Epigraph:
There should be no compulsion in religion. Surely, right has become distinct from wrong; so whosoever refuses to be led by those who transgress, and believes in Allah, has surely grasped a strong handle which knows no breaking. And Allah is All-Hearing, All-Knowing. (Al Quran 2:257)
In a pre-summer ritual, an Iranian policewoman warns a young woman about her clothing and hair during a crackdown to enforce the Islamic dress code. Photograph: Majid/Getty Images
Source: The Guardian
With summer approaching, president has provoked a row with senior clerics after criticising police for enforcing a strict interpretation of dress codes
President Hassan Rouhani, who came to office in 2013 partly on the votes of young, middle-class women, knows that in the summer, hundreds or even thousands will be arrested by the morality police for “bad hijab”, a slack interpretation of the official dress code requiring women to cover their hair and figure even as temperatures push 40 degrees.
In his remark last year that “you can’t send people to heaven by the whip”, the president expressed a belief that citizens should not be forced into “good” behaviour, and in two recent speeches he skirted the issue of hijab, provoking a critical response from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, and from senior members of the clergy.
In late April, the president told an assembly of Iranian police officers the duty of the police was solely to enforce the law. “The police’s job is not to enforce Islam, and furthermore, none among them can claim that their actions are sanctioned by God or the prophet [Mohammad].”
Although Rouhani stopped short of mentioning the harassment of women with bad hijab, he made a break from the period of his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when then police commander Morteza Ahmadi Moghaddam stressed that the “philosophy at the heart of the Islamic republic was the presence of religion in society” and so “the police must act to ensure that this goal is met”.
Rouhani’s offered a different vision: “Many religious issues are merely matters of individual faith,” he said. “Police come into the picture only when an actual law…clearly and explicitly applies. For example, during mid-day prayers, could the police enter a bank and tell the employees that they must halt all business to pray?”
Rouhani’s comments made a splash the next day on the front pages of many reformist papers, including Shargh, Etemad, Mardom Salari and Arman. But it wasn’t long before he received a response.
Khamenei appeared just a day later before an assembly of police commanders, making it clear that enforcing Islam was the police’s first priority: “All work can be done in the name of God, but in your work it is most easy to see how God’s will can be done. That is because your duty is to serve the society of the Islamic republic.”
A member of the editorial board at Etemad told Tehran Bureau the leader had several motives in replying to Rouhani. “Firstly, he wanted to demonstrate his dominance over domestic affairs. Secondly, he wanted to show that in his view, Islam supersedes the law. And finally, he wanted to offer a kind of rebuke to Rouhani for getting out of line.”
One analyst saw a connection with April’s interim nuclear agreement with world powers at Lausanne. “This disappointed many of Khamenei’s most ardent supporters, and they imagined that his leniency toward the west might translate to leniency in the domestic arena, which would allow Rouhani to take up reform with little resistance,” she said. “Khamenei’s immediate response is part of his efforts to assuage his anxious supporters and remind them that flexibility toward the western powers doesn’t necessarily mean moderation in domestic policies.”
But Khamenei’s intervention also opened the door for others to enter the fray. Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi, a senior Shia cleric, told another group of police commanders that Rouhani’s remarks not only weakened “the morale of the police” but gave “the green light for corrupt elements to introduce all manner of filth into society without any repercussion or response from the police”.
Ayatollah Nouri Hamedani pointed out that Iran’s constitution came “straight from Islamic criteria” and that the idea the police should not enforce Islam precluded the concept of “enjoining the good and forbidding the evil” in society, a notion found in the Qur’an. Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, chairman of the Assembly of Experts, the clerical body that chooses the supreme leader, threatened the president with serious consequences: “The executive branch cannot deny Islam; it must uphold it. If it denies Islam, Islam will deny it in turn.”
Mohsen Kadivar, visiting professor in Islamic philosophy at Duke university, North Carolina, and an influential reformist thinker of the 1990s and 2000s, said that Rouhani had expressed basic principles that were fundamental to all modern states.
“Managing the nation on the basis of law is the cornerstone of the contemporary nation-state system, so to negate that in any way is to invite chaos,” he said. “The announcement by the supreme leader and a few other marjas [leading clerics] that the police and everyone else should uphold Islam is a denial of the fundamentals of law, an agent of disorder, and a rejection of the rule of law.”
Kadivar said the arguments of those criticising Rouhani were incompatible with the “multiple interpretation” of sacred texts in all religions. “For example, different jurists and muftis will put forth various, sometimes conflicting fatwas. On which fatwa should the police or any other agents of the state rely when enforcing Islam?”
Categories: Asia, Hijab, Secularism, Separation of Church and State
Societies and states should police crime only and leave sin to God. He is the Master of the day of judgment.
Not making this subtle distinction changes the pious into a transgressor, who transgresses other’s human rights and the impious into a freedom fighter, I am afraid.
But this is general problem in many Islamic countries and societies. I remember, last year while sitting in hotel in Cairo, one police lady came and admonished my wife as her few hairs were visible from back side of the neck. In spite knowing that we are not Arabs she said to observe the law of land. You are right it is surpassing the limits but you have to live with it. See around you will find many policing your own women.
