Iran reviewing mandatory headscarf law after months-long protests
- Protests have swept Iran since September 16 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by morality police for allegedly flouting the sharia-based law
- The hijab headscarf became obligatory for all women in Iran in April 1983, four years after the Islamic Revolution that overthrew the US-backed monarchy
Iran said on Saturday it is reviewing a decades-old law that requires women to cover their heads, as it struggles to quell more than two months of protests linked to the dress code.
Demonstrators have burned their head coverings and shouted anti-government slogans. Since Amini’s death, a growing number of women have not been observing hijab, particularly in Tehran’s fashionable north.
“Both parliament and the judiciary are working [on the issue]” of whether the law needs any changes, Iran’s attorney general Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said.
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Iranian authorities pounce on woman not wearing a hijab amid police crackdown on protests
Quoted by the ISNA news agency, he did not specify what could be modified in the law by the two bodies, which are largely in the hands of conservatives.
