A new anti-hijab movement is stirring controversy in Iran. More and more women are posting videos of themselves walking down the street with their hair uncovered on social media. An act of contesting the wearing of the compulsory hijab sometimes leading to arrests and clashes.
These acts of protest began on July 12, National Day of the Hijab and Decency in the country. This day is supposed to celebrate the introduction of the compulsory hijab in the country after the Islamic revolution of 1979.
However, on the eve of the day, nearly 200 Iranian activists published a statement on Iran’s Radio Zamaneh website in which they called the compulsory hijab in Iran the result of “poisonous thinking” that “discriminates against women”. Activists called on Iranians to “fight and resist” the compulsory hijab. The next day, some Iranian social media users started using the hashtags #No2Hijab and #WalkingUnveiled.
Videos and photos shared on Instagram and Twitter show women walking through the streets unveiled, some violently clashing with police. A video of two women walking the streets without hijab has been viewed more than 28,000 times on Twitter.
A long-standing dispute
Following this protest movement, the Iranian vice police carried out arrests and videos of these also began circulating on the Internet and on Iranian social media.
A fight between women also took place on a bus, where a conservatively dressed woman threatened to report to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps another woman who had come forward. Following the incident, Sepideh Rashno, the author and anti-hijab activist who came out on the bus, was arrested and forced to make a confession on television.
On TwitterIran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called the new move a “propaganda” campaign launched by the West.
However, many Iranian women who wear the hijab have taken to social media to defend the women’s movement. They claim that the imposition of the hijab goes against their beliefs.
Anti-hijab movements have been part of the country’s history since the introduction of compulsory hijab more than forty years ago. Between 2017 and 2019, for example, a movement called The Street Girls of Revolution took shape, in which women stood silently in a crowd with their hijabs tied to a stick.