FOR MANY PEOPLE in Ireland today, the realities of life under the Islamic Republic of Iran can feel distant. Something that belongs to another culture, another history, another world.

Reports of women being stopped in the street, detained for how they dress, or punished for behaviour deemed “immoral” are often received with shock, but also with a quiet sense that such things are difficult to fully imagine in a modern society.

But they are not as unimaginable as they seem.

In recent days, much discussion has taken place across Ireland after the release of the 1926 Census. A welcome look at the country’s history. And some of that census has brought stories of an Ireland of the past that we have come to understand as one that operated a very different system. A society where religious authority defined morality, often controlled behaviour and enabled the punishment of those who did not conform.

The high-walled institutions of Old Ireland, like the Magdalene Laundries, were not simply places of ‘care’. They were buildings where women — often unmarried mothers — were confined, silenced and forced into manual labour because they were judged to have failed a moral standard set by the Church.

The front door and hallway of the now derelict Sisters of Our Lady of Charity Magdalene Laundry on Sean McDermott St. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

The litany of cruelty and abuse that was perpetrated against the victims of these institutions is now well documented in Ireland. These women were not criminals in the legal sense. Their “crime” was social and moral. Yet they were removed from society, sometimes for years, sometimes for life.

They worked without pay, lived under constant supervision and had little or no ability to challenge their situation. Their voices carried no weight against the authority of the institutions that controlled them.

What made this system possible was not only the power of the Church, but its alignment with the wider structures of society. Families sent daughters to these institutions. State bodies referred women to them. Public contracts supported their operation. Oversight was limited. The system was not hidden; it was normalised.

Old Ireland, modern Iran

It is from this point that we can begin to understand Iran under the Islamic Republic, not as something entirely foreign, but as something structurally familiar.

Iran’s trajectory, however, also reflects a different kind of rupture. Prior........

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