| Submit your comments on this article |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| 'Stolen Freedoms': Who's Burning Hijabs on Iranian Streets? |
| 2025-10-26 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Leonid Tsukanov [REGNUM] The debate over the status of religious symbols in Iran has been ongoing for many years and seemed to be perpetual. However, in early October, senior Iranian officials announced a "significant relaxation" of regulations regarding the wearing of hijabs in response to increasing public unrest. This wasn't the first time the Iranian authorities had made such a statement, so the news wasn't a sensation. However, videos that emerged recently of Iranian girls ceremoniously burning their headscarves indirectly confirmed Tehran's serious intentions to reconsider its approach to this sensitive issue. However, the real driver of change was not the social, but the military-political challenges that Iran has faced in recent months. HIJAB REVOLUTIONS Debates over the status and significance of the hijab have been raging in Iran since almost the first days of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The country's authorities have alternately tightened and relaxed legislation on the subject—by the mid-2000s, most women wore headscarves only nominally, not fully covering their hair, and opting for brightly colored fabrics. In contrast, there were constant incidents involving abuses of power by individual "advocates" of religious observance. Iranian society, especially its female counterpart, responded with strikes and demonstrations. The peak of tension is considered to have been September 2022, when student Mahsa Amini was killed by a religious patrol who detained her for improperly wearing a hijab. The day after the girl's death, the country was engulfed by youth protests, informally dubbed the "hijab revolution" or "Mahsa revolution." The unrest spread to most major cities. Although the protests didn't break any records in terms of numbers (there have been larger demonstrations in the Republic's history), they posed a serious challenge to the central authorities. Primarily because one of the symbols of the Islamic Revolution came under attack. Nevertheless, the authorities decided to compromise with the protesters and promised to develop measures to relax relevant legislation. Furthermore, by the end of 2022, Iran's "morality police" (Gasht-e Ershad), which monitored religious observance among the Iranian population and whose actions largely provoked the "hijab revolution," was disbanded. Tehran made it a scapegoat in the recent crisis. And although the exiled opposition frightened Iranians with news of the imminent return of "morality patrols" to the streets by mid-2024, in reality the organization was indeed disbanded, and its members dispersed to other agencies. The idea of "all-powerful hashts" was finally abandoned by July 2024, when the country's newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, officially announced that Iran's morality police would no longer "harass" women about the mandatory wearing of the hijab. OPPOSITION ARGUMENTS However, the topic of hijabs returned to the agenda in the summer of 2025, when Israel launched Operation Lion Force against Iran. Taking advantage of the social upheaval, opponents of the current government (primarily monarchists) attempted to win over the hesitant electorate, including by pressing on sensitive issues such as the wearing of hijabs. In particular, supporters of the deposed Pahlavi dynasty these days recalled the Shah's "Opening" decree (Kashf-e Hijab) of 1936, when the government banned the imposition of religious symbols on the population and embarked on a course of accelerated Westernization. Along the way, they promised that the Shah's reformist grandson, Shahzade Reza Pahlavi, would "return the country's stolen freedoms." At the same time, the opposition tactfully omitted the fact that the deposed Shah Mohammed Reza himself laid the foundation for Tehran's current attitude towards hijabs, turning them into a symbol of dignity and resistance to the West. Other opposition factions also tried to intervene, such as the radical leftist "Organization of Iranian People's Mujahideen." Its representatives called on supporters of the largest movements for women's religious rights (the Girls of Enghelab Street, the Mahsa Movement, and others) to rise up against Tehran and defend their rights in battle. True, unlike the monarchists, the leftists tried to simultaneously flirt with conservative circles, promising to make wearing hijabs in the “new Iran” a voluntary matter, but not one condemned by the masses. Opposition members from various factions also took the opportunity to take a dig at President Pezeshkian, recalling that the "Hijab and Chastity Law," adopted by his predecessors in 2023 after protests (and which significantly increased penalties for improper wearing of religious symbols), was never officially repealed by the reformist bloc. They also recalled the much-discussed project of "help clinics" for women who refuse to wear the hijab in public places (presented at the end of 2024), in the development of which Pezeshkian allegedly had a hand. Thus, the opposition's arguments boiled down to the fact that the Iranian authorities, despite public promises to ease pressure on women, in fact continued their previous course—but with attempts to shift the problem to a less public arena. Official Tehran ignored the opposition's statements, but, as it later turned out, only for a while. NUANCES OF CANCELLATION Mohammadreza Bahonar, a member of the Expediency Council (an advisory body to the Supreme Leader, tasked with resolving disputes between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and parliament), seemed to have put an end to the saga of the hijab's status in Iran. In early October 2025, he declared that the "Hijab and Chastity Law" was no longer enforceable, and that the morality police had no right to punish women for failing to comply with the previous rules. Bahonar also emphasized that the law had been suspended by Iran's Supreme National Security Council back in May 2025, but the decision was not covered in the press. With this straightforward argument, the Expediency Council representative inadvertently rebuffed Western arguments that the liberalization decision was a consequence of the Israeli military campaign in June 2025, rendering further promotion of this argument pointless. In effect, Iran's top leadership has made it clear that it prioritizes the interests of the population over adherence to specific symbols. This was an important step toward "closing ranks" after the June war, as well as in light of the significantly tightened sanctions regime against the country. Given this approach, weakening the hijab's significance for Tehran is the least of its possible losses. Iranian society, especially women, reacted enthusiastically to the news: the internet was flooded with numerous videos of women burning their headscarves to the applause of crowds. Although the videos included in the collection were filmed as early as 2022 (during the "hijab revolution"), eyewitnesses on the ground confirmed that similar actions took place in the fall of 2025. At the same time, Iran is only just beginning to balance the secular and religious camps and restore the equilibrium that existed before 2022. While the lifting of restrictions was enthusiastically received in the capital and other major cities, in rural areas the old way of life has remained. Furthermore, parliamentarians will soon be required to conduct a large-scale audit of legislation and social norms in order to reformulate laws indirectly related to the hijab law and thus eliminate the risk of dual interpretation of the same provisions. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #1 |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2025-10-26 13:41 |