In Iran, boys and girls conversing is an unspeakable evil, which sends the hardliners into an unbearable rage.
Outraged by scenes of young boys and girls using Shi’ite Islam’s most sacred mourning day as an opportunity to flirt in public, Iran’s religious hard-liners are calling on authorities to stamp out such “vulgar displays.”Failure to do so, some newspaper commentators said, would force pious citizens to take matters into their own hands.
And I think we all know that they are not referring to on-the-spot fines.
“Let the officials realize that the heroic and passionate people of Iran can easily deal with a handful of hoodlums and promiscuous elements that ridicule our sanctities,” the hardline Jomhuri-ye Eslami daily said in an editorial last week.
hood.lum n 1. THUG; esp: one who commits acts of violence
Sounds more like a term to apply to the hardliners.
The main focus of hardline anger was a gathering of several hundred youngsters at Mohseni square in affluent northern Tehran earlier this month on the night of Ashura.—-“In the sunset of Ashura, women and girls in tight clothes and transparent scarves…
The nerve!
.. and guys dressed in Western fashion lit candles while laughing their hearts out,” said the Ya Lesarat weekly, mouthpiece of the feared Ansar-e Hizbollah hardline vigilante group, members of whom later dispersed the crowds.
Happiness simply will not be tolerated!
Other newspapers printed pictures from the Mohseni square gathering, focusing on young girls wearing make-up, laughing and mingling freely with the opposite sex.“In this disgraceful event which was like a large street party, women and girls … as well as boys … mocked Muslims’ beliefs and sanctities in the most shameless manner,” Jomhuri-ye Eslami said.
For the youth, this is not a religious issue, but rather a chance to socialize.
“In general, religious events like Ashura have become a way for young people to interact freely in public,” said one analyst who follows religious affairs closely.“The religious side of it is much less important to them than the social aspect,” the analyst, who declined to be named, added.
Meanwhile, when they are not lopping off people’s heads, hardliners are scratching their own.
Religious figures in Iran, including President Mohammad Khatami a reformist cleric, have noted with dismay that Iran’s disproportionately youthful population, around two-thirds of whom were born after the 1979 Islamic revolution, are increasingly turning away from religion.
Gee, I wonder why.
Update: Check out the google ads on Iranmania. You can’t stop the revolution!!
