Media Propaganda About Scarves In Iran

November 12, 2007

Elaine Meinel Supkis

All over the media, radio and TV is the stupid story about Iran making women wear head scarves and 'modest' clothing. How terrible! But notice there is virtually never any news about our so-called 'moderate' Saudi buddies. Time to strip down this latest propaganda salvos and show the naked truth!

From the BBC:

Iranian newspapers have printed a list of moral vices that the police are targeting, including wearing make-up and hats instead of headscarves.

The police say they will also suppress "decadent" films, drugs and alcohol.

First: most US religious organizations of every possible kind want what? To suppress 'decadent' films, drugs and alcohol! Not to mention out of wedlock sex, fornication, adultery, touching shoes in men's rooms, etc. The US goes berserk over Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. running or diving about, drunk and half naked. Our entire celebrity worship is directed to the female embodiments of the Whore Of Babylon. Even as we present ourselves as the creme de la creme of high culture and moral sobriety, we erect palaces to gambling, whore houses and Washington DC politics. Heh.

So we are horrified to see the Iranian regime enforce the exact same laws the Christian Coalition would run here. Indeed, this hysteria about dress as most of the planet strives to go pagan-naked is very amusing to me. I used to do events where I would dress up as a Victorian lady. In the proper dress of the very-encumbered 1880 fashions. Bustle and corset, the proper shoes, the feathered hat and the umbrella, people would do a double-take when seeing me approach in full sail. I noticed that men were more polite. Children hesitated and stepped aside as I swept along the NYC sidewalks to the park, for example. I used to do skating displays in various rinks in NY and New Jersey using real Victorian skates.

It is very difficult, skating in such dress, of course. But very amusing. One required a gentleman to hold the hand or elbow as I would glide about the ice.

The point of my Victorian lectures was to explain how women lived in these very difficult dresses. The ankles never showed after a woman was married but the neck and upper shoulders were nearly bare! In other words, women's dress has gone through many revolutions and fads! And the level of modesty coupled with raging sexual desire has always been an element in all this.

For example, the more a woman covers up, the more the tiny bits she shows becomes highly sexually charged! For example, Paris Hilton has to run around with her ass and tits hanging to her knees to get attention and she is the embodiment of anti-sexuality. Men stare and then turn away. I have found, when I was dressed in full Victorian dress, the act of pulling off a kidskin glove, slowly while holding my hand right above the bulging upper breasts would cause some men to nearly faint with happiness. That is, when I was a good 30 years younger, of course!

So concealing things enhances sexual desires. In the Muslim world, this is like 1914. Women dared not show ankles or if they swam, they had to do it at sexually segregated beaches and use 'beach houses' drawn by mules into the sea where they could daintily emerge from these shelters far from the men, hidden from view, covered with a bonnet, three layers of dress and stockings and shoes! The invention of bikes opened many vistas for women and of course, was part of women's liberation.

Back to reality here: the news about Iran is all about propaganda. We are supposed to be disgusted by them. And then gawk at Spears and Hilton. This is part of the war push: we must save the poor Iranian women from this hell! Free them so they can ape us!

Of course, this noble course has some problems. Our Gulf Allies are a million times nastier than Iran! This little detail is not just glossed over or ignored, there is this mountain of utter lies about Saudi Arabia, for example!

The police are warning they will deal seriously with any women who dare to wear short trousers, skimpy overcoats or skirts that are revealingly transparent or have slits in them.

In this way, we will have a society that is safe and inclined towards other social, economic, cultural and political activities

Wearing boots instead of full length trousers will not be tolerated, nor will hats instead of headscarves.

Indeed, the police stipulate that small headscarves are out - the scarf must cover a woman's head and neck completely

When my mom was in Saudi Arabia in the seventies, the religious police there ran over a wife of an European oil company who decided to bicycle across a public road from her fenced-in compound to the American compound. She was run over and killed by the religious police who spotted her. My mother was so outraged, she stormed out of the country. Women in our ally nation cannot vote, drive a car, go out alone, date anyone, marry without permission or pretty much do anything.

Only the women under the Taliban fared worse! But all the propaganda we hear these days describes Saudi Arabia as 'moderate.' I hear this continuously so it must be a very important piece of our propaganda diet. The real rules are very anxious to implant this lie deep into our brains!

American Forces Press Service:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23, 2002 – U.S. Central Command has relaxed the requirement that female service members wear the Muslim abaya when off-base in civilian clothes.
About 1,000 American service women are affected by the change. The command still "strongly advises" female service members to wear the abaya, a black cloak that Muslim women are required to wear by the Koran.

Central Command officials said the requirement was put in place as a force protection measure. Saudi Arabia is a conservative Islamic country and the home of Mecca and Medina, two of the holiest sites in Islam. The officials said the country adheres to a strict interpretation of Islamic religious law as put down in the Koran, the Muslim holy book.

The abaya in Saudi Arabia is a long black robe that covers the head and body. In other areas of the world, the abaya is a simple headscarf.

This story was from when there was a huge uproar over the news that US officers who were women, sent out to save the despots of Saudi Arabia, were forced to look like black ghosts. The US was frantically trying to convince us that SA was a fine, free country and we were bringing freedom and democracy to the Muslim world. This stupendous lie is still being fed to us. Iraq had one of the freest communities in the Muslim world for women. A stellar example. Afghanistan under the Russians was the same way. Both were destroyed by the US and reactionaries putting women into servitude were installed with US money and aid.

US State Department:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hopes to “rally moderate forces and moderate voices in the Middle East” during a weeklong trip to the region to visit Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian territories.

