Is Being Young, in Iran, a Crime?

Maryam Kashani, Rooz Online:

“I still do not know why they have detained me. I am not wearing make-up neither is my hair sticking out of the scarf. I had simply walked out of the house to get some medicine for my mother. My father gave me the keys to his car so I can return home faster. As I was opening the door of the car, someone tapped me on the shoulder. My heart melted.”

Maryam is a twenty something girl, did not return home for 24 hours after the tap on her shoulder. The “sister”, as the women members of the moral police (monkerat) that enforce Islamic code are called, asked Maryam with a sarcastic tone: “Why are you crying? Do you think we are wolves?” Maryam was not the first women to cry in such a situation, just as it was not the sister’s first time to say these words. For many years now many Iranian youth have experienced similar incidents of the moral police. But for what crimes? READ MORE

Hejab

The first charge against young women is not observing the hejab, or Islamic covering. For years now authorities have tried to impose the Islamic dress code for women, through different policies. Despite this, the “problem of the hejab”, as officials call it, continues to persist. Last Friday, after the public prayers at Tehran University, a crowd marched along one of the main avenues of the capital in protest to the slack enforcement of the hejab by officials. According to ISNA student news agency, the marchers chanted slogans that called for the punishment of those not observing the Islamic hejab. At the end of their march on Engelab (revolution) Square, the demonstrators read out a communiqué which said that the lack of enforcement of the hejab was a sign of the absence of religion and of the Islamic Government in the social sphere. The statement went even further to state that the “Islamic nation would not remain passive” in the wake of the government’s weaknesses. This agony is shared by the current members of the Majlis (Iran’s Parliament) and the law enforcement forces. Just a few weeks ago, with the approach of the warm summer weather, the police sent out an internal circular aimed at combating the “flagrant display of moral corruption”, as it calls individuals who do not fully observe the Islamic hejab. The Majlis too presented a draft bill to come up with a “national dress” aimed at combating what it calls unobserving of the Islamic dress code. But efforts, like many similar earlier ones, failed to change the behavior of the youth, thus continuing to send many to jails and detention centers.

Relations between boys and girls

Social researchers had concluded a long time ago that the principal reasons for divorce in Iran are economic, cultural, and the lack of familiarity of the married couples with each other prior to getting married. This is something social scientists agree on. Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic, any relations between boys and girls, and men and women, outside marriage were illegal.

Law enforcement officials, members of the Passdaran Revolutionary Guards, Baseej militia members etc arrest whenever they see couples who are not married or engaged to be married together. According to Noorian, the social deputy of the police, “research has shown that the meeting of boys and girls outside the supervision of the family and with disregard for the cultural and social norms, even for the purpose of marriage, has negative consequences.” But in reality, the meeting of boys and girls even the supervision of family members is condoned and not tolerated.

After she was put in a room with other girls that had been arrested the same evening, Maryam learned that some of the girls in the room had been arrested for having “illegal relations”, which they explained to be walking on a street with a boy or eating ice-cream with a boy. They told her that their mothers were fully aware of their rendezvous with their boy friend. Out of fear, some of them said, they told the police that the boy was their brother. And when one of the “brothers”, as the men moral police are called, asked the girl how many brothers did one of the girls have, all the other policemen laughed at her.

So young people cannot walk together on the streets. They cannot walk in the parks. They cannot arrange to meet each other. Going to a café with someone from the opposite sex is a crime.

Ms Nasrin Afzali writes in a report in Zan, a woman’s magazine, on a case that she had encountered.

