Details Announced for Tehran Municipality's 'Education and Training Headquarters'; With 'Central Role' of Mosques

Tehran Municipality has announced details of the 'Education and Training Headquarters', a new policy aimed at strengthening the role of mosques in educational and cultural areas, which critics view as a replacement for student mobilization programs and part of the Islamic Republic's ideological efforts in social structures. According to the government news agency ILNA, Mohammad Amin Tavakoli Zadeh, the deputy for social and cultural affairs at the municipality, stated that this plan was established at the mayor's directive and in collaboration with mosque affairs, education, and the Tehran municipality. Under this plan, 'each mosque is required to support two girls' and boys' schools, and cultural programs are designed around local parks.' Tavakoli Zadeh explained that so far 'more than 650 mosques and 720 schools have joined the Shahid Arman Ali-Vardi plan.' According to this municipal official, the plan also includes 'jihadist, sports, and artistic working groups in mosques that, alongside training courses for instructors, are strengthening the social network of neighborhoods based on religious teachings.' Previously, the Ham-Mihan newspaper reported that Alireza Zakani, the mayor of Tehran, had allocated 300 billion tomans to the 'Education and Training Headquarters' plan in 1402 (2023). The central role of mosques in the 'Education and Training Headquarters' comes as Zakani claimed when introducing this plan to secure funding in 1402 that 'its goal is to exchange urban social affairs with students' and to form it for 'better interaction' with the Ministry of Education. The allocation of large budgets by the capital's municipality to the government's ideological programs instead of addressing citizens' welfare and public services is a recurring policy of the municipality. Every year, billions of tomans from citizens' shares are spent on ideological government displays such as the 'Arbaeen' march. The allocation of large budgets for alternative programs to student mobilization under the name of 'Education and Training Headquarters' is not unprecedented. Previously, the plan to open a 'clinic for abandoning hijab' was announced just days after a wave of protests in Iran and the world against the arrest and transfer of Ahoo Daryai, a female student at Azad University, to a psychiatric hospital. According to government media, this center intends to carry out actions by imitating classes on combating and preventing social harms. Reports claim that in this clinic, 'individual counseling, group sessions, and skill-building workshops in the fields of self-awareness and managing social pressures' will be conducted. The idea of establishing special clinics for abandoning hijab by the 'Women and Family' department of the 'Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice' headquarters was met with widespread protests in cyberspace, especially from psychiatric specialists and civil and human rights activists inside and outside Iran. A video of the harsh treatment of street vendors by municipal agents in Shahriar has surfaced, showing the government's reaction to criticisms of the 'clinic for abandoning hijab': its name is 'Mahfel'. The opening of the 'clinic for abandoning hijab' is a new initiative by the government to impose hijab.