On 8 January 1936, Reza Shah of Iran issued a decree known as Kashf-e hijab (also Romanized as and , ) banning all Islamic veils (including hijab and chador), an edict that was swiftly and forcefully implemented.Hoodfar, Homa (fall 1993). The Veil in Their Minds and On Our Heads: The Persistence of Colonial Images of Muslim Women, Resources for feminist research (RFR) / Documentation sur la recherche féministe (DRF), Vol. 22, n. 3/4, pp. 5–18, Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE), Milani, Farzaneh (1992). Veils and Words: The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers, Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, pp. 19, 34–37, Paidar, Parvin (1995): Women and the Political Process in Twentieth-Century Iran, Cambridge Middle East studies, Vol. 1, Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 106–107, 214–215, 218–220, Majd, Mohammad Gholi (2001). Great Britain and Reza Shah: The Plunder of Iran, 1921–1941, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, pp. 209–213, 217–218, Curtis, Glenn E.; Hooglund, Eric (2008). Iran: A Country Study, 5th ed, Area handbook series, Washington, DC: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, pp. 28, 116–117, The government also banned many types of male traditional clothing.Katouzian, Homa (2003). "2. Riza Shah's Political Legitimacy and Social Base, 1921–1941" in Cronin, Stephanie: The Making of Modern Iran: State and Society under Riza Shah, 1921–1941, pp. 15–37, London; New York: Routledge; Taylor & Francis, Katouzian, Homa (2004). "1. State and Society under Reza Shah" in Atabaki, Touraj; Zürcher, Erik-Jan: Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernisation in Turkey and Iran, 1918–1942, pp. 13–43, London; New York: I.B. Tauris, Katouzian, Homa (2006). State and Society in Iran: The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis, 2nd ed, Library of modern Middle East studies, Vol. 28, London; New York: I.B. Tauris, pp. 33–34, 335–336,
The ban was enforced for a period of five years (1936–1941); after this, women were free to dress as they wished for forty years until the Iranian Revolution of 1979, when the reverse ban against unveiling was introduced. One of the enduring legacies of Reza Shah is turning dress into an integral problem of Iranian politics.
Background and impact In 1936, Reza Shah banned the veil and encouraged Iranians to adopt European dress in an effort to promote nation-building in a country with many tribal, regional, religious, and class-based variations in clothing.
It was the policy of the Shah to increase women's participation in society as a method of the modernization of the country, in accordance with the example of Turkey. The Queen and the other women of the royal family assisted in this when they started to perform public representational duties as role models for women participating in public society, and they also played an active part as role models in the Kashf-e hijab.
The reform was long in the making. In the second half of the 19th-century, Iranian upper-class men started to visit Western Europe and started to adopt Western clothing for themselves, which made Western fashion become considered as a sign of progress and modernism in Iran among parts of the elite. Prior to this, during the era of slavery in Iran, female slaves (kaniz) were allowed to move about alone in public outside of the sex segregation of the harem unveiled, which separated them from free women, but slave women had not been seen as respectable women. p. 57
From the 1920s, the Iranian women's movement supported unveiling, and a few individual Iranian women started to appear unveiled.Sanasarian E. The Women's Rights Movement in Iran : Mutiny Appeasement and Repression from 1900 to Khomeini. New York N.Y: Praeger; 1982. In 1924, the singer Qamar-ol-Moluk Vaziri broke gender segregation and seclusion by performing unveiled in gender-mixed company at the Grand Hotel in Tehran and at the Royal Palace Theater. Iranian women's rights activists supported unveiling, and the feminist Sediqeh Dowlatabadi is believed to have been the first woman in Iran to have appeared in public without the veil in 1928. To appear without a veil or even favor it in public debate was very controversial, and women's rights activists who spoke in favor of unveiling sometimes had to be protected by the police. In 1926, the Shah specifically provided police protection for individual women who appeared unveiled but with a scarf or a hat to cover the hair.Women and Politics in Iran: Veiling, Unveiling, and. Reveiling. By Hamideh Sedghi. New York: Cambridge University. Press. 2007. p. 85
In 1928, the queen of Afghanistan, Soraya Tarzi, appeared unveiled in public with the Shah during her official visit in Iran. The clergy protested and asked the Shah to tell the foreign queen to cover up, but he refused. His refusal caused rumours that the Shah planned to abolish the veil in Iran. Later that year the Shah's wife, Queen Tadj ol-Molouk, attended the Fatima Masumeh Shrine during her pilgrimage in Qom wearing a veil which did not cover her completely, as well as showing her face, for which she was harshly criticized by a cleric.Fazle Chowdhury: Promises of Betrayals: The History That Shaped the Iranian Shia Clerics As a response, Reza Shah publicly beat the cleric who had criticized the queen the next day.
