Iranian Cleric Says Hijab Rebels 'Loose', Deserving Punishment

It comes as members of Iraq's Shia Hashd al-Shaabi militias and other proxies of the Islamic Republic have been given permission to study at Iranian universities.

Mohammad Moqimi on Monday called the reports about the use of Hashd al-Shaabi forces to repress the university protests "simplistic", students fearing the forces were being inserted to crack down on dissent as universities continue to be a hotbed of anti revolutionary sentiment.

He said the militia students are "sincere and genuine people."

On Thursday, a group of students from Tehran and Amirkabir Universities expressed opposition to the news of the new student admissions.

In a statement, Tehran University student activists said they would not accept “military forces, whether in combat or school uniforms, within the university premises".

Vowing to resist their presence, they said that the university’s atmosphere is already poisoned due to the presence of professors affiliated with the regime and Basij militiamen masquerading as students.

They accused the authorities of sidelining students by suspending, removing, and suppressing them, while replacing them with borrowed forces from Iraq.

Al-Hashd al-Shaabi was established back in 2014, following a fatwa to fight ISIS, which controlled four governorates and reached the borders of the capital Baghdad at the time.

The Iraqi state-sponsored umbrella organization is composed of approximately 67 different armed factions, with around 128,000 fighters that are mostly Shia Muslim groups, but also include Sunni Muslim, Christian, and Yazidi groups.

In an audio file released on Sunday, Abdolreza Seif, the Head of Faculty of Literature and Humanities and an advisor to the dean of Tehran University used a derogatory Persian word for dancers, which denotes immoral entertainers, to describe performing arts students.

Singing and dancing is forbidden in the strict interpretation of Islam, which the hardliners in Iran try to enforce.

Students at the fine arts faculty have been staging sit-ins against stricter hijab rules inside the university premises since last month.

Many were seriously injured by the campus security forces and several others arrested by plainclothes agents.

The sit-in began after the authorities announced new rules for the specialist arts institution which require girls to wear a pullover headscarf with stitched front (called maghna’e in Iran) which is like a nun’s coif, completely covering the head and the neck. Failing to comply, the university has announced, would result in suspension.

Following the incidents, several statements were issued online by students from institutions including Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tarbiat Modarres University and Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, vowing to continue protests against the repressive policies.

A video received by Iran International shows thousands of people gathered gathered outside the city hall in Rasht after the hijab police tried to whisk away three women. Onlookers intervened and rescued the women. As the news of the incident spread in the city, residents began to gather in the square in protest.

Some tweets say that gunshots were heard and security forces also fired tear gas, but it is too early to verify those reports.

Iran on Sunday officially announced the return of the hijab police to streets and earlier videos and reports received from Iran showed numerous incidents of confrontations between women who chose to appear without covering their head and plainclothes hijab enforcers.

Last September, the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in hijab police custody triggered months of protests and the government for a while ordered enforcers off the streets. But in the past six months more and more women have shed the hijab and appear in public in ordinary attire.

Clerics and hardliners however have been pushing for a forceful reaction to what they call "loss of honor", "lawlessness" and a phenomenon threatening the very foundations of the clerical regime.

A video emerged on Saturday showing a hijab enforcer attacking and trying to detain a teenage girl. The video quickly became viral on Persian Twitter.

Sadeghi posted a video on Instagram expressing his anger over the detention of yet another woman in morality police hands due to her inappropriate hijab.

“Believe me, if I saw such a scene, I might commit murder,” he wrote in the caption of his video. "Why do you get paid? To take people's daughters into a van and arrest them?"

Regime agents rushed to Sadeghi's house in Tehran in the wake of the post, when he jumped from the third floor in a bid to escape. A dramatic chase ensued, which he filmed and streamed live to Instagram, in spite of the regime's attempts to ban the app.

In a new campaign to enforce mandatory hijab, morality police have now returned to the streets in full force after a brief few months' respite following the worst of the unrest which erupted in September after the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody.

Women continue to defy the official dress code, particularly in Tehran, despite the crackdown, with huge numbers seen across the country's public spaces from malls to universities with their hair uncovered as they flout the mandatory hijab rules.

Experts fear the renewed zeal of the morality police risks reigniting tensions.

In a post on Instagram, she dramatically explained the events after an acrimonious dispute with a hijab enforcer in a city bus on July 16.

A video of her quarrel with the hijab enforcer on social media went viral last year leading to her arrest by the regime forces.

“I was afraid and went to the balcony to scream and ask for help, but a number of regime agents threatened me not to scream, otherwise they would come up and break my neck!” read her post.

Rashno further added that over ten agents searched everywhere, and one was filming the procedure.

The 28-year-old artist and writer was tortured last year into denouncing herself and other activists, expressing regrets for her confrontation with the hijab enforcer.

Her ‘forced confessions’ was also aired on state-run television after she was brutally beaten before the telecast. Her suffering left a deep mark on many people and prepared the stage for large anti-government protests later in September when Mahsa Amini was killed in hijab police custody.

Rashno was found guilty of “association and collusion with the intention of committing a crime against the country's security" and “propaganda against the Islamic Republic” and given a five-year suspended jail sentence in December.

In May, she revealed on her Instagram account that she has been punished by her university with two semesters suspension.

"As a citizen, I have the right to choose the clothes I wear,” she wrote in response to the decision, adding that she plans to return to the university after her suspension with “her preferred outfit.”