Iran’s morality police forcing women to wear headscarves
As a result of nationwide protests over the death of a 22-year-old woman in their custody, Iran’s morality police have resumed patrolling the streets to force women to wear Islamic headscarves.
The authorities struggled to contain mass protests sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death in September. Earlier this year, protests largely died down following a brutal crackdown in which over 500 protesters were killed and nearly 20,000 arrested.
In spite of the fact that morality police were rarely seen patrolling the streets throughout the crisis, authorities insisted that the rules had not changed. Iran’s clerics regard hijab as a cornerstone of the Islamic revolution that brought them to power more than four decades ago.
According to a police spokesman, morality police will resume notifying and detaining women not wearing a hijab in public. Marked vans were seen patrolling the streets of Tehran by members of the morality police.
Last fall, the hijab battle became a powerful rallying cry, with women leading the way. It has not taken long for Iran’s clerical rulers, whom most young protesters accuse of being corrupt, repressive, and out of touch, to come under attack, with calls to overthrow them. The Iranian government blamed the protests on a foreign conspiracy without providing any evidence.
The protests were attended by several Iranian celebrities, including directors and actors from the country’s celebrated film industry. There have been several incidents of Iranian actresses being detained after they appeared in public without the hijab or expressed support for the protests.