Public Culture Tsar Bans 'Deviant' Women's Coats

Women's coats and manteaux cut above the knee are banned and longer ones must be buttoned up at the front, the head of Iran's Public Culture Council has announced.

As reported by the state-conttrolled IRNA news agency, in a meeting with reporters in Sari on Thursday evening, Majid Emami Asr said low domestic production of women's clothing and an influx of cheaper, foreign-made garments had led to "chastity and hijab being diverted to extremes and deviance".

Part of the problem, he said, was the lack of a standardized sizing system and approved designs: "Now we have a clear and unified rule, according to which coats that fall above knee-height are prohibited."

He went on: "The 13th government supports the diciplinary approach of the Public Culture Council toward social anomalies, especially with regard to chastity and hijab. Abuses are being perpetrated through the import of clothing."

Emami Asr also called on Iranian lawmakers to reduce the import tariff on women's black chadors to zero, so as to reduce their price in shops and - hopefully - encourage more women to wear them.

Large numbers of Iranian women have reported being harassed by so-called "morality police" in recent years and open hostility toward wearers of so-called "bad hijab" appears to be on the rise.  A week ago today Ahmad Alam al-Hoda, Mashhad's Friday Imam and President Ebrahim Raisi's father-in-law, called on the faithful not to "wait for the police" to intervene if they saw an unveiled woman in public.