Generation Z against the Ayatollahs: Iran's 'veil revolution'

Clerics in the Islamic Republic of Iran, like their conservative Sunni brothers, make the veil a symbol of the modesty supposedly advocated in Islam's founding texts. Not all Muslims agree with the wearing of the veil, but many women in the Muslim world and elsewhere wear it as a sign of piety and modesty. Others, usually from affluent backgrounds or influenced by Western dress culture, do not wear the veil, but do not consider themselves any less pious or Muslim than others.  

The wearing of the veil is the subject to endless ideological and theological debate in Muslim societies. For Fatima Mernissi, the veil is the price that women in post-colonial Muslim societies have had to pay to secure a place in the public space. The veil, which for Mernissi, symbolizes the most marked sign of the question of identity, is the counterpart that women are forced to pay for the right to have a seat in the public sphere in an admittedly patriarchal, but post-traditional society. 

In an article entitled " Islam, Women and Imaginary Identities" published in French and Spanish in 2006 in the Catalan journal CIDOB, I spoke of the veil as an imaginary solution to real problems. At the same time, I listed eighteen sociological and cultural usages of the veil, which make of it a floating signifier (in Roland Barthes' sense) that denotes and connotes different meanings according to the individual and/or social situation of women in the cultural mosaic of the East and West. 

In North Africa, the veil coexists with Western dress without any problem. Social and religious pressure favors the wearing of the veil, but Moroccan, Algerian, or Tunisian women are generally more or less free in their choice of dress. In France, wearing the veil is becoming a cultural, political and identity challenge, especially in a context where assimilation has more or less failed, especially for young people in the suburbs. The obsession of the French political élite and public opinion with the veil as an ostentatious sign of religiosity in a space of secularism and supposed modernity stems from a reductive interpretation of the veil, that only serves to encourage a sterile, even useless, debate.  Moreover, Hindu nationalists who burn the veils of Hindu Muslim women not only violate the latters’ right to choose but turn the veil into a sign of political and cultural provocation in a context of triumphant and vindictive Hindu nationalism.

The only two countries that have made the veil compulsory in public spaces have been Saudi Arabia and Iran. The former seems to be moving recently towards a more liberal approach that advocates choice rather than an official ban on 'uncovering'. Iran remains committed to the precepts of Khomeinism, according to which the veil remains a pillar of the social edifice of Shia ideology.

The ultra-liberalism of the Shah's period (1941-1979) gave unprecedented freedom to women in a strictly traditionalist society. Western dress was encouraged and even imposed in certain public places. The Shah's liberalism was associated among Khomeini's followers with shamelessness, westernization, and a return to the pagan values of pre-Islamic times. The abandonment of the veil was simply associated with the abandonment of Shiism. Thus, the veil was strongly and vehemently adopted after the 1979 revolution. The veiled and black-clad women symbolize not only a triumphant conservatism, but also a reference to the whole gamut of Shia sensibility, including Ta'zieh (the theatrical commemoration of the death of Hussein Ibn Ali), the sense of injustice, and the doctrine of salvation (the liberation of believers from the yoke of tyrants by the awaited Imam El Mahdi). The veil denoted a return to the true Iranian Shia identity, while its rejection in Pahlavi times symbolized a pagan and quasi-Islamic "Zoroastrianization" of the country. 

The regime in Iran has found it difficult to impose a strict veil. The more educated women become, the more they want to exercise free choice in dress. The Morality Police that tortured and eventually killed Mahsa Amini monitors the streets for "bad veils", but the law is being challenged by a dramatic development in social behavior that encourages more choice and freedom for women. 

In the Shah's time, the imposition of "uncovering" had produced a backlash among many women and families; in the wake of Ayatollahs' rule, the forced veiling imposed by the regime produced the opposite effect among the younger generation. 

