Book: The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore, and Politics

This is a link to a sample chapter on the UC Press website:
Concealing and Revealing Female Hair: Veiling Dynamics in Contemporary Iran
By Ashraf Zahedi

Excerpt: Decades of discontent with the shah led to the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Massive numbers of Iranian women participated. The image of thousands of veiled women demonstrating against the shah captured the world’s attention. The veil had found a new political meaning. No longer a symbol of backwardness and oppression, it now signified resistance. Even many secular and modern women, who did not believe in wearing the veil, put it on in solidarity with religious women and in opposition to the shah.
Iranian women, veiled and unveiled, played an important role in the revolution and its victory. Though they did not participate in the revolution as women advancing their own cause, they hoped to benefit by supporting it. But their symbolic use of the veil came to haunt them as the postrevolutionary regime of the clerics set into motion the Islamization of Iran.
Women were the first targets. Shortly after the revolution, the clerics’ regime entertained the idea of officially reveiling Iranian women. And veiling was good for business. Among the clerics’ supporters were the aforementioned conservative bazaar merchants,who could recapture the huge market they had lost during the Reza Shah era and only partially regained during his son’s reign.
On March 8, 1979, thousands of Iranian women—many of whom had veiled to express their dissent and support the revolution—marched in the streets in the first of many protests against the veil. They were often violently attacked by Islamic zealots. Ironically, they were not supported by secular and leftist organizations that had, in principle, favored women’s rights and social advancement. In the name of revolutionary unity, these organizations viewed women’s protests as diversionary and chose not to support them. This was a sobering experience for secular and modern women.Without the support of men and secular political organizations, they could not succeed.
In July 1980, the Islamic regime began implementing “compulsory” veiling as part of the regime’s agenda to institutionalize and exploit the female identity espoused by the authenticity movement. It promoted wearing the veil as “moral cleansing.” Concealing female hair became the clerics’ immediate political project. The regime capitalized on all mass media to justify veiling. It propagated the links between veiling, morality, and Islamic virtue. Women who did not comply with veiling or the new hijab were subjected to harassment, violence, and imprisonment.
The meaning and symbolism of hair again took the center stage. Female hair was publicized as seductive and alluring. According to a prevailing Islamic view, “it has been proven that the hair of a woman radiates a kind of ray that affects a man, exciting him out of the normal state.” Even Abolhassan Banisadr, Iran’s first elected postrevolution president, allegedly shared this view. Concealing female hair says more about men’s sexual anxiety than about the seductive power of women. In other words, “fear of the power of female sexual attraction over men” justifies any device that can protect men against female power.