A Conservative Cleric's Call to Abolish Mandatory Hijab for Tourists in Free Trade Zones

Simultaneously with the remarks of a member of the Cultural Commission of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, who stated that the issue of 'freedom of dress' for attracting tourists is 'deviant', a conservative cleric called for the abolition of the mandatory hijab law for tourists in Iran's free trade zones. Ahmad Mazani, a member of parliament, said in an interview with ILNA news agency on Tuesday, July 9, that Iran is suffering from 'strategic mistakes' in the tourism industry. He identified one of these 'mistakes' as the perspective that 'tourism is successful when we open the space for un-Islamic behaviors'. The member of the Cultural Commission described the notion that foreign tourists travel to Iran to 'find opportunities for un-Islamic and illegitimate entertainment' as a 'wrong idea'. He did not consider the 'minimal dress code' defined for foreign tourists in Iran as a 'barrier' and added that they are looking to see Iran's tourist attractions as a country with a multi-thousand-year historical and cultural heritage. Ahmad Mazani called the discussion of freedom of dress in free trade zones to increase tourism as 'deviant, oversimplifying the issue, and lacking research support'. In contrast, Mohsen Ghoreyani, a cleric and conservative political activist, told ILNA that tourists 'are not obliged to observe our religious laws from a Sharia and jurisprudential perspective; they can choose their own hijab, and there is no obligation for them religiously'. Ghoreyani, who was previously a student of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, a conservative cleric, conditioned the abolition of the hijab law for tourists in free trade zones on 'cultural development' in these areas and added: 'Just as we go to other countries and act according to our own laws, tourists should also be allowed to act according to their own laws in our country.' He opposed imposing Islamic jurisprudential rulings on tourists and said: 'It is better to leave this issue to the discretion of the tourists themselves.' Currently, Iran is the only country where 'observance of hijab' is mandatory for all women, including non-Muslim or foreign women. In this context, 12 religious reformists issued a statement on February 6 published on Goya News, emphasizing that the policies of the Islamic Republic in this regard have resulted in nothing but 'excessive financial costs, religious and spiritual discredit, political inefficiency, and social capital wastage'. Ghoreyani's remarks come at a time when the mandatory hijab law in Iran has been openly challenged by some women for months. The 'White Wednesdays' campaign, which led to the phenomenon of 'Girls of Revolution Street' in Iran, calls for the right to choose whether or not to wear hijab by publicly removing headscarves. Accordingly, several women wearing Islamic hijab, including types of chador, have also joined this campaign and explicitly expressed their opposition to the compulsion and insistence on wearing hijab. The response of the Islamic Republic authorities, including the police and judiciary, to this phenomenon has been the arrest and trial of several of these women and violence against some of them during their arrests. In the latest judicial actions against opposition to the mandatory hijab in Iran, Shaparak Shajaryan, one of the women known as 'Girls of Revolution Street', announced in a live conversation with her audience on Instagram that she has been sentenced to two years of imprisonment and 18 years of suspended imprisonment. Earlier, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, the prosecutor of Tehran, had reported on July 1 without naming Ms. Shajaryan that one of the Girls of Revolution Street had been sentenced to two years of imprisonment and 18 years of suspended imprisonment. During the public protests against the mandatory hijab last year, among the arrested women, according to initial rulings, Narges Hosseini was sentenced to two years in prison, Maryam Shari'atmadari to one year in prison, and Shima Babaei to two months in prison. The reaction of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, to this phenomenon in a speech on March 8, International Women's Day, was that 'they spent all that cost, thought, and propaganda, resulting in a few girls being deceived and removing their headscarves here and there, and all their efforts were summarized in this small and insignificant result.'