Tag: sharia

Iran cyber police target ‘un-Islamic’ stores on Instagram

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Authorities in Iran are cracking down on small businesses that sell “un-Islamic” clothing and other products on social media, notably Instagram. Owners of Instagram businesses say they have been contacted by the Islamic Republic’s cyber police, who take control of their pages, replacing images of their products with messages saying the pages have been closed for reasons of “#IslamicHijab” or that, “According to a court order, this page has been shut down”.

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While Iran’s notorious “morality police” have kept a low profile since the eruption of the “Woman Life, Freedom” protests in September 2022, the Islamic Republic’s cyber police have stepped in online, imposing their brand of “morality” on small businesses that rely on social media – many of them owned by women.

Iran’s cyber police, known as FATA, are responsible for monitoring illegal online activity such as child pornography, fraud, and drug and weapon sales. But in recent months they appear to have another priority: targeting small businesses on social media. While networks such as Facebook, Instagram, X, Whatsapp and Telegram have been blocked in Iran for years, millions of Iranian users use VPNs to bypass the censorship.

Clothing and lingerie designers, tattoo artists, massage therapists, tour guides, make-up artists … the businesses that are targeted promote what is perceived as a Western lifestyle, often with photos that violate Iran’s practice of Sharia law. Women appear on lingerie and fashion pages without Islamic hijab, their hair and arms visible. Women and men are seen touching each other on pages that promote tattooing or massages.

Their pages are taken over by the cyber police, and the content is replaced by an announcement: “This page has been closed by the Police for the Sphere of the Production and Exchange of information,” the official name of the FATA cyber police. Businesses that have spent years accumulating thousands of followers see their work and livelihood put on hold.


Despite the pressure from the Islamic regime in Iran on the small fashion designers who sell their products on Instagram, many of them continue their work under fear, as our Observer confirms. The photos have been blurred and modified by FRANCE 24 to ensure the security of the pages. © Observers

The online businesses’ motivations are usually economic, not political. Their owners cannot live without the income they earn from selling their products on social media, especially Instagram. According to a survey published in 2022, there are more than 415,000 small businesses on Instagram in Iran. The jobs of more than 1 million Iranians are directly and indirectly linked to these small businesses on Instagram.

This ceramics manufacturer, which sells its products on Instagram, removed these photos and ceased production of some of its items after Iran's cyber police FATA started targeting online businesses selling products deemed un-Islamic.
This ceramics manufacturer, which sells its products on Instagram, removed these photos and ceased production of some of its items after Iran’s cyber police FATA started targeting online businesses selling products deemed un-Islamic. © Observers

Pages that promote tattooing and massages are regular targets of Iran’s cyber police. However there are hundreds of tattoo artists and masseurs who are active on Instagram.
Pages that promote tattooing and massages are regular targets of Iran’s cyber police. However there are hundreds of tattoo artists and masseurs who are active on Instagram. © Observers

Another page closed by the police, where the police did not hesitate to also remove the bio and put a new hashtag in the bio: “#IslamicHijab”
Another page closed by the police, where the police did not hesitate to also remove the bio and put a new hashtag in the bio: “#IslamicHijab” © Observers

 

‘I am not going to change my lifestyle out of fear’

 

Tina [not her real name] is a small business owner in Iran. Her sales are solely dependent on her Instagram page. She designs and produces women’s clothes, including underwear, and her page features images that show female models with bare shoulders, arms and midriffs, in violation of Iran’s restrictive Islamic hijab rules. While Tina’s Instagram page has not yet been targeted by the police, she is concerned because many of her friends and colleagues with small businesses on Instagram have been ordered to close.

 

I have been running this page for about a year. My only source of income is my clothing, which I sell on my Instagram page. I also try to sell my stuff on Amazon, but it’s very complicated in Iran because we are under an international embargo.

I have several friends whose pages have been closed by the police. They have received either a text message or a phone call, in some cases even via their Instagram messages, asking them to go to the police. The police ask for their password, change the password, then delete all their content and replace it with a single post saying the page was shut down by the police.

In some cases, my friends were lucky that the police only asked them to delete certain photos and they were able to keep their page. I also have some other friends who have ended up in court and are awaiting trial.

This is so much stress that I don’t even want to think about it. My friends always warn me to be careful, but I just refuse to think about it.

I could do business differently, present my products differently. But firstly it would reduce my turnover. And secondly, why should I do that? I am not going to change my lifestyle out of fear of the regime.

Even if they close my page, if they delete my content, I will create a new page.

They can force me to sell my products without photos and videos of models on my page, but I will also make another anonymous page, with models. I will not give up.

What I do is completely normal. It’s the demands of the Islamic Republic that are abnormal.

I also have a personal battle to fight. My family is not very open-minded and they are not happy with what I am doing. They are not religious, but they are conservative. They have changed a lot in recent years, especially after the “Woman Life Freedom” movement, but they still don’t like it when their daughter publishes her photos in revealing clothes that I make to sell.

I don’t want to fight, I’m not an activist, but I will not change my lifestyle, the way I want to live, unless I am forced to. When you live in a country like Iran, you get used to always living in fear and threat, but we have to live our lives. That’s the way it is. 

 

In a further attack on the freedom of social media in Iran, Mohammad Mahdi Esmaili, the Iranian minister of culture, announced on January 31 that “all bloggers with more than 5,000 followers must apply for permission to continue working”.

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Morality police patrols return to Iran’s streets after 10 months

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Nearly 10 months after Iran’s so-called “morality police” disappeared from the streets during mass protests over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, the Iranian police announced July 16 that they had resumed patrols targeting “immoral clothing.” Amateur videos and first-hand reports from our Observers in Iran indicate that the patrols had resumed in the days before the announcement. But with many Iranian women having gotten used to going out with their heads uncovered in recent months, it remains unclear whether the patrols will be able to stop them. 

