Ali Motahari’s Criticism of Co-ed University Cafeterias
Ali Motahari, a former member of parliament, criticized the reduction of recent protests to the co-ed cafeterias in universities in an interview with the Tehran University internet network.
In this interview, when asked what he believes is the main cause of the recent protests, he says the movement that has emerged has higher goals. There are economic aims, foreign policy issues like why we have become subordinate to Russia, why people do not have enough say in their own fate, and why we do not have free elections. You have reduced all these important goals to the issue of co-ed cafeterias, which is a wrong approach. The essence of the work is also wrong; why should it be co-ed when a thousand young men and women are together who are not related by blood?
After the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, many university students have protested against gender segregation in self-service cafeterias by refusing to go to the cafeteria or by sitting together, male and female, in the dining hall.
This issue has faced opposition from radical groups as well as the university’s security and student Basij.