Rouhani Orders Halt of Mixed Gender Camps

Just a week after Iran’s leader ayatollah Khamenei publicly complained about what he termed as “mixed gender youth camps,” president Hassan Rouhani responded by stopping such camps at the country’s universities.

Mohammad-Reza Dezfooli, the secretary of the supreme council for Iran’s cultural revolution announced that Rouhani had asked that Khamenei’s remarks about mixed camps be followed up and such events prevented from taking place.

Last week, speaking about cultural issues, Khamenei had said, “Some have mistaken cultural activities with concerts and mixed gender camps and justify these acts by saying students must be happy,” and added that while it was good to be happy but then asked “At what cost? At the cost of holding mixed camps? What has the West gained from mixing genders other than current crimes that we should follow the same ways?”

A few months earlier too Khamenei had publicly objected to “mixed (gender) camps and music concerts” at universities adding that those who planned such activities “without doubt committed “treason to student environs and even future generations.”

Years earlier too, during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, Khamenei had aired the same complaint, then directly to the minister of science Mostafa Moin.

During Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency too, Khamenei had made similar remarks and universities had announced that students who participated in mixed camps would be barred from attending their classes for a semester.

While cultural issues, which are defined in Iran loosely to include what women wear to any mixed events, appear to have been the concern of some Iranian authorities, there are other quarters that deny such events. Social network users for example responded to Khamenei’s recent remarks to deny mixed camps at universities, with many saying they had never heard of such events while attending their universities.

Khamenei has regularly mentioned problems with cultural issues at universities and in society in general and has called on government officials to take corrective action, essentially Islamizing society. Last year when the issue of unlawful scholarships to state officials became a hot political issue, even causing the impeachment of Rouhani’s science minister (who oversees the activities of all institutions of higher education), Khamenei criticized the government’s public exposure of this issue calling it “one of the worst actions in the last two years.”