Sreya Sarkar
Any kind of compulsive dress code for any person, be it Ghunghat or Hijab, be it keeping a beard or growing your hair, is unacceptable in today’s world, a world that has become an intricate jigsaw puzzle of different cultures preferring diverse dress codes, coexisting, thriving and advancing together.
The recent death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old girl in the custody of Gasht-e Ershad, Iran’s Islamic guidance patrol has dragged into the open the topic of compulsory Hijab which has always been a contentious and simmering issue in Iran. In two weeks the protest spread like wildfire across the country starting from Amini’s hometown, Saqqez.
The protest might seem anti-Hijab at first glance but, it is much bigger than just that. It’s a protest against everything that has been going on in the country since 1979. It’s about the big promises made and not fulfilled. It is about the democracy the Iranian people hoped for but never got. But front and center of that are the women who are not just participating in it but sparking it and leading within the country. The protest is a push back not only against the Hijab law but also laws that allow men to divorce more easily than women, laws that grant men exclusive custody of children, lift restrictions on polygamy for men, lowers marriage ages for girls, and require women to get the permission of their father or husband to travel.
Obligatoriness has made Hijab stifling for it has taken away women’s right of having agency over their own bodies. Yet from day one, the Iranian government classified Hijab as among the foundational principles of the state’s identity following the revolution in 1979. Many of the women who had come out to protest against the monarchy upending the Shahs in favor of what they thought would be democracy didn’t have head scarves on but soon after Ayatollah Khomeini the architect of the Iranian Revolution and the first leader of the Islamic republic took Iran on a different and unexpected route. In 1983 Iran’s new parliament enforced the mandatory Hijab.
The story of Amini was brought out by a woman journalist Niloufar Hamadi of Shargh, an Iranian daily. Soon after Hamadi was arrested and is now being held in solitary confinement in Evin prison. But how many women will the regime lock up to silence the truth?
The unprecedented scale of the protest we see today is not out of the blue. It has been in the making for a while. This has been made possible by decades of quiet, grassroots networking by Women’s Rights activists, even as prominent rights advocates were being given prison terms or had to slip into exile. Amini’s tragic killing amalgamated isolated voices and stories that poured in under the banner of #MahsaAmini, a hashtag that has surpassed 80 million mentions on Twitter. But this is not the first time Iranian women have shared their experiences and shown their solidarity. In 2014, many shared photos and videos of themselves flouting the Hijab laws, as part of an online protest campaign ‘My Stealthy Freedom.’ Since then it has inspired and spawned other movements like 'White Wednesdays', 'Girls of Revolution Street', and #mycameraismyweapon. Masih Alinejad, the founder of ‘My Stealthy Freedom’, an Iranian journalist driven to exile 13 years ago, has been helping galvanize the country's women. The Iranian regime has sent secret envoys to kill Alinejad previously. She had to switch locations 7 times and now lives in an FBI safe house. This is how suppressive the Islamist regime is yet, Iranian women continue to raise their voices. Alinejad told The New Yorker last week, “The Iranian regime will be brought down by women, I believe this.”
This time the protest is different. Unprecedented in size, speed and marked by the audacity of the protestors. The image onlookers see and will remember are women waving their veils in the air, burning them on bonfires, cutting their hair in public, and letting loose slogans like “Zhin, Zhiyan, Azadi” (women, life, freedom), “Death to the Dictator”, “Justice, Liberty, No to mandatory Hijab.”
Roham Alvandi, professor at the London School of Economics spoke to MSNBC recently. He said, "This younger generation of women have spent their whole lives in a securitized state with a crumbling economy, in a country isolated from the world and they have had enough.” He believes that these protests are shaking the very foundations of the Islamic Republic.
But how is the Islamic Republic reacting to this protest?
The Iranian state has stamped out several protests in the last four decades. Most recently, in 2019, hikes in gas prices brought sudden public outrage across the country that the government answered with live firing. The Internet was shut down. This time Iranians are ready for the internet gag and have learned to circumvent the restrictions using VPNs.
They are going to need it, as the regime will not give in to the pushback easily.
The Islamic rulers in Tehran remain tone deaf to the demands of the Iranian people's opposition to the mandatory wearing of the Hijab. The violence that led to Amini’s death is not accidental, it is a big part of Iranian Supreme leader Ali Khamenei's approach to fighting political dissent. Violent repression is his underlined policy and is deepening the divide between the public and the Islamic Republic.
The anti-Hijab movement is being equated to ‘dissent’ driven by ‘foreign forces’ by the government which is ridiculous according to Iran expert Alex Vatanka who recently spoke in a podcast organized by Middle East Institution. “Let’s not patronize the people of Iran and say that they are being paid or being instigated by foreign powers" for they are facing oppression every day of their lives in Iran. He also said, "Compromise could be a path forward but the regime is afraid that it will open the pandora's box." It will soon be followed by the demand for more reforms and the Republic is not ready to do that.
Though mandatory Hijab has become a lightning rod for women to speak out against not being treated with dignity and is no longer a sign of cultural norm or a matter of choice, it has further entrenched the need for the Islamic masters in Iran to hold on to it as a tool of control to gain and maintain political legitimacy in the country. The insecure, panic-stricken regime has been cornered by its own people as is obvious from the protests. Its 83-year-old Supreme leader is fighting to control a nation full of twenty and thirty-something Iranians and is fast running out of political options.
It is difficult to predict what comes next but according to Iran expert Marjan Keypour Greenblatt, the rawness of the anger will further make things worse for Iran before the situation starts getting better.
But let this violent brouhaha be a warning to all nations that are inching towards greater orthodoxy after losing faith in the viability of the democratic process.
Even in successful democracies the tendency to succumb to religion and tradition survive in innocuous forms but soon they can become restrictive laws if allowed to flourish as we witnessed recently in the US when the Supreme Court repealed the ruling that had guaranteed abortion access nationwide for fifty years. In India last year, there was a fuss about a FabIndia advertisement that was rolled out before Diwali. The campaign was attacked for several reasons including featuring women not wearing bindis. It led FabIndia to pull down the advertisement after the backlash that called it ‘culturally inappropriate.’
Let us not fall prey to cynicism and allow religion, ascriptive identity, and social mores to take over our political and public lives, especially restricting women who generally bear the brunt of maintaining traditions by taking away their choices. Let this protest and its message stay with us. Giving men and women choices is the only way forward for any nation.