May 30, 2014

An Iranian member of parliament has said that partisan politics is costing the government the power to implement a coherent policy on veiling. Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, who is also an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and related to him through marriage, appeared on the popular television program “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow” and spent considerable time discussing veiling in Iran.

“One of our problems in our struggle with veiling is that we do not make a united statement,” Haddad-Adel said. “One person says cultural work must be done, another says we have to confront this issue with organized institutions. These multiple statements and seasonal actions have ruined the work. The power of the establishment is lost through such actions.”

Haddad-Adel pleaded with officials inside President Hassan Rouhani’s administration to “not say things that give comfort” to those who break cultural norms.

At the beginning of every summer, Iranian authorities prioritize enforcing proper veiling. This year, however, the issue has received traction in the media for a variety of reasons. The arrest of young men and unveiled women dancing in the tribute video to Pharrell Williams' "Happy" and their high-profile public confessions have also brought discussion of the veil and cultural issues to the public.

Another cause is the viral Facebook campaign “My Stealthy Freedom,” started by Iranian journalist in London Masih Alinejad, that encourages women to post pictures of themselves without the veil as a form of protest. The page has over 400,000 likes. A two-minute video of a woman walking in Tehran without the veil has also gone viral. She walks down a busy street and, interestingly, very few people acknowledge or even notice her. The video has been shared by a number of Persian-language Facebook pages.