Iran’s state news agency stated that Iranian women took part in a nationwide anti-hijab campaign on Tuesday, disobeying the Islamic Republic’s strict hijab laws by sharing films of themselves in public wearing no veil. They demonstrated on July 12, which Iran recognises as the “National Day of Hijab and Chastity,” and which is promoted for a week by official organisations and agencies.
Recent attempts by the nation’s security services to severely enforce the dress code have prompted demands from women to reject it.
Iranian women’s activist groups took off their hijabs in public on Tuesday and posted these videos online. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has largely adhered to the Islamic hijab rule. The wearing of a head covering in public is required for women and girls over the age of nine by law. However, depending on the political history of the current president, its severity fluctuates from one administration to the next.
President Ebrahim Raisi, a cleric backed by the nation’s ultra-conservative religious elite, claims that the current backlash against the hijab law is “an organised promotion of moral degeneration in Islamic culture.” The government designated July 12 as “Hijab and Chastity Day,” which means that events will be held to support laws requiring women to wear the hijab. As Iranian women have been removing their headscarves to protest the day, males have been demonstrating their solidarity.
In the operation, the so-called “morality police” allegedly detained women while making claims that certain officials had requested that employees of banks, government agencies, and public transit companies ignore so-called “bad-hijab” women. At various Iranian cities, “morality police” have begun checking if women are covering their heads in hospitals and educational establishments.
For failing to wear hijabs during a skateboarding competition in Shiraz, a city in southern Iran, Iranian authorities recently jailed a number of young girls and others.
Beginning in January 2022, there was a controversy over school uniforms in the Indian state of Karnataka when several Muslim junior college students who wished to wear the hijab to class were sent away on the grounds that it was against the college’s dress code. As the conflict extended to more schools and institutions in the state over the ensuing weeks, groups of Hindu students staged counter-protests by calling for the wearing of saffron scarves.
The Karnataka government issued an order on February 5 declaring that uniforms must be worn compulsorily when policies exist and that the wearing of the hijab is not an exception.