As I passed the crowded areas of Tehran University and entered a building whose walls were covered with Islamic moral slogans, I heard the loud voice of a man. As I looked in that direction, I saw a relatively tall man with a disheveled beard walking briskly while a young couple followed him right behind him. The couple looked visibly distressed. At one point, the man abruptly turned around, grabbed the young woman’s purse and yelled “move faster.” They entered a room with a door sign that read “Security”. “You have a record, don’t you”, the man yelled at the woman once inside. The young woman began talking to a black veiled woman sitting behind a desk. A few minutes later, the young woman walked out of the room in complete anger. I asked her what the problem was. “I was talking to my cousin when this man interrupted us and said we had to accompany him to the security office”, she said. I asked if she had told the man that the person she was talking to was her cousin, to which she replied in the affirmative, adding that the man told her that it made no difference who he was and that she was not allowed to talk to even her cousin. At this time, another young woman who was witness to my conversation with the woman said that at one time she had been barred from talking to her fiancé, adding that the person who stopped them said pretty much the same thing, i.e. no boy and girl could talk to each other regardless of their ties.

Music

Iranian youth are not allowed to listen to their choice of music. Listening to loud music in a car is banned. They call it “sound pollution.” In a typical situation a “brother” pulls over a car, asks the occupants to come out, and then threatens them with punishment. In fact, sound pollution in Tehran has way passed the 50 decibel mark, and in some areas adjacent to highways it had even surpassed the 70 decibel level. The responsible official at the Sound Unit of the government Pollution Center has warned of the dangerous levels of sound in the capital. “If appropriate corrective measures are not taken to stop this sound pollution, dangerous consequences will follow”, he warns. The sources for this pollution, according to him, are industries, Mehrabad airport, railways and the traffic of more than 2.7 million vehicles in the streets of Tehran. With this clarified, it is still the youth that must pay the price of pollution!

Maryam later wrote in her diary that the “crimes of the other girls was at about the same level as mine: a colorful overcoat, a narrow strand of hair sticking out from the scarf, polished finger nails, and a short, tight and colorful overcoat. One of the girls was brought there because she was listening to music in her car, which made everybody at the room laugh.”

Other charges

There is an order in Tehran University that dictates how young people must behave. One of its provisions goes like this: “refrain from using any instrument, object, clothing, etc that is contrary to Islamic and social rules, which is considered propagating Western culture.” And these are in fact the “objects” it refers to: sunglasses, especially of RayBan brand, walkmen sets, T-shirts with pictures of entertainment stars, especially Michael Jackson. In the words of a young woman, “they stop you even for having Nike shoes, sneakers with flashing lights, etc.”

A man with long hair is considered decadent. The moral police even stop young men for the shape of their beard. “If you have a beard, you must also have a moustache”, said a young man, adding that long hair too was not tolerated. “So long as I had a beard, they did not care about my long hair. But as soon as I cut my beard, my hair became the cause of my detentions”, he added.

According to women’s Zan magazine, going hiking in a group is illegal. To stop young people from going hiking in the northern hills of Tehran, authorities have buried some of the war martyrs in Towchal, one of the high mountains in north Tehran, so that every Friday now tens of Baseej volunteers ply the mountain paths. Wearing colorful clothes is a crime. Even going to parties is a crime in Iran. Officials have openly said that do not tolerate parties in which young people mingle. Even encouragement acts such as clapping, whistling, or the chanting of hoorah is forbidden.

And of course love is forbidden too. A young woman told of a story that while a young moral police man repeatedly stopped her for wearing the “wrong” clothes or having her hair out of her scarf, one day she was surprised to find a letter from him expressing his desire to send his parents to meet her parents to talk about his interest in her. She threatened to copy and distribute his letter in the university. Even a hezbollahi moral police cannot love.

Moral class

That night, Maryam eventually could call her mother from the police station. The mother had almost had a heart attack searching for her daughter. Maryam tried to calm her when another woman detainee grabbed the phone from Maryam and told her mother not to worry because all these people wanted was some money. They would then subject us to some moral class and even show us a film or two, she added joyfully.

A few days after this incident, Maryam was released conditionally and began attending the moral class. They showed her and the others a film that she says was not very Islamic by itself. A “brother” who was running the film show would stop the film occasionally and inject some advice, which would make the girls laugh. A glance around the class room revealed that the girls looked no different than the way they did when they were rounded up on the streets. As a “sister” continued with her preaches, an older woman sitting next to Maryam shook her head in objection. She had been taken there because she was smoking in her own car.