wearing it as something rural, nomadic, poor and non-Iranian. The use of veils provided women with a level of moral satisfaction. It was very ideal for women to be seen wearing these veils because they were viewed as proper During the Pahlavi dynasty The use of veils began to be publicly challenged by women in the mid 19th century. Women such as Tahereh QorratolAyn, Huda Sha'arawi and Saiza Nabarawi unveiled themselves in public and created a political and religious controversy. Woman argued that being forced to wear the veil was a violation of their freedom and even a symbol of their inferiority. Attempts at changing dress norms (and perspectives toward it) occurred in mid-1930s when pro-Western autocratic ruler Reza Shah banned Iranian women from wearing the veil entirely. Many types of male traditional clothing were also banned under the pretext that "Westerners now wouldn't laugh at us". Many of Iran's leading feminists and women's rights activists organized in the Kanun-e Banuvan to campaign in favor of the Kashf-e hijab. To enforce this decree, the police were ordered to physically remove the veil from any woman who wore it in public. Women who refused were beaten, their headscarves and chadors torn off, and their homes forcibly searched. Until Reza Shah's abdication in 1941, many conservative women simply chose not leave their houses in order to avoid confrontations, and a few even committed suicide to avoid removing their hijabs due to the decree. A far larger escalation of violence occurred in the summer of 1935, when Reza Shah ordered all men to wear European-style bowler hats. This provoked massive non-violent demonstrations in July in the city of Mashhad, which were brutally suppressed by the Imperial Iranian army, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 100 to 500 people (including women and children). Some Western historians have stated that the reform would have been a progressive step if women had initiated it themselves, but that the method of banning it humiliated and alienated many Iranian women, since its effect was, because of the effect of traditional beliefs, comparable to a hypothetical situation in which European women were suddenly ordered to go out topless into the street. Some historians have pointed out that Reza Shah's ban on veiling and his policies were unseen in Atatürk's Turkey. The ban lasted for five years; from 1936 until 1941. Under next ruler Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, wearing of