Iran has thankfully decided to ban the mullet. While I cannot imagine any sane person objecting to such a move, sparing us future years of Joe Dirt, they also decided to ban several other haircuts. This move strikes me as a sign of impotence on the part of Ahmedinejad. As I have written about regarding the Saudi Arabians, decisions like this are an attempt to flex muscles that do not actually exist.
The crackdown on the public sphere is something that is usually resented by Iranians. However, after the rise of the Green Movement last year, the crackdown on men’s hair can be seen as a way to exert control over the population again. Max Fisher at The Atlantic is sympathetic to this view, even suggesting that things will get worse as the Green Movement continues to agitate.
I think we also need to look at international context as well. The spate of anti-Muslim debates in Europe, including the French ban of the burqa, demand Iran respond in a manner that indicates Islamic solidarity. The language of the haircut restrictions centers around “Islamic” and “Western.” It is not coincidental that these events are happening in close temporal proximity to one another. The New York Times emphasizes the “clash of civilizations” myth in this ruling, without really thinking through the implications or causes of the ban 30 years after the revolution.
These two elements, the Green Movement and the European marginalization of their Muslim communities, demonstrate how weak and ineffectual the current Iranian regime is. The result is they are emulating the Saudis and using faith as a cudgel to demonstrate that they do still have some power. Interestingly, one of the things that may emerge from this, as The Christian Science Monitor intimates, is that men may now be subject to the same level of “modesty scrutiny” as women. We may just end up with a more equitable treatment of the sexes.
