When Ali Shamkhani, a senior adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and former head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, was identified as the father of the bride in a video showing his daughter Fatemeh Shamkhani in a strapless wedding gown at a lavish ceremony in Tehran, the symbolism was brutal, and it should be!
The regime that demands strict hijab compliance for ordinary women under threat of arrest, was exposed for what it is -a system with one rule for the powerful, and another for everyone else.
In short: the rules are for you, not for them.
Remember Mahsa Amini? A young Kurdish woman who died in custody after being detained by Iran’s “morality police” for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly.
The same regime that tortures women for an uncovered strand of hair has no issue with the bare shoulders, and bare bosom of its elite’s daughters!!
The contrast is painful, one body punished, another body privileged.
That, from an Islamic-ethical standpoint, is nifāq (hypocrisy).
The Holy Qur’an warns-
“O you who believe! Why do you say what you do not do? Great is hatred with Allah that you say what you do not do.”
Surah As-Saff (61:2–3)
True Islamic justice is not selective. Islam’s moral system applies equally to all, the poor, the powerful, the ruler, and the ruled. When privilege determines piety, what remains is not Islam.
The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ established a precedent for justice that transcends status:
“By Allah, if Fatimah, the daughter of Muhammad, were to steal, I would cut off her hand.”
-Sahih Muslim, Sunan Ibn Majah
The message is timeless, no one is above the law.
But in Iran, the elites’ daughters can dress as they please while ordinary women die for strands of hair. When such double standards persist, the regime’s claim of ruling “by Islam” collapses under its own hypocrisy.
*Let’s be clear, Iran is not an Islamic polity, like any-other present muslim majority countries, it is also a nation-state draped in religious rhetoric. Like any other present muslim majority countries, its economic system also operates on riba (interest), the same foundation Islam prohibits.*
“Allah has permitted trade and forbidden riba.” Holy Qur’an 2:275
Its social structure, like any other present muslim countries, privilege elites while punishing ordinary citizens under surveillance and sanctions. Its political system mirrors any other authoritarian state, power consolidated among clerical elites.
This nation state model in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and all of the present Muslim world is not Islamic governance. It is modern nationalism painted with Islamic slogans. These states have accepted Western economic models of interest-based finance, class division, and bureaucratic hierarchy while cherry-picking religious symbols for obtaining legitimacy, and befooling the masses in the name of Islam!
This selective approach is exactly what the Holy Qur’an condemned in Surah al-Baqarah (2:85)-
“Do you then believe in part of the Scripture and disbelieve in part? Then what is the recompense for those among you who do so but disgrace in worldly life; and on the Day of Resurrection they will be returned to the severest punishment. And Allah is not unaware of what you do.”
When governments enforce part of the scripture that too selectively AND ignores riba; demands complete obedience but denies justice; claims Islamic law but rule by man made, nationalistic laws, then it has become the very example this ayah warns against, and nodoubt that’s why even after having 57 muslim countries right now, we are being humiliated everywhere due to this selective application of Islam to an extent that we have witnessed live genocides but couldn’t do anything for their liberation other than few theatrics, and rhetorics.
Hasbunallahu Wa’nimal Wakeel!