The punch-up put the cleric in the hospital for three days, he told the Mehr news agency.
Hojatoleslam Ali Beheshti said he came across the woman as he was walking to noon prayers in the town of Shahmirzad in Semnan province one day late in August.
He told her she was exposing too much skin and should cover up more.
“She responded by telling me to look the other way, which was very insulting to me,” Beheshti said. He then asked her a second time to meet the dress code standards and also to stop the verbal abuse.
The woman then clobbered the cleric, knocking him to the ground.
“I don’t remember what happened after that,” he said. “I just felt her kicks and heard her insults.”
Beheshti said he hasn’t filed a complaint against the woman, but doesn’t mind that the local prosecutor is investigating the matter—“as long as the case helps the cause of Islamic hejab.”
He said it was his religious duty to “promote virtue and prohibit vice” and he would continue to do so, despite living through what he called “the worst day of my life.”
Such incidents against clerics are not unheard of, albeit rare. Mehr named three other clerics who have reported being beaten up by women they berated for “bad hejab.”