vigilante Islamic police
.
This imples that they are acting outside the normal channels of
authority. Is this so?
The question would be whether there is any attempt by the government of
Iran to curb this behavior, or is it approved by the *national*
government, and if so, is the approval tacit or overt?
The situation in Somalia is quite similar, with a government ostensibly
striving for some type of secularity, even as the people with guns take
a harder line. In Somalia, there is obviously a certain degree of chaos
and power vacumm that does not exist (AFAICT) in Iran, which would make
the Iranian government more culpable than Somalia, but Iran is also a
militarized society (No thanks to the western industrialized nations)
with a high degree of private weapons ownership.
So the question arises... are these incidents fundamentalist "muggings",
or are the actions of these "vigilante Islamic police" state approved?
also, this part of the letter:
vigilante/policewomen
.
speaks volumes about the non-fundamentalist/religious makeup of the
current Iranian government,
and this:
.
The principle demands were as follows:
* Abolition of polygamy
* The right of divorce by women
* Joint custody of children for mothers and fathers
* Equal rights in family law
* Increasing the minimum legal age for girls to 18 (currently it
is 15)
* Equal rights for women as witnesses in courts of law
.
speaks to the "westernization" of Iranian culture (read that as
"assimilation"... the average Iranian most likely sees it that way...)
Needless to say, I am very suspicious of western influence on Iran, it's
culture, and people, and as much as I support the civil rights of women,
and men, and children worldwide, this issue truly needs to be put in
context of a culture under siege by the west.
As Juan Cole put it:
"Its values are not US values. But if we are going to do things like
send Marines into Iran to force Iranian women to wear bikinis at the
beach, we are going to have a very busy century and Arlington Cemetery
is going to run out of room.
Leigh
http://leighm.net/
Yoshie Furuhashi forwards a letter from Yassamine Mather:
Dear friends,
In a recent posting on your web site, Rostam Pourzal uses an anonymous
email by a 'witness' in Tehran to deny the extent of the repression of
women demonstrators by vigilante Islamic police on 12 June 2006 ("What
Really Happened in Tehran on June 12? Did Human Rights Watch Get It
Wrong?" MRZine, 18 June 2006). Pourzal tries to portray president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a 'popular', 'radical' figure, and tries to
underestimate, justify and excuse the brutal, repressive nature of the
Islamic regime in Iran; in doing so he makes various assumptions and
claims that we will deal with in a another posting. However as far as
the events of 12 June in Tehran are concerned, contrary to the claims
of the anonymous 'observer', the extent and intensity of the brutal
attack on the peaceful women's demonstration was far worse than that
portrayed by the BBC and the international media.
FULL TEXT:
<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/letter070706.html></blockquote>
N.B. In my editorial introduction, I do not comment on any part of
statements made in the open letter, for doing so would be a misuse of
editorship.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
