A prominent Sunni cleric in Iran recently delivered a sermon in which he attributed rising crime, corruption, and social unrest to the failure of women to wear the hijab, casting women’s dress as the root cause of the country’s social ills. The cleric’s remarks were made in a male-only gathering, reinforcing the gender hierarchies institutionalized by Iran’s theocratic regime, and offering insight into the patterns of political distraction and control that are a hallmark of the Islamic Republic.
While rhetoric around the hijab is most often associated with Iran’s Shia establishment, Sunni religious figures have increasingly mirrored these messages, echoing the regime’s efforts to police public behavior. The speech highlighted how religious justifications are invoked to maintain patriarchal norms, suppress dissent, and shift public focus away from the chronic corruption and governance failures that have brought Iranian society to repeated crisis points.
In his address, the Sunni cleric, identified as Maamousta Mahmoudi, asserted, “Failure to observe hijab can lead to numerous social issues, including increased crime and corruption, a lack of respect for family, the spread of prostitution, and a decrease in national security.” He claimed further that the hijab does not restrict women, but rather offers ‘protection and true freedom.’
These remarks come at a time of intense pressure on the Iranian regime. Economic decline, international sanctions, and ongoing unrest over the compulsory hijab—exacerbated by the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022 and subsequent widespread protests—have exposed widening fault lines in Iranian society. Despite the regime’s insistence on the hijab’s role as a guarantor of social stability, investigative reports and human rights organizations point to deep-seated governmental corruption, mismanagement, and the exploitation of state resources for the financing of armed proxy groups across the region as the real drivers of social malaise.
Iran’s use of religious codes to frame internal problems is neither new nor unique to its Shia clergy. Sunni clerics, particularly those seeking favor or protection in a hostile political climate, have sometimes advanced similar lines to reinforce state authority or insulate their communities from repression. This complicity does not erase the fact that minorities—including Sunnis, women, and ethnic groups—remain subject to systemic discrimination and are often scapegoated for the regime’s failures.
Analysts point out that high rates of crime, prostitution, and substance abuse across the Islamic Republic bear little relation to women’s attire and are instead a direct outcome of decades of authoritarian governance, economic isolation, and official corruption. Iran is consistently ranked by Transparency International among the world’s most corrupt countries, and its leadership—particularly figures within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—have diverted public funds to support foreign militia operations, even as basic economic needs at home go unmet.
The invocation of the hijab as a firewall against social decay is thus used primarily as a distraction from these deeper problems. Human rights advocates observe that such rhetoric is often a prelude to waves of intensified enforcement, surveillance, and violence directed at women, students, and anyone perceived as a threat to state authority. Despite these risks, acts of resistance, most visibly in the form of public protest and non-compliance with compulsory dress codes, have become more common—especially among Iran’s youth and in urban areas.
Internationally, the Iranian regime’s justification of social repression in the name of religious morality underpins its wider regional posture. The Islamic Republic’s support for terrorist proxies—including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis—is couched in religious and anti-Western language, even as such activities exacerbate internal hardships for ordinary Iranians. Israel and democratic states view these patterns not as pure internal policy but as interconnected elements of a broader campaign by Iran to destabilize the Middle East, redirect unrest, and undermine the legitimacy of sovereign states through its ‘Axis of Resistance.’
The state’s fixation on morality policing does little to address the root causes of the nation’s crises and instead isolates Iran in a region where social norms and political realities are swiftly evolving. Mahmoudi’s sermon, far from an anomaly, typifies the mode by which both Shia and Sunni clerical elites seek to maintain relevance and state favor, even as their messages increasingly diverge from the everyday realities of Iranian citizens confronting unemployment, inflation, and political repression.
In conclusion, recent religious pronouncements blaming women’s dress for national decline offer a revealing lens into the persistence of state-driven social control in Iran. The regime’s blending of Sunni and Shia religious messaging to reinforce its authority, scapegoat the vulnerable, and distract from dire internal failures remains a principal tactic. For Israel and the broader international community, these events are not isolated to cultural debates but are intrinsic to the Iranian regime’s ongoing repression at home and terror activities abroad—dynamics central to the iron swords war and the wider confrontation between democracy and terrorism in the Middle East.
