Humiliated in Election, Revenge with Bad Hijab

As right-wing politicians continue to attack Iran’s green movement, the secretary-general of the Islamic Motalefe (Coalition) Society blasted opponents of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration, calling them “anti-revolutionary” and claiming that green movement supporters were using inadequate hijab as a way to address their humiliation, after their humiliation in last year’s presidential elections.

In a new attack on opponents of Ahmadinejad’s administration, Mohammad-Nabi Habibi referred to them as “conspirators” who use inadequate hijab “as a tool in the soft war against society’s morals” on part of people he referred to as members of the “green cult.”

The Coalition Society secretary-general’s remarks are published a week after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration unveiled a plan to “promote culture of hijab and modesty” in society. In one of the administration’s most controversial moves, all women working in government offices and organizations will be forced to come to work in “uniform covering. “

In his remarks, Habibi ridiculed freedom to dress and claimed that inadequate hijab threatened society’s “psychological health.” The secretary-general of the Coalition Society did not clarify how the government should confront citizens with inadequate hijab. In prior years, the police would detain girls and women deemed to have been in inadequately covered by the Islamic Republic’s standards.

The secretary-general of the Coalition Society, who was delivering a speech for the party members, referred to the green movement supporters as a group of “anti-revolutionaries” who “are addressing their humiliation from defeat in the tenth presidential election by inadequate hijab to disrespect God’s orders and the Muslim people.”

According to official statistics of the sitting administration, the “anti-revolutionaries” referred to by Habibi included 14 million citizens who voted for the green movement’s leaders, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi in last June’s presidential election.

It must be noted that at the end of Farvardin Habibi predicted the green movement’s future reactions by warning against new unrest in the new year: “Since the first days of the new years attempts were underway to unleash the conspiracy’s second.”

Habibi, who was speaking to members of his pro-Ahmadinejad party, then blasted the former reformist president. Questioning Khatami’s management, which set in place the “preconditions for massive social unrests,” Habibi implicitly accused the two-term president of “acting in the interest of the enemy.” He said, “America’s attempts against Iran are posed in the triangle of threats, sanctions and political and economic unrest. If people like Khatami are not careful, and under the guise of prediction, talk about social and economic unrest, they have acted in the interest of the enemy.”