Springtime in Iran is beautiful. Unfortunately, as NPR points out, it also means that the so-called “Morality Police” are out in full force, working to enforce a set of decency laws that primarily, and many say unfairly, target women. An estimated 7,000 of these undercover officers, known as the Gashte Ershad (“guidance patrol”) roam the streets each day.
That led Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad and the group My Stealthy Freedom to launch a social media campaign in which Iranian men don the Hijab, or headscarf, to support their wives. The My Stealthy Freedom Facebook page has become a huge hit, with over one million likes and counting.
“Most of these men are living inside Iran and they have witnessed how their female relatives have been suffering at the hands of the morality police and humiliation of enforced hijab, Alinejad said in an interview with the Independent.
This isn’t the first campaign Alinejad has started to protest Iran’s moral behavior laws. Last year, she earned acclaim for her photo series showing Iranian women posing without a head scarf, and directly opposing the policy that has been in place since the revolution of 1979. “This is me, a 24-year-old from Tehran,” wrote one women in a photo who maintained her anonymity to protect herself. “I dream of the day that I can choose the style and color of my clothing, a tiny share of anyone’s human rights.”
The #MenInHijab hashtag has taken off across social media, with Iranian men posting pictures, often with their wives, showing them in the Hijab as an ironic means to not only protest the selective way morality laws are enforced in their country but the very nature of the decency laws themselves.
“In our society, a woman’s existence and identity is justified by a man’s integrity, and in many cases the teachings of a religious authority or government officials influence a man’s misguided sense of ownership over women,” Alinejad told the Independent. “So I thought it would be fantastic to invite men to support women’s rights.”
