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

What are you trying to say?

Iran sends a feminist to jail for 24 years and that sends you back to 1986 in America?

 

We have credit accounts in the US to help pay for that fashion diva in all of us...Screw your habib and a religious leader that sucks the life out of the room...

 

The key difference is that the woman on the left could dress like the woman on the right if she chose to. But not the other way around.

 

Eh, that actually depends on where you live too. France, for example, is cracking down on people dressing like the woman on the right even if they chose to.

 

None of our business. Since when have we become the world's moral authority? Shouldn't we pay attention to our own crimes - like for instance the civilians we keep killing in Syria and Yemen, and not at Iran and whether women can take off their Hijab or not?

Anyway the whole thing seems fishy to me. I wonder what benefits these women are getting - and from who?

 

I

think it shows how backward iran is and why they cant be trusted with nukes

 

As I said in a previous post, the views of someone who has lived in both the United States and Iran are interesting and valuable.

Question concerning the enlightenment of the clerics: If someone living in Iran drew a cartoon mocking Mohammad and presented it in public, what would be the response from the Iranian government?

 

Was apartheid none of our business as well? What do you mean by fishy? Most of the information came from Amnesty
International - a highly respected Human Rights organization which has also criticized the US on numerous occasions. Why
do you wonder if these women are getting "benefits." Isn't standing up for their freedom motivation enough? The horrendous
punishments they are receiving for fighting for freedom are a matter of record.

 

Separation of Church and State was put into our Constitution by our 'seminarian' Founding Fathers so they could protect Churches and people's right to worship as they please. Anyone who tried to hinder a person's right to their religious convictions under some banner of 'freedom', is trampling on the very foundation our nation was built on.

 

I appreciate that you consider my views 'valuable', but they are valuable to me because they are mine In other words, and this applies more broadly on the issues we are discussing, my problem isn't people drawing whatever conclusion they wish based on facts. Those conclusions and judgments don't bother me, nor do I feel compelled to follow them either.
A case in point is what you ask about. While I am not religious, I personally don't find all that much value in 'expression' that is meant solely to incite and insult others, except when that is intention! And that intention is to me can be properly proscribe (for Iran) when the audience intended to be insulted are those to whom you are ultimately answerable. So, if someone wants to draw an insulting cartoon in the West to insult Muslims and express such sentiments about them, it is up to that society to decide whether such an insult serves any purpose. On the other hand, I would not feel the same way about a genuinely scholarly critique of any person, as long as that critique is expressed in a forum for other scholars and not laymen who aren't particularly qualified to determine the validity of the critique. That is my view of the appropriate on the appropriate contours of free expression in a society like Iran and what would serve its best interests. And so, yes, if someone was stupid enough to one to insult millions of people who would find insult in a cartoon of the nature you are suggesting, then I assume that person would have also assumed the risk of what comes with that kind of expression.

 

Enlightenment values are fine until you get to the French Revolution. Many progressives have hated freedom and would gladly grind the human spirit underfoot.

 

You forgot a word. The separation definitely was not an effort to protect churches. It was put there to protect churches from GOVERNMENT persecution. Churches can be sold, torn down, boycotted, and turned into parking lots. In other words religion is not protected from the pressures of secular competition, just government action. The real threat to religion these days, is that the product it tries to sell nowadays, is in decreasing demand in the marketplace of ideas. Young people do not go to church. The pews are empty. The parking lot is empty and the clerics are having a tougher time justifying their salary. Nobody's fault that religion is losing its market. Its a fact of modern life. We just don't care enough to be invested in this 'god' idea these days.

 

edit: deleted by me because it was a duplicate post.

 

The protection is for religious freedom

It also protects atheists as well as believers

 

Iran shouldn't have nukes but not because they can't be trusted. Frankly I don't think they're that stupid, but only because Saudi Arabia and Turkey will want them and I wouldn't put it past them to blow up the whole Middle East.

This of course bodes the question: 'If Saudi Arabia is bombed, how long will it burn?'

