Cartoon by Michael de Adder

Have Iran’s hard-liners lost the battle over women’s headscarves?

By Scott Peterson Staff writer

Christian Science Monitor: The veteran schoolteacher will never forget the first time she broke Iranian law by venturing into public without her head covered, and felt the wind in her hair.

Widespread protests had been raging for three months, led by women and girls in an unprecedented wave of discontent that swept through scores of Iranian cities.

The catalyst was the mid-September death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who had been detained by Iran’s so-called morality police, allegedly for showing too much hair.

The women-led protests that swept Iran last fall were brutally suppressed. But for a range of reasons – protesting the regime, reclaiming agency – women are ignoring laws requiring the hijab, creating a dilemma for hard-liners.

In response, Iranian women burned their headscarves in public and let their hair down. And – as the protests widened, with women and men together at the barricades facing a crackdown that reportedly left more than 500 dead and 20,000 detained – they demanded the toppling of the Islamist regime.

“I went to a mall [with] tears in my eyes,” says the primary school teacher, who gives the name Neda, recalling her first moments of breaking Iran’s strict hijab rules. “I can’t describe the feeling of air going through my hair.”

These days the 40-something professional routinely goes out with hair flowing: to the cafe, in the streets, and “everywhere.” “Now in my country it’s like feeling free, and brave,” Neda says. “A year ago, we even did not think it could happen at all.”

While the “Woman, Life, Freedom” street protests were largely snuffed out months ago, and stricter hijab rules have been enacted, legions of Iranian women like Neda are still refusing to wear hijab in public. That has left Iranian hard-liners scrambling to find ways to stanch and reverse this enduring defiance, which they deem an existential threat to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

A new law now before Iran’s Majlis, or parliament, would impose heavier fines and add punishments like restricting access to bank accounts and confiscating vehicles, as well as up to three years in prison for breaking hijab rules. But the law, scheduled to be debated in July, also prohibits physical coercion on the street, something that has caused an uproar among hard-liners. They reject it as too lenient, though the law was drafted by the office of President Ebrahim Raisi and the judiciary, both of which are controlled by hard-liners.

The angry debate in the hard-line camp illustrates the depth of the challenge that the defiance poses to the Islamic Republic. First, by women’s widespread repudiation of what hard-liners see as the core revolutionary ideal of hijab. Then, more broadly, by rejection of intrusive social control over all aspects of life that the regime has exercised for 44 years.

“The impact of these laws remains to be seen,” says Tara Sepehri-Far, a Washington-based Iran researcher for Human Rights Watch.

“There seems to be a debate within the establishment about how to enforce them in a way that doesn’t cause a lot of friction with the general public, the way that resulted in the death in custody of Mahsa Amini and the whole protest – but also keeps this [hijab] stranglehold, because this is very much a core issue for hard-liners,” says Ms. Sepehri-Far.

While the authors of the new “chastity and hijab” law aim to strike a balance that avoids igniting more protests, others demand more “robust” deterrence that would include physically painful forms such as lashing.

Hard-line lawmaker Alireza Abbasi, for example, called June 10 for the hijab law to be written so “no one would dare to remove their headscarves.”

Indeed, in mid-June uniformed and plainclothes security forces again raided coffee shops in several cities and beat customers over hijab rules. And the police chief of a northern resort province was filmed telling a subordinate, “Break the neck of anyone who breaks the [hijab] norms ... and I will take responsibility.”

One argument put forward by hard-liners is that the defiance plays into the hands of Iran’s external enemies who, in the words of one influential ayatollah, want “to rob us of the rule of religion.”

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei set the tone in early April, when he declared that rejecting hijab was religiously and politically “forbidden.” The “majority” of women who removed their headscarves, he said, were simple-minded and unaware that foreign spy agencies are operating “behind the scenes.”

“Those [anti-hijab] campaigns seek to preoccupy the minds of our youths with sensual urges,” warned Mr. Abbasi, “so that they will have no room to pursue missiles, the nuclear program, and knowledge-based technology.”

Still, protesting Iranian women from the start have rejected such claims of foreign meddling, just as they say any new law is incapable of reversing the achievements of their push for greater freedoms >>>