It is these new generations that are currently rebelling against what they call "the dictator", i.e. the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Reading and listening to the rhetoric of these young people rebelling across Iran against the clerical regime, on the one hand, and the reactions of security and religious officials, on the other, one thinks he or she is in two diametrically opposed and totally different countries. The young speak of freedom, choice, democracy, individuality; while regime officials speak of the martyrs of the war with Iraq, and of Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general killed in Baghdad by US drones in January 2020. The new generations speak of hope, future, and life, while the regime clings to a victimhood rhetoric of purely Shia connotation.

To explain the behaviors and ideas of this generation rebelling against the Ayatollahs, Holly Dagres of the Atlantic Council (and editor of IranSource, MENASource and the Iranist) tweeted some of her research on what she calls Generation Z in Iranian society. “Iranian Zoomers”, she explains, “are frustrated/angry with the status quo and aren’t afraid to say it online and push outside the red lines of the Islamic Republic of Iran." They are not afraid of the red lines rigorously drawn by the Ayatollahs because they have created, in my opinion, a parallel sphere to the orthodox doxa of the 'wilaya of the faqih' (the tutelage of the Supreme Leader) and the doctrine of the Shiite Twelvers (the twelve Shiite imams who have the value of higher initiates, passing on the esoteric knowledge of Ali. The last imam, the twelfth, is considered occult and is identified with the Mahdi, whose arrival on earth is expected to be before the end of the world). This parallel sphere of Gen Z is set in the "free" space of Tik-Tok and Instagram, where these young people dance, love, communicate freely and away from the eyes of the Big Brothers of the Gasht-e Ershad (the Morality Police).

It is this Generation Z that is behind "the nationwide protests sparked by the murder of Mahsa Amini" (same source). Dagres talks about the use of the internet and social media to circumvent censorship; however, what is interesting, in my opinion, is that the Zoomers were able to create a social movement made up of individuals and communities that share the same values of celebrating the body, liberated sexuality and a totally apolitical discourse. The body as a form of expression against the all-political and the all-ideological doctrine of the Ayatollahs. Being anti-political, Generation Z's bodily expression becomes, paradoxically, a radical (radically political) gesture that can at any moment turn into a revolt against religious power. 

The reason, according to Holly Dagres, is that "Iranian Zoomers, like Generation Z everywhere, are digital natives and part of this truly globalized generation". This means that the register from which they form their worldview is the vast world of globalization with its image subtleties, subcultures, subtexts, manifestations of the body through voice, dance, tattoos, piercings, songs, and humor. They are years away from the militant rhetoric of the Revolutionary Guards and the victimizing discourse of the Shia ideology of the Twelve Imams. The needs of Iranian Zoomers cultivated through interaction with a virtual world that pretends to be free and daring put them in direct contradiction with a rigorous conservatism imposed by force through the obligation of the hijab and state intervention in Iranians' private lives.

The ideological and generational gap is huge. Holly Dagres describes it well when she talks about  how "many Iranian Zoomers feel disconnected to the geriatric clerical establishment and don’t have anything in common with them.". What distinguishes today's Zoomers from the Green Movement of 2009 (when the Zoomers were children, according to Dagres) and the 2019 protests, violently repressed by the regime (when they were teenagers), is that “Iranian Gen Z is taking control of their future in a way their parents haven't been able to. They're leading the protests in-person and online, saying very loud and clear that they no longer want an Islamic Republic” (same source). 

Holly Dagre cites Hadis Najafi, 23, “who was murdered by security forces on 9/21” as “the very essence of this Gen Z-led protest. She was an active TikToker who posted dance videos and reposted them onto her IG account.” Many are not afraid to die if necessary for freedom and life. The question is whether the killings by security forces will exacerbate the rage in the streets and bring out more people (the revolutionaries' bet) or whether fear will eventually silence the loud voices as it did in 2009 and 2019. The next few days will be decisive. 

What is certain is that the gap between the Revolution's conservative rearguard and the post-revolutionary Generation Z is widening. Iran is therefore at a crossroads of historical choices that may also prove tragic anyway: either the Zoomers' revolution triumphs, not without bloodshed; or repression will overcome the protests after an indiscriminate and bloody crackdown as it did in 2019. History is repeating itself, but it is not yet clear whether the anger of the street and the reaction of the regime have reached a point of no return.