Taking the hejab heat

by Gareth Smith June 1, 2007

written by Gareth Smith June 1, 2007

Summer arrived early in Iran this year, and withthe hot May days the annual drive against “bad hejab” tookon greater force than usual. Police arrested thousands ofwomen deemed to be flouting laws requiring covering inpublic, seizing women with hair spilling out from headscarves or whose coats were too short or too tight. There has been talk of offending women being exiled fromTehran, although nearly all are released quickly aftersigning a pledge to dress better in future. The crackdown has also targeted shops selling shortmanteaus, the lighter body-covering coat chosen by manyupper-class and younger women in preference to the moretraditional, all-enveloping black chador. Pressure for the police action had been building up for sometime. Senior ayatollahs in the holy city of Qom have longbeen disgruntled with what they see as the lax socialpolicies of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, epitomized by hisdecision last year – later suspended by supreme leaderAyatollah Ali Khamenei –

Elections Hejab iran

Gareth Smith

Gareth Smith was a distinguished journalist who reported from the Middle East for over two decades. He served as the Financial Times correspondent in Tehran, where he was the chief Iran correspondent from 2003, following his earlier role as Lebanon correspondent. Throughout his career, Smith covered Middle Eastern affairs for leading media outlets, including The Financial Times, The Guardian, and the BBC. He also contributed as an editor to Executive magazine. His work as a freelance journalist in the 1990s, focusing on the politics of Iran and Iraq, paved the way for his appointment at the FT. In 2009, he relocated to the west coast of Ireland, where he balanced freelance journalism with his passion for nature and the land.

Taking the hejab heat

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