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They are the personified antithesis of freedom – the moral policemen of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Their task: to check that women cover their hair, that there is no dancing and singing in public and that men do not have haircuts that are “too Western”.

What about the rumors that the vice squad is being disbanded?

What is the current status of the morality police in Iran?

The moral police see themselves as a body that “enforces the law and prohibits injustice,” Pardis Mahdavi, a sociologist whose research includes research on sexuality in Iran, told “Time” magazine.

On Saturday, Iran’s Attorney General, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, responded to a journalist’s question that the vice squad was not supervised by the judiciary. In fact, Gasht-e-Ershad reports directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, from the start.

The Attorney General went on to say that the vice squad was disbanded, at least according to Western media:

In addition, the hijab law is currently under review, according to Montazeri.

However, as of Monday, when the text was published, no official statement had been made by Iran’s national news agency or authorities about the disbandment of the patrol or the amendment of the hijab law. On the contrary, Iran’s state media rejected claims that the country’s vice squad would be disbanded, CNN reported Sunday.

State television channel Al-Alam also reported that foreign media portrayed Montazeri’s statements as “the withdrawal of the Islamic Republic from the issue of hijab and modesty,” as the BBC writes. She quotes the Iranian broadcaster: “But no official in the Islamic Republic of Iran has said that the vice squad is closed.”

Among other things, the vice squad checks whether alcohol is being consumed, whether men do not wear haircuts that are ‘too Western’ or whether participants in mixed-gender gatherings are actually related.

A particular focus of the vice squad is the strict dress code that has been mandatory for women since shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Think of wearing a hijab, clothing that is not too tight or sleeves that are not rolled up.

If someone is found to be breaking the law, the offenders will be taken to a center where they will be informed (or, in the case of dress code violations, until they are brought in in law-compliant clothing).

Would the dress code also be abolished?

The short answer is: probably not.

In particular, the government of Iran sees dress codes as an important pillar of policy. They are intended to visually emphasize to the outside world that Iran is an Islamic state. Abolishing the headscarf obviously undermines the religious-conservative values ​​on which the regime is based. Abolishing women’s headscarves would be a major blow to the self-image of the Islamic Republic.

Even if the vice squad is disbanded, that doesn’t mean that the decades-old law will be changed at the same time. In addition, the moral police is not the first monitoring body to monitor compliance with alleged religious precepts – a follow-up organization would therefore be conceivable.

However, the dissolution of Gasht-e-Ershad would have social significance. Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, tells Time magazine that the vice squad has nothing to do with morality or policing. The security forces are simply tasked with “harassing women” and “demonstrating power”. At least this harassment could come to an end if the vice police were actually disbanded.

The moral police in the protest movement

In the past, the interpretation of the dress code was an ongoing negotiation between the population and the regulator. Many Iranian women have repeatedly crossed the line in their daily lives and engaged in actions of subtle resistance against the moral police and the laws that women despise. They wore their hijab pulled back, dressed snugly under open jackets or on bright red lips.

Some protests, however, were far more risky than this quiet tussle over common law: In 2017, Iranian activist Masih Alinejad launched the White Wednesdays movement, in which women took off their headscarves and wore white clothes. Alinejad has since been banned from Iran, but is still regarded as one of the regime’s loudest critics. She has no confidence in the alleged dissolution of the vice squad. On Twitter she writes:

And in 2016, a group of Iranians developed a mobile app called Gershad that uses population data to bypass checkpoints manned by vice squads.

And on December 27, 2017, Vida Movahed was unveiled on a power distribution box on busy Enghelab Street in Iran’s capital Tehran. She held up her headscarf in silence for an hour. Her photo went viral on the internet and marks the beginning of a feminist wave that has not stopped since and has reached its peak in the current protests.

Should it be confirmed that the vice squad has actually been abolished and that the headscarf requirement should actually be scrapped, that would be a concession to the protest movement. At the same time, the government symbolically reduced the protests to the headscarf issue. But the Iranian people have long demanded more than wearing their hair: they want the end of the mullahs’ rule. A protester told the BBC:

Another says:

Therefore, this step probably wouldn’t be enough to end the protests anyway.