Iran Will Stop Arresting People For Violating 'Islamic' Dress Code

Women will no longer be arrested for violating the Islamic dress code in effect since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, said Tehran Police on Thursday.

According to a report by Associated Press, this move signaled a relaxation in punishments given for violating the conservative dress code. It may be noted the young and reformed Iranians who voted President Hassan Rouhani to power earlier this year, have been making this demand for a very long time.

Reformist daily Sharq quoted Tehran police chief General Hossein Rahimi as saying, “Those who do not observe the Islamic dress code will no longer be taken to detention centers, nor will judicial cases be filed against them.”

The semi-official Tasnim news agency said those found in breach of the law will be made to attend classes taken by police. It also said that the repeat offenders could still be subjected to legal action while the Islamic dress code remains intact in places outside Tehran.

However, people who oppose such a ruling still occupy high positions in the Iranian judiciary and security forces. So, it was relatively unclear as to whether it will be fully implemented or not, the Associated Press report stated.

For approximately 40 years, women in Iran were coerced to wear long and loose clothes and cover their hair. Younger and more liberal-minded women opposed this system by wearing loose headscarves that did not totally cover the hair and by applying nail polish, which did not sit well with the conservatives.

The Iranian moral police usually would detain people who violate the code. The authorities then call the families of the arrested and order them to bring clothes that abide by the Islamic code, the report stated. Men could also get arrested if they were seen wearing shorts or going shirtless.

In 2016, Tehran police announced that they would deploy 7,000 male and female officers for a new plainclothes division in order to keep a check on public morality and to enforce the Islamic dress code. This was the largest undercover assignment of this kind, stated the report.

Recently, Saudi Arabia had relaxed some of its rules for women. In early December, the ultra-conservative kingdom even lifted its long-standing ban on showing movies in the country.

According to a report by Forbes, the Middle Eastern country scheduled its first screening of a movie in more than 35 years in December. The new law was announced by the General Commission for Audio-visual Media, chaired by the minister of culture and information Dr. Awwad bin Saleh Al-Awwad.

The ministry, however, stated that the movies to be shown will go through a censorship procedure so that they remain within the “media policy standards of the kingdom” and abide by its stringent social code.