The unveiling of women had a huge symbolic importance to achieve women's emancipation and participation in society, and the shah introduced the reform gradually so as not to cause unrest. In the mid-1930s, only four thousand out of 6.5 million Iranian women ventured into public places without veils, almost all in Tehran and consisting mainly of Western-educated daughters of the upper class, foreign wives of recent returnees from Europe, and middle-class women from the minorities.
Female teachers were encouraged to unveil in 1933 and schoolgirls and women students in 1935. In 1935, the women's committee Kanun-e Banuvan ('Ladies Society') was formed with support by the government in which women's rights activists campaigned for unveiling. The reform to allow female teachers and students not to veil, as well as allowing female students to study alongside men, were all reforms opposed and criticized by the Shia clergy.
The official declaration of unveiling were made on 8 January 1936, and the queen and her daughters were given an important role in this event. That day, Reza Shah attended the graduation ceremony of the Tehran Teacher's College with the queen and their two daughters unveiled and dressed in modern clothes, without veils. The queen handed out diplomas, while the shah spoke about how half the population being disregarded in the past, and told women that the future was now in their hands. This was the first time an Iranian queen showed herself in public. Afterwards, the Shah had pictures of his unveiled wife and daughters published, and unveiling enforced throughout Iran.
Enforcement
To enforce this decree, the police were ordered to physically remove the veil from any woman who wore it in public. Women who refused were beaten, their hijabs and chadors torn off, and their homes forcibly searched.
Until Reza Shah's abdication in 1941, many conservative women simply chose not leave their houses in order to avoid confrontations, and a few even committed suicide to avoid removing their hijabs due to the decree. A far larger escalation of violence occurred in the summer of 1935, when Reza Shah ordered all men to wear European-style bowler hats. This provoked massive non-violent demonstrations in July in the city of Mashhad, which were brutally suppressed by the Imperial Iranian Army, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 100 to 500 people (including women and children).
Reactions
The unveiling was met with different opinions within Iran.
The Iranian women's movement had generally been in favor of unveiling since its beginning. Unveiling was supported by progressive women's rights advocates such as Khadijeh Afzal Vaziri and Sediqeh Dowlatabadi, who campaigned in support for it. Dowlatabadi was an active supporter of the reform, and engaged in the women's committee Kanun-e Banuvan, which was led by the Shah's daughter Princess Shams to unite women organizations and prepare women for unveiling. Many of Iran's leading feminists and women's rights activists organized in the Kanun-e Banuvan to campaign in favor of the Kashf-e hijab, among them Hajar Tarbiat, Vaziri, Dowlatabadi, Farrokhroo Parsa and Parvin E'tesami. The Iranian women's rights activists and feminists were mainly from the educated elite, and some had appeared unveiled even before the Kashf-e hijab: Dowlatabadi is believed to have been the first woman in Iran to have done so, appearing in public in 1928 completely unveilied. However, there were also some feminists who opposed the reform; because while they supported unveiling, they did not support a mandatory unveiling, but rather women's right to choose.
Some Western historians have stated that the reform would have been a progressive step if women had initiated it themselves, but that the method of banning it humiliated and alienated many Iranian women,El Guindi, Fadwa (1999). Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance, Oxford; New York: Berg Publishers; Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 3, 13–16, 130, 174–176, Chehabi, Houchang Esfandiar (2003): "11. The Banning of the Veil and Its Consequences" in Cronin, Stephanie: The Making of Modern Iran: State and Society under Riza Shah, 1921–1941, pp. 203–221, London; New York: Routledge; Taylor & Francis, Heath, Jennifer (2008). The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore, and Politics, Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp. 66, 252–253, 256, 260, since its effect was, because of the effect of traditional beliefs, comparable to a hypothetical situation in which European women were suddenly ordered to go out topless into the street. Some historians have pointed out that Reza Shah's ban on veiling and his policies were unseen in Atatürk's Turkey, which succeeded in unveiling without introducing a ban. The Shah's decree was commented on by the British consul in Tehran:Abrahamian, Ervand (2008). A History of Modern Iran, Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 84, 94–95,
The religious conservatives reacted with opposition toward the reform. According to former Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei, the policy was aimed at "eradicating the tremendous power of faith" in Muslim societies that was enabled by what he termed the "decency of women", as hijab in his view prevented Muslim women from suffering from the "malicious abuse" that he regarded women in the West to be victims of, and what in his view made people preoccupied with sexual desires.
Aftermath
Despite all legal pressures and obstacles, a large proportion of Iranian women continued to wear veils or chadors.
One of the enduring legacies of Reza Shah has been turning dress into an integral issue of Iranian politics. When Reza Shah was deposed in 1941, there were attempts made by conservatives such as the Devotees of Islam (; q.v.) who demanded mandatory veiling and a ban on unveiled women, but they did not succeed. Under the next ruler Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, wearing of the veil or chador was no longer an offence, and women were able to dress as they wished.