NY Review of Books, March 8, 2021
Unveiling Iran
by Roya Hakakian
From the start, the Islamic Revolution used the compulsory hijab to
cement its rule by subordinating women. A wave of civil disobedience is
challenging all that.
On December 27, 2017, a thirty-two-year-old woman climbed atop a utility
box on a busy Tehran block called the Revolution Street. People usually
do not clamber on street furniture in Tehran, but this particular sight
was odder still for its being a woman with a stick in her hand.
Perfectly focused on her task, once she found her balance, she loosened
the knot of her white headscarf and removed it—exposing her dark hair
that fell to her waist. Tying the scarf to one end of the stick, she
began, with slow, rhythmic movements, to wave her makeshift flag.
Traffic slowed. Passersby stopped to watch. For those few minutes, the
flag-waving woman had fixed people’s attention. If she felt fear, it was
not visible. At that moment, she became a nexus that connected Iran’s
bygone veilless time to its current era of prohibition. She was not the
first or only woman to stage a public protest against gender inequity,
but this particular rebellion—removal of the mandatory headscarf—broke a
taboo that had ruled for nearly forty years. It was as if, in all the
previous shows of dissent, women had tip-toed around that ultimate
symbol of their subjugation. This was a revolutionary act, one the
regime would not tolerate even on the Revolution Street, where all past
rebellions in Tehran had begun.
Vida Movahed was arrested and soon put on trial. By then, everyone had
learned her name. She received a two-year prison sentence, the first
nine months in solitary confinement. The first time Movahed’s image
flickered on my computer screen, a wave of mingled fear and joy washed
over me. Here was another generation pursuing the same dream mine had
had. When I had first arrived in the US, in 1985, I thought that the
longing one experienced in exile had to do with being displaced. But no
longer. Now I knew it had to do with being wronged and wishing to see
that wrong—which drove me from my homeland—righted. I can never forget
the searing anger I felt as a teenager who had to walk the blistering
streets of Tehran in August in mandatory Islamic uniform. As exiles, we
must cherish what little vindication comes our way—if only by finding in
the fleeting image of a veil-less woman a trace of our younger selves,
stealing back our freedom.
On January 16, 1979, Iran’s last royal ruler, Shah Mohammad Reza
Pahlavi, left the country, and just over two weeks later, his nemesis,
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, returned from a fifteen-year exile,
signaling the end of two and a half millennia of monarchy. The
post-revolutionary period presented many pressing challenges to the
Ayatollah: the imperative of establishing a new civilian government and
ending martial law, while ensuring national security, and the need to
reopen schools and the economy after months of nationwide strikes and
shutdowns. But there was another priority for Khomeini. Two weeks after
the revolution, he nullified the Family Protection Act, restoring the
unilateral authority of men over their wives and children. On March 3,
he barred women from serving as judges. Three days later, he announced
that all women and girls over the age of nine, regardless of religious
affiliation, had to abide by the Islamic dress code.
Revolutionary fever ran high in those days, and most people, regardless
of their political leanings, revered the Ayatollah. Such was his
standing that in a referendum that April, close to 98 percent of voters
checked the “yes” box next to “Islamic Republic” as their preferred form
of government. There was little sympathy for those seen as sympathizers
with the former regime—as the Ayatollah’s death squads, going door to
door, were soon targeting any political opponent.
The space for dissent was shrinking, but it had not yet disappeared. On
March 8, International Women’s Day, thousands of women took to the
streets to protest the restitution of the mandatory hijab. “We did not
rise up [against the Shah] to go backward,” they chanted. The
participation of two particular groups contributed to making this
demonstration historic. The first comprised women who had always worn
the veil but said they did not wish to impose their choice on others and
wanted women to have the right to choose how they dressed. The second
involved primarily French and American feminists, some of whom, like
Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, demonstrated in front of the Iranian
embassy in Washington, D.C., while others, like Kate Millet, traveled to
Tehran itself with the Committee for International Women’s Rights. They
saw the Ayatollah as a threat to women’s rights worldwide and were
determined to show solidarity with their Iranian sisters.
The mood of defiance was best captured by Millett, who looked straight
into the cameras and called the Ayatollah “a male chauvinist.” It was
the last time anyone inside the country spoke so boldly against him
without suffering retribution. It also marked the end of an era in which
Iranian women could call on the overt support of Western feminists in a
struggle deemed universal. After that moment, such universalist claims
fell out of favor among Western feminists, who came under fire in
academic and activist circles for imposing their values on anticolonial
movements; instead, a cultural relativism came into vogue, one that
tended to view the veil as an authentic exercise of native traditions,
rather than as a symbol of oppression and inequality.
