The Girls of Enghelab protests (Persian: دختران انقلاب, romanized: Dokhtaran Enghalab) are protests against the compulsory hijab in Iran and are part of the wider Iranian Democracy Movement.
The protests were inspired by Vida Movahed, an Iranian woman known as the Girl of Enghelab Street (Persian: دختر خیابان انقلاب, romanized: Dokhtar Khiaban Enghalab), who stood above the crowd on a utility box on Enghelab Street (Revolution Street) in Tehran on 27 December 2017 during the 2017–2018 Iranian protests, tying a white headscarf to a stick, and waving it to the crowd as a flag. She was arrested that day and was released temporarily on bail a month later, on 28 January 2018.
Some people interpreted Movahed's action as being based on Masih Alinejad's call for White Wednesdays, a protest movement that the presenter at VOA Persian Television started in early 2017. Other women later re-enacted her protest and posted photos of their actions on social media. These women are described as the "Girls of Enghelab Street" and the "Girls of Revolution Street" in English sources. Some of the protesters however claim that they were not following Masih Alinejad's call. The protests intensified in 2022 due to the death of Mahsa Amini.
Symbol
The safety pin of the Girls of the Revolution Street
Islamic Republic's Penal Code
Under the judicial system of the Islamic Republic of Iran imposed shortly after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, article 638 of the 5th book of Islamic Penal Code, called "Sanctions and deterrent penalties", states that women who do not wear a hijab may be imprisoned from ten days to two months and/or required to pay fines from Rls.50,000 to Rls.500,000. Fines are recalculated in the courts to index for inflation. This has been translated and published by the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.
Article 639 states that two categories of people shall be sentenced to between one and ten years' imprisonment; first, a person who establishes or directs a place of immorality or prostitution, and second, a person who facilitates or encourages people to commit immorality or prostitution.
These are some of the laws under which some protesters were charged. During the Iranian revolution in 1979, the veil was used as a way to protest The Pahlavi government.
Background
Before the Iranian Revolution, during the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the hijab was not compulsory, although some Iranian women chose to wear headscarves or chadors.
Following the 1979 Islamic revolution, the hijab gradually became mandatory. In 1979, Ruhollah Khomeini announced that women should observe the Islamic dress code; His statement sparked demonstrations with the 1979 International Women's Day protests in Tehran, which were met by government assurances that the statement was only a recommendation. The hijab was subsequently made mandatory in government and public offices in 1980, and in 1983 it became mandatory for all women.
In 2018, a government-run survey dating back to 2014 was released by President Hassan Rouhani, showing that 49.8% of Iranians were against compulsory or mandatory hijab. The report was released by the Center for Strategic Studies, the research arm of the Iranian President's office, and was titled "Report of the first hijab special meeting" in July 2014 in a PDF format.
On 2 February 2018, a poll conducted by the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) showed that a few Iranians agreed with "changing Iran's political system or relaxing strict Islamic law".
An independent survey by GAMAAN conducted in 2020 showed that 58% of Iranians did not believe in hijab altogether, and 72% were against compulsory hijab rules. Only 15% insisted on the legal obligation to wear it in public.
Iran is the only country in the world that requires non-Muslim female residents to wear a headscarf. In January 2018, a Chinese female musician had a black cloth placed over her head after her hijab fell off in the middle of her concert performance. The event was described as "suppression", "humiliating", and "shameful".
Timeline
December 2017
27 December
On 27 December 2017, pictures and videos of Movahed waving her scarf went viral through the hashtag "Where_is_she?" (#دختر_خیابان_انقلاب_کجاست, "Where is the girl of Enghelab Street" in Persian) on social media. While at first she was unknown, days later, Nasrin Sotoudeh, the human rights activist and lawyer who has also been arrested, found out that the woman was 31 years old and had been arrested on the spot with her 19-month-old baby.
January 2018
28 January
On 28 January 2018, according to Nasrin Sotoudeh, the lawyer investigating the case, Vida Movahed was released temporarily on bail.
29 January
On 29 January 2018, a woman was arrested in Tehran after reenacting Movahed's protest by standing on the same utility box in Enqelab Street, taking off her white hijab, and holding it up on a stick. Photos posted on social media show that at least three other women reenacted Movahed's protest in Tehran on 29 January, including one near Ferdowsi Square.
30 January
According to Nasrin Sotoudeh on 30 January 2018, the second woman who was arrested on 29 January 2018 was Narges Hosseini (Persian: نرگس حسینی); her age was 32.
On 30 January 2018, several more women, but also men, protested against the compulsory hijab law by reenacting Movahed's protest. This took place in Tehran, as well as other cities as well including Esfahan and Shiraz.
February 2018
1 February
On 1 February 2018 the Iranian Police department announced they had arrested 29 women for taking off their hijab.
2 February
According to Nasrin Sotoudeh, the Iranian lawyer, Narges Hosseini, known as the second Girl of Enghelab Street, who was 32 years old, was unable to pay the US$135,000 bail set by the judge presiding over her case, facing a possible 10 years in prison and up to 74 lashes on charges including openly committing a sinful act.
15 February
New photos and video shared on social media show another woman re-enacting Movahed's protest on the same street, Enghelab Street (Revolution Street) on 15 February 2018. She was identified as Azam Jangravi on videos, showing the police taking her down aggressively. According to her latest Instagram picture, she said that she was a part of Iranian women Reformists and Executives of Construction Party and had taken no orders from someone either inside or outside the country and had done that to protest against compulsory hijab.
