From Iranian police crack down on dress code violations

TEHRAN, Iran - Police closed dozens of clothing stores and hairdressers and stopped cars and pedestrians in a crackdown on women who do not abide by Iran’s strict Islamic dress code and men wearing fashions seen as too Western, Iranian media reported Monday.

If you allow Grateful Dead tee shirts today, tomorrow some people will be eating chili dogs, next week they’ll be watching Adam Sandler movies, and the next thing you know their subjects might learn that there are different ways of looking at the world, that outsiders aren’t necessarily evil, that there might be more than one way of doing things, and that the ruling junta doesn’t have a monopoly on ideas.

More below the fold:

Many women - particularly in Tehran - push the boundaries of the code, wearing short, colorful coats that reveal the shape of the body and letting their headscarves slip to show much of their hair.

And the reason for the dress code is probably two fold. The first must be that they need to treat women as property so that the male half of the population can feel superior to someone. The second must be that the males in Iran have so little self control that even a brief glance at a wisp of hair or a slight curve would send them into a lust-filled frenzy and civilization (such as it is) would collapse over night.

Police spokesman Mehdi Ahmadi said 32 clothing shops and hairdressers in Tehran were shut down so far, according to the semi-official Fars news agency. He also said 21 vehicles had been stopped because passengers were breaking dress rules. There was no word on whether anyone had been arrested.

Police official Nader Sarkari defended the actions, saying “people in inappropriate clothes and those who sell these clothes are aware of their violations since they have often been given warning.”

“Why should some individuals take it upon themselves to commit an act society has deemed a violation?” he told the official news agency IRNA.

And by society, Sarkari means a bunch of impotent old farts who have had their brains twisted so badly by primitive superstitions that they can’t form a rational thought. Ahh theocracies. Such a source of amusement, just as long as you don’t have to live in one.