That night, in our living-room in Tehran, I remember watching the
evening news and feeling confused. The women protesting looked like
women I knew, yet the official broadcaster’s anchor called them
“corrupt,” even “prostitutes.” Nonetheless, the protest forced the
officials to backtrack for a time, claiming that the Ayatollah had
merely proposed what he thought was best for women in calling for a
restoration of the veil. But this much had become clear: while the
Ayatollah might rail against the Great Satan, the United States, and its
ally, Israel, and puppet rulers, the Pahlavis, he was willing to act
against an unnamed enemy: free and independent women. To close observers
of his political rise, he was simply revealing what had always been his
agenda.
Khomeini’s earliest objections to the Pahlavi dynasty centered on the
toxic effects of Westernization, whose chief manifestation was in the
unveiled presence of women in public. Reza Shah, the first Pahlavi king,
had banned women’s Islamic dress code, the headscarf and the veil, in
1936. His son advanced his father’s policy with other reforms, which,
among others, gave women the right to vote. In a 1963 letter, Khomeini
protested to the king: “The good of the nation and the peace of all
hearts rests in the close adherence of the monarchy to the mandates of
Islam, which prohibits the participation of women in the political
process.” In a sermon that same year, he warned of the hazards of
women’s participation in the workplace: “Women will paralyze
productivity in any office they enter. Whatever entity women enter,
mayhem will enter along with them.”
This preaching roused social conservatives and the less educated, who
were among his earliest disciples, but left secular Iranians and the
educated middle class unmoved. Then, in 1964, a new law prompted a fresh
intervention by Khomeini, one that changed the course of his career and
the nation’s history. That year saw passage of a bill that extended
diplomatic immunity to all American military personnel living and
working in Iran. However, the Ayatollah, fully intent on inflaming
public sentiments, unleashed a torrent of venom in which he claimed that
immunity had been granted to any American in the country:
Our honor has been trampled underfoot…. The dignity of the Iranian army
has been trampled underfoot!…. If someone runs over a dog belonging to
an American, he will be prosecuted. Even if the Shah himself were to run
over a dog belonging to an American, he would be prosecuted. But if an
American cook runs over the Shah, or the clergy of Iran…no one will have
the right to object. Why?
This time, the Ayatollah’s political advisers realized that his speech
presented an opportunity to broaden his base, by appealing to the
left-leaning elite that saw American imperialism as the root of all
evil. One such adviser, a young cleric named Ali Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani (who would later become a two-term president), recommended
that the Ayatollah temper his tone about women’s rights, to maximize
that appeal.
Khomeini’s capitulation speech resulted in his being sent into exile,
but it also turned him into a household name. He cast himself in the
image of a selfless nationalist, an Iranian Mahatma Gandhi, fighting the
foreign powers who were plundering the motherland. Through the 1970s,
Khomeini escalated his anti-American rhetoric, speaking of Pahlavis as
“American puppets.” He even cultivated Iranian socialists by Islamizing
Marxist terms like “proletariat,” “bourgeoisie,” and “classless
society,” which in turn gave those concepts a wider currency. It was as
if Khomeini had tried to start a fire by using patriarchy as kindling,
only to realize that anti-imperialism made far better fuel.
After the historic March 8, 1979, demonstrations, the authorities
realized that the path to repealing the right of women to choose their
own attire could not be a straight one. Instead, they adopted a series
of half-measures that would ultimately lead to the same goal. If they
could not impose the hijab, they could order greater sex segregation—in
the name of giving women the freedom to go without the hijab in
female-only company. Soon, hair salons, sporting events, public pools,
election sites, beaches, and private parties were all sex-segregated.
Schools were also segregated, and since only women could teach in
all-girl schools, and since not enough women had the training to teach
advanced science and math, some all-girl schools did without those
classes. As a result, girls’ education was seriously degraded, which in
turn sharply reduced the number of women entering the fields of science
and math in universities.
In championing all things Iranian, the authorities recast the hijab as
just another Iranian national tradition, like the Indian sari or the
Japanese kimono. And those who did not embrace the hijab risked being
seen as agents of “Westoxification,” the regime term for the corruption
of the authentic Iranian culture by malign Western influences. In
particular, women who refused to wear the hijab were suspected of
harboring closet royalist sympathies for the deposed Westernizing king.
No one who wanted to stay alive, let alone keep their job, in Iran in
1980 would risk that—so people went along. In an interview, the leading
woman novelist Simin Daneshvar said, “When we can rebuild this ruin of a
country, restart its economy, boost its agriculture, and establish the
rule of justice and liberty…then we can tend to minor matters at leisure
and think over the women’s appearance and dress code.”
