The Iranian Government decided to stop for the moment the controversial law that toughens penalties against women who do not wear a veil (hijab) “until appropriate conditions are met” and after making changes to the legislative project.
“The amendment to the hijab law will remain on hold until the appropriate conditions are met,” said this Wednesday the vice president for Parliamentary Affairs, Shahram Dabiri, in statements reported by the Iran Front Page media.
Dabiri did not explain what adequate conditions he was referring to for enacting the headscarf law. The politician explained that they stopped the promulgation of the bill by asking Parliament not to send it to the Executive for signature, something the Supreme National Security Council did over the weekend.
The lack of wearing the veil by women is a gesture of civil disobedience that many Iranians have adopted after the death of Mahsa Amini after being arrested by the Morality Police for not wearing the hijab properly in September 2022.
The controversial regulations establish punishments for women who violate the country’s strict dress code, with prison sentences of up to five years in case of repeat offenses and fines of up to $2,000. amount well above the average salaries in the country.
Iranian President Masud Pezeshkian expressed his “reservations” to the legislative project and warned that it could “ruin many things in society.”
Has Iran disbanded its morality police?
Last December 3rd at night, Iranian Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said at a conference that Iran’s “morality police” has “nothing to do with the Justice Department” and has been “shut down by those who created it.”
His statements were carried by the state news agency ISNA, and created the impression that the Islamic Republic was responding to enormous public pressure after months of anti-government protests sparked by the death of the young Kurdish woman, Jina Mahsa Amini.
However, the Iranian state broadcaster Al-Alam claimed that Montazeri’s statements had been “taken out of context”, and that Iran’s justice department “would continue to monitor public behavior.” Iran “does not have a ‘morality police’, but a ‘public security police’, and the justice department has no plans to abolish it, nor will it take a step in this direction,” pro-government media reiterated about what, according to them, Montazeri actually said.
Iranian women’s rights activist Mahdieh Golroo told DW that Montazeri’s statements represented a tactic of the Islamic Republic’s information strategy. “First they state something and attract the media to raise hopes that the regime is capable of learning and reforming,” analyzes this activist exiled in Sweden.
Iran’s “morality spy” network
Even if the “morality police” were ostensibly shut down, “another group could take on this task of controlling women in public.” Iranian media have since reported stricter controls on dress codes, especially the hijab, carried out by the organization, whose name in Farsi translates as office to “command good and forbid evil.”
This organization operates in parallel to the “morality police.” It was founded in 1993, is headed by a Tehran cleric, and depends on state funding to carry out its work. Its brigades are mostly volunteers who provide information on alleged violations of “morality” rules to one of 500 offices spread throughout Iran.
Violations against “morality”
Stories of violations of “morality” reach pro-regime news agencies, such as Tasnim News, which recently published a story about “a ticket seller at an indoor playground in Tehran who does not [llevaba] a headscarf. As a result, the indoor playground was closed.”
Stories like this are an example of the consequences that companies and institutions face if the women who work in them do not wear the hijab, as ordered by Islamic law. One case reported last week in the province of Qom, south of Tehran, involved a bank director fired for serving a woman who was not wearing a veil.
The secretary of this organization, Mohammad Saleh Hashemi Golpayegani, believes that the “morality police”, which can be photographed or recorded by citizens during the detention of women, is counterproductive.
In a statement following the death in custody of Jina Mahsa Amini, Golpayegani suggested that, instead of using vice squads to enforce “codes of morality”, the Police should rely on the voluntary support of the “trusted population”. According to Golpayegani, his organization should receive more funds, and he claims that three million citizens are willing to support it.
Keep reading:
- Iranian arrested after stripping naked in protest against hijab
- The harsh laws that women in Iran face to get a job
- Woman left paralyzed after being shot for not wearing hijab in Iran