After Months-Long Protest, Iran Abolishes ‘Morality Police’

After more than two months of unrest brought on by Mahsa Amini’s arrest for allegedly violating the country’s strict female dress code, local media reported Sunday that Iran had abolished its morality police.

Since the 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish descent passed away in detention on September 16, three days after her arrest by the morality police in Tehran, protests spearheaded by women that the authorities have dubbed “riots” have rocked the country.

Since Amini’s passing, an increasing number of women, especially in parts of Tehran, have refused to wear the hijab, as seen by the burning of their required head coverings and the shouting of anti-government slogans by protesters.

Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri was quoted by the ISNA news agency as saying, “Morality police have nothing to do with the judiciary and have been abolished.”

However, under the hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Gasht-e Ershad or “Guidance Patrol,” a morality police service, was founded to “spread the culture of modesty and hijab.”

The Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution of Iran, which is currently led by President Ebrahim Raisi, established the units.

In order to police the dress code, which also mandates that women wear long clothing and forbids shorts, ripped jeans, and other attire deemed immodest, they started their patrols in 2006.

A day after Montazeri stated that “both parliament and the judiciary are working” on the matter of whether the law mandating women to cover their heads has to be altered, it was announced that the units would be abolished.

In televised remarks on Saturday, Raisi stated that although Iran’s republican and Islamic foundations were firmly rooted in the constitution, “there are ways of executing the constitution that might be flexible.”

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