tehran with girls and women from all the above mentioned categories to discuss their views on the veil and its importance in their lives. "I have been used to this kind of dress since my childhood, and I do not see it as a problem," she said in an interview with Al Jazeera Net in the field of Leasar in the center of the capital. "It is a full veil that does not lack anything. I'm free to dress, I pray, and I'm free in that too. "

During a tour of the high-end Tirja market west of Tehran, usually frequented by women under the hijab (hijab), Al-Jazeera Net met Ms. Zahra Qora Lu, who was wearing the chador. She asked her about the presence among women wearing this type of hijab in the market "Yes, I may not feel very comfortable, but I understand their motives, some of them do so as a reaction to the policy of imposing the headscarf, and not the hijab itself as a legitimate duty, so we have to distinguish between the two."

"The global system is aimed at the values ​​of Iranian society, especially the headscarf through cultural invasion in different ways, so the authorities have to address the issue thoroughly, and not tolerate it," said Ms. Fatima Rajabian, who wears the veil of the chador in the Damawand Street, east of Tehran. Calls to take off the headscarf paid from abroad. "

Campaigns to take off the hijab
The opposition of some Iranian women is not limited to the Islamic hijab not only by wearing it, but also by the illegal hijab, and by women's campaigns, through which they oppose the obligatory hijab law.

In the past two years, the campaign of the daughters of the coup d'état, in the heart of the capital Tehran, began during the protests of January 2018 on the deterioration of the living situation, after a unified vida removed its hood, standing on a huge box amidst a crowd of Iranian citizens.

The girl, known as "the daughter of a coup", was arrested after a short period of time. This action turned into a phenomenon and campaign in Tehran and major cities, in which Iranian girls were already few.

(White Wednesday), the title of a campaign led by the Iranian opposition abroad is the cymbals Ali Ahmadinejad since 2017 to date, through satellite channels and networks against the Islamic veil, calling on the Iranians to take off their headscarves (headscarf), and photographed and published on the networks.

In December 2017, Tehran Police Chief Brigadier Hossein Rahimi announced that the police would organize educational sessions for those who did not uphold Islamic values, rather than arrest them and bring them to justice. This comes after the police conducted patrols (extension) since January 2006 in the streets of cities to combat the phenomenon of non-adherence to the veil.