Unveiling the Duality of the Hijab

Unveiling the Duality of the Hijab

by Shirin Khanoom

AS I WALKED DOWN Tehran’s bustling Vali’asr street, I found myself navigating crowds of colorful hijabs: yellow with purple flowers, blue with stripes, green with sparkles, and the classic sleek black. With my own navy blue hijab loosely fitted on my head, I trekked through the sea of bright headwear to search for my aunt, who had stopped to grab some barbari bread from a local bakery. As I peered into the lively shops, I happened to make eye contact with a stern-looking policeman. Without a thought, I reached up to grab the ends of my loose hijab and pull it down to fit tightly around my hairline, clutching it to make sure it did not budge. Today, I think back to that moment and ask myself: Why did I do that? Why was that action of mine so instinctive? Though the policeman never actually spoke to me about my veil, I felt an unspoken communication between us, similar to that between a student and a teacher. I hadn’t necessarily wanted to tighten my headscarf at that moment; I did it, though, because the law had taught me to.

Iran has a long history with the hijab. Initially worn as part of the standard clothing ensemble for women in medieval Persia, for both religious and practical reasons, its use declined somewhat with the arrival of the Turkic nomadic tribes to the area, whose women did not cover their hair. After the Safavid centralization in the 16th century, though, the headscarf became standard dress for women, and it was considered almost non-Iranian to not cover one’s hair. This standard persisted until 1936, when the first Pahlavi King, Reza Shah, issued a decree known as kashf-e hejāb, in an attempt to westernize the country. It banned all veiling of hair for women, as well as a lot of traditional Iranian clothing for both women and men. This decree, and the subsequent backlash, is a main reason why the hijab has become such a large issue in Iranian politics. After the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the formulation of Iran as a Islamic Republic, the hijab became a mandatory article of clothing for women in all public and social settings. This rule is still enforced today.

Both the Shah and the Islamic Republic have had political aims leading to the laws that they’ve enforced, and therefore their clothing regulations on women (and in general) reinforce an image that is beneficial to their political aims. The Shah enforced the decree that banned hijabs for women in his goal of westernizing the country, in an effort to keep up and compete with progressive Western nations. The mandatory veiling law enforced by the Islamic Republic of Iran likewise reflects the government’s ideology: it promotes the strong Islamic values that the government wants to follow, and so the Islamic Republic enacts it and laws like it to uplift Islam, condemn Western ideologies, and set an image of power and superiority over their own country. In both these time periods, Iranian women and their clothing have been used as a tool by the Iranian governments in achieving Iran’s political goals and maintaining an image of power for others to perceive. In response, the Iranian women have protested regulations involving the hijab to condemn the governments for prioritizing the country’s (and their own) image instead of the concerns of the Iranian people.

In 1936, Reza Shah passed kashf-e hejāb in his attempt to westernize and modernize the country to align with European ideals, even though this goal of his clashed with the majority female Muslim population that wore their hijabs to follow their faith and religious values, or even those who wore them as normal dress. Before the imposition of this decree, many feminists and women’s rights activists campaigned in favor of banning the hijab. However, others also opposed the reform because they believed that the Iranian women should have the right to choose their clothing based on their own ideologies. Reza Shah’s attempt to enforce this decree was aimed at furthering his goal of westernizing Iran, though the people of Iran retain many different ideologies, cultural ideals, and cultural expressions because of the multitude of deeply-rooted cultural identities in the country.

Despite the Shah’s decree, many places refused to serve or employ unveiled women, since the ingrained cultural and religious mores disapproved of that so-called lack of modesty. However, the police were ordered to forcibly remove any hijab that a woman was wearing in public and those who refused were beaten and searched. Many women were thus faced with a dilemma: wear a veil and get beaten, or not wear a veil and lose many job prospects and opportunities. The Shah failed to consider the socio-religious impact of this order on the populace, an impact that contributed to a backlash in the form of the Islamic Revolution. The hijab, then, became a tool used to carry out Reza Shah’s agenda, and reinforce a power dynamic between men and women that uplifted men and disadvantaged women. The inability of women to choose their clothing based on their personal ideologies shows how the Shah’s government attempted to control women’s lives in his goal of westernizing Iran.

