Common Folk Using Common Sense

Police in Iran began a nationwide crackdown recently aimed at “guiding” women to adhere to the Islamic dress code, which requires women in Iran to cover their heads and bodily contours. The nationwide clampdown on “poorly-dressed” women began in mid-April.

This “guiding” includes bloody public beatings. Spare the rod, spoil the wife, right?

Women in Iran are obliged to cover all bodily contours and their heads but in recent years many have pushed the boundaries by showing off naked ankles and fashionably styled hair beneath their headscarves. Iran’s police chief Esmaeeli Ahmadi Moghadam has insisted that the crackdown is not temporary and will continue.

What’s particularly disturbing about all of this is that it’s the Iranian government doing this, not just random street thugs. Perhaps Jimmy Carter can elaborate on how the new regime in Iran is better than the Shah’s.

Iran also warned tourists and other foreigners visiting the country to obey its Islamic dress code in line with a nationwide crackdown against slack dressing, the ISNA news agency reported. The law also applies to members of non-Muslim minorities and all visiting foreigners. “We have asked travel agencies to warn tourists and to explain the laws of this country,” said Tehran’s deputy chief of police, Hossein Sajedi-Nia.

Iranian tyrant Ahmadinejad and company do not only export terror, they also uses it to terrorize their own people. They terrorize their own children, women and men. Of course, they have a carte blanch to do it because world media refuses to cover the atrocities. Of course this is nothing new, because they covered up the atrocities of the Soviet Union, China during the Cultural Revolution, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and continue to do so with the Palestinian Authority.

Why don’t we hear more about these things? Where are the true human-rights champions when you really need them? Does the suffering of these people matter less because they’re far away? Or even, in the morally relativistic worldview that many self-proclaimed do-gooders seem to hold, is it just a “different culture” to be celebrated in the name of diversity?

For example, growing up female in Iran Layla did not know happiness. At age 13, to get money, Layla’s parents sold her to a man who they knew wanted to prostitute her. For a father to sell his daughter is legal in Iran if done in the form of a marriage contract. At the age of 13, Layla became the legal wife of her pimp. The cultural and legal traditions of Iran left her no way out. Girls are raised to obey their fathers. Once married, women have to obey their husbands. Judges, no matter the circumstances, usually side with the man in cases related to domestic disputes. That was Layla’s predicament when police arrested her at 18, having survived two pregnancies and the trauma of having to give up both babies. Authorities charged her with prostitution and adultery. While awaiting trial, Layla tried to defend herself against the charges. She told stories of incest at home as a child and physical brutality from her husband. “My whole, life nobody listened to me, no one understood my problems, and no one believed me when I told them the terrible things that had happened. Everybody judged me and thought the sexual abuse was my fault,” Layla recalled. When he heard her accusations, the judge decided she was responsible for seducing her brother. He sentenced Layla to death by stoning — the punishment the Koran commands for both adultery and incest.

This one incident should have caused a world-wide outcry. But I would bet that this is the first time you’ve ever heard of it. Why?

Equally at blame for the cover-up is the feminist movement. If you go to the websites of major women’s groups, such as the National Organization for Women, the Ms. Foundation for Women, and the National Council for Research on Women, or to women’s centers at our major colleges and universities, you’ll find them caught up with entirely other issues, seldom mentioning women in Islam. During the 1980s, there were massive demonstrations on American campuses against racial apartheid in South Africa. There is no remotely comparable movement on today’s campuses against the gender apartheid prevalent in large parts of the world.

Most of the feminist groups or the women’s rights groups are openly antagonistic toward the United States, agnostic about marriage and family, hostile to traditional religion, and wary of femininity. The contrast between them and Islam could hardly be greater. Yet, for the most part, they stay silent on Islam.

If these were women being smacked around by a Catholic, Baptist, or Mormon, our feminists and their buddies in the media would be airing it every ten minutes.

The good news is that Muslim women are not waiting around for Western feminists to rescue them. “Feminists in the West may fiddle while Muslim women are burning,” wrote Manhattan Institute scholar Kay Hymowitz in a 2003 essay, “but in the Muslim world itself there is a burgeoning movement to address the miserable predicament of the second sex.” The number of valiant and resourceful Muslim women who are devoting themselves to the cause of greater freedom grows each and every day.

I suppose when the world, even the United States, gives you a pass for murdering innocent civilians worldwide, beating up and murdering your own women becomes that much easier - especially if you’re a 7th century Muslim barbarian.

Iran, Islam, headscarves, Moghadam

Spread The Word: