{"id":106323,"date":"2018-02-12T12:00:28","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T12:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=106323"},"modified":"2018-02-10T15:51:38","modified_gmt":"2018-02-10T15:51:38","slug":"as-irans-women-continue-to-rise-and-fly-their-hijabs-woe-be-unto-the-mullahs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/02\/as-irans-women-continue-to-rise-and-fly-their-hijabs-woe-be-unto-the-mullahs\/","title":{"rendered":"As Iran\u2019s Women Continue to Rise and Fly Their Hijabs\u2026 Woe Be Unto the Mullahs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oxford<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

8 Feb 2018 – <\/em>Following last month\u2019s protests challenging Iran\u2019s theocratic regime, including women across the country climbing on telecom boxes, taking off their headscarves and waving them aloft on sticks, police quickly arrested 29 women accusing them of protesting against a law that makes wearing the hijab compulsory. When Vida Movahed, a 31-year-old mother, clambered up an electrical box and was pictured waving her head scarf from a stick on a busy street in Tehran, this courageous lady was arrested and held for about a month before being released, according to activists. Thousands of social media users have shared messages, dubbing her the \u201cGirl of Enghelab Street\u201d after the area in central Tehran where she staged the protest, and using the hashtag \u201cWhere_is_she?\u201d \u201cBefore even being tried by legal authorities, [women] are taken to a place called \u2018Gasht-e Ershad\u2019 [Guidance Patrol], where they can be harshly beaten up. Whether a case is opened for them or not is not important,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cThe illegal punishment they have had to bear has always been much more than what is foreseen in the law.\u201d Sotoudeh accused the police of frequently going beyond the law.<\/p>\n

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Photo courtesy of Maher Salami, Tehran University<\/p><\/div>\n

New waves of protests continue to draw more support with hijab flying still spreading across the country focusing on demands for personal freedoms. Iran\u2019s socio-economic malaise can explain neither the way protesters mobilized in such scattered local sites nor the velocity by which the protests have spread.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s anti-hijab campaigners grow bolder weekly with spreading public demonstrations of defiance. The demonstrations, which included dozens of women on 7 Feb 2018 according to the Wall Street Journal continue as they expose deepening differences between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a relative \u201cmoderate\u201d who has courted women\u2019s support, and \u201cSupreme Leader\u201d Ali Khameini who opposes any easing of strictures on the head scarf, or hijab.<\/p>\n

\u201cIranian society is squarely in a post-revolutionary phase,\u201d according to Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the nonprofit International Crisis Group. Among the images and videos shared on social media one 2\/7\/2018, one showed a woman with hair dyed pink. Others stood in parks or the middle of busy roads and flashed peace signs at passersby as they waved their hijabs, in the air. The January demonstrators and those protesting the hijab \u201chave been frustrated with the government\u2019s empty promises, which haven\u2019t been fulfilled at all,\u201d said Shadi Sadr, an Iranian lawyer and women\u2019s rights activist based in London who runs nonprofit Justice for Iran.<\/p>\n

Soheila Jolodarzadeh, a female member of the Iranian parliament, said the protests were the result of longstanding restrictions. \u201cThey\u2019re happening because of our wrong approach,\u201d she said, according to the semi-official Ilna news agency. \u201cWe imposed restrictions on women and put them under unnecessary restraints. Therefore, women from Enghelab Street and now across Iran are putting their hijab on a stick.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s \u2018morality police\u2019 released statistics claiming that they arrested or sent to court 3.6 million women over the recent past because of how they wear the hijab, so these arrests are not new.\u00a0 People are protesting exactly because of such a crackdown, according to MP Soheila Jolodarzadeh.<\/p>\n

Many religiously conservative Iranians are among those now supporting the protests, with many insisting that religious dress should be a personal choice.<\/p>\n

Photos shared on Twitter increasingly show women in traditional black chador robes, standing on pillar boxes with signs supporting freedom of choice for women.\u00a0One held a sign reading: “I love my hijab but I’m against compulsory hijab.”\u00a0 Female activist Azar Mansouri, a member of the reformist Union of Islamic Iranian People party, said attempts to control female clothing will continue to fail.<\/p>\n

