The morality police is just an excuse.
The morality police is just an excuse for drafting a plan to dismantle or stop the harassment by the morality police. The idea that supporters of dismantling the morality police are playing into the enemy’s hands indicates a kind of confusion and lack of a detached or rational decision-making body within the power structure of the Islamic Republic regarding how to deal with the issue known as the morality police.
Within the government, there are those who support eliminating or moderating its methods because they believe its harm to the system, especially after the death of Mahsa Amini, outweighs its benefits. However, part of the hard core of power, who see their livelihood and cultural-political identity and that of the system in enforcing hijab, oppose this idea.
It seems that the power structure in Iran is experiencing confusion and an inability to make decisions when facing the issue known as the morality police. Although the recent protests and the direction the slogans have taken indicate that the issue is no longer just about compulsory hijab and the morality police, and the words and promises of officials hold no importance for the protesters.
The hashtag Mahsa Amini, which has surpassed 50 million on Twitter and is on its way to becoming the most historic hashtag on this social network, has become a symbol for expressing all the pains, sufferings, shortcomings, or, as people themselves put it, the injustices they or others have faced over all these years.
Medicine after Sohrab’s death.
Some wise conservatives or those who have claimed over the years to be open to dialogue, or at least have demonstrated it in their behavior during demonstrations, and have even criticized the morality police, are now trying to provide analyses on why these events are happening instead of attacking the protesters or linking them to foreign influences.
For example, saying that these protests have social rather than economic and political roots, and if attention had been paid to them, things wouldn’t have reached this point. Jalil Mohibi, the former secretary of the Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, tweeted that contrary to what some believe, the protests of 1999, 2009, and 2022 are all social, not political. All three riots are consequences of lifestyle choices. This difference in lifestyle is also the result of a specific model of success in life, including education and employment, which officials prefer for their own children but not for others.
This group supports dismantling the morality police. For example, Ezzatollah Zarghami, the former head of IRIB and the current head of the Cultural Heritage Organization, tweeted that the greatest vice is making people pessimistic about the essence of religion. The system has no dead end, contrary to what some friends and enemies think. Revising some ineffective social laws and methods will not lead to the domino-like fall of the system. We should understand social changes and plan for them.
Some, like the Fars News Agency and Seyed Ali Mousavi, a media activist and conservative analyst, have remembered amidst the protests that perhaps dialogue could solve the problem. Fars, in an article, likened recent events to marital disputes and titled it ‘Fellow Citizen, Let’s Talk.’ One user commented on this article on a social network, saying, ‘Only divorce.’ Ali Mousavi tweeted that every time a political event occurs, we are met with a barrage of insults as soon as we open our mouths. Social networks were once supposed to be the community’s dialogue table, but now what?
Or over the past four years, I have written extensively about social anger, social resilience, and the accumulation of anger, considering it a threat to society. What we have witnessed these days and in 2019 is the overflow of anger that, with the presence of opposing elements, has turned into hard violence, and some innocent people have fallen victim to this violence-seeking. Or quoting from the Guardian about how to engage in dialogue in the online space.
However, the responses from other Twitter users and protesters to these requests have not been very friendly. Not only have they not welcomed it with open arms, but they have also viewed it with skepticism and simply seen it as a tactic to get out of the crisis. The responses are along the lines of ‘It’s too late now’ or ‘You had years of opportunity, but you silenced our voices for any excuse, so only your voice would be heard. Now that things have gone wrong, you’ve remembered dialogue.’
Don’t dismantle the morality police; it’s just an excuse.
Opponents of dismantling the morality police say that the protesters, or as they call them, rioters and agitators, have used the morality police and the death of Mahsa Amini as an excuse to attack the core of the system. That’s why any retreat in front of them or giving concessions will not only not satisfy and stop them but when they see they have achieved one of their demands, they will continue these protests to force us to retreat one by one. The leader of this view is Raisi’s father-in-law.
Alamolhoda has said it is unclear why some are seeking to dismantle the morality police in the country, and in this matter, the police are fulfilling their duty against improper hijab, and certainly, with young single men, you cannot deal with women without hijab, so women must be used for this subject.
It is clear that his remark is a jab at some insiders in the conservative movement, like some members of parliament, who have explicitly announced the dismantling of the morality police or drafting a plan to counter the harassment by the morality police. Although some figures from the Stability Front are still defending the existence of the morality police in unison with Alamolhoda.
For example, Ali Khazrian has said that one should not vote for the dissolution of the morality police because of one mistake. However, another member of the National Security Commission has said that the government can stop the operations of the morality police, or another representative has said that the morality police have made people more immodest and irreligious than making them adhere to hijab.
Moinuddin Saeedi, the representative of Chabahar, has also announced the drafting of a plan to prevent harassment by the morality police in parliament. However, given that such issues are generally not within the scope or authority of parliament members to decide on, and considering that it does not seem that the majority of parliament is in favor of eliminating the morality police, the only thing we will likely see in the coming days is the fading or reduced impact of the morality police, not its elimination or dismantling.
In this context, articles have been published in Iran Gate.
- Morality police or death chariot.
- Hijab referendum: Yes in Turkey, no in Iran.
- The result of a foresight report on hijab: There is no choice but tolerance.