February 2, 2024
The controversial bill to enforce mandatory hejab throughout the country has still not gone into law.
The bill was passed by the Majlis in September. But in October, the 12-man Council of Guardians, which must approve all legislation as compliant with Sharia law and with the Constitution, vetoed the bill, saying it had too many vague terms that would make it difficult to carry out.
The Majlis approved a new version in November. But the Council of Guardians rejected it a second time in December for the same reasons.
The Majlis approved yet another version late in December. But Majlis Speaker Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf said January 25 that he cannot forward the text to the Council of Guardians until he receives certification from the Raisi Administration that funds are available to carry out the provisions of the bill, believed mainly to be for the employment of enforcement officers.
Qalibaf said, “We sent a letter to the government more than 25 days ago, but they have not yet responded.”
This leaves the issue of hejabs enforcement floating in the air, where it has been for months on end.
Majlis Deputy Amir-Hossain Bankipur said the latest version of the hejab and chastity bill provides a mild fine for the first hejab offense, with an eight times greater fine for a second offense, in an apparent effort to pressure women to comply after being caught one time. He said the first offense fine will be 30 million rials ($60), with the second offense fine a hefty 240 million rials ($480).
The police used to talk often about enforcing the dress code by using facial recognition equipment, taking photos and then identifying those women without head-coverings with facial recognition software. The Chinese government uses facial recognition software to track down wanted people on the streets. Iranian officials said they had obtained Chinese equipment.
But, in China’s case, the police have photos of wanted people and facial recognition software uses cameras to scan faces on the streets, then alerts the police when it finds a match to a photo of a wanted person.
Iran sought to work the opposite way. The cameras would photograph women without head coverings. Then the software would have to search through roughly 40 million photos taken for the national ID cards to find a match, a much more complicated approach than what the Chinese use.
The police have long since ceased talking about facial recognition software as the solution to the hejab problem.
Meanwhile, hardliners have started on a new issue demanding surgical gowns for women that are Sharia-compliant. Twelve variants of surgical gowns have been designed for female patients, according to Mohammad-Hossain Taheri-Akerdi, the secretary of the state body responsible for promoting Islamic standards. It isn’t known how many hospitals have agreed to accept Taheri-Akerdi’s designs.
The two women shown in the accompanying photo are having their own hejab problems. Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi are reporters for Tehran dailies who were arrested for their news stories on the September 2022 arrest, hospitalization and death of Mahsa Amini, the woman arrested for failure to adhere to the hejab rules whose death set off national protests.
Hamedi and Mohammadi have been convicted for their “crimes” and were freed from detention January 14 to await action on their appeals. It is the norm in Iran to free those convicted while they appeal. But the day after their release, they were photographed with no head coverings whatsoever and the Judiciary’s Mizan news website said “a new case was filed” against the pair as a result.
The sentences for reporting their stories on Amini are 13 years for Hamedi and 12 years for Mohammadi.