A grainy video of female officers from Iran's morality police assaulting a young woman whose headscarf only loosely covered her hair has sparked a new public debate on the decades-long requirement for women in the Islamic Republic.
While officials of all ranks up to President Hassan Rouhani have weighed in on the incident, it has seen women in Iran not only question the rule that they must wear the hijab in the street but also their faith in the theocratic Shiite-dominated nation.
Even before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the long, flowing black robes for women known as chadors and the headscarves, or hijabs, were both a political and religious symbol in the Shiite-dominated nation.
"I used to be a person who would always say her prayers and deeply believed in God," said Afrouz, 28, who like other women who spoke to The Associated Press in Tehran would only give their first name for fear of retribution.
"I would always say grace before having a meal. Right now, I believe in none of those things." The video appeared online last week, with activists suggesting it was taken in Tehran, though nothing in it offers hints at its location.
It shows a young woman with a long red scarf loosely covering her head, her hair clearly showing, being surrounded by three morality policewomen wearing chadors, who grab her.
One grabs her by the throat. She screams, they pick her up off her feet. She then ends up on the ground, weeping as another woman comforts her before the officers grab her again.
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"Why are you hitting me? You have been destroying us for 30 years," she is heard shouting at one point.
The video went viral on social media and drew an immediate reaction from officials. Iran's interior minister, Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, ordered authorities on Thursday to investigate the incident soon after Masoumeh Ebtekar, a female vice president for women's affairs, condemned the police's "violent" approach to the situation.
Reformist lawmaker Tayebeh Siavoshi said Saturday that the policewoman seen in the video grabbing the young woman's throat has been suspended pending the investigation. None of the women in the video have been identified.
"Imposing (force on women) will lead nowhere," she said. President Rouhani, a cleric who is considered a moderate within Iran's political system, also criticized the morality police in a speech on Saturday. The police force's stated mandate is "promoting virtue and preventing vice."
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