“[T]he countries that we're meeting with particularly in the GCC+2 is a group that you would expect to support the emerging moderate forces in Lebanon, in Iraq and in the Palestinian territories,” she told reporters on the airplane en route to the region.
*snip*
“I'm also going to talk about democracy because the forces of moderation ultimately have to transition into moderate democratic forces or the Middle East I think is not going to be stable,” she said.

“We have with the Saudis these discussions.

The Wahabbist reaction set in motion during Lawrence of Arabia's subversive actions in the Midddle East during WWWI are stilll playing out today. The US knows that Americans need simple propaganda triggers so we fly into a mindless rage when the media plugs into our brains the story de jure. Just like when the President of Iran was visiting NYC, the media here yelled nonstop about how horrible Iran was about gay men.

Then sat aside while a Republican was put on trial for touching a man's shoe in a bathroom! It is still quite illegal to be gay in many parts of the USA! And the Republicans run on a very anti-gay rights platform. So it gave me dark amusement watching the US chastize Iran over the same things we have done in the RECENT past.

Heck, in my own lifetime, it was quasi-legal to lynch blacks who had virtually no civil rights including the right to vote! And gays feared persecution so much, they all had to hide their true sexual orientation or flee to France, one of the few countries that didn't care if one was gay or straight. So our hysteria about Muslims acting like we did a mere 45 years ago is pure bunk.

BBC:

Saudi Arabia's religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress, according to Saudi newspapers.
In a rare criticism of the kingdom's powerful "mutaween" police, the Saudi media has accused them of hindering attempts to save 15 girls who died in the fire on Monday.

This is a classic story from our 'moderate' allies. Imagine this happening in Iran or Iraq! I still remember when a woman walking in Italy without a scarf was harried and harrassed by leering, jeering males. And you couldn't go into a Catholic Church without a scarf. They kept head coverings at the door for women who were unaware of this rule. This has collapsed, of course.

I remember when women wore hats nearly all the time! Before hairspray. When a woman went out, she put on hat and gloves. When I was a child. This sort of formality has vanished and we go about, looking more and more like blobs and field hands. Maybe we should all wear bags over our heads. Call this 'Gitmo Chic'.

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Comments

[Neuro Artist]

"Maybe we should all wear bags over our heads. Call this 'Gitmo Chic'."

-Good idea, thanks, you gave me a laugh, LOL! Why not a brand new christmas shopping bag to get the holiday spirit. Then we can cover ourselves from neck to ankles with christmas gift wrap, to protest how the terrorists took our christmas spirit away from us.

Actually the times I have been in Iran I was shocked by how many women actually flirted with me on the street, and you see women everywhere, anytime, working etc, which you don't see in Pakistan, for instance. We are fed many mis-conceptions.

[Not Student]

I am sure Paris Hilton will have a fit if she read how you described her.

[Kate Namous]

Spot on, Elaine. Here in Marrakech, there's marvelous variety in how women dress: a few in full black hijab (locally regarded as imported designer fundamentalist,full hijab here was never all black); many in scarf and djellaba; the young ones in western style dress, great manes of hair blowing in the wind as they speed by on motorbikes. However tight the outfit, though, everything is well covered.
I used to wonder why women always got stomped on whenever there was a religious revolution. I don't wonder any more, it is all about controlling women's sexuality. In Islamic countries, it's difficult to say whether the women are covering up to help control male sexuality, or vice versa!
Oh yes, and check out that book by Craig Barnes, In Search of the Lost Feminine.

[Blunt Force Trauma]

I do not practice the Muslim faith and do not fully understand it. But, I do live in Canada and just cannot understand the North American or U.K. fear of Burqas/Burkas or head scarves. This whole ignorance factor is predicated on so much propaganda in the media, usually based on 'terror'; to the point of whipping up non-Muslims into a frenzy every time they see women wearing these garments in public on this continent.

Sometimes, I feel that it may be necessary in this society for some women, whom are not Muslims, to be wearing a Burka. It is shocking to see young girls and women "dressing" with very little left to the imagination. The term "prostitot" comes to mind as well as those perverse beauty pageants for little girls with full make-up. Ick!

There is so much contradiction contained within the ignorance, hate and propaganda against the Burka and/or head scarf in this society, it makes one just want to scream. Especially with the all the (sexual) images one is subjected to on a daily basis portrayed in everything from advertising to television and movies in our society.

I think that ignorance of Burkas or head scarves has very little to do with 'imprisoning' women or making them into slaves. It allows them to maintain their self worth and identities. I may be wrong. You may disagree. But, I think it's their choice. And so it should be. After all, it could be argued that a lot of women in our society are "imprisoned" by media images and forever seeking surgery and suffering from psychological disorders from that "imprisonment" by way way of anorexia or bulimia nervosa. Even suicide. But, those are whole other horrible and unfortunate subjects.

I don't know. Maybe it's me. But I've seen women in Burkas and have noticed some very beautiful eyes. Perhaps they saw me "noticing" that trait and smiled back at me....with those eyes.

Don't know what all the fuss is about. Is the media, in general, just upset that these women are not showing more skin?

[Nammusa]

I like that word, prostitot, Blunt Force Trauma. I have 2 daughters now age 10 and 11. Even when they were much younger, I found the girl's clothes looked like mini prostitute outfits. A friend commented, who wants to see little girls dressed like that? Good question.
Then I noticed much the same applied to women's clothing, try find an article of clothing that does not suggest how sexy you will look in it. As if all women want to dress like they're constantly on the make.

[Elaine Supkis]

Back when I also did demonstrations in medieval fighting while wearing full steel armor, I would joke that this is the ideal gab for a young lady. No fear of assaults! Indeed, I was raped as a child and developed this enduring need to fight back which directly led me to learning sword fighting skills and then hammering out my own steel armor.