This exploratory study, the first attempt at capturing the experiences of victims of DV with the criminal justice system in Iran, explores their plight in the absence of legislation that defines and criminalizes DV. Drawing on 15 in-depth interviews with Iranian women who turned to police departments and courts, we demonstrate the flaws inherent in Iran's judiciary and law enforcement organizations, suggesting they reinforce the integrity of the family as a patriarchal unit through readings of religious commands, stabilize the boundary between public and private, and dissuade women from claiming their rights. We provide suggestions for future research for reform, given the growing influence of feminist movements toward gender equality.

Struggling between the contradictory demands of colonial and neocolonial forces, Muslim women have been constantly at the center of ideological, political, and religious discourses and subjected to surveillance at multiple levels. More specifically, Muslim women's bodily practices, particularly the veil, as an embodied marker of difference that challenges the Western ideals of femininity and signals the “Otherness” of Muslim women, have been at the center of debates on Muslim women's bodies and embodiment. This thematic review of feminist scholarship on regulating and controlling Muslim women's bodies suggests that postcolonial and postsecular feminists have tried to alter narratives portraying veiled Muslim women as “victims” of patriarchal oppression and have disputed representations of Muslim women as “Others.” However, important nuances of Iranian Muslim women's multidimensional and complex decisions, informed by multiple matrixes of power, whether in the form of self‐regulation or through the constant control of the surveilling gaze of dominant “Others,” remain to be explored.