When the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021, we wondered what their attitude would be towards women. Would they lock them up at home again as during their first dictatorship at the end of the last century? Or had they changed as their political representatives in Qatar implied? At first, with its policy of open doors to journalists (allowed to travel without major obstacles throughout the country), the press conferences of its spokesmen and its astute use of social networks, it gave the impression that things could be different. The mirage was short-lived.
In a matter of months, and after deliberately ambiguous initial statements, his ban on women studying, working outside the home, and even having access to parks, has made clear his vision of Afghan women no longer as second-class citizens, but as mere reproductive accessories without any rights. Even worse. If between 1996 and 2001, the bearded created a moral police that was responsible for intimidating women who dared to go out on the street without the company of a man, laugh in public or even make noise with their shoes when walking, now they have privatized repression and leave the punishment of the disobedient in the hands of parents, husbands, brothers, or eldest sons (the male guardian, or mehram). It is they who are called to chapter in police station if one of their wives leaves the narrow lane that has been marked. In this way, even those who do not share the radical interpretation of Islam of these Sunni extremists are forced to restrain the females of their family to avoid the consequences.
In neighboring Iran, the situation is far from similar. Despite the misogyny of the hijab law and other laws that curtail women's rights since the proclamation of the Islamic Republic, Iranian women have always been able to study and, with some limitations, work. The veil became the toll for their access to public space. Unlike in Afghanistan, women are highly visible on the street, in public administration, in the private sector, shopping malls or places of recreation. However, in the wake of protests against the mandatory cover-up that sparked the death in police custody of the young Mahsa Amini, the regime has also shifted its technique to bring the rebels to heel.
At first, Iran's rulers tried to quell public anger over Mahsa's death (and the tightening of the hijab law that had been enacted two months earlier) by removing the so-called "morality police" from the streets, one of whose patrols had stopped her. The attempt at appeasement did not work. On the contrary, many Iranians felt empowered to remove their scarves, which for two decades had already revealed more hair than they covered. That gesture of civil disobedience has taken over from the protests, silenced by the brutality of the repression. So the regime has returned to the charge, fearful of losing one of the pillars of the Islamic Republic.
Now instead of orientation patrols, it is a facial recognition system that allows the images of the cameras installed in streets and highways to detect (and warn) the offenders, as this newspaper has told a few weeks ago. But above all, and this is where Iran's Shiite Islamists are following in the footsteps of their Taliban neighbors and ideological rivals, they are privatizing the pressure on women to cover up. Banks, shops, restaurants and any other business risk a fine, and even closure, if they allow a woman to enter with her head uncovered. (Last month they already closed a hundred establishments, according to official media). So their owners are forced to act as morality policemen, while the authorities defend that the hijab is a social demand. Perverse.
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