IRAN Protests yield result: Morality police abolished, hijab may no longer be mandatory

(Patria) - After months of protests in which more than 300 people were killed, Iran has decided to relent and abolish the morality police.

"The morality police have nothing to do with the judiciary" and that is why it has been abolished, said Iran's chief prosecutor, Jafar Montazeri, as reported by AFP.

"The morality police have been disbanded, but the judiciary will continue to deal with this social challenge," the Shargh newspaper quoted the chief prosecutor, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri. No details were given about the circumstances or implementation of the decision.

Regime critics reacted with fear to the announcement. The problem is not the morality police, but the requirement to wear head coverings, tweeted a Persian activist. "Women must be able to move freely without scarves," he said, noting that this would be "only a first step."

Observers say that although the disbanding of the morality police does not mean the end of the mandatory wearing of scarves, it represents a significant step in the success of the women's movement in Iran.

In addition, Iran has announced that it will review the decades-old law requiring women to cover their heads, as it struggles to quell more than two months of protests related to the strict dress code. The protests swept Iran after the death on September 16 in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman of Kurdish origin who was arrested by the morality police for allegedly violating that Sharia law.

Protesters burned head coverings and chanted anti-government slogans. Since Amini's death, an increasing number of women are not wearing the hijab, especially in the modern northern part of Tehran. "Both parliament and the judiciary are working (on the issue)" of whether the law should be changed, Iran's state prosecutor Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said yesterday.

According to the ISNA news agency, he did not specify what might change in the law by a decision of those two bodies, which are largely in the hands of conservatives. The review team met on Wednesday with the parliamentary culture commission "and results are expected in a week or two," the chief prosecutor said.

President Ebrahim Raisi said yesterday that the foundations of the Iranian republic and Islam are enshrined in the constitution. "But there are methods of implementing the constitution that can be flexible," he said in a televised address.

The hijab became mandatory for all women in Iran in April 1983, four years after the Islamic Revolution that overthrew the US-backed monarchy. It remains a very sensitive issue in a country where conservatives insist the hijab should be mandatory, while reformists want to leave it to individual choice.

After the hijab became mandatory by law, with changing dress norms it became common to see women in tight jeans and wide, colorful scarves. But in July this year, Raisi, an ultra-conservative, called for the mobilization of "all state institutions to enforce the law on wearing scarves."

However, many women continued to violate the rules imposed on them. In September, Iran's main reformist party called for the abolition of the mandatory hijab law.

The Union of the Islamic People's Party of Iran, founded by relatives of former reformist President Mohammad Khatami, on Saturday asked the authorities to "prepare the legal elements that pave the way for the abolition of the mandatory hijab law." The opposition group also calls for "the official announcement of the end of the activities of the morality police" and "allowing peaceful demonstrations," the statement said.