After dissolving the morality police.. How did the hijab transform from an icon of the revolution into a symbol of power in Iran?

Introduction to the report:

Under the weight of the growing protests, the Iranian Public Prosecutor, Muhammad Jaafar Montazeri, announced the abolition of the "morality police" in principle by the relevant authorities, at a time when Parliament and the Supreme Council of the Revolution announced their intention to discuss the veil issue and take a decision on it within two weeks, apparently in an attempt by the Iranian authorities. To recalibrate its conservative positions and meet the aspirations of the new generation, against the background of the protests sparked by the murder of the young woman, "Mahsa Amini", which sheds light on the context in which the veil issue developed in Iran, transforming from an icon of the Islamic revolution to a symbol of the control of power in the country.

Report text:

In 2009, the pillars of the Iranian regime were shaken by a massive uprising, following accusations of rigging the presidential elections during which former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won his second term. The uprising, or the Green Movement as it was known by its most famous name, was described as the largest popular movement that Iran has witnessed since the Islamic Revolution. In 1979. In 2017, protests were renewed in the country due to poor economic conditions following the imposition of the largest package of sanctions on Tehran by the United States, and two years later it witnessed a similar crisis due to high fuel prices, the high cost of living and unemployment.

And while Tehran chose to confront all these waves of protests with force, which were not devoid of violence at times, citing reasons of preserving the state and the cohesion of the regime in the face of internal and external threats, these protests were far from threatening the foundations of the Islamic Revolution itself.

But now, after more than four decades of rule, Tehran is witnessing for the first time a movement targeting the ideas of the revolution itself from a generation that did not attend its events, and seems less committed and accepting of the religious principle on which the rule in the country was founded.

The escalation of events and the expansion of protests over recent weeks in Iran was a surprise to both the authorities and the angry street itself, as clips of hair cutting and veil burning spread like wildfire on communication platforms, while the protests expanded to Iranian cities far from the capital.

Because of the religious symbolism that the veil carries, and its political symbolism in a conservative country like Iran in particular, some tend to frame the recent protests as a rejection of the regime and the revolution that brought it to power, and an uprising of the younger generation, most of whom did not witness the Islamic revolution, against the alleged monopoly of religion and practices of the state. Especially the morality police.

As for the authority, it sees in what is happening the fingerprints of foreign hands sowing chaos in Iran, and then Tehran put all the demonstrations in the “conspiracy” basket, in conjunction with the continuation of Western sanctions, and the faltering negotiations of the nuclear agreement.

Conflicting narratives.. The street is in the face of power

The latest season of protests in Iran began with Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian girl who was arrested by the morality police during a family trip to the capital, Tehran, for allegedly not complying with the hijab laws, and eventually died shortly after inside her detention facility in Mysterious circumstances.

And while the official government version issued in the forensic report says that the girl died due to diseases she had previously suffered and resulted in a sudden disturbance in heart function, based on a video clip that showed the girl taking steps towards an official, then talking to her for moments and falling on the spot, which Indicating that she fainted, not assaulted, unofficial Iranian media published a picture of a letter from the head of the "Bandar Abbas" city authority, in which he questioned the outcome of the official report, based on the appearance of bleeding near the girl's ear and bruises under her eyes that are inconsistent with the symptoms of a heart attack.

It seems that the regime's version could not convince the street, especially since the "Amini" family itself doubted her, accused the authorities of lying, and denied that her daughter was in poor health before her arrest.

The family reported the accounts of eyewitnesses who confirmed that the girl had been beaten, and proved the validity of their words by the presence of blood spots next to her ears in the famous image that spread of her, in addition to preventing them from seeing her.

The family was not allowed to view the autopsy report of Mahsa's body, in addition to the video that Iranian television published from inside the detention center, in which the timing and date of the recording were deleted, which confirmed the belief of many that the surveillance camera footage shown by the authorities had been deleted and edited.

If we ignore the sudden dramatic escalation of the "Amini" incident, the Iranian girl may not be considered a unique case, as Iranian law punishes women who wear clothes described as "indecent", under the Islamic Republic's four-decade-old veil law.

Legal penalties stipulate that punished girls attend compulsory classes on the hijab and Islamic values, and that they must contact a relative before they are released.

Sometimes the penalty for being in the public sphere without a headscarf or wearing tight clothing includes detention, imprisonment, flogging or a fine.

However, the application of this law has become less severe and strict in recent years, with the grip of the morality police decreasing significantly and the intensity of confrontations with girls who do not wear decent clothes according to the authorities’ stricter definitions of the concept of modesty.

(AFP)

Over time, influential voices among the Iranian political elite joined the voice of the street on this issue, such as Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was arrested on charges of incitement.

The authority, then, did not differentiate in its security campaign between opponents and the sons of former presidents, and arrested hundreds of people, and the events caused more than two hundred deaths, according to official statistics of the Iranian Ministry of Interior, a number that is much lower than the estimates of opposition and independent human rights groups.

However, the different aspect of that Iranian movement is that it bears a unique character that targets the veil for political considerations rather than being religious or social.

The roots of the "politicization of the veil" in Iran go back to the past decades, preceding the Iranian revolution, to the time of Shah Reza Khan.

