Who would have thought it?

This is the story they tell: at approximately 7 pm on Saturday, February 23, the Ershad patrol, modesty police assigned to enforce clothing regulations, accosted and attempted to arrest a young woman at Goldis Shopping Mall, located in western Tehran, presumably because her dress was not sufficiently modest.

In recent weeks, the police squads charged with enforcing modesty have become more rigorous in their enforcement, with thousands of women detained, questioned, and arrested for violating hijab standards.

Instead of meekly submitting to her fate, the woman fought back. A young man - it is unclear whether he was accompanying her - came to her defense and joined her in fighting the police. In an attempt to subdue – and humiliate him - the police grabbed the young man and threw him into the garbage can nearby.

That was when the large crowd, predominately made up of young people, rose up against the police and attempted to liberate the young woman themselves.
Faced with a full-blown riot - complete with angry crowds with garbage cans being set on fire - the frightened police jumped into the van and fled the scene, except for one unfortunate officer who was left behind. The policeman was reportedly attacked and beaten by the mob.

The police returned, reinforced by a full-fledged anti-riot unit. To gain control of the situation, members of the unit fired warning shots into the air and threatened to fire directly into the crowd. There were reports of between 10-15 arrests.

There’s your peaceful Iranian regime. Willing to shoot into crowds of its citizens over whether someone’s clothing is appropriate or not.

During my college days, there were often editorials/articles from students who had Iranian roots in our campus paper. The vast majority of these stories were about how nice Iran was, and how it was just a misunderstood place. The authors often glossed over the morality police, whose despicable nature is illustrated above, and proclaim that things are just ‘different’ there and it’s no big deal. It was always cast as a beautiful land that that evil George Bush was targeting for its oil.

Well, apparently the subjugation and tyranny are a big deal to those being oppressed on a regular basis. Unthinkable!

I wonder if everyone who wants us to just leave Iran to its own devices (nuclear devices, that is) would be content living under the Islamic leadership of that country? Would the many college students who protest against any sort of sanctions against the regime like having an armed police force haul them away for that Green Day t-shirt? Maybe that doesn’t get to them. Maybe we just need to keep reminding them that according to the Prez of Iran, there are no gays there (because they murder them).
*Gasp* But remember you liberally minded youngsters, as we’ve been told in response to our warnings about the danger of the hardline Iranians, it’s not a bad regime– just different.

P.S.: I’m just kidding. I already know that college students don’t really care about what the Iranians are doing. They thought Ahmadinejad’s line about no gays was funny, as if he were just an elderly man denouncing rock music as trash. They didn’t really care that the Iranians were killing homosexuals. That outrage lasted about four minutes until Bush mentioned we were still fighting for freedom in Iraq again.

Jawa Report has the video.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 2:28 pm and is filed under Iran. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.