Long before protests began spreading across Iran last month, the hijab, the Islamic headscarf that Iranian law requires women to wear in public, along with loose, casual clothing – has been at the center of conflicts over national identity, religious power and political power for decades.
Worn by trust, the veil has long been a reminder of the strength of the Islamic Republic. But now, stripped and waved by young women in fierce protest, it has become a symbol of the gap between the people’s demands and what the government is willing, or even able to provide.
The enforcement of modesty laws is the obvious reason the country’s ethics police make arrests Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, a few weeks ago. Police claimed that Ms Amini had suddenly collapsed from a heart attack during mandatory head covering training while in custody. But when a video and photo of her lying in the hospital in a coma, bruises on her face and bleeding from her ears, were shared online, they quickly went viral – and caused outrage. After her death a few days later, the demonstrations erupted into the largest protests Iran had seen in years.
But this is more than anger over a tragic, scandalous death. The protests, led by women, have propelled an array of Iranian society to rise to one of the most important political movements the Islamic Republic has seen since its founding in 1979. .
Amini’s death sparked the protests. But what makes them a disaster is a series of changes that have taken place over the decades in Iran, leaving the hardline government increasingly out of step with the demands of its people.
The war of ideas, the female body
The politicization of the veil began not with the law of the Islamic Republic, but with an earlier law that forbade women from wearing it in public.
More on protests in Iran
In 1936, Reza Shah Pahlavi – the father of shah overthrown in revolution in 1979 – banned women from wearing the veil, or headscarf in public, in an attempt to Westernize Iran. Mona Tajali, professor of international relations at Agnes Scott University in Georgia and the author of “Women’s political representation in Iran and Turkey: Asking for a seat at the table. “
That law was so unpopular that it lasted only a few years. But it was enough to solidify the headscarf as a symbol not only of religious identity, but also of wars for national identity.
After the revolution, the hijab once again took center stage in Iranian politics, now as a symbol of the new government’s Islamic identity.
“These ideologies are reflected in the female body,” Ms. Tajali told me. The women were revealed to have symbolized the secular, Western character of the shah regime. The veiled woman will now be a symbol of the Muslim national identity of the new, post-revolutionary Islamic Republic.
It is important to note that the forced face covering, has been unpopular with many Iranian women in the first place. One of the first major protests after the revolution occurred when women protested against the mandatory hijab law. It was not until years later, after the Iran-Iraq war that allowed the Tehran government to consolidate its power internally against external enemies, did the rules of modesty fully apply.
Narges Bajoghli, professor of Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University and author of “Iran Reframed: Anxiety about power in the Islamic Republic. “
The veiled woman has become an obvious symbol of the extent of government control over society – embodiments of state power dressed in black.
A Changing Iran
But the veil requirements may have helped put Iran on the path to the current protests in an unexpected way: by making conservative families more comfortable allowing their daughters go to college.
Professor Bajoghli said: “Suddenly, in their mind, society has become Muslim, and so it is safe for their daughter to leave home and go to university. Today, women make up more than half of college graduates.
Education has opened up new opportunities for women to enter public life. And that, in turn, has led many to become dissatisfied with the limitations they find there, such as rules that forbid women from holding senior magistrate positions. Professor Bajoghli said: “In the mid-1990s and 2000s there were a lot of people from all religious backgrounds in society who started saying, ‘We need to rethink these laws because it’s starting to affect us. our colleagues’.
At the same time, the country is undergoing significant political changes. In the early days of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was very popular, and his hardliners easily found a broad base of support among the population, Dr. Bajoghli said. But his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who took office in 1989 and is Iran’s current supreme leader, is little liked and respected as a cleric.
To consolidate his power, Ayatollah Khamenei worked to build a support base among the country’s extreme conservatives. But over time, as Iran became a younger and more urban country, that base shrank and dissolved into competing factions, Professor Bajoghli said.
Today, ayatollah is 83 years old and is reported to be bad heathy, raising the prospect of a succession struggle in the near future. And though he is still believed to have the support of Iran’s powerful and heavily armed Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as many of the country’s paramilitary militias, the reaction to his death Ms. Amini highlighted the growing discontent that even the Islamic Republic’s elite supporters may have with her hardline approach.
“Religious people who support the Islamic Republic are coming out and saying: ‘Why are we doing this to our children? This no longer makes sense for this religion, for this generation”, Professor Bajoghli said, noting that Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, had made a public statement in support of Ms. Amini and called on the government to join the dialogue.
That has left Iran’s hardliners in a political bind: The country not only faces a shrinking political base, but it also has to face an increasingly backward platform from society. The authorities have responded by ramping up violence in an attempt to crush dissent, apparently unwilling to allow any alternative visions of Iranian identity.
Mahsa Amini is Kurdish and the slogan adopted by the protesters, “Women, Life, Freedom”, originates from Kurdish fighters. Voiced by young Iranians, it suggests a vision of a more egalitarian society not only by gender but also by ethnicity, Professor Bajoghli said.
The danger of imposing restrictions on the female body with such powerful political symbolism, it turns out, is that women will wield that symbolism for themselves. For decades, women’s veiled heads have demonstrated the popular power of the state. But now, young Iranian women are questioning the regime’s authority with all the braids that don’t cover their bodies.
