Sept 16, 2023, marked the first death anniversary of 22-year-old Iranian woman Mahsa Amini followed by nationwide anti-hijab protests that shook the country for months. She died after being taken into custody by the Morality Police (Gasht e-Irshad) for violating the strict hijab law. Months into the protests with around 537 protesters dead, the Iranian regime withdrew the Morality Police from the streets hoping to tone down the rising "Woman, Life, Freedom" (Zan, Zendegi, Azadi) movement. Around Amini's death anniversary, the Iranian regime started taking pre-emptive measures like investing significantly in surveillance systems to identify "bad hijabi," redeploying the morality police, arresting the activists, and sacking artists who had come out in support of the protests. Why has the post-Islamic revolution Iran has witnessed so many protests?
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A possible answer can be found in Oliver Roy's keen analysis of Political Islam being an ineffective tool to address the problems of modernity. The Islamic-revivalist movements like the al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun (Muslim Brothers) movement in Egypt and Gharbzadegi (Westoxification) in Iran started erupting in the Middle East in the beginning of the 20th century to counter the homogenizing of Western modernity and going back to Islamic roots.
Political Islam as a national ideology came into prominence in the second half of the 20th century not so much because of it being an effective system but primarily because of failure of the secular elites running the government. For instance, Mohammed Reza Shah and before him, his father Reza Shah tried to snatch away religion and force secularism on people without sufficiently lifting their education and socioeconomic levels. In his 1936 ruling known as Kashf-e Hijab, Reza Shah tried to forcefully remove women's hijab when women's participation was not more than 10.2% in primary and 1.3% in the secondary level of education.
According to the classical sociologist, Max Weber, sufficient rise in the educational and income levels of people starts a process of disenchantment that brings them out of the garb of religion to a more complex reality of the material world. With the rise in economic standards, people start demanding more rights in their social as well as private lives.
In a country like Iran where the government is unwilling to relax its strict religious enforcement, the cracks manifest through regular protests. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the GDP per capita of Iran has nearly doubled from 2,429 US dollars to 4,387 US dollars and the general literacy rate has risen from 39% to 89%, but there have been no major concessions in the social freedom. Moreover, due to Iranian's revolutionary posture in the international arena and sponsoring proxy groups in the region, it has come under varied economic sanctions which have deteriorated the economic condition making the general unemployment rate as high as 11%. No wonder slogans like "Not Gaza, not Lebanon, my life for Iran" (Ne Gaza, Ne Lebanaan, Zendegi Man Baraiye Iran) have been commonplace during the protests.
The condition of women is much worse. Even when their enrolment is 98% in primary, 80% in secondary, and 57% in higher education, their unemployment rate is 18%, much more than their male counterparts. As per Human Rights Watch, not only there are fewer jobs for women in Iran in comparison with men, but some employers also demand written permission from their husbands or fathers before offering the job. Among many other aspects of discrimination that Iranian women face, mandatory hijab is the most visible of them all. Political Islam attempted to fill the identity void for some time, however, cracks in the system have started appearing everywhere now. According to Roy, this would create a different set of crises which will eventually result in the demise of Political Islam.
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