The Bored Ayatollahs

One would think that suppressing a mass uprising that just won't seem to go away would keep Iran's theocrats awfully busy, but the ayatollahs have been more focused lately on skirt hems and hair-dos. Perhaps it's proscrastination, a make-work project to avoid having to get through all those tedious sham trials for the thousands of dissidents recently rounded up and imprisoned in these heady times. Whatever it is, there has been a steady output of late of new rules and updated regulations concerning personal attire in the Islamic Republic.

In June this year, the republic's "moral police" fanned out in a force of 70,000 to snuff out the fires of what the mullahs-on-high perceive to be a "western cultural invasion". New problems the police force have to deal with in this particular seasonal crackdown include men wearing necklaces, mullets and ponytails. The latter two are not found on the government's list of approved hairstyles (oh yes, there's a list). Long nails, tattoos, tooth gems (whatever those are), and body piercings are also now needing to be banned. This is on top of the perennial problem that Iranian women miraculously and persistently manage to make the shroud-look still come off sexily by wearing close-fitting overcoats and loose headscarves (think Grace Kelly). Then there are the dogs:

...the Iranian parliament proposed a bill to criminalise dog ownership, on the grounds that it "poses a cultural problem, a blind imitation of the vulgar culture of the west. ...

...Under Islamic customs, dogs are deemed to be "unclean". Iranians, in general, avoid keeping them at home, but still a minority, especially in north Tehran's upper-class districts, enjoy keeping pets. Last year Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi, a prominent hardline cleric, issued a fatwa against keeping dogs and said the trend must stop.

The country's universities are particularly unruly. There, the moral police have had to target "female students wearing bright clothes" as well as "caps or hats without scarves, tight and short jeans, and body piercings" (as well as everything on the main list, including clothes that are insufficiently baggy, tattoos, loose headscarves, and so on). Male students need to be duly reminded that it's forbidden to dye their hair, pluck their eyebrows, wear tight clothes, jewelry and shirts with "very short sleeves", as reported by Reuters:

The semi-official Fars news agency published a list of universities around Iran that were given a note outlining the code but did not say on what basis they were selected.

It's long been an uphill battle to subdue the pesky habit of so many Iranians to sport "un-Islamic" fashions and hair-dos, but by God, someone's got to do it if the people of Iran are to be protected from the disease of Westoxification. Anything could happen! Women may start flaunting their cleavage all over the place like that sassy Baroness Ashton, the European Union's Foreign Minister, whose sluttishness had to be toned down by Iran's state media, those astute vanguards of journalism who have women's modesty ever present in their editorial standards-- even the modesty of female infidels. Or Iranian women might take after the whorish ways of the French first lady. When Carla Bruni-Sarkozy spoke out last year against the Iranian government's plans to stone to death Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani for a "moral crime", the Iranian state media lashed out, calling her "the morally corrupt singer and actress of Italian (origin)" who "was able to break the Sarkozy family and marry the French president", as reported by the Huffington Post at the time:

The Kayhan newspaper, whose editor is a representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, described Bruni-Sarkozy as a "prostitute" on Saturday in an article headlined "French prostitutes enter the human rights uproar."

Fortunately, not all western women are as insolent as Bruni-Sarkozy (the nerve of the woman! Stoning, wah, wah, wah... god, get over it!). The US-based "Women Against War" joined "an important meeting of US peace groups" who met with Iran's head honcho, President Ahmadinejad in 2008. The group felt Iran is just misunderstood, and everything is going just splendidly in the Islamic Republic. The American women warmly shared with Ahmadinejad their opposition to "the covert efforts of the US government to overthrow the Iranian government" and Ahmadinejad in turn assured the peace activists that Iranian women are doing just fine:

On the issue of women, he spoke with animation and humor. "Let me tell you the truth about women: they're about to replace me", he joked. He said he has two female vice-presidents and "when they say something, no one dares oppose them." He further explained that women are very active in all fields and that 70% of university students are women. The majority of the employees of the Iranian Central Bank are women; Ahmadinejad joked that if the US Treasury had had more women, we might have avoided the current fiscal crisis. He then sounded quite poetic as he spoke of how womanhood is defined in a different way in Iranian society; the mother has higher status and respect in the family; and a woman is seen as sublime beauty, kindness, and joy of society. Any harm to a woman's heart, he said, is harm to society.

It seems they didn't have a chance to get into what might seem like a slight contradiction to such statements, like the intent to stone to death one of those high status mothers of "sublime beauty", Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani; the unlawful imprisonment of women human rights defenders, the torture and rape of women protestors from the Green Movement, or really anything else of any substance. But as Women Against War, who seemed to want to keep things gushy and friendly, pointed out, none of that really matters:

President Ahmadinejad did not answer many of the specific questions that I still want to have addressed; but he came and he listened. I believe the conversation will continue. That is what is important.

And by the way, in case you're wondering, Ahmadinejad also told the American delegation of women peace activists not to worry about the nukes. It's all exaggerations. Just a small side-project of the regime. So don't worry about that either. Just worry about whether your pants are too tight and covering up your tooth gems.

Lauryn Oates is a Contributing Writer for The Propagandist.