Preventing women from entering stadiums: Call of the guardians of the jurist in Raisi era

The focus has returned to women in Iran and preventing them from exercising their rights and limiting their opportunities to express their views in the era of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, especially since this is the first time since Raisi assumed the presidency of Iran in August 2021 in which a religious man came out and called on the regime to prevent women from entering stadiums. If this order is implemented, it will have a significant impact on the reality of Iranian women, who have always advocated for their full rights.

Iranian calls

This comes in the context of a letter addressed to the Iranian president on January 26 by the head of the Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom, Valiollah Lavani, in which he called on the ruling regime to take a decision by the Ministry of Youth and Sports to ban women from entering stadiums, considering that this matter contradicts the teachings of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the traditional clerics and the religious seminary, saying, “Women’s entry into stadiums is not a priority for women in society, as it fundamentally contradicts Iranian Islamic values and is in line with the Western view of women.”

It is worth noting that Lavani’s call came during a soccer match between the Iranian and Iraqi teams on January 27, 2021, with the participation of ten thousand spectators, including about 2,000 women, which prompted FIFA at the time to respond to those calls, emphasizing the importance of women attending the stadiums and calling for a decision from the ruling authorities to stipulate the right of women to enter the stadiums.

Repression of Iranian women

It should be noted that Lavani’s call comes within the framework of suppressing the civil liberties of Iranian women, who have not stopped giving them the right to work, education and all the basic rights that allow them to engage in all activities. Women went out in demonstrations and rallies and called for a rejection of what is happening against them inside Iran.

The foregoing indicates that there is a new trend in Iran by the clergy based on the return of women to the home and the cessation of exercising their rights, claiming that this contradicts the teachings of Vilayat-e Faqih and imitates Western society, which raises questions about the extent of the regime’s response to these calls and whether Iranian women will witness more pressures and restrictions on them during the coming period.

To answer these questions, Osama al-Hatimi, a journalist specializing in Iranian affairs, explained that despite the recent demands made by some Iranian clerics affiliated with the Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom, who are described as strict, not to allow women to attend soccer matches, they were not accepted by the men of the Iranian regime, as the calls came before the match between the teams of Iran and Iraq in the World Cup qualifiers, which was attended by a number of women.

Hatimi pointed out in a special statement to the Reference that the Iranian regime has managed for nearly the past four decades to continue the process of banning women, except in special cases, under the pretext of protecting them from the masculine atmosphere and preventing them from seeing men wearing little clothes, but this did not prevent the escalation of tension between the women’s sectors from time to time, while international and human rights organizations responded to the efforts of Iranian women to jump over this ban, which prompted the FIFA leadership to exert forms of pressure on the Iranian regime and threaten to stop Iranian soccer and prevent it from qualifying for the World Cup.

Hatimi added that the incident of the Iranian woman Sahar Khodayari, who set herself on fire two years ago after feeling that she would be sentenced to months in prison as a punishment for disguising as a man and trying to participate in a match, came as a powerful pressure card that combined with other cards, such as FIFA pressures and the continuation of women’s protests against the Iranian regime, obligating the regime to allow women to participate in soccer matches. Thus, the clerics returned to resume their demand for the regime to reverse the decision allowing women to attend matches, especially since the Raisi regime is affiliated with the conservatives.