The Iranian hijab.. the identity of the revolution

About 86 years ago, during the reign of Shah Reza Khan, Iran witnessed a similar uprising related to the veil, and it has been burning for six years, but it is in contrast to what is happening today, as it took place in defense of the veil against the regime's hostile policies.

In January 1936, the Shah, who was friends at the time with the founder of modern Turkey, "Mustafa Kemal" Ataturk, wanted to borrow the secular model of his neighbor Turkey, and try to impose a radical change on the conservative Iranian society, in which the influence of religious scholars remained in effect.

The ambition to borrow the entire Western model prompted the Shah of Iran to clash with religious scholars first, for he withdrew many social privileges from them, in conjunction with the application of compulsory conscription, which ignited the anger of many who worked in trade and had a strong alliance relationship with religious scholars.

The matter was not limited to the hijab, but the state at that time prohibited the wearing of the traditional black dress for women, which covers the whole body and is known as the chador. This angered the religious scholars.

And while religious scholars remained the first reference for a large segment of conservative society relatively far from modern civil life, many women preferred to stay inside their homes for years, leaving the house only in the dark or hiding inside vehicles, to avoid confrontation with the police, who used force against them.

After the Shah was exiled after his closeness to Germany in World War I and angering England, his son, "Mohammed Reza" Pahlavi, assumed power after him. The young Shah decided at that time to ease the veil ban, and many women returned from their hiding places to wear the chador in public.

However, wearing the hijab has become associated with a political concept among a large group of young people, who saw it as a way to express their political opposition to the monarchy and its alienation of Iranian society, which continued despite the relaxation of the hijab ban laws.

And when the revolution triumphed, and the regime in Iran slowly turned to the pure Islamic character, and the non-Islamic national leaders who participated in the revolution were excluded, the veil turned into an explicit symbol of the revolution, not only in Iran but even in its Islamic surroundings, where observers point to a wide spread of the veil that occurred In the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution.

While many more moderate politicians rejected imposing the veil by force on women, others wanted to impose it as an official state identity.

So, in the early days of the revolution, some women who did not cover their hair were prevented from entering government offices, banks and other public places, then a law was passed requiring women to cover their heads and wear long, loose-fitting coats in public places in 1983, and women were forced to wear veils even inside their cars or else Punishments ranging from fines to imprisonment and lashings were applied to them by the then newly created morality police.

The new generation is rebelling against the morality police

Today, the regime of the Islamic Republic faces many challenges, on top of which are the popular protests that are renewed year after year in light of the ongoing international sanctions, the continuing rise in prices and the increase in unemployment rates.

However, the recent protests, which may exceed the intensity of the 2017 demonstrations, seem relatively different, as they did not stem from the financial difficulties that Iranians have suffered from in recent years, and were the permanent fuel for the clash with power. Rather, it seems that there is a new generation that did not attend the Islamic Revolution and does not feel By belonging to it, he demands radical reforms today, and implicitly revolts against all the symbols that he considers linked to the regime, foremost of which is the veil.

The scenes of women publicly burning their headscarves in the streets are a clear indication that a large segment of society is looking forward to different cultural trends, and they are calling for personal freedoms that are no less than what their peers enjoy in Western countries.

The current generation, then, represents a challenge to the authority and the religious and social traditions it cherishes linked to the revolution. It has opened up to the world, and even in its neighborhood it sees either countries that gave Islamic identity more space without coercion, such as Turkey, or countries that until recently were considered more conservative, such as Saudi Arabia, engaging in Broad social reforms that grant women privileges that were not imagined years ago.

Demonstrators burn veils during a protest against the death of "Mahsa Amini" (Getty Images)

These young people believe that most of what is currently left of the Islamic Republic’s regime is the “theory of the guardianship of the jurist” and the Islamic symbols associated with it, after the economic reform process that Rafsanjani started after the end of the war with Iraq faltered, and Khatami completed it, and Rouhani tried to strengthen it through the nuclear agreement.

The popular base of the regime, which maintained good participation rates in the presidential elections, has also eroded, until participation rates fell to their lowest levels in the history of the republic during the last elections, in reference to a growing political vacuum that the Iranian elites are facing with two generations of young people who are thirsty more than any other. A past time for political renewal and economic reform.

Under the weight of the growing protests, the Iranian authorities were finally forced to make some concessions, after the Iranian Public Prosecutor, Muhammad Jaafar Montazeri, announced the abolition of the "morality police" in principle by the relevant authorities, at a time when Parliament and the Supreme Council of the Revolution announced their intention to discuss the veil issue and take a decision on it within Two weeks, apparently in an attempt by the Iranian authorities to recalibrate their conservative positions and meet the aspirations of the new generation, and balance them with the traditional conservative segments that support the regime.

Tehran seems to realize that with the advent of the new generation, and the new uncontrollable means of communication and communication, a new type of political-economic opposition and protest is steadily developing.

And if yesterday's cassette tapes stimulated the emergence of the generation of the Islamic Revolution that dominated Iranian political life over the past decades, the Internet revolution shakes this well-established situation in an unprecedented way, just as the Islamic Revolution attached itself to the symbolism of the veil and took it as one of its main cultural pillars in extending its authority over society. Of course, the current protests did not find a more prominent symbol than the "veil" to express their discontent with the regime and its symbols, and the "Mahsa" incident was nothing but the fuse that ignited the fire in the heart of those contradictions that have been brewing for years.