Intellectual, historical and civilizational traditions of Muslim social thought
zeynab aalami; mahdi Hosseinzadeh yazdi; Qasem Zaeri
Abstract
The issue of unveiling has been one of the most pressing socio-cultural challenges in Iranian society. Beyond its incompatibility with Iranian-Islamic cultural values, it has generated significant social, political, and national consequences for the Islamic Republic. Understanding this phenomenon within ...
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The issue of unveiling has been one of the most pressing socio-cultural challenges in Iranian society. Beyond its incompatibility with Iranian-Islamic cultural values, it has generated significant social, political, and national consequences for the Islamic Republic. Understanding this phenomenon within its historical context—particularly its early manifestations in Iran—is therefore of critical importance. This study explores the discursive transformations of veiling from the Constitutional Revolution to the end of the reign of Reza Shah, within the framework of discursive conflict. The study adopts a discourse analysis approach grounded in the theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The findings indicate that during the early Constitutional era, a pro-veiling discourse prevailed. However, anti-veiling voices increasingly framed Western-style dress reform around four central themes: freedom, chastity, education, and religious reinterpretation. This framing destabilized the dominant discourse, leading to the emergence of five defensive sub-discourses: Qur’anic-jurisprudential veiling, Weakness-Oriented veiling, Woman-Centered veiling, socio-political veiling, and Legalistic veiling. A central binary emerged—"domesticity and veiling" versus "social participation and unveiling"—reflecting the deepening discursive polarization. With the rise of the Pahlavi regime, the anti-veiling discourse gained institutional support, especially through civil registration and public education systems. The 1935 Mandatory Unveiling Law effectively neutralized public debate by coercively imposing one side of the discourse.
