On 13 September, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, was arrested at a train station in Tehran by Iran’s feared morality and virtue police – the Gashte-Ershad.
She was accused of violating Iran’s compulsory hijab law by wearing hers “inappropriately”. On 16 September, Iranian authorities revealed that Amini died while in detention and claimed her death was from natural causes.
However, reports and eyewitnesses claim her death was a result of torture and ill-treatment. The death has caused outrage and grief in Iran and the globe.
In Iran, thousands of protesters took to the streets to express anger over issues that include personal freedoms in the Islamic Republic and an economy reeling from sanctions.
Women have been at the forefront of the protests, chanting slogans such as “death to the dictator” while cutting their hair and burning their hijabs in public.
Photographs of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei were also set alight, suggesting a general discontent with the state as opposed to just Amini’s death.
Online, the hashtag #MahsaAmini started to trend on social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, with women around the world posting videos of themselves cutting their hair in solidarity.
As the antiregime protests continue and the death toll rises, internet watchdog NetBlock and residents claimed the authorities restricted access to Meta Platforms’ Instagram and WhatsApp, two of the last social media networks allowed in Iran.
This crackdown against women is not a new phenomenon and Amini’s death is just the latest symbol of the oppression of women in Iran.
The Hijab has been a dynamic, fraught political symbol with the aim of demonstrating the religious character of a state that made the Shi’ite interpretation of Islamic law its constitution.
Ever since the 1979 Islamic revolution, girls and women have been compelled by Iran’s Islamic Penal Code to comply with the dress code of covering their hair, arms and curves in public, and those who fail to do so risk being arrested, fined, lashed and even imprisoned for committing a sin.
Despite this, millions of Iranian women actively resist the hijab and push the limits of the stipulated dress code by wearing it loosely around their heads and often letting the headscarf fall to their shoulders.
Amini’s death has become a symbol of resistance not only against the enforcement of the hijab, but also the religious dictatorship of Iran.
President Ebrahim Raisi’s latest bellicose pronouncements and his security forces violent responses suggest they realise what is at stake is not merely the hijab, but the regime itself.
The protests come when Iran’s political establishment is confronting a leadership crisis as the octogenarian Khamenei show signs of increasing frailty.
Raisi, who came to power in sham elections in 2021, has been unable to deliver on his campaign pledges of greater employment prospects, more housing units and stemming corruption.
What is at stake here is the credibility of the Islamic Revolution itself as an alternative form of governance.
-Solomon is academic head of the department of political studies and governance at the University of the Free State.
-Bekker is a MA candidate in the same department, specialising on gender in the Middle EastNorth Africa region
