Kashf-e hijab

On 8 January 1936, Reza Shah of Iran (Persia) issued a decree known as Kashf-e hijab (also Romanized as "Kashf-e hijāb" and "Kashf-e hejāb", کشف حجاب) banning all Islamic veils (including hijab and chador), an edict that was swiftly and forcefully implemented. The government also banned many types of male traditional clothing. The ban was only enforced for a period of five years (1936-1941), however, since then, the hijab issue has become controversial in Iranian politics. One of the enduring legacies of Reza Shah has been turning dress into an integral problem of Iranian politics. In 1936, Reza Shah banned the veil and encouraged Iranians to adopt European dress in an effort to promote nation-building in a country with many tribal, regional, religious, and class-based variations in clothing. It was the policy of the Shah to increase women's participation in society as a method of the modernization of the country, in accordance with the example of Turkey. The Queen and the other women of the royal family assisted in this when they started to perform public representational duties as role models for women participating in public society, and they also played an active part as role models in the Kashf-e hijab. The reform was long in the making. In the second half of the 19th-century, Iranian upper class men started to visit Europe and started to adopt Western clothing for themselves, which made Western fashion become considered as a sign of progress and modernism in Iran among parts of the elite. From the 1920s, the Iranian women's movement supported unveiling, and a few individual Iranian women started to appear unveiled. In 1924, the singer Qamar-ol-Moluk Vaziri broke gender segregation and seclusion by performing unveiled in gender-mixed company at the Grand Hotel in Tehran and at the Royal Palace Theater. Iranian women's rights activists supported unveiling, and the feminist Sediqeh Dowlatabadi is believed to have been the first woman in Iran to have appeared in public without the veil in 1928.