A three-day strike is being observed by merchants across Iran starting Monday. To distract attention from the vast support that this strike has been receiving on social media, the Iranian regime spread false information about Hijab patrol or what is wrongly translated to English as “Morality Police” being “disbanded”. The “morality police” has not been disbanded, and even the regime has now denied this news.
It is worth mentioning that throughout the four decades since the Islamic Republic’s formation, hijab patrol has been managed by various state police agencies. Its activities have been slowed down during election seasons. Its operation was also, at times, arbitrarily halted and then restored, depending on the regime’s national and international goals.
Hijab Law is part of Islamic Penal Codes, Article 638 and is a rooted in the regime’s facade of Islamism. Women have constantly, unofficially, risked breaking the law, but as long as it is a law, breaking it is a crime per Ayatollah Khamenei’s famous speech in 2017 where he refers to the Shariat Law, Acts of Haram, and the Islamic Republic being the “land of the Prophet and Amir-Al-Momenin (Ali).” He says the act of taking off the hijab is against the law of the land and Allah’s law.
Mainstream Western media has evidently been on the side of the regime’s propagandist policies for the past couple of decades. It falsely terms hijab a “cultural tradition” for Iranians, presenting the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) as the only way forward for Iranians. It also wrongly sells “sanctions” as the number one grievance of Iranians and claims “reform” is the only demand in Iran. Such hegemonic narratives have been silencing the truth of Iranians’ struggle against a dehumanizing, corrupt, and terrorist regime. The latest disinformation campaign is part of the same attempts.
The question is: who is behind all these disinformation campaigns? Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in his latest speeches, has accused the diaspora media of painting a bleak picture of Iran, saying that the lack of sufficient propaganda tools by the Islamic Republic is causing disappointment among young Iranians. The message of “hope” should be advertised, he says.
It is important to note that the supreme leader blames Persian media based in Western countries, and not Western or English media itself. This is because the Western media has been downplaying the crimes of this regime and has been spreading misinformation to this end. The recent CNN report detailing how rape is used as a tool to quell protests in Iran was not news to Iranians. But it is astonishing that this horror story was disregarded by mainstream Western media for decades.
The regime’s goal is to survive the revolution by distracting the world’s attention away from the uprising, derailing the people’s demands, and downplaying the slogan of the protests: women, life, freedom. Hijab is a subcategory of the first word in this powerful triad, and the incriminating law of hijab will only go away when the regime is gone.
The writer is an Iranian-American academic and a Professor of Persian Language and Literature at New York University.
