Looking at the faces of the victims of acid attacks in Iran under the clerical rule is a diagram of the oppression of Iranian women.
Imagine for a second the amount of oppression on every Iranian, when it reaches women, it multiplies. On the one hand, the Iranian woman as a citizen is tolerating the oppression that is inflicted on every Iranian under the rule of the mullahs, on the other hand, she bears the burden of double oppression for being a woman and bears it on her psyche.
Women in Iran do not have security in schools, offices, taxis, subways, buses, streets, and even at home, and constantly breathe in an atmosphere of threats, discrimination, crime, and stress. This is what Iranian women face every day.
Talking about the extent and dimensions of the double oppression of Iranian women is beyond the scope of this article and requires an open discussion, but what temporarily worries the society as an urgent issue and stirs the souls of the people is the criminal fatwa of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s representatives, as the ring leaders of the regime’s Friday shows in the cities of Isfahan and Bojnourd.
On October 2, on of the regime’s clerics, Yousef Tabatabai met with the Deputy Chief of Intelligence and Security of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the regime and the Commander of the Police Force of Isfahan Province, referring to the women whom he called ‘norm-breakers’. He said:
“The atmosphere of the society should be made insecure for these people, who are also few in number, and they should not be allowed to break the norms easily in the streets and parks … The police should be given more authority to confronting breaking the norms and breaking the law. We should not be afraid that if we deal with violators, they will take hostile action against us.”
It is interesting that on the same date, Abolghasem Yaghoubi, the Friday prayer leader and representative of Khamenei in North Khorasan, also said:
“The law enforcement forces must make the lives of the rioters who have evil intentions in their minds insecure. The phenomenon of bad hijab and lack of hijab in society is like a virus among the people and it must be confronted. In addition to the police and the judiciary, to deal with the lack of hijab, people should also get involved in this matter and be moral polices. Therefore, we must be sensitive to non-coronaviruses.”
Yousef Tabatabai had made similar statements in 2011: “The issue of hijab is beyond just a mention and in order to deal with bad hijab, one should raise club and use force.”
He also said: “If someone does something in public, it must be stopped, because unrestrained it causes harm to others. Some believe that coercion is not necessary for society and should be introduced through culture, but you cannot do anything with advice alone.”
His statement caused a wave of acid attacks on the women in Isfahan, and this issue caused the city of Isfahan and consequently the whole of Iran to be in shock and astonishment.
The coincidence of the criminal fatwas of the two representatives of the Supreme Leader and the use of the common code of ‘making insecure’ shows that there is a clear policy of repression of the regime.
But in fear of the consequences of such fatwas by the regime’s clerics, the state-run daily Hamdeli on 6 October wrote: “Two days after the sixth anniversary of the acid attack on the girls of Isfahan, and while the perpetrators of this crime have not yet been arrested, the Friday prayer leader of Isfahan, in controversial statements, called for the make the society insecure for the women he considers as unveiled (having a bad hijab).”
But the truth is that this time Iran’s supreme leader and his representatives are miscalculating. From 2011 until now, there have been dramatic changes in Iran. The state of society is now explosive. When it comes to explosives, everyone knows that the regime’s first mistake can be its last.
