Iranians Dance As Civil Disobedience During Nowruz Holidays
Maryam Sinaiee
Iran International
Civil disobedience can take different forms, but in Iran where it has been banned for over four decades, dancing has become a non-violent form of protest.
Iran International
Civil disobedience can take different forms, but in Iran where it has been banned for over four decades, dancing has become a non-violent form of protest.
The Islamic fasting month of Ramadan has coincided with Iran's extremely popular Nowrouz New Year Holidays this year but instead of fasting and praying as they are expected to do, many people seem to be determined to enjoy the holidays after months of violently suppressed protests. They want to show the government they have not been subdued.
Iranian holiday makers have been sharing videos of themselves dancing and making merry -- on the streets, at the beach, in shopping malls or in parks – in different parts of the country, even some very conservative areas, despite the unwritten ban on dancing in public that can get them into the trouble with the authorities.
Holiday makers watching a girl dance at the beach in Reyshahr in southern Iran
In most videos shared on social media, women are dancing with bare heads and not on their own but with men in the middle of a circle of clapping and cheering onlookers which make their defiance even more biting to the hardline religious and political establishment.
Quite often, the performances, particularly in crowded streets and shopping malls, appear to be very spontaneous with the dancers quickly disappearing into the crowds within a few minutes in flash mob style.
Most onlookers, as videos show, appear to be very happy and supportive of the dancers. In a few cases, they also chant “Woman, Life, Freedom”, the signature slogan of the 2022-23 protests, besides encouraging the dancers with clapping and singing along, and even showering them with money.
Girls dancing at a shopping mall in Jolfa, a small town in East Azarbaijan Province
In a few cases police has intervened to stop the performances and disperse the crowds. Weary of sparking fresh protests, authorities have shown some tolerance but at the same time tried to scare people into submission by shutting down some hospitality businesses while hardliners have complained that authorities are not taking sufficiently strong preventative action.
Police dispersing a crowd cheering a singing man and another who was dancing at Isfahan’s historical bridge during Nowrouz
In the tourist city of Amol earlier this week, the attorney general ordered a holiday resort to be shut down for women’s bareheaded dance in public in the month of Ramadan.
Similarly, the attorney general of Hamedan, Hassan Khanjani, ordered a café near the Ganjnameh Achaemenid inscriptions in the mountain outside the city to shut down. The café had “planned” music and dance programs for the visitors, he said, adding that two people were arrested in this connection for “encouraging others to depravity and moral corruption.”
Flash mob on a street in Karaj, 50km to the west of the capital Tehran
Hardliner ex-lawmaker Hamid Rasaei highlighted the videos of young girls dancing near Achaemenid inscriptions in Mount Behistun in the province of Kermanshah and protested to the ministry of cultural heritage and tourism for not acting to stop such infringements.
“Over 9,800 were martyred in Kermanshah province [in the Iran-Iraq war]… so that these places can be sensible places for families and to improve people’s historical understanding, not a place of dance,” Rasaei who likened the dance of a few young girls, who even had headscarves on, to “cabaret dancers” before the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
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Despite numerous new measures to curb the trend, more women are daring to be seen without headscarves on streets, in public buildings, and on social media, shaking the foundations of the theocratic dictatorship to the core.
Life after the Mahsa Amini incident will never be the same. For many, the hijab has gone for good but the country’s hardliners will not relent in their battle.
In a determined statement on Thursday, the Islamic Republic’s Interior Ministry described the hijab as "one of the foundations of the civilization of the Iranian nation" and "one of the practical principles of the Islamic Republic.”
"There has not been and will not be any retreat or tolerance in religious principles and rules and traditional values, and hijab, as an unquestionable religious necessity, will always be one of the practical principles of the Islamic Republic of Iran," read the statement.
But, never have Iranians been forced to cover their hair throughout their millennia-old culture, and the Islamic Republic – along with Taliban Islamist extremist group in Afghanistan — is the only Muslim country with such a strict interpretation of hijab and nationwide coercive measures for its observance.
The unrest created since the death in morality police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini has made it increasingly difficult to enforce the mandatory Islamic dress code which has become a symbol of revolution.
The tide against the hijab was never as strong as it is today. Anti-hijab campaigns such as ‘White Wednesdays’, ‘Girls of Enghelab Street’, ‘No to Mandatory Hijab’, and ‘Sneaky Freedoms’, have been branded plots by “the enemy” to disrupt the idea in the minds of Iranian women.
The mere existence of so many campaigns against the obligatory dress code is indicative of its low popularity among the people.
In addition to the regime suggesting that the anti-hijab movement is "one of the axes of the enemies’ cognitive war against the nation”, the Interior Ministry has also called the “Women, Life, Liberty” -- the main motto of the current wave of anti-regime protests – a “demagogic slogan” devised by the intelligence agencies of adversaries to conceal their evil intentions.
The conspiratorial statement - typical of the regime rhetoric - claimed that the schemes of the movement have been foiled but the people but did not explain that if such is the case, why the Islamic Republic has been intensifying measures to enforce hijab. Workshops and seminars are being pushed on women to quash the female-led uprising against the regime’s hackneyed propaganda lines.
The ministry has also incited numerous clashes as it urged organizations as well as ordinary citizens to confront women who unveil in public, emboldening the hardliners to attack women and girls with loose-fitting hijab in public because they know the authorities will back them in courts if the rows lead to judicial cases.
Earlier in the week, it was announced that women could be fined as much as $60,000 for flouting hijab observance when a new law to enforce the Islamic dress code is passed by parliament.
These penalties will apply to passengers who do not abide by the hijab rules everywhere from in private vehicles to schools, restaurants and even in cyberspace. Nobody is above the law either, celebrity or otherwise, said lawmaker Hossein Jalali.
As surveillance intensifies, the regime also plans to use CCTV cameras and facial recognition technology to identify women who flout the hijab, and use cash fines and social restrictions to punish them including blocking their bank account and banning them from internet access or using governmental services.
Since the death of Mahsa Amini, the morality police may have had to step back from public life somewhat, but the swell of rebellion remains a bitter pill for the regime to swallow as they seek new means of oppression.
Four decades after the Islamic Republic forced women to wear headscarves, it is clear that change is afoot. Who knows what will be in the near future, but the tide has turned and no matter the levels of oppression and surveillance, there is no doubt there is no going back. The regime is fighting a losing battle and it has lost the hearts and minds of its people.
Women are prepared to sacrifice their lives to ensure the futures of the next generation and we are witnessing a resilience even the tools of dictatorship seem unable to quash.