Read her tagline. It explains everything. "Radical Ignorance." |
The opposite. Islam was practiced for over 1000 years in Afghanistan when that picture posted by the PP was taken therefore you can not blame Islam for forcing women to veil as they would have been wearing their niqabs and hijabs from day 1. Same thing in Saudi Arabia where women before the 70s dressed differently. |
My point is that you cannot look at a tiny segment of the population and pretend you know the country. Iranians are religious in their own way. They don't ALL want to look like your friend. I'm sure your friend had a very nice life under the Shah. Millions of working-class people - who suffered from his corruption, bribery, wholesale dissection of the country in the interests of foreign corporation, and unadulterated hedonism - did not. Homeini would have never come to power had he not had the support of a significant chunk of the population. The Shah has repressed that population, came down on any expression of political dissent, and relied on his cronies and Americans to keep him in power. He lost. A nobody, planted by a foreign country, with no talent but that for conspicuous consumption - you thought he was going to last? Now someone is feeding the line of "very sorry what happened to the country" and you believe it? |
On 14 January 1979, an article titled "Little pain expected in exile for Shah" by The Spokesman Review newspaper found that the Pahlavi dynasty had amassed one of the largest private fortunes in the world; estimated at well over $1 billion at the time.[103] A list submitted to the ministry of justice in protest of the royal family's penetration of every corner of the nation's economy detailed that the Pahlavi dynasty dominated the economy of Iran at the time. The list showed that the Pahlavi dynasty had interests in, amongst other things, 17 banks and insurance companies, including a 90 percent ownership in the nation's third-largest insurance company, 25 metal enterprises, 8 mining companies, 10 building materials companies, including 25 percent of the largest cement company, 45 construction companies, 43 food companies, and 26 enterprises in trade or commerce, including a share of ownership in almost every major hotel in Iran. According to another source, the Pahlavis owned 70 percent of the hotel capacity in the country at the time. Much of the Pahlavi dynasty fortune was required to be transferred to the "Pahlavi Foundation", a charitable organization and the families' trust. The organization refuses to give any value of its assets or an annual income but a published book in Iran by Robert Graham, a British journalist, calculates that on the basis of its known holdings, the foundation assets totalled over $2.8 billion at the time.
In Iran alone the Pahlavi foundation owned four leading hotels—the Hilton, the Vanak, the Evin and the Darband. The foundation gained international attention for purchasing the DePinna building on Fifth Avenue, New York, at the time in 1975 valued at $14.5 million. Such investment in a foreign market by the Pahlavi foundation gained media attention because in order to do such foreign investment the foundation had to register as an American charitable foundation with the declared aim of using the rental to pay for Iranian students studying in America. The advantage of such charitable status was that the U.S. authorities could not investigate the books of the Pahlavi Foundation in Iran.[104] Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi was also known for his interest in cars and had a personal collection of 140 classic and sports cars including a Mercedes-Benz 500K coupe, one of only six ever made. A wonderful, enlightened ruler! A great loss to the world! |
Huh? I'm not the poster who put up that picture, but surely her point was the opposite. Whatever you think of the Shah (and like others here, I don't think much of him), one of his defining things was taking control away from the turbans so that women could dress as they wanted. Without a religious police to tell them to throw a chador over that miniskirt. Why do you think the mullahs hated the shah so much? |
Oops, just looked at the picture. It's Afghanistan. Still, the same point applies: Afghanistan had a modernizing -- Russian-backed socialist! - government that religious folks hated. We even supported the religious folks against the Russians, and now we have the Taliban. You can't argue that Islam provided freedoms that were actually provided by the Russian proxies. |
That's not WHY he took control away from the turbans. He took it so he can have 100% of it himself. That women could dress more freely was an unintended consequence. Why don't you weep for Saddam, too? Iraqi women under him never had to cover. Religious minorities had a peaceful life. Especially the Sunni minority. (It's the Shia majority that got screwed). |
^^^ freedoms that are being reversed by the Taliban as we speak |
You still don't get it. These miniskirted women you see in the picture - they all Muslim as can be. Afghanistan has been Muslim for hundreds of years. That women were forced to cover their faces in the last several decades had nothing to do with Islam. Otherwise they would have had to cover for all these centuries. |
+10000 |
Good grief. Muslima was saying that because women wore miniskirts somewhere, that women can always wear miniskirts in Islamic countries. Obviously, she's wrong: they wore miniskirts in secularizing countries, not in Islamic states. Stop rambling on about Saddam. |
Regarding the veil, Only 20% of the muslim world is in Arab countries, and only a fraction of those women cover their faces. And ot isn't just the Russians or the Shah. Look at Indonesia. They have what, 200 million muslims. Lebanon, Jordan. Tunisia. Libya. Egypt. Iran. |
How do you know these women were all "as Muslim as can be" as opposed to, say, atheist communists? Maybe they never wanted to cover, and they had a brief period under the Russian proxies when they didn't have to cover. The Taliban came in and the burkas returned for everybody, religious or not. |
I guess you don't like to be corrected for your mistakes, huh? I'm going to break it up nice and slow for you: A regime can allow women to wear miniskirts. AND still be corrupt and repressive. Think of that next time you post pictures of women wearing miniskirts and pretend it's a great sign of progress. You have children? Go boss THEM around. I'm stop rambling when I'm good and ready. |
The Taliban have nothing to do with Islam. If full covering was about Islam, women would have remained fully covered in Afganistan from the day the country went Muslim. How do YOU know they were atheist communists? |