Carole King sang that "I feel the earth move under my feet" whenever her truelove is around. Now, an Iranian cleric suggests that women behaving promiscuously are also causing the earth to shake. "Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes," says Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, a senior Iranian cleric. See Women to blame for earthquakes, says Iran cleric.
We have seen this same causation confusion in our own country. Jerry Falwell claimed that the ACLU, pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays and lesbians brought on the attack of 9/11. And then Pat Robertson claimed that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for abortion and later said that the earthquake in Haiti occurred because Haitians a long time ago made a pact with the devil to help them throw off the yoke of the French.
This all underscores a theme Karen Armstrong likes to return to: that fundamentalists of any stripe have more in common with each other than they have with the more reflective members of their own faith. I'm sure that if Robertson and Hojatoleslam ever got together, they would end up nodding a lot in agreement with each other.
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The sad part is, while extremists here (Robertson, Falwell, Phelps) are relegated to sideshow clown status, in Iran, this cleric's views seem much more in line with actual laws on the books: "The Islamic dress code, called the hejab, imposed by the 1979 revolution, mandates that from the start of menses, a woman outside of her home or in the presence of an unrelated man must completely cover her hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothing to hide the contours of her body. Any woman found to be “badly veiled” can by arrested and jailed by the morality police."
Sucks when the Robertsons and Hojatoleslams of the world actually have some political influence on others.
I'm sure you've all seen this before, but the Award for Greatest Strained Causation goes to members of the Westboro Baptist Church, who are responsible for these signs: http://randazza.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/westboro.jpg
Essentially they say that because America tolerates homosexuals, we will deserve every calamity that befalls us.
And what calamities are planned because we tolerate members of the Westboro Baptist Church?
That's a great theme for a counter-protest.
We don't know to what extent comments like these also have a sideshow clown status among Iranians, at least privately. The Iranian movie "Offside" was secretly shot in Tehran in 2005, during Iran’s World Cup qualifying match against Bahrain, and was all about 6 women trying to sneak into the stadium disguised as men to watch a soccer match. Of course, the movie is banned in Iran.
By the way, I fixed the hyperlink to the article.
I'm certain that millions and millions consider these statements the height of ridiculousness. One can see this in "Reading Lolita in Tehran" and other Iranian authors, as well as from the many bloggers inside the country.
My point was that statements coming from silly clerics like this one are, sadly, backed up by law in Iran. So when he stands up in his pulpit and says that calamity is caused by women flouting Iran's Islamic dress code, it's a call for the state to more strictly enforce the dress code for women, which is exactly what's happening now: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/7639728/Suntanned-women-to-be-arrested-under-Islamic-dress-code.html
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