Maryam Sinaiee

The call from Isfahan’s Friday Prayer leader for a police crackdown on loose hijab has sparked outrage from Iranians on social media. Yousef Tabatabainejad, who has again demanded action against “norm breakers,” is remembered for similar calls six years ago before a series of acid attack on women in the city.

In a meeting on Friday with an official from Law Enforcement (the uniformed police), Tabatabainejad called for them to enforce the mandatory ‘Islamic’ dress code for women by making the streets “unsafe” for those – who he said were few – flouting the rules.

Also on Friday, more than a thousand kilometers away in Bojnourd in North Khorosan Province, eastern Iran, another Friday prayer leader, Abolghasem Yaghoubi, urged the Police to “make life unsafe” for those who fail to comply with hijab rules “because they seek to make our society insecure.”

Mahdieh Golrou, an Tehran-based political activist, in a tweet on Friday reminded Iranians of Tababtabainejad’s denunciation in 2014 of women whose dress he considered outside prescribed standards and his call for people to take the matter into their own hands.

At least four young women in Isfahan were subsequently attacked with acid, in October 2014, by men on motorbikes. One of the women died and others were seriously injured, including loss of sight. The victims were apparently chosen because their headscarves and outfits did not meet vigilantes’ ideas of norms.

Those responsible for the attacks were never arrested, while victims and witnesses claimed the authorities ignored vital evidence. Some residents in Isfahan said they had received warning text messages in the days before the attacks.

Human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, currently imprisoned with a 38-year term, warned in 2014 that “dispatching unidentified and untrained individuals to promote virtue among the citizens is completely against the law, legal principles, and legal rationale, and is a menace to the citizens...”

The authorities, however, blamed the acid attacks on foreign intelligence services seeking to undermine public morality. Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi in 2014 claimed Britain’s MI6 was behind the incidents.

Looking back to the police investigation, ‘Great Khan,’ a Twitter user, recently observed that the Police had within 24 hours found and arrested pranksters who had posted a video clip on social media a few months ago. “Thank God the moral security [of Iranian society] and Islam were maintained,” Great Khan noted, while wondering why police investigators have been unable to track down the acid attackers. The special-effects clip in question – which “caused anxiety” to people, said authorities  –showed eggplants (aubergines) raining down on Tehran.