There is an incident every few years that makes countless people unconnected among themselves rally for a cause.
Sometimes, it’s a woman gangraped in a moving bus in Delhi. Sometimes, it’s a Black American killed by a police officer. In the latest case, it’s the death of a 22-year-old woman in Iran.
Mahsa Amini was detained by Iran’s ‘morality police’ for violating the country’s dress code. Women are required by law in Iran to wear a hijab —a head covering— among other requirements, such as to wear loose-fitting clothes and not wear form-fitting or revealing clothing. She was allegedly beaten in the morality police’s custody. She died later in a hospital.
In a country where women are detained for showing their hair even partially, the sight of hundreds of women waving their hijab in the air and burning them and cutting their bare hair in public would be unimaginable. Yet such acts of defiance have been regular across Iran for weeks since Amini’s death.
The protesters —overwhelmingly women— are not merely calling out police brutality or expressing anger against Amini’s custodial death. They are also challenging the Iranian state and its inability to fulfil its own promises and people’s aspirations.
While the immediate trigger for the nationwide protests was Amini’s death, the protests are the latest in the long time of protests and combine several factors ranging from disgruntlement over economic difficulties to anger against the state apparatus that could not keep up with its own promises.
Hijab: From symbol of defiance to state imposition
The ongoing protests in Iran against mandatory wearing of hijab are likely to give an impression that women overwhelmingly oppose hijab in the country. It would also appear that hijab is a symbol of a state rooted in Islamic orthodoxy. While this would be partially true, it is far from truth. The truth is much more nuanced.
Hijab became mandatory in Iran after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 which brought Islamic clergy to power after overthrowing the liberal, pro-West monarchy.
