Iranian women defy the bullets to let their hair flow free

As Iran’s regime faces its biggest protests in recent history, a new normal is sweeping across the country’s urban centres. Teenage girls and older women are increasingly taking to the streets without their headscarf, or hijab, bravely defying the mandatory requirement to cover their heads in public.

The death of Mahsa Amini, who was allegedly beaten in police custody for the inappropriate wearing of her headscarf, has prompted the biggest wave of dissent against strict religious dress codes since the turbulent early years of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Women and girls say they are determined to confront a ruling theocracy that once seemed unbreakable. The protests continued this weekend in city centres and university campuses more than 40 days after Amini’s death and even as the regime used bullets, tear gas and arrests to quell them.

In the city of Karaj, west of Tehran, Farnaz, a 15-year-old high school student, glares defiantly at the riot police with a confidence beyond her years as she strolls around the streets, her long dark hair flowing freely.

“The morality police tried to arrest me on a number of occasions but I am a fast runner and also am familiar with the different back streets, so every time I was approached by the guards I ran away quickly and was able to survive,” she said.

One of those women now daring to walk the streets uncovered, Farnaz demonstrates courage in a country that has had no qualms about murdering civilians on the street. Thousands of young girls and women with an average age of 17 have already been imprisoned for demonstrating against the regime since early September, according to a leaked government report obtained by News Wire.

“Even in the recent days of protests, I have confronted the riot police, walked up to them, gazed into their eyes without speaking to them, and they didn’t take any action on me,” Farnaz says, her voice emboldened with a sense of hope and purpose that her defiance is worth the risk.

She says that the Islamic regime, which deposed the Shah in 1979, should now relax the headscarf rules, first introduced four years later and enforced zealously by the morality police ever since.

The latest wave of public anger and frustration has resulted in “death to the dictator” — the cry which led to the fall of the shah — being regularly directed against the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Walking around the more affluent neighbourhoods of her home city, Farnaz said she was recently cheered for not covering her hair and greeted with other slogans now synonymous with the protests including “woman, life, freedom”.

In the less affluent neighbourhoods, however, she encountered opposition and resistance to change, as people sought to remind her that she lives in a Muslim country.

The hijab has been politicised since the reformist ruler Reza Shah Pahlavi, who reigned from 1925-41, banned women from wearing chador, the Islamic whole-body veils, and headscarves. His son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, continued the modernising policy, although he relaxed the ban on hijabs. Women were able to socialise unchaperoned outside their homes, go to university, drink alcohol in clubs and bars and vote in national elections.

After the Islamic revolution some of those freedoms remained but alcohol was prohibited and Islamic dress codes made mandatory. Violent crackdowns by the security regime on political dissenters and protesters also became the norm.

Amini,who was of Kurdish origins, was arrested on September 13 in Tehran by the morality police for not wearing her hijab properly, part of a moral crackdown by the new leadership of President Raisi. She fell into a coma and died three days later, aged 22.

Last Wednesday police used bullets and tear gas to disperse the large crowds who marched to her grave, on the 40th day since her death, an important milestone of mourning in Shia Islam.

Video showed security forces firing birdshot at women as they gathered in Amini’s home town of Saqez, in the Kurdish-majority west of the country.

The commander of the Revolutionary Guards, the military guardians of the regime, warned protesters that Saturday would be their last day of taking to the streets. However, violent confrontations continued on Sunday at universities across the country. Video posted by Iran Human Rights showed Iran’s Basij forces, a paramilitary branch of the guards, opening fire on students at close range.

Iran Human Rights, which is based in Norway, said that at least 253 protesters have been killed by Iran’s security forces in the past six weeks, 34 of them children. The number of arrests has topped 14,000.

Raisi’s government announced today that it will hold public trials for 1,000 people in Tehran over “subversive actions”, including assaulting security guards and setting fire to public property. Some have been accused of “corruption on earth” and “war against God”, offences that carry the death penalty.

Such repression has not deterred Mojgan, a university lecturer in Tehran, from joining the new wave of women demonstrating.

 “I started with driving unveiled, and now, whenever I go on a walk with my husband, I remove my headscarf,” the 41-year-old said, such actions were unheard of just weeks ago as morality police arrested anyone breaking the rigid Islamic rules.

“I am not concerned about possible encounters with security forces, because now I have the audacity to stand up to them and defend my way of dressing,” she added. Growing numbers of men are also openly supporting their wives, mothers, daughters and sisters.

“I think the morality police will no longer have the backbone to take action against women over not complying with the hijab mandate because the majority of the people now support each other and will not be silent in the face of the police brutality,” Mojgan said.

Such acts of dissent are not only limited to the Kurdish west and the capital. In the northern city of Rasht, on the Caspian Sea coast, Kiana, a 19-year-old engineering student, also said that she had started to remove her headscarf in public. However, she admitted that she remained fearful of the security forces who patrol the streets, especially those in plain clothes.

“You cannot figure out who they are and when they will be stalking and harassing you,” she said. “My parents are concerned about threats I may face as a result of removing my hijab and walking unveiled, so they don’t encourage me, but other women on the streets are showing solidarity.”

Kourosh Ziabari, a journalist, said that in spite of attempts to lock down the country’s internet and social media, images were flooding online platforms showing women walking without headscarves in public places from shopping centres and restaurants to schools and universities.

Before the headscarf protests began, Iran was already ravaged by the effects of the pandemic and western sanctions, creating ripples of discontent. Tehran officials have repeated unsupported claims that foreign enemies have fomented the recent unrest.

The new wave of protests from women and girls has sent a message that the government can no longer ignore, Ziabari said.

“The government has treated women’s personal choices as an existential matter essential to its survival, and is now finding itself in a critical stalemate because more women, including a large population of conservative, religious-minded women, are jaded with these restrictions.

“They are calling on the government to stop politicising their way of dressing and using religion to suffocate the public manifestation of their identity.”