The Morality Police is just an excuse
The Morality Police is just an excuse for drafting a plan to dismantle or halt 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, believing that its harm to the regime, especially after the death of Mahsa Amini, outweighs its benefits. However, part of the hard core of power, which sees its livelihood and cultural-political identity in enforcing hijab, opposes this idea.
It seems that the power structure in Iran is experiencing confusion and an inability to decide on the issue known as the Morality Police. Although the recent protests and the direction of the slogans indicate that the issue of compulsory hijab and the Morality Police is no longer the sole concern of the protesters, and the words and promises of officials hold no importance for them.
The hashtag Mahsa Amini, which has surpassed 50 million uses 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 individuals put it, the injustices that have been inflicted on them or others over all these years.
A remedy after Sohrab’s death
Some rational conservatives or those who have claimed to be open to dialogue over the years, or at least demonstrated it in their behavior, and even criticized the Morality Police, have tried these days to provide analysis on why these events are happening instead of attacking the protesters or linking them to foreign influences.
For example, they might say that these protests have a social basis, not economic or political, and if attention had been paid to them, things wouldn’t have reached this point. Jalil Mohbi, the former secretary of the Headquarters for Enjoining Good and Forbidding Wrong, tweeted that contrary to some beliefs, the protests of 1999, 2009, and 2022 are all social, not political. All three upheavals are a result of lifestyle, and this difference in lifestyle is due to 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 the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting and the current head of the Cultural Heritage Organization, tweeted that the greatest evil is making people distrust the foundation of religion. The system has no dead end. Contrary to the belief of some friends and enemies, revising some ineffective social laws and methods does not lead to the domino effect of the system’s downfall. We must understand social changes and have a plan for them.
Some, like the Fars News Agency and Seyed Ali Mousavi, a media activist and conservative analyst, have remembered during the protests that perhaps dialogue can solve the problem. Fars likened the recent events to marital disputes and titled their article ‘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, as soon as we speak, we are bombarded with insults. Social networks were once supposed to be a forum for community dialogue, but now what?
In the past four years, I have written extensively about social anger, social resilience, and the accumulation of anger, and considered it a threat to society. What we witnessed these days and in 2019 is the overflow of anger that has turned into hard violence with the presence of elements of the opposition movement, and some innocents have fallen victim to this violence. Or quoting from The Guardian about how to conduct dialogue in the online space.
However, the responses of 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 suspicion, considering it merely a tactic to get out of the crisis. The responses are along the lines of ‘it’s too late now’ or ‘you had years to listen, but you silenced us for any reason so only your voice could 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 Mahsa Amini’s death as an excuse to attack the foundation of the regime. Therefore, any retreat or concession to them not only doesn’t satisfy or stop them, but when they see they’ve achieved one of their demands, they will continue the protests to force us to retreat one by one. The leader of this view is Raisi’s father-in-law.
Alamolhoda said it’s unclear why some people are seeking to dismantle the Morality Police in the country, and in this matter, the police are fulfilling their duty against improper hijab. Certainly, with young single individuals, they cannot deal with women without hijab, so women must be used for this issue.
It’s clear that his comment is a jab at some insiders of the conservative movement, like several members of parliament who have openly spoken about dismantling 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 instance, Ali Khazrian has said that one shouldn’t vote to dissolve the Morality Police because of one mistake. However, another member of the National Security Commission has said that the government can halt the Morality Police’s practices, or another representative has said that the Morality Police has made people more immodest and irreligious rather than promoting hijab.
Moeinuddin Saeedi, the representative of Chabahar, has also announced the drafting of a plan to prevent the harassment by the Morality Police in parliament. However, given that such issues are generally beyond the authority of parliament members to decide on, and considering that it doesn’t seem like the majority of parliament is in favor of eliminating the Morality Police, what we will likely see in the coming days is the fading or diminishing impact of the Morality Police, not its elimination or dismantling.
In this context, articles have been published on Iran Gate.
- Morality Police or the Chariot of Death
- Referendum on Hijab: Yes in Turkey, No in Iran
- The result of a foresight report on hijab: Tolerance is the only solution