Iran Closes Water Park Because Women Were Not Wearing Hijabs

Iranian media reported on Monday the Mojhaye Khoroushan water park, one of the largest indoor water parks in the world, has been shut down because too many women were allowed to enter without wearing mandatory Islamic head coverings.

The manager of the park, Mohammad Babaei, told local media the complex was shuttered by the authorities because too many people were “ignoring chastity and hijab” rules. Babaei denied these charges, insisting the park “adhered to the law” and admonished women who tried to enter without mandated head coverings.

Babaei said the park, which is located near the city of Mashhad, has about a thousand employees who are now worried about their jobs. 

Mashhad is Iran’s second-largest city, and a major destination for tourism and religious pilgrimage, as it contains a shrine that is sacred to Shia Islam. The Mojhaye Khoroushan complex covers over 70,000 square yards.

The water park in Mashhad is one of the biggest attractions Iran has shut down in its mad rush to intensify hijab law enforcement, but it is by no means the only one, as The National noted on Tuesday:

Scores of businesses have been closed in recent months as Tehran clamps down further on women’s freedom, already vastly curtailed under the decades-long rule of the regime.

Book shops, cafes and clothing stores have been forced to shut after orders from authorities, who have threatened action against businesses serving women without the hijab required since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The Iranian theocracy seemed to wobble for a few heady months after a 22-year-old Kurdish woman named Mahsa Amini was abducted and killed by the “morality police” in Tehran for allegedly wearing her headscarf improperly. Massive protests swept across the country, as women of all ages made gestures of defiance against the Islamist regime.

The regime eventually regained its equilibrium and launched a brutal crackdown against the protesters, and once they were subdued, it began doubling down on its hijab laws and “morality police” enforcement. 

In December 2022, hardline President Ibrahim Raisi visited Amini’s home province in Iranian Kurdistan and effectively pronounced last rights over the protest movement, declaring that all of the gigantic demonstrations were the work of foreign provocateurs, the morality police did nothing wrong, Amini randomly died of a mysterious “illness” while in their custody, and Iranian women love the hijab laws.

The protesters have not given up entirely, so the regime is cracking down hard in the run-up to the first anniversary of Amini’s murder, including widespread arrests of human rights activists, journalists, professors, and students. Relatives of the hundreds of men, women, and children who were killed during their crackdown have been warned to remain silent. Regime judges warn that the “punishment will be doubled” for anyone who joins in anniversary demonstrations.

Part of this crackdown involves getting even tougher on hijab laws, in an effort to demoralize the protest movement by showing it has accomplished nothing. Punishments for not wearing a hijab are being increased, and the regime said it will use A.I.-enhanced surveillance networks to identify uncovered women. Political activism against the hijab law will also be punished more harshly under pending laws.

U.N. human rights experts denounced Iran’s new “Support for the Culture of Hijab and Chastity” law as “a form of gender apartheid,” under which the regime would impose “systemic discrimination with the intention of suppressing women and girls into total submission.”

The U.N. uses similar language to describe the Taliban’s brutish treatment of women in Afghanistan. Like the Iranian regime, the Taliban has banned women from amusement parks because they allegedly violated head and body covering laws. In August, the Taliban banned women from Band-e-Amir National Park, one of the biggest and best parks in Afghanistan, because too many women were allegedly flouting hijab laws.