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Amini, 22, was arrested by members of Iran’s Guidance Patrol on September 13, 2022 for allegedly not wearing a headscarf, and died three days later. Her death sparked months of mass protests that resulted in more than 500 deaths, thousands of injuries, and tens of thousands of demonstrators arrested.

The protests, under the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom,” led many Iranian women to refuse to wear the Islamic hijab in public, defying Iran’s mandatory hijab laws. Guidance Patrol units stopped patrolling, and Iran’s regular police had to focus on breaking up the protests, not enforcing hijab rules.

Now the Iranian regime is cracking down.On July 16, Saeed Montazer Al-Mahdi, spokesman for the Iranian police, announced that the morality police would resume conducting morality patrols. “Following massive demand by several groups of people, and the urging of the president and the head of the judiciary to achieve a safer society and enforce family values, police patrols will, from today, alert persons wearing immoral clothing and, if they insist, report them to the courts.”

 


In this video posted on Twitter the man filming says the woman in black is an officer of Iran’s Gasht-e-Ershad morality police making an arrest in the Gisha neighbourhood of north Tehran on July 15, 2023.

 

Many Iranians on social media report seeing police conducting morality patrols on the streets in recent days. They have posted images showing women with their heads uncovered being stopped by women in black chadors accompanied by uniformed male police officers. Police vehicles are visible in the images, along with unmarked white vans. 

Most of the posts on social media report seeing the patrols merely order women to put on a headscarf, but there are also videos suggesting arrests are being made.

Montazer Al-Mahdi did not specifically mention the Guidance Patrol (known as Gasht-e-Ershad in Persian), and it was unclear whether the new patrols are being conducted by regular police or personnel from the religious police unit. Iran’s attorney general had announced in January that the Guidance Patrol was being disbanded, but it was denied by state media.

Iranian authorities have for months been using traffic-surveillance cameras to detect women drivers and passengers without hijabs, and using the vehicles’ licence plates to identify the women and summon them to court to pay fines.

 

“Young women aren’t afraid of arrest or fines”

Niusha [not her real name], an Iranian woman in Tehran who has refused to wear Islamic clothing in public places for more than a year, explains what is now happening on the streets of Iran:

“I go outside as I please, wearing a T-shirt and shorts. However, I have seen patrols of the morality police in several places in Tehran in the north and in the city centre, although I have not seen or heard of them arresting anyone yet.

I have seen their female officers in black chadors as usual. But now they are in white vans, whereas their vehicles used to be white and green [official colours of Iranian police vehicles].

On the other hand, I know many women who have been summoned to court. The Islamic Republic agents have reported them to the authorities for not wearing Islamic dress in public places and the women have been brought before a judge and are now waiting for their verdict.

 


The caption of this video posted on Twitter 17 July 2023 says it shows officers of Iran’s morality police checking women for hijab violations in the western city of Kermanshah.

And the number of threatening text messages to women drivers in cars has increased. Traffic cameras are used to check whether the women in the car are wearing an Islamic hijab or not, and if not, they send a text message and fine the car owner, sometimes impounding the car for a while.

And I don’t see Iranian women actually giving in to the pressure. The main force behind the protests – and most of the women you see without Islamic hijab – are young women and teenagers. I do not see any way the morality police are going to stop them. Young women aren’t afraid of arrest, fines, or parental pressure, or being deprived of their social rights. They’re not afraid of anything.

But middle-class families who have to go to work every day need their car, and some of them might fold. One of my friends, who has not once worn a headscarf in the last few months, put one in her car as a precaution.”

 


This video posted on Telegram shows Iranians in the city of Rasht protesting following the arrest of three women on 16 July 2023 for not wearing Islamic hijab on the street.

On July 17, media outlets close to the state claimed a judge in the Tehran province sentenced a woman to work in a morgue in Tehran for not wearing a headscarf in her car.

The Islamic Republic has once again set out to push back Iranian women with the help of police forces, but many political analysts call this latest act a shot in the Islamic Republic’s own knee.

This photo posted on Twitter on 15 July 2023 shows a suspected morality patrol by police in Tehran’s Valiasr Square. © @NR2OH

 

For the extremists, enforcing Islamic hijab is the last bastion before the regime’s collapse

Tara [not her real name] is a political analyst in Iran. She has been arrested several times for her criticism of the Islamic Republic. She is also one of the Iranian women refusing to comply with the Islamic dress code imposed by the mollahs in Tehran. She explains why, just two months before the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death and amid an unprecedented crumbling of legitimacy for the regime, the Islamic Republic is adding fuel to the fire after decades of economic, environmental, political, diplomatic and human rights crises.

“As far as I can tell, there is a struggle between different political factions in Iran. There are extremists, including Ahmad-Reza Radan, Iran’s newly appointed police chief, who want to reintroduce the morality police. They have the upper hand. But there are other blocs who, for whatever reason – maybe fear of more mass protests – disagree. Some hardline websites such as Tasnim News and Javan [two media outlets close to Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC] have denied the morality police are being redeployed, saying the amateur images showing such patrols are ‘fake’. 

For the extremists, enforcing Islamic hijab on the streets is critical, the last bastion before the regime’s collapse. It’s a way of showing that the regime is still in control.  That is why the hardliners have recently organised rallies by their supporters to protest the regime’s lack of initiative to enforce Sharia law in public spaces.

We should not forget that we are approaching the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death. Maybe they think that with such a strong presence on the streets they can stop people from marking this day in the coming weeks. But I think that will backfire on them in the end.”



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