Iran and the unstoppable revolution of consciences
Choice in the liberal democracies of the West, Law in the Muslim world. Not wearing the compulsory veil correctly can be deadly in some Islamic countries, such as Iran. The death of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Masha Amini in police custody on 16 September is unfortunately not an isolated case in a country that uses the control and vigilance of a specific police force - the Morality Police - to ensure that the strict dress code and rules of conduct in public, especially for women, implemented after the Islamic revolution in 1979, are strictly enforced.
Beyond dress, the protests that have started in Kurdistan and spread to Tehran and other Iranian cities in recent days are rooted in dissatisfaction with long-standing economic and social malaise, as well as the problems inherent in a material reality that, influenced by economic, religious and political factors, shape the structure of control that perpetuates women's subordination. Saving them from the corruption of the West is a matter of state, and the veil is only the most visible part of a symbology that sees women, as bearers of national virtue, as essential to the transmission of that virtue within the family, and as being outside any aspiration to power.
This is not an exclusive conception of the Iranian regime, but of a broader understanding of social and affective relations which, in the case of Islam, is justified under the umbrella of tradition-based religion. The very form of the state, the Civil Code, the Family Codes, the Council of Guardians of the Constitution and all the institutions permeate a system of domination that women suffer in their daily lives and which has the consensus of all political forces, including those more reformist sectors that push for legal changes to mitigate gender gaps, because they consider that the issue of women and their legal and citizenship rights are not intertwined with democracy and, therefore, not an urgent issue. And while social and demographic changes that encourage the integration of women into the public sphere are creating increasing pressure to adapt legislation to the changing reality, to the extent that significant steps have been taken in recent years by the religious establishment, changing legislation that discriminates against women is not easy in the face of opposition from a conservative and social control establishment - the Council of Guardians of the Constitution - that sees them as a dangerous element of uncontrolled openness to undermine the nature and principles of the theocratic rule.
The processes of cultural and social change throughout the Middle East region, including Iran, may encourage long-term political transformations, but it is unrealistic to think that the Ayatollahs' regime is in danger, even if this time we are witnessing an unprecedented display of popular anger and very significant gestures of civil disobedience, such as women burning their headscarves or cutting their hair in public, and other acts of sabotage and direct attacks on government agencies and symbols. Confronting the power of the mullahs is not a trivial matter, it requires a great deal of courage, and such courage in which the risk of many years in prison - or death - is real, frightens a regime that feels vulnerable to international media exposure at a time when world leaders are meeting in the General Assembly at the United Nations, and cannot afford any sign of weakness. Although there is no structured opposition today, and the regime will do all it can to break the will of the elites and the more open-minded student sectors, the debate around the compulsory wearing of the veil and the violation of dress codes are but a symptom of the younger generation's distancing from religion, the loss of trust in public institutions and the worsening of life expectations.
The revolution of consciences is already unstoppable throughout the Middle East and Iran is no exception. The gap between the regime's institutions and the younger generation is widening. A society that loses its fear, even in the face of police brutality and repression, is ungovernable, at a transcendent geopolitical moment in which the region is also undergoing a process of ideological reset, normalisation and development after the implementation of the Abraham Accords, while the Supreme Leader's health is deteriorating and the question of his succession is open to question.
Marta González Isidoro, journalist and international politics analyst.