Religious leaders ban 30 women from running for Iran's presidency

I guess it'd be worth asking why the military, police, judiciary and provincial and rural male population support this crap. They saddled up against monarchies and American intervention, and spent the eighties playing Red Rover with Iraqi tanks; but socioeconomically castrating half of their own population for a third of a century doesn't seem to bat an eyelash.

 

Firstly, a full blown invasion from a hostile neighbor will always spur nationalistic fervor in all peoples of any country. The majority of the war was fought in Iranian Arabestan, a region of people who had/have no ethnic or even religious allegiance to the Shiite elite, yet they still fought tooth and nail to protect their land against Saddam.

Secondly, the military, police, and judiciary male population is a demographic of individuals intimately tied to the regime and the ideologies of the regime. Asking "why they support this crap" is like asking why a zealot supports zealotry. It's endemic to their world view.

Thirdly, chastising Iranians for not "batting an eyelash" against an extremely vicious and violent regime that routinely imprisons, tortures, and kills political dissidents (at a rate superior to the Shah's era) is pretty rich coming from a guy sitting in his first world arm-chair. This regime will grind itself and the country to a pulp just to cling on to any last bit of power. It's tough to sustain a theocracy in the 21st century, especially when your population is now a generation detached from the revolution and yearns for irreligious freedoms, which is why the Mullahs realize if they lose this regime then they will lose the country for, quite possibly, forever.

Fourthly, Iranians very much do care about the state of affairs in their country, from religious to gender to ethnic inequalities, etc. Criticizing people for not risking their lives and for not living up to your standards of civilized living is an incredibly non-empathetic and ignorant thing to do.

 

Nice editing Pulitzer, but the "provincial male population" you avoided addressing is a much larger chunk of the citizenry that isn't "tied to the regime" as it were; and the legitimacy of these laws come from the fact that (a) they were accepted traditions for centuries beforehand and (b) these guys never spoke out against them. What's more, a lot of the more heinous suppression against women in Iran is ostensibly banned by the government but still fully enforced, because the local male populace will still stone and hang with impunity.

Furthermore, the "military, police and judiciary" are the three groups of people who could actually change regimes and policies in Iran. All the gross, backwards crap that happens there survives precisely because these groups validate and enforce it, almost all always will with violence.

 

How does it compare with mutilating adult women's faces or stoning them to death for having an affair, or publicly hanging teenage girls for getting pregnant?

 

Yes, and in that regard, they have very limited power. Iranians are urbanizing. The median age is 26, and 71% of the population is already urban. The population is growing increasingly liberal while the government is growing increasingly hardline. There is a correlation there. The "provincial" and "rural" are merely tools of an ultra-conservative government. Their numbers are dwindling and they have virtually no effect on popular Iranian culture. The "villager mentality" is openly mocked in cities.

I wasn't aware you were so well-versed in Iranian history. We haven't even scratched the surface of the 20th century Iran, and I'm guessing you have a passing familiarity with even that--that which is vastly more relevant to a discussion about the state of affairs of modern Iran--so I find it laughable that you dare talk about "centuries beforehand".

The people who supported Khomeini supported him. Why would they speak out against him? The people who did speak out against him spoke out against him very early on after the revolution, a time at which he was giving the green-light to a number of systematic purges throughout the entire nation, including those tied to the old regime and leftist groups, and those deemed "un-Islamic" in any and every perverted capacity that insular extremism and mass paranoia saw as prosecutable. Those who could, left, causing one of the most severe cases of brain drain in the entire world. These are the factors you should be paying attention to, not half-baked abstractions of "'they' 'never' spoke out against 'them'."

Do you honestly believe that the government does not play the primary role in wrongful executions in Iran? These hicks are carrying out "Islamic law" exactly the way the government wants them to. The only reason those things are constitutionally "illegal" is because it looks good on paper. These "local male populaces" aren't renegades or vigilantes, they are tools of the central government in that they uphold the status quo.

