Bazaar in Shiraz selling fabrics, 2015
In January of 1936, Reza Shah, the first Iranian king from the newly installed Pahlavi dynasty, issued an edict - Kafsh-e Hijab - banning the wearing of all forms of head coverings including but not limited to hijabs and chadors, from the public sphere. Kafsh-e Hijab, or forced unveilings, soon became a hallmark of the Shah’s tyrannical rule. Forty-three years later, after the Revolution of 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini made force veiling, or compulsory hijab, a hallmark of the Islamic Republic. For the past century, Iranian rulers have used the subjugation of women through forced unveiling and veiling, to fulfill their own national agenda’s.
On January 7, 1936, Reza Shah Pahlavi gave an address at the Tehran Teachers College which became known as Rooz-e Azadi-ye Zan (Women’s Emancipation Day). The Shah stated in his speech: “You ladies should take advantage of the opportunity to work ... and to educate. ... you have now entered the society, have moved ahead to guarantee your own happiness and to contribute to the welfare of your country. Remember, your duty: work. ... Be good educators of the future generation and train good students. ... Serve your country....” (Sedghi, 86). The speech preceded the January 8th edict of Kafsh-e Hijab, explaining the Shah’s reasoning for forced unveilings - re-defining Iranian womanhood. This redefinition of Iranian womanhood wasn’t to embody a feminist politics, but rather to present an image of Iran’s modernity to the Western world, and to consolidate the Shah’s power through stripping authority away from the Islamic clergy and Iranian men. Hamideh Sedghi, author of “Women and Politics in Iran: Veiling, Unveiling, and Reveiling,” emphasizes this point, stating: “Women’s emancipation was thus a means, not an end,” (86). Female bodily autonomy during this era effectively became a symbolization of the Shah’s overarching rule on the country, no longer was private life safe from the tyranny of Reza Shah. The personal had become political.
In 1979, Mohammad Reza Shah, Reza Shah’s son and successor, was forced into exile, and a religious cleric by the name of Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, known as Ayatollah Khomeini, filled the power vacuum in Iran. Khomeini installed an Islamic State, thereby naming Iran the Islamic Republic of Iran, and named himself Supreme Leader. According to activist and journalist Masih Alinejad, “women’s rights concerns came second to the regime’s insistence on adhering to a radical interpretation of Islam,” and gender-based issues became an afterthought (28). Soon after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, the hijab became the most prominent symbol of the regime.
One of the first issues the new regime tackled was that of women’s rights and compulsory hijab. Ayatollah Khomeini repealed many laws aimed at empowering women, and defunded institutions dedicated to that very cause. On March 8, 1979, International Women’s Day, 100,000 women in Tehran protested laws that had been introduced to parliament in favor of compulsory hijab as well as other restrictions, however they were met with police violence. women who failed to wear the hijab since 1979, or engaged in bad hijabi, or poor veiling, have been subject to physical and verbal harassment by clerics and other religious individuals. Even prior to the official law passed by Parliament in 1983 which made hijab compulsory from a legal standpoint, many men intensified their assault on unveiled women, labeling them as “Western dolls” or “Western prostitutes” (Sedghi 205). This mentality coincides with the regimes’ anti-Western propaganda that fueled that revolution and subsequent regime change. The revolution of 1979 was largely nationalistic, anti-imperialistic and anti-monarchical; it stood against not only the Pahlavi dynasty in power, but their Western allies, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom. Thus, all modernization efforts implemented by the Pahlavi dynasty, including the introduction of Western attire, were overturned. Once again in Iranian history, women’s bodies had become under the purview of the state to propagate the national interest.
Womanhood has continued to be appropriated by modern Iranian rulers to embody their national and international agenda, and to symbolize the strength of their rule. Through both Kafsh-e Hijab and compulsory hijab, Iranian rulers have taken the freedom of choice away from Iranian women, who desperately try to fight for their freedom. Today, Iranian women live in fear of the regime’s morality police who harass and at times abuse women who engage in bad hijabi. No woman is allowed to enter the public space without a hijab and manteau. Just as unveiling forced onto women by Reza Shah acted as a symbol of western modernization, the image that is portrayed of today’s Iran is one of mass repression and a strict adherence to the Regime’s interpretation of Sharia Law, symbolized by compulsory hijab. Since 1936, women have become pawns in the State’s national strategy, and the politicization of the veil has become representative of regime power. While many dissenters try to silence the women’s right movement in Iran, saying that it is “not the right time”, the abolition of compulsory hijab would undoubtedly result in the diminishment of the Islamic Republic’s power because of what it symbolizes. Overthrowing the current regime will only be feasible once women’s rights are considered a paramount pillar in the fight against the Islamic Republic.
Optional Readings:
“The Making of the Modern Iranian Woman: Gender, State Policy, and Popular Culture, 1865–1946” by Camron Michael Amin
“The Wind in My Hair: My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran” by Masih Alinejad
“Women and Politics in Iran: Veiling, Unveiling, and Reveiling” by Hamideh Sedghi
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