Searching for an Iran that never was
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but they certainly don’t tell the whole story. In this era of social media I have seen dozens of posts with pictures like the one below of women with heads uncovered stylishly dressed romanticizing the Shah’s Iran of the sixties and seventies (you can find similar posts about Afghanistan). These posts have been particularly common since the brutal murder of Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s morality police and the hijab protests that ensued. The problem with these pictures (and posts) is that they rarely, if ever, present the Shah’s Iran as it actually was. While I am no fan of the Islamic Republic, the Shah’s Iran was deeply flawed and in many respects was just as repressive as the Ayatollah’s rule today.
Female students at Tehran University, 1971
The simplistic narratives that dominate most social media debates distort history and present an Iran that never was. Photos, like the one above, are only a snapshot of a moment in time and place and fail present the complexity of Iranian society. While it may be shocking to some, Iran is a diverse country often defined by its contradictions. In Iran the veneer of the Ayatollah’s strict interpretation of Islam and anti-Western rhetoric obscures from public view its more liberal currents just as the photo above ignores the traditional and conservative elements of the Shah’s Iran. The divide between conservative and liberal has shaped modern Iranian politics and if we want to better understand Iran, we should interrogate the history of this divide.
Reza Shah and the Hijab
By the early 20th century, a liberal/modernist elite was emerging in Iran and challenging the country’s deeply traditional society. These elites were inspired by various Western ideas and often educated in schools run by British and Americans. Many of these elites backed the rise of Reza Khan in the 1920s. Reza and his backers dislodged the Qajar dynasty from power and established the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925. In power, Reza dropped the title Khan and adopted the title Shah, the traditional Persian title for king. Inspired by the Kemal Ataturk in neighboring Turkey and the hyper-masculine versions of nationalism shaping inter-war Europe, Reza Shah and his “liberal” backers undertook a sprawling reform program meant to unify and modernize Iran. Among these were a series of sartorial reforms mean to modernize the dress of Iranian. The liberals backing these reforms looked at the traditional clothing, including the hijab, as a sign of backwardness (for more see Shayegh, Cyrus; Who is Knowledgeable is Strong: Science Class and the Formation of Modern Iranian Society, 1900-1950). These reforms required that men wear western-style jackets and trousers and banned the hijab.
Reza Shah ruthlessly enforced the policy of unveiling. According to many accounts, he even sent his police into the streets of the capital Tehran and ordered them to rip the hijabs and chadors off women who did not comply with the new dress standards. Abbas Amanat, a historian of modern Iran, said of the policy:
“The rigorous enforcement of the new policy, which continued up to the end of the Reza Shah era, meant that women belonging to even the most conservative families were to remove their veils and chador. Carefully monitored by the shah himself', the universal enforcing of unveiling was not free of social tension. Ugly scenes of police forcefully removing women’s chadors in the streets, reprimands and sacking of military and civilian officials who were reluctant to abide by the new policy, and general disregard for conservative sentiments against unveiling cast a shadow over the whole episode.” (Iran: A Modern History; pp. 490)
The violent enforcement of unveiling was traumatic enough that for some older Iranian women, they chose to remain cloistered in their homes rather than appear publicly unveiled. According to Amanat, most women who had unveiled under Reza Shah remained unveiled after the British forced Reza Shah to abdicate the throne and the policy was abandoned in 1941. Mohamed Reza assumed power in his father’s stead and despite some strong political headwinds, entrenched himself in power after 1953 with the help of the U.S. Like his father, Mohamed Reza Shah and his clique adopted a paternalistic attitude toward the veil.
Funeral procession for an unknown martyr killed in the Iran-Iraq War (credit Creative Commons)
The “Enlightened” Rule of Mohamed Reza Shah
For many of opponents of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the rule of Mohamed Reza Shah, often referred to as “the Shah of Iran” is held up as exemplary to what an “enlightened” Iran could be. In many respects, Mohamed Reza Shah followed in the footsteps of his father implementing reforms meant to modernize Iran and mimicking the West in style. However, like his father, Mohamed Reza was an authoritarian ruler who booked little dissent and violently repressed his conservative opponents.
Like many Middle Eastern autocrats, the Shah saw himself as an enlightened monarch dragging a backward and superstitious population into the modern world. Many of his reforms targeted traditionally conservative rural communities. These reforms included massive land reforms and educational reforms promoting literacy modeled after the US Peace Corps. The proponents of the Shah often looked down on these rural communities with a mixture of contempt and paternalism. These attitudes toward traditional communities contributed to a worldview that saw the hijab and chador as symbols of backwardness and superstition holding the country back. The perpetuation of this worldview helped exacerbate the divides between conservatives and liberals.
Under Mohamed Reza, women who continued to wear the hijab and chador faced discrimination in Iranian society. According to anthropologist Fadwa El Guindi, the hijab became a marker of social class generally associated with the poor and under educated. Some women even went as far as to remove the veil while at work and don them again when home with family. There are even reports that some restaurants refused to serve women wearing the hijab.
Like his father, Mohamed Reza Shah’s attitude toward women had little to do with their agency, autonomy, and independence. The Shah, like many autocrats, valued how Iranian women reflected his image internationally. He never attempted to mitigate the discrimination against veiled women in Iran or argue for respecting a woman’s choice of what to wear. While a powerful and influential minority of Iranians looked down the hijab, according to academics Faranzeh Milani and Parvin Paidar, a majority of Iranians did not.
An Iran that Never Was
There isn’t a photo that can capture the complexity of Iran today. The country remains one of contradictions and divisions. Like the Shah’s Iran, women are not a monolith, there are women who deeply value the hijab and the practice of veiling and many who resent being forced to conform to a government/religiously mandated dress code. When criticizing the Islamic Republic for its lack of respect for women’s agency and rights we should be careful. Presenting the Shah’s Iran as a historical ideal of women’s rights ignores historical realities. If we look to the past for what we hope Iran can become, we will remain searching for an Iran that never was.