Even the secular left assented, arguing that debate about the hijab
should not get in the way of first “completing the revolution to its
successful end.” Kar, the weekly paper of the most popular
Marxist-Leninist group, went so far as to promote the hijab among its
female cadres, trying to retrofit the Islamic dress code to a Marxist
worldview: “It is precisely to instill self-control in the individual
and to increase labor productivity that Islam recommends the hijab.”
The largest Islamic revolutionary organization in Iran, the People’s
Mujahedin—shortly to be outlawed by the Ayatollah and become his most
formidable opposition—designed a new Islamic uniform for women. It
included a black veil, the chador, that is open at the front, requiring
women to hold its corners in their hand to keep it closed (unlike the
burqa or the abaya, which are worn like dresses and are put on over the
head). This design thus hampered women’s freedom of movement. The
overall new uniform—a long, loose coat-like garment, a scarf worn down
to the edge of the brows, a pair of pants, and close-toed shoes—covered
all but the hands. Later dubbed the manteau, it became the standard
outfit for female office workers and schoolgirls—I wore it myself all
through high school. Soon, it became mandatory dress for any woman
outside the home.
By 1981, with the war between Iran and Iraq already underway, the veil
had transcended its status as a mere item of clothing. It was the emblem
of anti-imperialism, the hallmark of national unity, an expression of
cultural identity, the most effective form of resistance against foreign
influence, the surest way to honor the martyrs, the safest armor to ward
off toxic influences, and the greatest proof of loyalty to the Supreme
Leader and the revolution.
When the dress code was first enforced, the Ayatollah was beginning the
second year of his rule—at the head of a new, postrevolutionary
government run by leaders who thought it their divine mission to reshape
the world. By the end of that decade, the war was over, the Ayatollah
was dead, and the regime was governed no longer by revolutionary true
believers, but by pragmatists who were mostly looking out for their own
interests. Iran still had no diplomatic contact with the US, since all
relations had ended with the seizure of the US embassy in 1979. Then, in
1997, another blow came: the European Union cut relations with Iran,
too, after the verdict of a German court implicating Iran in the
assassination of four Kurdish dissidents in Berlin. To quell internal
dissent and reestablish economically vital ties with Europe, the regime
needed to show a new image to the world—and so, in June 1997, a smiling
clergyman named Mohammad Khatami rose to power on the promise of
initiating a “dialogue among civilizations,” and heralding a “reform era.”
The journalists from around the world who flocked to this new Iran
reported two fundamental changes: first, the popular hatred for America
had subsided; second, the “hijab police” were less visible. With
diminishing enforcement, the hem of the manteau was rising, its form was
becoming more fitting, its look perfectly colorful and even fashionable.
This new manteau would having been unthinkable when in the 1980s, when I
was a teen, when the headscarf and the manteau could only be gray,
black, dark blue, or brown, and its fabric had to be thick and plain. By
1984, the year that I finally left Iran, not a week went by when I was
not stopped or warned to bring my scarf forward to the edge of my
eyebrows. By 1997, the scarf was barely staying on the women’s heads,
and often slipped off entirely. While these were important acts of
rebellion, still like all other rebellions, they needed a leader to
become a movement.
What is most surprising about Masih Alinejad is less that a diminutive
woman with an unruly head of hair could become the opposition figure
most feared by the regime than that she is herself a genuine product of
the postrevolutionary era and its ideology. Born in 1976, in a small
village in north of Iran, she was raised in a poor, very conservative
family. Her brothers were decorated veterans of the Iran–Iraq War, her
father a member of the Basij, the regime’s most reliable paramilitary
force. If Masih did not make her hijab perfect, it was not the police
she feared. It was her father.
But her real trouble began with love. In 1996, she met a boy and
married, and the young couple moved to Tehran, so that he could pursue
his literary ambitions. He soon found his way into the city’s literary
circles, but his wife, with her provincial accent and manners, was an
embarrassment. Within a year, he divorced her.
Masih’s family, feeling disgraced, pleaded with her to return home. But
she refused. She had decided to stay, learn to drive, find a job, and
make a life. Her career in journalism began with an unpaid internship at
a newspaper, Majles. By the year’s end, her byline was appearing on the
front page. She’d surprised her editors, and herself, by her ability to
charm her subjects into confiding in her—and here her rural accent had
proved an asset, setting her apart from her colleagues and spurring
affection from hardened politicians. Soon she was a top domestic
correspondent, respected by colleagues, a favorite of readers. But she
was also outspoken—which is why her editors, under pressure from the
Ministry of Intelligence, barred her from covering the 2009 presidential
elections. She was the most effective and beloved journalist in the
country, but suddenly she was out of a job.
