At a hospital in the holy city of Qom, a young woman squats in a corner with a sick child in her arms. Her headscarf has slipped down to her shoulder revealing her hair, and a mullah is seen using his phone nearby. Surveillance video of the scene published on March 9 has caused a furore in Iran, with women angrily accusing the mullah of planning to denounce the mother for hijab violations on a special app created by the Islamic regime. Users supporting the regime have labelled the mother a “bitch”, and Iranian women in response have flooded social networks with the hashtag “I’m a bitch too”.
The video that emerged on social media was recorded by a surveillance camera in a hospital in Qom, one of Iran's most religious cities.
An initial excerpt shows the mother squatting in a corner, her headscarf on her shoulders and her hair visible, as a mullah stands nearby using his phone. A second excerpt shows the mother angrily accusing the mullah of taking photographs of her and her sick child without permission. “Give me your phone, let me see the photo, delete it,” she tells him. Several other women, some wearing the Islamic hijab and some not, come to her aid, and one of them takes the mullah's phone to check it.
A year and a half after the “Woman Life Freedom” protests kicked off in September 2022, the reaction from women in Iran has been fierce. The videos have been seen hundreds of thousands of times on social networks, with comments suggesting the mullah was using a government-supplied app on his phone to report the mother for hijab violations. The app, known as “Nazer” (“watcher / informant” in Persian), is issued to government-vetted informers to allow them to report hijab violations to the authorities. Women who are reported receive "unveiling notifications" sent via text message, and in some cases receive punishments such as having their vehicle impounded.
Pro-regime users accuse the mother of 'bitchy behaviour'
On March 10, Qom’s chief prosecutor, Hasan Gahrib, also a mullah, announced his staunch support for the mullah in the video. “We are pursuing the disruptors of public order and the people involved in spreading the video footage on social media and the Persian opposition media abroad,” he said. The city’s Deputy Prosecutor Rohollah Moslemkhani told local media March 12 that four people had been arrested so far in connection with the dissemination of the video footage.
Pro-regime social media users placed the blame on the mother, with some accusing her of “bitchy behaviour,” using the Persian insult “saliteh,” for allowing her headscarf to fall as she tended to her child.
Supporters of the “Woman Life Freedom” protests reacted by creating the hashtag “I’m a bitch too” to express their support for the mother. “The Woman Life Freedom revolution is alive,” one woman wrote on X. “It is unstoppable and is impacting our lives and culture at every opportunity. Sometimes we resist by taking off our scarves, sometimes by using words: #I’m_a_bitch_too.”
Another woman wrote: “#We_are_bitches, and to overthrow the perverted mullahs, we will get even bitchier.”
What was the mullah doing on his phone?
After the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s morality police in September 2022 and the massive protests that followed, the Islamic Republic changed its strategy. Street patrols by the morality police were halted, and the regime urged Iranian citizens to step in to help report women seen without a hijab in public.
The regime created websites, tiplines and an app for smartphones that allowed citizens to easily report women without a hijab to the police. Citizens downloading the Nazer app must register, be approved and undergo a brief training. Their reports are then used to fine or, in some cases, arrest the women reported.
'If she’s a bitch, we are all bitches'
Asieh Amini is an Iranian women’s rights activist based in Norway. She explains the situation in Iran.
The Islamic Republic is trying to turn people against each other by assigning its followers to take action against people who do not think like them.
People got angry when they saw this video in which a mullah has actually become an informer.
Attacking this woman in Qom and calling her a “bitch” has led to a movement and a hashtag that says we are all bitches if defending her rights and fighting back made her a bitch in your eyes.
Insulting and humiliating women with words like “bitch” is like using a weapon to gain control over their bodies, their behaviour and their lives. Saying “OK, I’m a bitch too,” is a way for women to disarm the weapon.
The real story here is that the Islamic Republic did not arrest the mullah. They arrested the people who posted this video.
People's reaction to issues like this related to the hijab and women have intensified since the “Woman Life Freedom” protests.
The Islamic Republic may be disempowering protesters on the streets with killings, rapes, arrests and executions, but that does not mean the protests have stopped. These online campaigns or these kinds of reactions to this mullah are other forms of protest.
Since the “Woman Life Freedom” protest in Iran in 2022, the gender paradigm in Iran has generally changed. In a poll released last week in Tehran, less than 2 percent of people in Tehran support the oppression of people by the state over issues such as the hijab.
CORRECTION (13/3/2024): The original version of this article used the English "slut" as a translation for the Persian word "saliteh" being used in connection with the video of the incident at the hospital in Qom. We have replaced the word "slut" by "bitch," which is a more accurate translation in this context. While the Persian word "saliteh" is sometimes translated as "slut" or "loose woman" or "Jezebel" in English, in Iranian culture and literature it is also used as a general misogynistic term in a similar way to the English words "bitch" and "shrew".
