Iran Cracks Down on ‘Immodestly’ Dressed Women

29 Apr 2010 – A national crackdown on the opposition movement will extend to women deemed to be dressed immodestly, the Telegraph reports.  Tehran chief of police Brig. Hossein Sajedinia has said the authorities will be taking to task all Iran’s “suntanned women and young girls who look like walking mannequins.”

“We are not going to tolerate this situation,” said Sajiedinia, “and [we] will first warn those found in this manner and then arrest and imprison them.”

Since the Iranian revolution, women have been legally required to wear a scarf over their hair and an overcoat (called a manteau), but how tight and trendy their manteau is and how much hair they let peak out of their hijab is not specified under Iranian law.  Women must simply be modest, but the lack of clarity means sometimes women get away with tight coats and skimpy head scarves and other are reprimanded by the authorities (as in the picture above).

Scapegoat, thy name is woman

But with Iran still simmering from last summer’s election uproar, the government has fallen out of favor with a considerable portion of the population.  And with the country’s grip on the population faltering, Iran’s Islamic leadership has deigned to launch a “scaremongering campaign to persuade the population that vice is sweeping the streets of the capital,” the Telegraph writes.

Iran’s leadership has plenty of potential trouble on the horizon to scapegoat with Islam and Islamic dress.  The Iranian nuclear program has ruffled many a feather in the international community, with plenty of saber-rattling from the Israelis.  The US says a strike on Iran is ruled out, but only for now.  And internally, things are messier.  Opposition leaders Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hussein Moussavi are calling for protest on June 12 to observe the anniversary of what they consider to be a stolen election, the New York Times reports.  Moussavi and Karroubi have denounced the Iranian leadership, saying their role in voter fraud, wide-spread imprisonment of the opposition and government corruption are “anti-Islamic.”  Moussavi commented, “I truly don’t understand how they will answer to God.”

Earthquakes and reptiles

Senior cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi said last week that immodestly dressed women “lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,” CBS News reported.  Sedighi is not reported to be a seismologist.

Sedighi greater point was that Iranians should take refuge in religion to keep from being “buried under the rubble.”  Iran’s capital city Tehran sits on a major fault line, and experts say the city is due for a massive earthquake in less than 20 years.  The Iranian government is considering plans to move the capital out of Tehran and possibly to Qom.

Sedighi said Iran had already be struck by a great “political earthquake” following the June elections that kept President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in office.  The cleric said, “The political earthquake that occurred was a reaction to some of the actions (that took place). And now, if a natural earthquake hits Tehran, no one will be able to confront such a calamity but God’s power, only God’s power. … So let’s not disappoint God.”

And in Mashad, Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda warns that women wearing make-up “will be chewed by reptiles” – presumably in hell.

It is not discussed whether Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi or Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda are aligned with Iran’s supreme leadership, but it is believable.  Since the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini and his those behind him have consolidated power in Iran’s religious sector, propping up friendly voices and drowning out those who would disagree with the nation’s leadership.  Whatever the case, Iran’s can expect their wardrobe to the cause de jour while the government wrestles demons at home and abroad.

Source: Palestine Note