A few weeks ago, the Middle East Forum published an article about the unpopularity of Maryam Rajavi among Iranian youth. The author stated that the reason for the unpopularity of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) among Iranian youth was the hijab of the leader and female members of the group.
Although the author of this article only addressed one of the reasons for the unpopularity of the MEK and did not consider important reasons such as the terrorist record, betrayals, and crimes of the MEK against the Iranian nation, his reference to the issue of forced hijab in Maryam Rajavi’s organization is worth examining.
What is clear is that in the MEK, the right to choose one’s clothing is very limited for members, both men and women. This restriction is even worse for women. In Maryam Rajavi’s ruling structure, the hijab is completely mandatory.
The rule of forced hijab for female members inside the MEK campa continues to this day despite the protests against forced hijab in Iran. A significant example is the case of a child soldier in the MEK, Damona Taavoni. During the Albanian police raid on Camp Ashraf 3, Damona, who was being interviewed by an Albanian news outlet, was warned by her superior about her hijab. The film went viral in the social media.
As a matter of fact, the MEK leaders, namely Maryam Rajavi, are unable to lift the restrictions on clothing for members within the group because breaking any of the organizational restrictions means breaking the cult bars. In an organization where there is strict gender segregation, forced divorce, and a ban on getting married and having a family, observing hijab and conservative clothing style is a very serious tool in controlling the members.
But in order to attract the attention of Western politicians and to purify their image among Iranian youth, the leaders of the MEK are forced to cover up the ban on hijab inside their camps. They allow certain number of their followers and sympathizers to show up in the group’s rallies without a veil on their heads. That is why in the images of events of the MEK that are held outside camp Ashraf 3 –with the mouth-watering titles of freedom, human rights, democracy, and women’s rights– Iranian girls are seen without hijab, albeit in relatively conservative clothing such as long sleeve jackets and suits.
These young un-veiled girls are usually chosen from among the daughters of the MEK members. These girls are the same former children who were separated from their Mujahed parents and were smuggled to Europe and North America in 1991. Girls like Militia Javedan, whose parents were MEK members and who were separated from their parents and passsed between several foster families in Norway. Today she serves the MEK office in Norway when ever they need a young modern woman to speak on behalf of the MEK.
A large number of MEK girls and its former child soldiers such as Atefeh Sabdani and Zhina Hosseinnejad, have managed to keep their distance from this organization and even criticize it, but many of these girls are still financially and even emotionally dependent on the MEK’s cult-like system because they may still have their mothers in Ashraf 3 or because they are like Damona still trapped in Ashraf 3.
MEK girls living in Europe, with their modern clothing, have the duty to be propagandists for the organization that has imprisoned their mothers in the village of Manz, Albania, in that remote camp. Given that their mothers are alive, they live in complete isolation from the outside world in a cult-like violent group that has required them to observe the compulsory hijab.
Mazda Parsi