Benoit Faucan and Michael Amon
WSJ, Sept. 28, 2022
“Growing up in Iran, it’s impossible to know someone, a young woman who has not been arrested because of allegedly wearing her hijab improperly.”
The protests that have erupted across Iran in the past two weeks are rooted in anger at the country’s morality police, an unpopular vestige of the 1979 revolution that represents a weak point for the government, according to protesters and human-rights advocates.
The death of Mahsa Amini, 22, on Sept. 16, while in the custody of the morality police has touched a nerve among many Iranian families, who have had their own humiliating experiences with officers tasked with enforcing the country’s strict Islamic codes for clothing and behavior. Among those protesting are conservative women and men, joining throngs of young secular people who say the enforcement of rules around hijab, or headscarves, for women is often capricious.
Iran requires women to dress modestly, to wear no heavy makeup and, above all, to don a hijab, or headscarf. They are forbidden from riding bicycles and motorcycles, among other acts. Such rules are often customary though not mandatory in many Muslim countries.
Advocates of the rules have called them Iran’s “last stand” on strict Islamic morality, with polls showing that a growing majority of the country is secular and opposed to the mandatory hijab.
Large swaths of the country are fervent adherents to a conservative strain of Shiite Islam, and some men independently enforce the hijab laws on the streets. Even clerics seen as moderates support the hijab laws. … Source