Mehrangiz Kar: The Mandatory Hijab Policy in the Iranian Government is Based on 'Stubbornness'

While recent reports have emerged of several women openly protesting against the mandatory hijab in Tehran, new images have also surfaced indicating that this protest movement has spread to several other major cities in Iran, including Isfahan, Shiraz, and Mashhad. These protests began in December with the release of a video showing a woman publicly protesting the mandatory hijab on Enghelab Street. This woman, known as the 'Girl of Enghelab Street,' had attached her headscarf to a stick and was waving it like a flag while standing on a power pole. Nasrin Sotoudeh, a lawyer and human rights activist who has been following this woman's case, announced on February 8 that she has now been 'released.' Ms. Sotoudeh also stated that for another woman named 'Narges Hosseini,' a bail of 500 million tomans has been set following her arrest. Mehrangiz Kar, another lawyer and human rights activist, stated in an interview with Radio Farda that the Iranian government has generally used the concept of bail in a way that seems to serve as a tool for repression, imposing exorbitant bail amounts for minor offenses, and taking individuals accused of crimes, rightly or wrongly, simply to keep society quiet and subdued. According to eyewitness accounts, six of the 'Girls of Enghelab' have been arrested, but social media images suggest that men have also joined this group. What legal charges could be brought against these individuals? The Iranian judiciary does not seem bound by legal principles regarding crimes, the status of the accused, or the nature of the crime. It has proven that all behaviors that the Islamic Republic disapproves of and wishes to attribute to enemies and foreigners are transformed into charges such as actions against national security, public disorder, and propaganda against the Islamic regime. This can easily be misused to label these actions as threats against the security of the Islamic Republic or propaganda against it. Naturally, this also includes men. The judiciary operates without legal constraints, accountability, or a sense of obligation to adhere to its own internal laws, at least to hold public trials and allow lawyers to participate from start to finish. Just to keep society quiet, they engage in a futile struggle against women—like in the past four decades—who dislike the mandatory hijab and break the laws governing it in any way possible. Ms. Kar, assuming we accept that many women in Iran, as you said, dislike the mandatory hijab or describe the laws governing it as unjust, this may be a concern for women, but why does the government also have the same concern about the mandatory hijab and spends a significant amount annually on this issue? Because it has unreasonably made the mandatory hijab a principle. In other words, it sees itself as being based on it. Otherwise, how could they not know that for nearly four decades, Iranian women, even sometimes women with voluntary faith-based hijabs, dislike the mandatory hijab? In recent years, the government has set aside this policy-making in internal affairs to the extent that it has become based on stubbornness. Furthermore, a significant portion of its supporters earn their livelihood from this stubborn policy and provide numerous false reports to the authorities regarding hijab enforcement; the authorities, in turn, do not care about the issue and say, 'What is this piece of cloth? Just throw it on your head.' The clerics who influence the government generally believe that yes, hijab is mandatory; while others correctly interpret Islamic texts as stating that hijab is a recommendation and that the law does not impose worldly punishment for it.