So says ‘de Ayatollah:

Khamenei told the Iranian students’ conference that in the Iranian vision of Islam, it was determined that poor women should be compelled to cover their entire bodies and faces in order to honor them and make their dress conform to the style adopted by aristocratic women. This policy, he said, logically followed from the conclusion that men have an “inborn desire for sexual violence.”

In ancient Iran, aristocratic women used to wear hijab,” he said. “Women from lower classes did not bother. But when Islam came, it rejected such instances of discrimination. It said that all women must wear the hijab. In other words, it wanted to honor all women. This is what Islam says. Now, they [in the West] behave as if we are doing something wrong and they are doing the right thing! No, they are in the wrong. They must answer why they have been treating women like a commodity in order to gratify their own lust.

“I received some statistics yesterday,” the ayatollah continued. “According to those statistics, one third of women in the world are beaten and battered by men. In my opinion, this is very heart-rending; it makes one tearful. And these instances of abuse mainly happen in the industrial countries of the West. This stems from men’s inborn desire for sexual violence.

“In their sensationalism concerning women’s affairs,” he continued, “they blame us by saying: You have made hijab compulsory. They themselves have made lack of hijab compulsory. They do not allow girl students to enter university, if they wear a headscarf. Yet they have the audacity to question us by saying: Why have you made hijab compulsory?”

Wearing the hijab, he said in answering his own question, “is aimed at honoring women, whereas that [the practices of the West] aim to abuse and insult women.”