Iran's anti-veil protests draw on long history of resistance

People chant slogans during a protest in downtown Tehran. [AP Photo]

Many women wore a "roosari" or casual headscarf that was "part of traditional clothing rather than having a very religious meaning to it."

Throughout the late 19th century, women were front-and-centre in street protests, she said. In Iran's first democratic uprising of 1905, many towns and cities formed local women's rights committees.

This was followed by a period of top-down secularizing reforms under the military officer-turned-king Reza Shah, who banned the wearing of the veil in public in the 1930s.

During the Islamic Revolution, women's hijab became an important political symbol of the country "entering this new Islamic era," Momeni said. Growing up in Tehran, she remembers "living between two worlds" where family and friends didn't wear the veil at private gatherings but feared harassment or arrest by police or pro-government militias in public.

In 2008, Momeni was arrested and kept in solitary confinement for a month at Tehran's notorious Evin Prison, after working on a documentary about women activists and the 1 Million Signatures Campaign that aimed to reform discriminatory laws against women. She was later released and joined the 2009 "Green Movement" protests.

Like Shams, she sees today's wave of protests as shaking the foundations of the Islamic Republic.

"People are done with the hope of internal reform. People not wanting hijab is a sign of them wanting the system to change fundamentally," Momeni said.

The 2009 protests were led by Iran's "reformist" movement which called for a gradual opening-up of Iranian society. But none of Iran's political parties - even the most progressive, reformist-led ones - supported abolishing the compulsory veil.

Shams, who grew up in relatively religious family and sometimes wore hijab, recounted how during the 2009 protests, she renounced the headscarf publicly. She found herself under attack by pro-government media, but also shunned by figures in the reform movement - and by her then-husband's family.

"The major reason for our divorce was compulsory hijab," she said.

As Iran has been besieged by U.S. sanctions and several waves of protests fueled by economic grievances, the leadership has grown insular and uncompromising.

In the 2021 presidential election, all serious contenders were disqualified to allow Ebrahim Raisi, a protege of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, to take the presidency despite record low voter turnout.

The death of Mahsa Amini, who hailed from a relatively impoverished Kurdish area, has galvanized anger over forms of ethnic and social - as well as gender - discrimination, Shams said.

From Tehran's universities to far-flung Kurdish towns, men and women protesters have chanted, "Whoever kills our sister, we will kill them."

Shams says Iran's rulers have backed themselves into a corner, where they fear yielding on the veil could endanger the 44-year-old Islamic Republic.

"There is no way back, at this point. If the Islamic Republic wants to stay in power, they have to abolish compulsory veiling, but in order to do that they have to transform their political ideology," she said. "And the Islamic government is not ready for that change."