Iran’s state Islamic body announced on November 12th that it will open a specialist mental health clinic in the Iranian capital, Tehran, to treat Iranian women who resist the regime’s mandatory hijab laws and refuse to wear headscarves.
Iran sets up mental health clinic to ‘treat’ women who refuse to wear hijab. I’m sure these women will be treated just as well as they treat the gay community. pic.twitter.com/ZfTdPFw8u4
— Imtiaz Mahmood (@ImtiazMadmood) November 13, 2024
The clinic is called the Clinic for Quitting Hijab Removal, and it is the latest attempt of the Islamic Republic to suppress dissent by Iranian women against the regime that has spread throughout the country since the death of Mahsa Amini under morality police custody in September 2022 and the massive “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests that followed. It is also an example of how the regime labels those who oppose them as mentally ill.
Mehri Talebi Darestani, the Head of the Women and Family Department of the Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Tehran Province, will oversee the center’s operations and claimed that the facility “will be for the scientific and psychological treatment of removing the hijab, specifically for the teenage generation, young adults, and women seeking social and Islamic identity.”
She added that the project is focused on promoting “dignity, modesty, chastity, and hijab” and said that “visiting this center is optional.”
Lol. Just obey. It's that simple.
— The Bullshit Telegraph (@realSketchyNews) November 14, 2024
The wording of the clinic’s mission statement, as described by Darestani, closely mirrors that of facilities for substance abuse. Many prominent human rights activists and organizations have condemned attempts by Iranian officials to pathologize opposition to the mandatory hijab law and dissent against the regime.
The Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which will implement and oversee the project, is responsible for defining and enforcing strict religious standards in Iranian society, including how Iranian women dress.
The department is sanctioned by the United Kingdom and other countries for human rights abuses and its brutal sanctioning of women who do not follow the Islamic Republic’s mandatory hijab laws.
Why is it necessary for protest or even comment on other people'scustoms?! America you're being a Karen
— Waldo (@Aquarius03_11) November 15, 2024
It is led by Mohammed Saleh Hashemi Golpayegani, who is directly appointed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Earlier this November, Ahou Daryaei, a 30-year-old student from the Islamic Azad University in Tehran, was assaulted for allegedly refusing to follow the mandatory hijab laws. She stripped to her underwear and walked around the campus to protest against the demands by the Islamic Republic that women wear the hijab. Daryaei was branded as mentally ill and was taken to a mental health facility.
Last year, four Iranian psychiatric associations issued a joint statement condemning the regime’s systemic branding of women who refuse to wear the hijab as mentally ill.
This is just so insulting
— Vicmanvictv (@kingstressless) November 14, 2024
“The diagnosis of mental disorders is within the competence of a psychiatrist, not a judge, just as the diagnosis of other diseases is in the competence of doctors, not judges,” the psychiatrists wrote in a letter to Iran’s Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei that was published by Iranian media last July.
