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Dissenters opposing Iran’s hardline hijab mandate face having their bank accounts frozen, prison, or worse, if they fail to comply with what is being framed as a public health order.

The 1979 Islamic dress code, which has been a catalyst for massive pro-civil liberty demonstrations in the country, was mandated in August as the country’s President Ebrahim Raisi clamped down on non-conformity.

Called the Hijab and Chastity Project, Raisi’s cultural health mandate was issued to “cleanse society of the pollution caused by nonconformance with Islamic dress codes.”

The mandate’s purpose, Iran Wire said, is to build a “model Islamic society”.

The cultural health mandate was delivered to most government departments, with the nod of approval from the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, setting Iran’s decades-old mandatory Islamic dress code in stone.

Draconian

According to the August 2022 119-page hijab mandate sent to government agencies, departments were:

1. To introduce surveillance cameras to monitor and fine unveiled women or refer them for “counselling.”
2. To place student clerics in residential buildings to monitor compliance.
3. Hospital staff are required to provide “appropriate garments” to female patients on their way to surgery.
4. Fines for non-compliance.
5. A mandatory prison sentence for any Iranian who questions or posts content against mandatory hijab online.

Freezing bank accounts, reported Iran International, is a new measure likely to be implemented as part of a “more modern framework, using the technologies that already exist.”

The proposals to expand government overreach are part of the Iranian government’s response to the gap left by the supposedly disbanded morality militia (the Gasht-e-Ershad).

Hossein Jalali, a legislator and cultural committee member, explained:

“It is possible that women who do not observe hijab would be informed via SMS, asking them to respect the law. After notifying them, we enter the warning stage… and in the third stage, the bank account of the person who unveiled may be blocked.”

The digital infrastructure exists, as does the legal precedent.

An official hijab SMS warning system was at least trialled by Iranian authorities in 2019.

Women who took off their hijab to drive a car, or women who generally violated the “public health” mandate, were summoned to ‘the morality police station.’

Offenders were then given an official warning and only released after they commit to complying with the hijab mandate in writing, added Radio Farda.

If the cultural health mandate was broken a second time, those “accused were charged, and referred to a court of law.”

This, Jalali said, would now include “the government moving to block the bank account of the offender as a way of punishing them.”

In the past, recalled Radio Farda, Iran has used up to 8,000 undercover men and women, mandate compliance agents, to “identify dress code offenders”.

Adding to reports from Iran International, Armenia-based news agency News.am tracked the source of the news back to the Iranian newspaper Donya-e-Eqtesad.

Quoting Jalali, News.am relayed his confidence that “such a measure would help stop protests in the country” and force cultural health mandate compliance.

He then suggested freezing a repeat offender’s bank accounts could be an alternative to incarceration.

Being locked out, instead of being locked up, is still a prison sentence. The former just means less pesky paperwork for tyrants. The state doesn’t have to house, clothe, and feed offenders.

Control Freaks

With the obvious connection between the hardline hijab mandate and COVID mad mask mandates, it’s no stretch to suggest the West’s new authoritarians are salivating with excitement to see how it all pans out.

Chief among those is likely to be the iron-fisted socialist, Christophobe, and COVIDian, Premier Daniel Andrews, who accommodated the message of Islam, in an all-out hypocritical embrace of Mohammad’s mix-and-match theology, earlier this week.

Likewise, ‘full-tilt tyrannical’ Canadian “progressives”, who took the lead on cancelling protesters by freezing the accounts of pro-informed-consent freedom protesters earlier this year.

Truckers protesting COVIDian WEF-tist Justin Trudeau’s “vax or the axe” mandates, raised $3.85 million in 11 days (ending near $10 million) as they took their concerns to Ottawa.

Reacting to the protesters, Tiananmen Trudeau hid behind a positive “COVID” test, contemplated sending in tanks, smeared protesters as “Nazis”, confiscated their funding, then had organiser Tamara Lich arrested and held without bail.

Whether it’s hardline mask mandates or hardline hijab policies, there is the same “public health order” devil, singing the same “public health crisis” tune.

The dangers of a cashless society aside, for those following the unfolding events in Iran, Human Rights News Agency recently released a comprehensive report on the protests, calling them the “biggest demonstration against the hijab in modern history”.

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Originally published at Caldron Pool. Photo by Bess Hamiti.