17 February
Narges Hosseini and Azam Jangravi were released from custody temporarily on bail.
21 February
Another female protester named Shaparak Shajarizadeh (Persian: شاپرک شجری زاده) was arrested protesting with a white scarf on Wednesday, 21 February 2018 in a Gheytarieh street; eyewitnesses said that the police attacked her from behind and took her in custody.
Photos shared on social media show that the government was placing an inverted v-shaped iron structure on the utility boxes so as to inhibit anyone standing on top of the boxes. She was sentenced to two years in prison in addition to an 18-year suspended prison term. In addition, she stated that she left Iran.
22 February
Another woman named Maryam Shariatmadari (Persian: مریم شریعتمداری) was protesting compulsory hijab in the afternoon on a utility box; the police asked her to come down and upon her refusal, was violently ejected by the police, subsequently suffering a broken leg.
Meanwhile Shaparak Shajarizadeh was beaten up in custody and released later temporarily on bail.
24 February
Eyewitnesses said that another woman named Hamraz Sadeghi (Persian: همراز صادقی) was protesting compulsory hijab on Saturday, 24 February 2018 when she was attacked by an unknown security force, who broke her arm and arrested her.
July 2018
8 July
On 8 July 2018, Iranian teenager Maedeh Hojabri was arrested after she posted videos of herself dancing to Western and Iranian music on her Instagram account without any headcovering. She was among several popular Instagram users, with more than 600,000 followers. Her videos were shared by hundreds of people, triggering a wave of Iranian women posting videos of themselves dancing to protest her arrest on social media.
October 2018
27 October
On 27 October 2018, students in Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran Branch protested after a morality police van entered the campus and attempted to arrest several women for improper hijab. Videos showed a student standing in front of the van, attempting to block its exit, which led the driver to attempt to run her over.
29 October
On 29 October 2018, an Iranian woman standing on the dome of Enghelab square in Tehran, removed her headscarf to protest the compulsory hijab. She was arrested minutes later by the police. and subsequently on 14th April 2019, identified as Vida Movahed, the original Girl of Enghelab Street.
February 2019
15 February
On 15 February 2019, the morality police attempted to arrest two girls for improper hijab in the Narmak area of Tehran and was met with resistance from bystanders. A group of people gathered around the Police van to vandalize it and managed to free the two girls held captive inside. A video from the incident shows police firing shots into air to disperse the crowd, which was later confirmed by the Tehran police.
March 2019
7 March
On 7 March 2019, two women were arrested in Kangavar in protest by walking the streets of the city without their hijab on.
8 March
On International Women's Day (8 March), groups of women in Tehran appeared unveiled to protest against the oppression of women. A video showed two unveiled women holding a red sign, which read "International Women's Day is a promise of a just world for all of humanity", on Valiasr Street. Another video showed a group of unveiled women on a Tehran Metro car handing out flowers to passengers.
11 March
On 11 March 2019, a man stood on a box on Enghelab street and waved a white scarf on a stick. He was arrested on the scene by the security forces.
May 2019
13 May
On 13 May 2019, students at the University of Tehran gathered to protest the increasing pressures to obey the mandatory headscarf rule. Plainclothes vigilantes attacked students who were protesting. Students also carried signs demanding freedom and free elections.
August 2019
In August 2019, Iranian civil rights activist Saba Kord Afshari was sentenced to 24 years behind bars, including a 15-year term for taking off her hijab in public, which Iranian authorities say promoted "corruption and prostitution".
September 2022
On 16 September 2022, a 22-year-old Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini was killed in custody of the Guidance Patrol in Tehran due to police brutality. Many people from all over the world reacted to Amini's death, and sparked a series of anti-hijab protests across the country.
On 20 September 2022, 16-year-old Iranian teenager Nika Shakarami (Persian: نیکا شاکرمی) disappeared in Tehran during the 2022 Iranian protests following the death of Mahsa Amini. Her family was informed of her death ten days later. She had died under suspicious circumstances suspected to involve violence by security forces.
Many women demonstrators have defiantly taken off their hijabs and burned them in bonfires or symbolically cut their hair in protest.
November 2024
On 2 November 2024, Iranian student Ahoo Daryaei, who stripped to her bra and underwear in hijab protest after members of Basij shouted at her, grabbed her aggressively, attempted to pull her clothes off and tried to drag her into an internal room used to punish female students accused of violating dress rules after her headscarf fell from her head while she was walking through the university and looking at her phone was forced into psychiatric treatment.
February 2025
On 6 February 2025, a woman stands naked on the hood of a police car in Mashhad as part of a protest against Iran's compulsory hijab law.
Other grassroot initiatives for uprising
Many young Iranians have formed decentralized underground networksand local neighbourhood alliances to coordinate protests and demonstrations, share safety information and publish manifestos:
- The United Youth of Iran (UYI) was first formed as an umbrella coalition connecting dozens of underground youth protest groups, student organizations and worker associations. In late 2022 they published a manifesto calling to dismantle the current regime and form a secular government.
- The Neighborhood Youth Alliances (Javanan-e Mahallat) were informal anonymous local groups forming in the cities of Isfahan, Teheran and Shiraz. They specialized in local flash-mob protests, coordinated strikes and used twitter and Telegram to bypass the Regime's censorship.
- Students in general, in univerisites and high-schools formed the core of early protests on Campuses. They openly defied gender-segregation rules on campus-dining halls, chanted against the religious authorities and held sit-ins.