Sidelining a woman’s freedom of choice

April 18, 2024

NEW DELHI – The UN’s fact-finding mission recently found Mahsa Amini’s custodial death as ‘unlawful’, and the subsequent state crackdown, an ‘egregious human rights violations’. In September 2022, Mahsa died in the custody of Iran’s Morality Police for violation of the Islamic Republic’s mandatory ‘hijab norms’. Her death created a global stir in the Muslim and non-Muslim world, evoking a debate over state-sponsored regulatory mechanisms versus women’s bodily autonomy and the right for choice.

Iran’s clerical leadership in 1981 declared ‘hijab’ or the Islamic headscarf as ‘one of the core principles of governance’. The protests that followed Mahsa’s death, under the banner of ‘women, life and freedom’, further hardened Iran’s stand, and now, it has gone for a stricter ‘hijab’ and chastity legislation without any public debate. The new law classifies ‘improper hijab’ as a crime, imposes higher terms of imprisonment (5-10 years) and a larger fine of up to 360 million Iranian rials ($8,508). It also embarks on ‘economic repression’, by arm-twisting businesses, celebrities, and public figures who are seen to be encouraging or allowing the rules to be broken (Human Rights Watch). The UN described it ‘as a form of gender apartheid, and deeply disempowering’. An Iranian expert at the Stimson Centre commented that it is a ‘psychological campaign’ to ‘scare women into compliance’. An Iranian human rights lawyer (IHRDC), demanded its immediate abolition.

Nevertheless, a 2018 study indicated that about ‘49 per cent of Iranians believed hijab to be a personal choice, not a mandate’. In neighbouring Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, UN agencies have ‘documented a series of hijab decree enforcement campaigns’ (UNAMA). The