As demonstrations against the obligation to cover one’s head shake the Islamic Republic, an Iranian bank manager who served a woman who wasn’t donning one was fired. The 80 million-person country has a law requiring women to cover their heads, necks, and hair, and the morality police enforce it. Mahsa Amini, 22, was slain on September 16 while being detained by moral police for allegedly violating dress code rules. This sparked large-scale protests that the administration has dubbed ‘riots’.
The bank manager in the province of Qom, which is close to Tehran, ‘had supplied financial services to an unveiled woman on Thursday,’ according to Mehr news agency. According to deputy governor Ahmad Hajizadeh, he was consequently ‘removed from his job by order of the governor,’ according to Mehr. The footage of the lady being shown ‘generated a lot of response on social media,’ Mehr continued.
According to Hajizadeh, directors of these institutions are in responsible of enforcing the hijab requirement because the government controls the majority of banks in Iran. Numerous individuals have perished during the rallies, most of them protestors but also some security officers, which Iran alleges are sparked by the Western ‘enemy’. The headscarf became mandatory four years after the 1979 revolution that overthrew the US-backed monarchy and founded the Islamic Republic.
Later, as fashion norms evolved, it became commonplace to see women donning loose, colourful headscarves over their hair while wearing tight trousers. The ultra-conservative president of this year, Ebrahim Raisi, however, demanded that ‘all state institutions’ be mobilised in July to enforce the headscarf requirement. Many women continued to break the law, nevertheless.
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