​

 

The ultimate question is what should the boundaries of that risk entail, to ensure a vital society, a growing and changing society as opposed to a stagnant one. If you want the possibility of reform from one generation to another, you have to allow for some rather 'offensive' speech, that challenges the society and the institutions. yes Society must get its 'pound of flesh; in order to have a sense of any order and cohesion, but that 'pound of flesh' must be limited so that brave and courageous souls can afford to offend a lot of people, enough to catch attention and survive and then maybe grow adherents and a movement.

Institutions of government and religion will inevitably do whatever they can to silence what they perceive as threats, so protections must exist to protect reform movements from being crushed at birth. I always ask myself does the intended form of social pressure end up sacrificing access to ideas, or does it simply allow for a strong response to those ideas?

 

Fundamentally, you are right. But while not relevant to this particular issue as much, the contours of free expression in Iran (as would be the case elsewhere) are adversely affected by the fact that Iran faces threats to its national security from a superpower no less. One that openly bribes, and coerces, people to try to undermine its government. Even the United States, faced with a threat much less serious, from a group of cavemen in Afghanistan, following 9/11 felt it necessary to clamp down on certain civil liberties. And associations with such an enemy would not be considered protected by "free expression", as they would be basically lumped into a host of anti-terrorism laws that proscribe any sort of support for groups the US characterizes (or more recently clearly mischaracterizes) as terrorists. Under ordinary circumstances, without such threats (which are real as can be), I would be taking a far more "civil libertarian" approach to many issues Iran faces. But not under these circumstances.

 

Reading comprehension fail. Try again.

 

Because having a gun is the death penalty.

 

The passage of the laws reflects the social fears and sentiments of the day which respond within an election cycle or two ( between two and four years normally) to public sentiment. Thus the 'Patriot Act' was born ( much of which I opposed) . Our first check against that public sentiment, is in the form of appellate courts interpreting a constitution and statutes with life term appointments. Thus several section of the laws no longer exist or were forcibly re-interpreted narrowly. The 'freedom act' was an effort to overhaul the patriot act and it discarded some section and refined others. Now if the public sentiment lasts and builds for more like a decade or more, then that will be begin to be reflected in new appointees of new Presidents, eventually overwhelming the older generation with a new set of values and priorities, but that takes a very long time

Now what checks exist in Iran to check the excesses of public sentiment ?

 

Iran has its own checks and balances, for sure, but ultimately until the very real threats Iran faces (they aren't at all comparable to anything the US faced even after 9/11), the whole notion that we can debate these issues in the way you suggest, just doesn't apply. Those threats need to subside first.

 

There is no threat to iran that the crazy mullahs did not bring upon themselves

 

Unfinished post? Here's your news flash. We were allowed to protest and to march against the excesses of the patriot act without government interference. We could march arm and arm with civil libertarians and muslim americans, and we wrote most of what we wanted on our blogs and our social media and to newspapers without government doing squat. And for the most part we were not fired from jobs, or disciplined at work for expressing those views. If you can one way or another, make sure that those who offend the sensibilities of society are not put in jail and are not driven into poverty, you can manage to keep the rest of social pressures, the shunning, the dirty looks, the refusal to invite them to weddings etc as 'punishment' Free and offensive speech and expression can have consequences, but that cannot be too draconian if you expect reform movements to have a chance.

 

Government action = Laws

You gave your opinion, and that's exactly what it is - your opinion! My opinion is that Christians are so frightened of being harassed for their convictions with law suits by those so called 'tolerant' liberals, that they're going underground. Not that it really matters, Christianity thrives under persecution anyway.

It is though an insult to our Founding Fathers and the nation they formed.

God is passe. Now it's 'In Money We Trust.'

​

 

People do not go to church cuz there are tons of lawsuits out there, against people who drive into their church parking lot, and sit down in a pew! We atheists sit and wait outside the service and take down their license plates. In my town, a group of us secular humanists follow them home and harass them with loud nasty music every Sunday night from 2 am to 5 am so they can't sleep and fill their yards with garbage while they are at work!

He he he!