This statement is technically correct, but completely irrelevant. Those three groups are institutions of the Islamic Republic. You seem to be under the assumption that the Iranian regime is a popularly-elected government or something.

This is exactly what I said in my comment, and it is correct, but you are framing it in an impertinent way. As I said above, they are institutions of the very regime that made them. The IRGC, Basij, Quds Forces, Sepah, etc. Do you honestly think these groups are going to vie for radical reform? Get out of here.

 

I see my ad hominem got you randy. Tell me, was it "non-empathetic" or "ignorant" that got you riled up? Judging by your posting style I'd say it was "ignorant", but judging by your complete inconsideration for the Iranian people and Iranian history, I'd posit that it should've been "non-empathetic".

 

That **** again.

 

If you think someone citing documented incidents of "mutilating adult women's faces or stoning them to death for having an affair, or publicly hanging teenage girls for getting pregnant" is a sign of their own frustration or insecurity about their own non-misogynistic "standards of civility," that pretty much betrays whatever dementia compels you to defend this backwards regime. Call me ignorant all you want buddy, I ain't never stoned a b****.

Maybe stop whining about Israel and imperialism for three seconds, and figure out to get these troglodytes to stop torturing, fearing or resenting half their damn population.

 

Funny. You might want to reread everything I wrote and actually try to comprehend it correctly.

 

I don't know dude; you seem to think condemning female mutilations, stonings and hangings is less "empathic" than the acts themselves, I don't really need to read or comprehend your deflective whining to formulate an opinion about that. I don't need to read up on Iranian history either; you see policies, customs and traditions as bloodthirsty and misogynistic as these, you can tell some segment of the population has valued them for millenia, and never evolved or advanced beyond that.

 

Whenever i've heard threats of "extinction" involving Iran and another State, it's usually through a translator and the speaker is communicating in Farsi.

 

This is an excellent tactic you're using, actually. My original point of contention was that you broadly dismissed the entire population as never having "batted an eyelash" against the atrocities being committed against women in their own country. Not only did I address that in my first response, but I also mentioned that many Iranians are also very upset with the injustices being committed against religious and ethnic minorities as well. It never had anything to do with this. You are the only one talking about this.

You have delved into this irrelevant (albeit heart-wrenching) tangent about face mutilation, stoning, and public hanging. Then you lob a number of completely baseless accusations: "Stop talking about imperialism! Stop talking about Israel!", and furthermore, you accuse me of "trying to deflect", when it is precisely you who has deflected from my original point for your last two posts. I have done nothing but categorically and factually approach each and every one of your statements with historical knowledge, and you come back at me each time with some B.S. about "centuries beforehand" and "valued them for millennia", and this is after explicitly saying you don't need to learn anything about Iranian history. What's more, you haven't even specifically addressed any of the points that I have made, and keep trying to equate me to some misogynistic ideal and misappropriating my allegiance to the Iranian regime when I have done nothing but damn them this whole time.

You are clearly someone who invests a lot of his self-worth in his knowing and intelligence, so I understand why you would be very miffed by what has happened in this thread. Your original point was heinous in its callousness towards the Iranian people. It belittled the Iraq-Iran war into "red rover", it presumed that those demographics of people you mentioned aren't directly complicit in the atrocities that occur in Iran (and as though they have any incentive to change things willy-nilly), and mainly, you accused an entire population of not even giving a crap when they most certainly do--all of which is what I was referring to when rightfully calling you ignorant and non-empathetic.

And frankly, it's about time someone called you out on your convoluted rhetoric and unfounded opinions on every little matter. You're just unlucky that it had to happen on something I know so much about.

 

Religion poisons everything.

 

I haven't seen an old fashioned d&d ass kicking on a while

 

What should *we* [Americans] do about it?

Rocket River

 

Donate some rice.

 

wait ...a debate that wasn't Mathloom vs ATW?