The protest movement in Iran is fighting against the headscarf. In doing so, they defend themselves against all forms of oppression and therefore find broad support among the population.
The headscarf has become a symbol of a movement in Iran that demands freedom and self-determination for all.
Is the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran also collapsing? This question is often asked these days. And in fact: Never in the last 45 years has this regime been under so much pressure from both a foreign and domestic policy perspective. The failure to prevent the fall of the Syrian dictator has once again revealed the country's weakness in foreign policy.
This had already become apparent when there were no more resources available to rush to the aid of Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israel. Also, the Russian retaliation in October after Iran attacked Israel weakened the regime far more than was admitted.
But above all there is the pressure exerted by Iranian civil society. Since the protests that occurred in autumn 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the so-called moral police, resistance on the streets has died down. However, civil disobedience has by no means decreased. You always see new acts of subversion. The last time was ten days ago with Parastu Ahmadi's singing performance in an old caravanserai.
Ahmadi broke two taboos of the Islamic Republic. She didn't wear a headscarf and instead wore an evening dress – which goes against the strict clothing rules. And she sang in public. This has been forbidden to women since the 1978 revolution. Not only the hair, but also the voice of the woman is considered so seductive by the ruling Islamists that it must remain hidden and unheard. Otherwise there is a risk of fitna and social upheaval because men can no longer control themselves.
Ahmadi is celebrated on social networks for her “lioness-like” courage in defying these taboos. You won't let yourself be taken away from your right to be heard and seen, says Ahmadi at the beginning of the video.
Broad protest movement
Freeing oneself from invisibility and inaudibility is the central motif of the uprising that became known as “Woman, Life, Freedom”. We know from the Iranian hacker group Black Reward that the regime sees the challenge posed by this movement as the largest in its existence. Because it cuts across society.
This makes it significantly different from the many other large protests of the past. Either this came only from the students (1999) or only from the part of the population that was still elected (2009, “Where is my vote?”) or from the poorer parts of the population (2017 and 2018/19).
However, everyone can join in on this protest, which is feminist precisely because it demands self-determination for all demands that are unheard and unseen: the linguistic minorities, which make up 50 percent of the population and are not allowed to learn their native language in school; Likewise the religious minority of Sunnis, who probably make up up to 15 percent but are considered virtually non-existent; further the LGBTQI who are not allowed to live out their sexual orientation; the Afro-Iranians who are written out of Iranian history – and therefore made invisible. And so on and so forth. If their right to exist is not immediately denied – like the Baha'is – they are at least second-class citizens. This applies to women, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and others.
That's why the term “feminism” today evokes a completely new association among people in Iran: Feminism used to be seen as a Western import, and even women's rights activists didn't want to have anything to do with it. Today things are different because feminism is understood as a fight for self-determination. That's why resistance to the headscarf is not just about the headscarf or the headscarf itself.
For this reason, nothing will change in this socio-political struggle, even if Iran's President Masud Pezeshkian has temporarily prevented the controversial new headscarf law, which provides for even harsher penalties for violating the obligation to wear a headscarf. Pezeshkian did recognize that there was a “danger of the regime’s self-overthrow,” which former President Mohammed Khatami had recognized months ago with regard to this law.
The law must be implemented first so that the fall cannot be stopped. This wouldn't even work if the headscarf requirement were lifted. Because the headscarf is only a symbol of Iran's history of state arbitrariness and oppression.
Three rulers, one maxim
The headscarf has been closely interwoven with the history of emancipation in Iran, in the sense of liberation from paternalism – and not just since 1978, the year of the Iranian Revolution, but since 1936. In that year, Reza Shah banned the hijab. He wanted to modernize the country by any means possible. Especially externally. The state therefore exposed women wearing chadors on the streets.
The ban was less strictly enforced under Mohammad Reza, who succeeded his father to the throne. Women are free to wear a headscarf on the street. However, it was still compatible with your career: you couldn't study with a hijab, and an employee in the ministry or bank had to choose between a job and a headscarf. Mohammad Reza's Western orientation was particularly evident in the women in miniskirts and high heels on Tehran's streets.
With the victory of the revolution and the immediate introduction of the headscarf requirement, Iranian history repeated itself: three rulers with a common maxim: We tell women how they have to dress and deny them self-determination.
The woman's body became a projection surface for an ideology. This is what Iran has been doing for almost a century. And the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” now turns against this. Because social consciousness has changed. Today it seems clear for the first time: freedom for all can only be achieved through freedom for women.
Something else has changed in recent years and opens up new possibilities: it is a far greater challenge to rebel against a religious dictatorship than against a purely secular one. Khamenei's claim to rule in the name of God caused many to shy away for a long time. Anyone who rebels against a secular dictatorship may lose their life. In the Iranian theocracy it is said that man's otherworldly salvation is also in danger.
In the fall of 2022, peaceful demonstrators such as Mohsen Shekari and Majid-Reza Rahnavard were accused of war against God and executed. The regime also thinks of itself as God? Nobody believed him anymore; Nobody believes the regime or its “Islamicness”, which is how the term “eslami budan” has to be translated somewhat poorly into German. And anyone who would still be willing to buy it that “this is the true Mohammedan Islam” would say to themselves: If this is Islam, then it would be better not to be Islam.
Slaughtered Revolutionary Guards
The central statement of all Islamists worldwide is: “Al-Islam huwa al-hall”, Islam is the solution. In this sense, Islamism means the introduction of the state and Islam. Iranians have long been opposed to this. After 45 years of actually experiencing Islamism, they say today: Islam is not the solution, it is part of the problem. Therefore, what we see here is a post-Islamist movement.
All of this has a lot of potential. But: Of course the Revolutionary Guards are still strong. And yet they are also weakened because they can no longer fall back on the Lebanese Hezbollah. In the fall of 2022, it was probably he who was used to put down the uprising. The domestic parts of the Guardians are divided and did not want to turn against their own population. No one shows how torn the regime's henchmen are more clearly than Mohammad Rasoulof in his film “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” with which Germany is entering the Oscar race.
In the film, a judge passes death sentences in autumn 2022 against young demonstrators of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, to which his own daughters also belong. Rasoulof explained in an interview with the NZZ that he was inspired to write this story by an officer in Evin Prison, where he himself was imprisoned in autumn 2022. He told him: Every day he thinks about when he will execute himself when he enters the prison. That's how detailed he is about this system. This pressure came from his children. They asked him: Why do you work in prison? What are you doing there?
In his film, Rasoulof describes what has often been heard in the last two years from internal reports that we know thanks to very hard-working Iranian hacker groups: Even their own troops, the beneficiaries of the system, are losing them. All of this combined with major foreign policy weakness makes an implosion of the Iranian system even closer to the realm of possibility.
Katajun Amirpur is a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Cologne. In 2023 she will publish “Iran without Islam: The uprising against the theocracy” with Beck Verlag.
