Feminist activist in Iran sentenced to 24 years in prison for removing hijab.

Discussion in 'Middle East' started by JessCurious, Sep 7, 2019.

  1. JessCurious

    JessCurious Well-Known Member

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    The New York Post reported on August 29 of this year that Iranian feminist Saba Kord
    Afshari, 20 years old, to 24 years in prison. http://nypost.com/2019/iranian-civil-rights-activist-
    gets-prison-for-taking-off-hijab-in-public/ She received 15 years for "spreading corruption and prostitution by taking off her hijab and walking without a veil." Apparently, Iranian men are so
    hard up that the sight of a woman's uncovered hair makes them run to a prostitute. The remaing nine years were added because she had been arrested for the same crime before
    and because she supposedly was "spreading propaganda against the state."

    Iran has cracked down on women's protests after a movement started called "White
    Wednesday" in which women remove their compulsory hijabs briefly. Her mother, and other
    feminists - Shima Babail, Mojgan Lali and Shaghayegh Mahaki were arrested in July at about
    the same time as Afshari.

    On August 9th, Amnesty International reported that two Iranian activists - Yasaman
    Aryani and Monireh Arabshabi had been sentenced to 16 years in prison each for "inciting
    and facilitating corruption and prostitution" by removing their hijabs in public, and for
    "spreading propaganda against the system." At the same time, Mojgan Keshavarz was
    sentenced to 23 years and six months on the same charges. http://www.amnestyusa.org/
    urgent-actions/urgent-action-update-a-decade-in-jail-for-defying-forced-veiling-iran-ua-
    96-19/

    In March of this year another feminist, Nasrin Sotoudeh, was sentenced to 148
    lashes and 38 years in prison for demanding Iran abolish its death penalty (Iran has the
    highest per capita execution rate in the World - at least 507 in 2017), demanding that
    the law requiring the mandatory wearing of the hijab be removed, and "disrupting public
    order." https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/03/iran-shocking-33-year-prison-
    term-and-148-lashes-for-womens-rights-defender-nasrin-sotoudeh/

    Also in August of this year, 18-year-old Maedeh Hojabari was arrested for appearing
    on Instagram dancing without her hijab. She was in the privacy of her own bedroom, but
    Iranian officials decided she was in public because she was on Instagram. She was forced
    to appear on national TV and make a tearful, groveling, apology for "breaking moral norms."

    While some will say Iran has improved since the bloody first years since the Islamic
    Republic was founded, these incidents show that Iran still has a LONG way to go before
    it emerges from a medieval barbarism.
     
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  2. notme

    notme Well-Known Member

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    Talking about barbarism....
    I doubt they have a lot of mass shootings happen there.
     
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  3. roorooroo

    roorooroo Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Not exactly sure what you mean by that, but would you rather live in the United States or Iran?
     
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  4. JIMV

    JIMV Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Hence the word 'Barbarian'...
     
  5. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Last edited: Sep 7, 2019
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  6. JessCurious

    JessCurious Well-Known Member

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  7. notme

    notme Well-Known Member

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    Well the rules are quiet clear. The only "problem" is how decent you dress where. Ones you play by the rules, in the US or Iran, than there aint much of a prob. And wearing a scarf hardly over your head vs being part of a shoot out. It doesn't sound like a tough choice.
     
  8. roorooroo

    roorooroo Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So you would rather live in Iran?
     
  9. btthegreat

    btthegreat Well-Known Member

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    Glad I live in a country with a strict demarcation between church and state.
     
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  10. FatBack

    FatBack Well-Known Member

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    Can we start a Go Fund me for the plane ticket? :)
     
  11. Poohbear

    Poohbear Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I think what Notme means is that he or she would rather live in America.
    Lefties want to live in Capitalist societies
    Arabs want to live in Israel.

    It's not surprising once you figure these characters out.
     
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  12. Sobo

    Sobo Banned

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    Not a friend of Islam but hey i can understand them. Feminism is a cancer. First you allow small stuff and then you have 50 different genders and diverse toilets.
     
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  13. 22catch

    22catch Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Hey respect the OP much but in my humble opinion it's really lacking perspective. Iran is young, like 40% under 30? Their upper class the shotcallers? Their children are running amok and just party and forgot what a hajib even looks like. This OPs opinion is really ignorant, dig around Iran isnt what they are telling us. Different yes..but eh
     
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  14. Iranian Monitor

    Iranian Monitor Well-Known Member

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    I don't have any sympathy for the Hijab rules in Iran, but I also don't all that much sympathy for anyone who picks this time (when Iran is under serious threats from outside powers trying to cause an implosion within Iran) to try to organize protests against it -- whether in the streets or through the social media. Unless you believe Iran becoming another Syria, is somehow good for the country, this is just not the right time for any of this. And this is what these cases are about: trying to organize protests and acts of civil or uncivil disobedience against what, in this instance, is a legitimate cause - but one being used and abused for illegitimate reasons to advance illegitimate agendas.

