Iran has ordered police to seize the cars of women who don’t wear hijabs in a tougher law that even top religious leaders admit will be impossible to enforce.
Despite massive protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, who was beaten to death while detained by Tehran vice police for wearing the hijab incorrectly, the regime imposes additional laws controlling women’s clothing .
The new measures include a fine equivalent to around £75 for not wearing a hijab, while repeat offenders can have their license withdrawn or their car confiscated if caught without one while driving. A senior religious official tasked with implementing the new rules admitted that new restrictions will be difficult to enforce because resistance to compulsory hijab is so widespread.
“According to this new law, the person who defies the hijab is a criminal and must be arrested, tried and fined. However, given the large number of people who defy this law, it is not possible to implement it,” Abdulhossein Khosropanah, the secretary of the Supreme Council for the Cultural Revolution, told Fars news agency. referring to the proposed reform.
Mr. Khosropanah, who otherwise supports the reforms, also stressed that the “old Islamic laws of the past” would not work in the “current era” of the regime.
As the issue of compulsory hijab continues to dominate public debate in Iran, a prominent scholar has suggested setting up a pilot project in the city of Shiraz where women could choose whether or not to wear the hijab, in order to explore the impact on social tensions.
“I have no doubt that the regime of the Islamic republic will not be able to defeat the current ‘woman, life, freedom’ movement which has swept our country and it is in its own interest to take the initiative and ‘abolish compulsory hijab,’ Dr. Mohammad Khodayari, a senior lecturer in psychiatry at the University of Tehran, told his students at a public rally.
A staunch supporter of the hijab as a “religious duty”, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, has previously claimed that the number of women who oppose compulsory hijab in Iran is “very few and a handful”. .
However, an official 2021 survey found that more than 70% of Iranian women oppose the compulsory wearing of the hijab, which was introduced after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
According to human rights groups, more than 600 people, including 72 children, have been killed since the start of the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.
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