Almost half a century later, the Islamic Revolution of 1979 led Iran to officially become an Islamic Republic, and, with it, to enforce regulations that practiced Islamic teachings. Even before instating a hijab mandate, the revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini began to condemn women who failed to dress modestly. He claimed that Islam heavily discouraged or even forbade women from expressing themselves by wearing makeup and clothes that exposed their necks, hair, legs and arms, as this would provide a distraction to society; and, after a few years, in 1985, it became officially mandatory for all women who lived and entered Iran to wear a hijab in public. The ruling power fell into the hands of religious leaders, and they began to establish a conservative social order that reflected Islamic teachings, mandating that women observe these teachings by dressing modestly. Once again, almost fifty years later, the Iranian women were, and still continue to be, used as tools to promote an Islamic culture and image that condemns influence from Western countries.

A multitude of movements arose in response to the hijab requirements after the establishment of the Islamic Republic. For instance, after the Stadium ban that prevented women from attending soccer matches, the “White Scarves’’ movement emerged, a protest in which Iranian women used their hijabs as a means of resistance. After the revolution, the government of Iran imposed an “unwritten law” that prevented women from attending soccer matches; among leaders, it was perceived as inappropriate for women to witness such “male nudity”, and many believed that viewing such sports would breed “vulgarity”. When the Iranian government declared that it was illegal to protest with banners and posters, Iranian feminists used their headscarves as canvases to write their protests and express defiance. Here, women in the movement found a loophole to fight back against these regulations by utilizing their hijab — an emblem of their gender — to fight against Iran’s largely male-dominated government, that had imposed this clothing requirement. The originally gendered apparatus, the headscarf, was used as a tool in and of itself to fight the culture of gender inequality. While the government sought to restrict access to protesting by banning posters and banners in front of stadiums, they were paralyzed when their own gender-branding technique was used to protest the gender inequity that they had instituted. The hijab could not be touched, as it was the mechanism the government itself used to label and treat women differently.

In late May of 2017, another large movement in protest of the hijab requirement emerged, the socalled “White Wednesdays”, founded by the activist Mason Alinejad, where women who unwillingly wore hijabs contested its imposition by posting pictures of themselves unveiled, while waving around a white shawl, with the hashtag “White Wednesdays”. Following suit, women who willingly wore the veil also contested the imposition of the hijab, by posting pictures of themselves wearing white headscarves in joint protest. Using a platform like social media, which allowed them to gather support in a way the Islamic Republic could not physically stop, Iranian women found a new avenue of protesting that garnered advocacy from individuals all over the religious and ideological spectrum, who believed in the freedom for Iranian women to dictate their own clothing choices. The government is attempting to justify the clothing restrictions on women with religion as the basis of these rulings, though this movement has shown that many women who practice the Muslim religion are not in support of the hijab mandate, revealing perhaps different motives as to why the clothing restrictions are being enforced. By implementing a dress code onto women, in the attempt to implement Islamic tradition and exercise their power, the male-dominated government is brandishing women as members of the non-dominant gender group, causing them to be treated as second-class citizens; thus the government is forgoing the interests of those it supposedly protects, for power and in the pursuit of political aims.

Throughout the past century, the hijab has been utilized as a tool to carry out the Iranian government’s intended political goals and reinforce its public image, during both the reign of Reza Shah and the rule of the Islamic Republic. This has prompted backlash from the individuals wearing this article of clothing— Iranian women. Recognizing that the hijab has become an instrument to fuel the Iranian government’s political motives, Iranian women have defiantly protested the government’s impositions of power that attempt to control their dress and daily lives.