1) There is no place in Islam for a ‘morality police’. The concept of such a police is immoral and un Islamic.
2) The Quran does not define hijab. There is no place in Quran where a woman is required to cover all her hair. What God has left flexible no human can enforce it.
3) The problem is not with the police. It is the religious leaders of all Muslim factions, including those who claim to be reformist. They promote persecution of women to support their own leadership.
4) Religion is a code of morality and ethics. Its scope is limited to this function. And the method to do this is “fazakkir’. Nothing else!
5) Organized religion is the problem. All organized religion is in fact seeking political power, no matter how much they deny it.
بسم اللہ الرحمن الرحیم
Personal conduct is not crime, so police has nothing to do with it. Police job is to safe guard the society from the criminals, and to help the enforcement of the decisions of the courts, the rest is between the man and his creator. If the State wanted to be a theocratic State, it should implement it first on the State level, the Economic System should be established in such a way that there should not be much wider disparity between haves and have not. Islamic Bank should be established, where there should be no usury (interest) and Judiciary system be made on Islamic system, then any other crime that impact the society could be punished under the Islamic Law. For other reforms the Clergy and the Media may play their Role to induce good moral values in the society. The police can not be entrusted such duties to implement personal conduct.
Zarif Ahmad
President Rouhani seems balanced person. There are so mañy guidelines in the holy Quran including ” hejab ” & ” donot become darogha ” . But it is interresting that many people love to become darogha giving plea that they are serving Islam. Those people must understand that service does not mean that one follows one teaching on the cost of others. It is the great tragedy of Muslims.
In The Glorious Quran,Chapter 88, Al-Ghashiya,The Over Whelming,The Loving God,Alwudood,says,
http://quran.al-islam.org/
}فَذَكِّرْ إِنَّمَا أَنْتَ مُذَكِّرٌ {21}”
[Pooya/Ali Commentary 88:21]
The prophet of Allah is sent to teach, preach and guide the people, but not to force people to adopt the right path.
Musaytir has been used here in the sense of an enforcer or compeller who forces or coerces in order to make any one carry out commands against one’s will under duress. As has been said in chapter 2 Baqarah: 256, there is no compulsion in religion, so the prophet of Allah is not a compeller in this sense, otherwise as the vicegerent of Allah he has the authority to execute His divine legislative will. It is Allah who will punish the transgressors.
Aqa Mahdi Puya says:
The authority of Allah is absolute, yet all the functionaries carrying out His authority on His behalf, such as the prophets, the Imams as their successors, the angels and the spirits, are authorised by Him to execute His will.
لَسْتَ عَلَيْهِمْ بِمُصَيْطِرٍ {22}
[Pooya/Ali Commentary 88:22] (see commentary for verse 21) ”
Basic human rights and freedom are equal for both men and women,There is a saying of the Holy Prophet Hazarut Mohammed(PBUH”)Khairul Umoorul osattayha”Moderation is better in the conduct or matters,all walks of life.He s,a has been declared as Role Model.”Laqud kana lakum fe rasoolullahay uswatun hassana”in the Guiding,code of conduct, the Holy Quran.
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The emphasis on many of these rules was necessary in times when there was ultimate emphasis on group survival. Now is an age of individual and human rights and all religions need to lighten up a little on their previous understanding of rules and focus more on individual human rights and a message of compassion in their religions.
It is tragedy of some ulemah who r unable to distinguish between emphasis & policing . They donot understand that genral reaction against emphasis is gratefulness while of policing is departing from the religion as noticed everywhere. They are also not aware that policing by some group is maligning the beauty of Islam. Stand takenby President Rouhani is appreciable . If all muslim head of states take the same stand it will be a great service to Islam.
The Holy Quran teaches that one should obey those who are in authority amongst us; if in France or in Belgium one can accept that the law disallows total or integral ‘burka’ why is it in Iran or Saudia one can’t accept the law of the land that stipulates a lady should cover her hair? I feel sorry for those who criticises such measures, one can comment on that but if you don’t like that then stay at home & don’t visit such ‘backward’ countries
Hijab is a religious guideline though it has many positive social impacts , it is beyond any govt. Authority to make any law against it . If any govt. is doing ; it is doing on its own risk . Question is that wether religious matters should be implemented by force or not ? The holy Quran and sayings & deeds of Huzoor SAW deny the use of force . If any person or govt. is doing wrong ,does not mean that we got licence to repeat that.
The Holy Quran gives safety in anonymity as a reason for women to use hijab and that should be enough. The state can however rule over a dress code to keep people from disrupting the peace. That essentially should be dictated, by the norms of the society. In other words the attire should not distract others from their business.
From this point of view, if Hijab is not the norm of the society then seeing in hijab can distract people. If the distraction is so great that a woman in hijab on the road can cause a traffic accident then, in my opinion, the state has the right to ban women in hijab out in the streets.Similarly, if a certain attire is recognized as hijab and a certain deviation from it can cause distraction then the state can reprimand one for adopting it, in my opinion.