Every now and then, Iranian media outlets are full of news and analysis about the boundaries between the “private” and “public” spheres. The most recent episode began July 7, when Mohammad Tarahomi, legal affairs traffic police deputy, announced that personal vehicles are not considered a “private sphere” and are thus subject to all public regulations, including mandatory veiling. The trunk and glove compartments of personal cars are, however, considered private spaces, because their interiors are not visible and therefore not subject to random police inspections.

The matter of what constitutes private versus public is not just an obsession of the police. Experts from a range of disciplines, including grand ayatollahs, lawyers, political analysts and lawmakers, all publicly express their views and advocate their perspectives on the matter. It is within this context that the quest for privacy has given rise to a mushrooming of privately managed residential complexes, especially in the Caspian Sea resorts in the northern provinces of Mazandaran and Gilan.

For many Iranians, these private complexes offer a Sharia-exempt space, or in other words, a small-scale “free” mini-city in which women commonly flout mandatory veiling, sunbathe on the beach and publicly consume alcohol. This side-stepping has not, however, gone unnoticed by the vigilant eyes of the Moral Security Police, whose head, Gholam-Heydar Heydari, on June 21 warned owners of such complexes that they must abide by public laws. Immediately after the warning, Reformist parliamentarian Mahmoud Sadeghi stated that private beaches are considered personal spaces and that police patrols and inspections of these complexes are forbidden without a court order based on reasonable grounds and on a case-by-case basis.

What is at stake in this controversy is the demarcation of the jurisdiction of law and the expansion of exempted areas, namely the private sphere. Topping the list of contended issues are those involving sartorial codes, such as the wearing of headscarfs; morality laws, like forbiding consumption of alcohol; and traffic control laws, like noise pollution, which is a euphemism for unlicensed music.