Tehran,
\nA spate of unprecedented protests against Iran\u2019s mandatory headscarves for women have been tiny in number, but have still reignited a debate that has preoccupied the Islamic republic since its founding.<\/p>\n
Walking through central Tehran with a loose scarf tossed lightly over her head, Samar, a dentist, is typical of the relaxed approach to headgear many Iranian women have adopted since the 1990s.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone should be able to decide for themselves what to wear. I don\u2019t think a few loose hairs can provoke anyone to anything,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She was referring to the conservative claim that men are unable to stop themselves assaulting women if they can see their hair.<\/p>\n
A typical sign \u2014 at a hammam in Kashan, south of Tehran\u2014compares the veil to a pearl\u2019s oyster: \u201cThe oyster keeps the pearl safe from the hazards.\u201d Many agree.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn our country, men are raised with the idea that women must be seen with a headscarf. I will never remove my headscarf in my country for as long as I live,\u201d said Hanieh, a journalist, wearing a much tighter scarf around her head.<\/p>\n
The issue has returned to the fore in recent weeks after several women took the unprecedented step of protesting in public without their headscarves. Police say 29 people have been arrested.<\/p>\n
Iran is the only country in the world to impose a mandatory headscarf on both Muslim and non-Muslim women as part of its ill-defined \u201chijab\u201d rules that require modest clothing, including a ban on shorts for men.<\/p>\n
In practice the rules have been steadily eroding for years.<\/p>\n
Particularly in wealthier areas, the all-body black \u201cchador\u201d robes have been increasingly replaced by jeans, make-up and loose, colourful scarves which many let drop around their shoulders entirely.<\/p>\n
To see how much Iranian society has evolved, one need only listen to the president, Hassan Rouhani.<\/p>\n
He once boasted of personally imposing the compulsory headscarf on women in the years after the 1979 revolution, starting with military centres.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe women employees… started moaning and making uproar but I stood firm,\u201d he wrote in his memoirs.<\/p>\n
But since he became president in 2013, the morality police that enforce clothing rules have largely disappeared from the streets.<\/p>\n
And just days after police announced the 29 arrests, his administration released a report showing that half of Tehranis opposed enforced hijab.<\/p>\n
The timing of the release, four years after the study was conducted, was seen as a shot against Rouhani\u2019s conservative critics.<\/p>\n
\u201cRouhani has evolved a lot,\u201d said Hamid Reza Jalaipour, a sociology professor at the University of Tehran.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a way, everyone has changed and we must forget the positions and statements of 20 or 30 years ago,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The report said a substantial number 40 percent still support mandatory hijab but that figure has dropped from 55.5 percent in 2006.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a society where at least 40 to 50 percent believe hijab is a personal and optional matter, it is very difficult to demand enforcement,\u201d it concluded.<\/p>\n
That is not a point that conservative clerics and officials are likely to concede easily.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei said the arrested protesters had either been duped, drugged or were working for foreign enemies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tehran, A spate of unprecedented protests against Iran\u2019s mandatory headscarves for women have been tiny in number, but have still reignited a debate that has preoccupied the Islamic republic since its founding. Walking through central Tehran with a loose scarf tossed lightly over her head, Samar, a dentist, is typical of the relaxed approach to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21283,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21284,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21282\/revisions\/21284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}