Disaffected, she got a visa to leave the country and traveled to
England. Soon, she shed her scarf and wore a hat instead. Then,
strolling down a London street one day in 2014, she took the hat off,
too. The breeze blew through her hair, and she felt overjoyed. A few
days later, on May 3, she uploaded a photo of her scarf-less self onto a
public Facebook page, dubbing the post “My Stealthy Freedom.” In truth,
she missed home and wanted to reconnect with her followers. So she
invited other Iranian women to share images of their moments of stealthy
freedom, expecting the page to get just a few photos. Instead, hundreds
of images of women without their hijab poured in from across the
country, and soon from supporters around the world.
I confess that when I first saw the My Stealthy Freedom Facebook page a
few years ago, I dismissed it as another social media fad. I did not see
its potential, indeed its revolutionary effect: the more women dared to
participate, the more submitted their own photos. Then, three years ago,
Vida Movahed, perhaps tired of acting stealthily, made her move.
Following her bold public act, dozens of other women followed suit—a new
campaign of protest was born, taking the Stealthy Freedom movement to a
new level, with the hashtag #GirlsofRevolutionStreet.
Masih Alinejad’s social media accounts now boast more than five million
followers, more than those of Iran’s president and Supreme Leader
combined. She receives hundreds of video submissions weekly. Her haters
send threats, but most followers are her fans. For the first time in
Iran’s modern history, there is an independent voice inviting people not
to follow a leader, but to lead themselves, to be the agents of the
change they wish to see.
I have often wondered how Alinejad has been able to achieve what so many
other feminists have not: the mass mobilization of Iranian women in
revolt against Iran’s official patriarchy. The answer, in part, is that
her metamorphosis from a veil-wearing woman to one who cast it off had
been so public. So many women had watched her journey in its every
detail that in the end, it was as if she had left an instruction manual
for “auto-unveiling.” And part of the answer, too, is that it no longer
made such a difference that a regime critic was isolated in exile;
through social media, she was a vivid presence among her Iranian public.
A small act of civil disobedience burgeoned into widespread resistance,
organized and led by women themselves. The campaign invited women to use
white headscarves, signifying their peaceful act, on Wednesdays and,
those who could, drape the scarf on their shoulders or around their
necks. Such was the way the hashtag #WhiteWednesdays came into being.
Another hashtag, #MyCameraIsMyWeapon, has given women the power to out
their harassers for the world to see.
The authorities look away for the most part, hoping to avoid bringing
more attention to the campaign and fueling the movement that has
attracted women young and old—and men, too. There have been more arrests
and convictions for women going unveiled. Six of the leading
#WhiteWednesdays campaigners are currently in prison, among them Saba
Kordafshari, who received a twenty-four-year sentence—ostensibly for
“walking unveiled,” but really because she refused to denounce Masih
Alinejad or the campaign. But few things show the authorities’ relative
impotence in the face of the campaign more than the triangular caps they
have had to install on top of utility boxes in an attempt to prevent
more Vida Movahed–type moments.
There are still those who say the mandatory hijab is a minor issue, but
the women forced to live with it see it as a daily reminder of the
inequality they no longer wish to tolerate. More prominent voices within
Iran, including some female members of the parliament, have come forward
to acknowledge not only the reality of gender discrimination but also
the way it is reinforced by the hijab as its most blatant symbol. In
February 2018, the office of the President Hassan Rouhani finally
released a four-year-old public opinion survey showing that at least
half the country now believes that the government should not require or
regulate the hijab.
In 2019, just before Covid-19 drove everyone inside their homes and put
public protests on hold, the streets surrounding the former US embassy
in Tehran were empty of the usual chanting crowds. At several schools
and universities where US flags had customarily been laid on the ground
at entrances, inviting students to step and wipe their feet on them, now
the young people walked around the flags or moved them aside altogether.
As for the slogans chanted at demonstrations recently, one of the most
popular has been “Our enemy’s right here. They lie when they say it’s
America.” Because controlling women has become both difficult and
politically costly, the regime has taken a pernicious new step to
transfer those costs to the citizens themselves. Since late 2020, women
who are caught on traffic cameras driving without their headscarves will
receive hefty fines and have their vehicles impounded, making their act
of disobedience economically unaffordable. The measure also has the
effect of pressing families to do the work of the hijab police by
ensuring that female family members do not drive unveiled.
If the regime had been able to strike a compromise with women on the
hijab when the protests first began, perhaps it would have brought the
movement to a premature end. But by declaring the hijab an impassable
redline, it has forced the women to recognize something they did not
realize at the outset of their disobedience: they will never be rid of
the hijab until they are rid of the regime.
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