Iran's government retreats from implementing new hijab law
British Iranian journalist and political analyst
Masoud Pezeshkian’s parliamentary deputy announced that the administration is drafting a bill to amend the highly controversial hijab law, which the Parliament Speaker had promised would take effect on December 13.
“We will send an amendment bill to the Parliament to halt [the controversies over its implementation] now to conduct further investigations,” Deputy President in Parliamentary Affairs, Shahram Dabiri, announced Saturday.
Reformist media and politicians have extensively criticized the new hijab law, spearheaded by lawmakers of the Paydari (Steadfastness) Party and their allies in the parliament, notably the Jebhe-ye Sobh-e Iran (MASAF) that was established less than a year ago. Ultra-hardliners of the Parliament have the backing of the Constitutional Guardian Council whose approval is required for all legislation.
Both groups have close ties to the ultra-hardliner former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili who lost the recent presidential elections to Pezeshkian and a shadowy cleric, Ayatollah Mohammad-Mehdi Mirbagheri with an extremely radical interpretation of the Sharia.
More reformist clerics have criticized the law. “This law’s implementation is fraught with political and economic problems and [will result in] stirring up hate and aversion to religion … making it official means neglecting the country’s [serious] political, social, and cultural problems,” Ayatollah Mohammad-Ali Ayazi, a member of the reformist association of Qom Seminary clerics told the moderate conservative Khabar Online Saturday.
Ayazi also argued that ultra-hardliners’ insistence on immediate enforcement of tough hijab enforcement measures is meant to sabotage the Pezeshkian government’s efforts to remedy the more urgent problems it is grappling with. Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Masoudi Khomeini, another member of the same association, has expressed a similar view.
Despite agreeing with the hijab as a religious principle, several top-ranking clerics, including Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli, have criticized ultra-hardliners’ insistence on implementing the new law in loosely veiled terms.
“This law suggests that they [the government] want to lead people to paradise by force,” conservative cleric Mohsen Gharavian who has been an outspoken critic of the new hijab law told Khabar Online. “Maybe we don’t want to go to paradise. What should we do [if we don’t]?” he added.
On Saturday, the relatively independent Rouydad24 news website wrote: “It appears that [the delay resulted from] the administration’s negotiations [with higher entities] to postpone the implementation of the Act and make some amendments to it have been successful."
Rouydad24 added that authorities at the highest level may have agreed that the controversial legislation formulated by ultra-hardliners cannot be enforced in the current circumstances.