    In the meantime, practically no one handed out any harsh, long sentences, actually ends up serving those sentences in Iran. You can check for yourself by following the trail and story of others where the headlines had claimed were 'sentenced to" a long prison term. And check how long they actually had to serve! (Even the case of Nasrin Sotoudeh, a feminist political activist and lawyer in Iran, mentioned in that report). Typically, the initial long sentence (and in this case, rather unprecedented if the report is accurate) is handed as a deterrent - to scare others not to engage in similar conduct. The actual sentence is then reduced substantially on appeal. It is then commuted quickly, unless the person is an actual threat somehow.

    All those who are truly interested in the human rights situation in Iran know all of this already. They know that the regime wants to advertise harsh long sentences which are almost never carried out to scare others against similar acts. But because there reports aren't meant for any Iranian audience, but rather as propaganda for western audiences to help promote their propaganda (and false) image of Iran, you see these cases given even more notoriety outside of Iran than Iran itself.
     
  15. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    theocracies are evil
     
  16. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    exactly, some on the right would like to change that, but this is exactly why religious rule should not rule the land
     
  17. Steady Pie

    Steady Pie Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Hmm...

    Rise up in completely justified resistence to stop these authoritarian theocratic *******s...

    ...or rise up against Trump because his twitter feed hurt your feelies.

    It astounds me that the left is more supportive of the latter.
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2019
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  18. FatBack

    FatBack Well-Known Member

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    State is gawd, to the left. They hate competition, hence the majority of the left are atheist-antitheist.
     
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  19. btthegreat

    btthegreat Well-Known Member

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    You would not mean any of the same people who blather on and on about future Muslim influence on our government, and the possible establishment of 'Sharia law' by state or local governments. Nobody could be that stupid, could they?
     
  20. Iranian Monitor

    Iranian Monitor Well-Known Member

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    Governments ultimately have a lot of evil in them. But for a country like Iran, I actually do not want separation of religion from state. The best model for Iran, given Iran's own history and traditions, is similar ultimately to what you have in Britain: reformed religion that plays its role mostly symbolically and on the sidelines, with a monarchy (in our case not hereditary, but chosen by an elected assembly of experts and these days going by another name) which stands on top of a national church (Church of England there, the Shia religious hierarchy in Iran).

    In the meantime, if you have any interest in a non-politicized story about the issues of Hijab in Iran, let me know. I will share it with you. I will try to give you the real facts, from a perspective of someone who not only doesn't like Iran's hijab laws, but sometimes worries about them whenever my daughter (who doesn't even put on a scarf in public despite the rules) goes out in public. While these days, as long as you aren't trying to make a political statement, you can get away with having your scarf almost not hanging on your head, not having the scarf with you at all is going to cause problems. She gets away with it because she is still young, approaching her teen years but still not a teenager yet. Although the hijab is mandatory for girls who reach the age of 9, and she has passed that age several years now, like most of her friends, she doesn't observe it. Eventually, she will have to unless things change in Iran. It is not the greatest issue in the world, as the rules are enforced very leniently, but it is an issue for her and her mom (my wife). They both hate the hijab rules, particularly in the summer where it does become somewhat of a greater inconvenience.

    That is one side of the story. The other side is something I ran into a few years back, stuck in traffic because of protests by a group of people who were demanding stricter enforcement of hijab rules in Iran! I asked the cab driver to drop me off as it was quicker to walk to where I wanted to go and because I wanted to have a smoke. As I walked, I ran into one of these protesters who didn't appear all that threatening to me. So I asked him (there were also a lot of women in the crowd): why are you trying to get people like my wife and daughter to be harassed and worse? His story made me realize that there is much more to this issue than sometimes meets the eye! His story, paraphrased, was something like as follows: He told me that it is because of people like your wife and your daughter that my own daughter is now a prostitute! He explained that he earned a very modest salary and yet he worked very hard to make sure he could send her daughter to college. Once in college, surrounded by people like me, and under pressure to keep up with the latest fashion, she wanted money from her parents they simply didn't have. He told me: what I am supposed to do -- sell my kidneys just so she can run around looking like a model like the rest of the crowd she hangs around with? He then explained, with tears in his eyes, that it already too late for his daughter: that even though she doesn't work and he doesn't have money to support her fashion and lifestyle, she is usually dressed with the latest fashion clothing, designer sunglasses, etc. To this guy, it was clear how she was earning the money to pay for it and he was probably right.

    The reality in Iran today is that, perhaps up to 20-25% of lower middle class and even some middle class young Iranian girls are forced to into forms of "prostitution" to keep up with the 'fashion models' that come from Iran's upper middle class backgrounds. They go to stores and choose the designer clothes and sunglasses and phones they want, but instead of paying in cash, they pay in other ways. Many have sugar daddies -- some of them much older guys with traditional wives. Those older, middle aged, traditional wives, are also unhappy with "Tehran's streets being turned into a fashion show". They too feel threatened by it all.

    I am against the Hijab rules in Iran, but the real issues in Iran for a large number of people, isn't about these things anyway.
     
  21. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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  22. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Well, this much is true: Glad I’m not an Iranian woman.
     
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  23. Iranian Monitor

    Iranian Monitor Well-Known Member

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    Edit: never mind.
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2019
  24. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    What do mass shootings have to do with this?
     
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  25. LangleyMan

    LangleyMan Well-Known Member

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    I think you mixed up a lot of things that are unrelated.
     
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