When Fashion is Life or Death: A Woman's Right to Chose her Own Modesty
By Christian Hopley
Womenswear is explicitly political as it is a tool used to police the rights and social mobility of women in a society. Fashion as a whole usually reflects the social, political, economical and religious state of a region at a time. In the case of the crisis in Iran, the hijab is the womenswear item that is leading to the destruction and harm of hundreds of Iranian citizens. Turmoil erupted in Iran after the death of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of the morality police following her arrest for allegedly not wearing the hijab. Over 22,000 people were detained for protesting and for the past six months have been tortured, sexually assaulted and mass executed. Protestors who received death sentences were given "sham" trials- many lasting 15 minutes - while some detainees were even forced to admit to crimes they did not commit.
In line with detaining and executing protesters, the violent police state in Iran has also begun targeted attacks on other groups of women and girls across the nation. Women's rights across all sectors of society have been forcibly threatened and rescinded; the right to choose their own modesty, right to education, right to financial freedom, even the right to leave their home unaccompanied by a man. Since November 2022, about 700 school girls have been poisoned by toxic gas, what some believe is an effort to force them out of schools.
Prior to the Islamic revolution of 1979, the wearing of head coverings in Iran was entirely optional. In 1936, Iran saw the first act of policing women's head covering by way of the Monarch Reza Shah’s “unveiling” order which required Iranian women to remove their hijabs in public. In the period after the Shah's monarchy, many women decided to wear the hijab as a statement of rebellion against the previous Shah monarchy and some were forced to by the strict control of male family members.
Hijab law was enacted during the Islamic revolution of 1979 and became a legal obligation for all women to wear a hijab in April of 1983. The crisis of 2022 isn't the first instance of Iranian women revolting against the government weaponizing the muslim religion. On March 8th of 1979 thousands of women in Iran took to the streets to protest the new Hijab laws. They chanted “freedom of choice in clothes”.
It is a common misconception that the Islamic religion at large is the entity to blame for the crisis in Iran. However, this wrongful thinking can easily snowball into Islamophobic rhetoric which is even more harmful. People who don't have an in-depth knowledge of Islam will offer up ill-informed statements like “Well why don't they just stop wearing hijabs/ head coverings” or “Islam is such an oppressive religion”. The crux of the issue is women of Islam losing the right to choose their own modesty and if they want to don a traditional head covering or not.
While wearing a hijab is not one of the five pillars of Islam some muslim women hold fast to the belief that it is a requirement for all women to cover their hair in accordance with the Qurans mandate of modesty. However, other groups of muslim women say it is not required of women to cover their hair at all times. Muslims have found support in the Quran for both groups of women. The muslim media entrepreneur and Forbes honoree Laila Alawa made clear in 2014 “The belief that one can pinpoint the degree of religiosity a Muslim woman possesses by looking at what is upon her head is degrading, invasive and pretentious”.
Regardless of how a woman chooses to outfit her individual modesty, all women are entitled to full autonomy over their body and how they cover said bodies. This is not just an Iranian issue, nor is it just an Islamic issue, the policing and governance the world has placed over women's bodies and their way of dress is a crisis plaguing all women globally.