{"id":1449,"date":"2023-01-23T09:21:22","date_gmt":"2023-01-23T09:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=1449"},"modified":"2023-01-23T09:21:22","modified_gmt":"2023-01-23T09:21:22","slug":"protests-in-iran-football-and-headscarves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=1449","title":{"rendered":"Protests in Iran: Football and Headscarves"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Hugh Beattie<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The Iranian football team recently attracted some attention in Qatar, not just because of the games they played in, but also because the players did not sing the Iranian national anthem before the game with England. Their brief protest reminds us that after three months of demonstrations it seems that the government has still not got a grip on the widespread protests that began in September following the death of the young Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, on September 16, in hospital in Teheran following her arrest by the Guidance Patrol, known as the Morality Police.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There have of course been serious demonstrations against the government before \u2013 in 2009 and 2019 for example, but these were relatively easily crushed.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rejection of the headscarf has become an important feature of the current protests. Women\u2019s dress has been a controversial issue in Iran for many years, becoming a central symbol during the culture wars between more secular and more religious sections of Iranian public opinion. In 1936, as part of efforts to modernise the country, the government of Shah Reza Pahlavi brought in the Mandatory Unveiling Act which made it illegal for women to wear a veil. For some years the law was harshly enforced; one reason for what the historian Nikki Keddie calls \u2018a later pro-veil backlash\u2019 (Keddie 1981).<\/span> When serious protests broke out against the government of Shah Muhammad Pahlavi (Shah Reza Pahlavi\u2019s son) in 1978, wearing a cloak (<\/span>chador<\/span><\/i>) which covers the whole body became a symbol of women\u2019s resistance to the Shah and his Westernising government. After the overthrow of the Shah and the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, women were required to dress modestly. When they left the home they had to wear a <\/span>manteau<\/span><\/i>, a kind of overcoat, and a headscarf to cover their hair. Wearing a <\/span>chador<\/span><\/i> was not actually compulsory, but even the <\/span>manteau<\/span><\/i> and the headscarf have become increasingly unpopular during the past few years. In passing it is interesting to note the contrast with Turkey, where during the 1980s the headscarf was actually banned in public institutions, universities among them, and women have continued to argue that this is unfair and that those who want to wear it should be allowed to do so (like in <\/span>this example<\/span><\/a>).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To return to Iran, the Tony Blair Institute recently published an opinion poll from Iran with some interesting findings \u2013<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n