President Hassan Rouhani, in a break with \u201cSupreme Leader\u201d Ali Khameini, insists that authorities must listen to protesters behind the Hijab unrest, hinting that it risked another revolution if their demands are ignored.\u00a0Rouhani, insisted that popular support will crumble if his fellow elites did not listen to protests that have swept the country in recent weeks. “The previous regime thought monarchical rule would last forever, but it lost everything for this very reason — that it did not hear the criticism of the people,” he added, Rouhani said at the shrine of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in southern Tehran, flanked by Khomeini’s grandson, Hassan Khomeini, a prominent reformist.<\/p>\n

Rouhani has now clearly allied himself with reformists including the release of political prisoners. \u201cNo one can stop the great people of Iran from expressing their views, criticism and even protest,” he said.\u00a0The shah’s regime “did not hear the voice of reformers, advisors, scholars, elites, and the educated,” said Rouhani.\u00a0“It only heard the voice of revolution and by then, it was too late.”\u00a0His comments echoed the sharp criticism a day earlier from jailed reformist Mehdi Karroubi, who has been under house arrest for the past seven years for leading protests in 2009.\u00a0Karroubi lashed out at Ali Khamenei in an open letter,\u00a0saying major reforms were needed “before it is too late”.<\/p>\n

The charge against Rouhani is that he has failed to deliver reforms as promised. More than 10 million Iranians, among 80 million, now live in absolute poverty, according to official figures.<\/p>\n

Against the Ayatollah and the Mullahs, the charge is that what they have delivered \u2014 power and wealth only to the clerics, social repression, foreign wars \u2014 are not what the Iranian people want. Yet it is also meaningless in retrospect to call the recent protests inevitable. Iran\u2019s larger socio-economic malaise can explain neither the way protesters mobilized in such scattered yet small local sites nor the velocity by which the protests spread so widely.<\/p>\n

Opposition figure\u00a0Mahdi Karroubi, who is currently\u00a0under house arrest, has voiced rare criticism of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, blaming him for the \u201cdisastrous results\u201d of the Revolutionary Guard\u2019s vast political and economic influence. In a rare open letter published recently, Mahdi Karroubi claims that Khamenei violated the constitution, and called on him to order the Revolutionary Guard to loosen its grip on the economy.<\/p>\n

Karroubi further insists that the nationwide street protests \u201ccorruption and discrimination\u201d are an alarm bell for the authorities to reform the economic and political system. Pressured by soaring food prices, the protests – the biggest in Iran since the post-election unrest of 2009 – took on a rare political dimension, with a growing number of people calling on Khamenei himself to step down.\u00a0\u00a0 He added that by vetting candidates in elections, Khamenei had reduced parliament to \u201can obedient assembly\u201d under his thumb and the influence of Revolutionary Guards lobbies. he added that the Assembly of Experts, a council of elected clerics charged with electing, supervising and even disqualifying the Supreme Leader, has turned into a \u201cceremonial council that only praises the Leader.”<\/p>\n

Karroubi further said December\u2019s nationwide street protests \u201ccorruption and discrimination\u201d were an alarm bell for the authorities to reform the economic and political system. Pressured by soaring food prices, the protests – the biggest in Iran since the post-election unrest of 2009 – took on a rare political dimension, with a growing number of people calling on Khamenei himself to step down.<\/p>\n

Khamenei’s power is also financial. A major portion of Iran’s national budget goes to the office of the supreme leader and its affiliated institutions. This funding is\u00a0not subject to government oversight<\/a>, and no one but Khamenei himself knows how much money he receives. Nor does anyone control how he spends it. Since 1979 revolution, the office of the supreme leader has laid out billions of dollars to expand the influence of his faith, Shia Islam, across the\u00a0Middle East<\/a>. War is a key part of that foreign policy. Since 2011, Ali Khamenei has sent Iranian troops into Syria’s civil war\u00a0to keep his favored regime\u00a0 in power<\/a>. The supreme leader is also behind Iran’s controversial nuclear program and the\u00a0 country’s\u00a0insistence on processing nuclear-grade uranium<\/a>\u00a0 which has brought international sanctions, invasive inspections and\u00a0global political criticism to Iran<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reformers have publicized a series of eight nonnegotiable demands:<\/p>\n