Julie Farby - AHN News Writer
Tehran, Iran (AHN)-In another crackdown by government officials, Iranian police have warned some 122,000 people, many of them women, about breaking Islamic dress codes since April of this year.
Another 7,000 people attended specific classes on respecting the rules enforced by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hardline government, which includes prohibiting certain types of Western-style haircuts and dress.
The conservative newspaper, Jomhuri-ye Islami, reports that "Since the beginning of the crackdown from Ordibehesht (the Iranian month that started in April), 122,000 people have been given a warning for improper dress and 6,947 of them have taken part in guidance classes."
In addition to requiring a woman's hair and body to be covered, the latest crackdown in Iran also extends to men. Under Ahmadinejad's increasingly repressive regime, barbers are restricted from offering Western-style haircuts, including spiked hair, plucking eyebrows, and any other styling considered to be the "immoral" influence of the West.
Alcohol is also banned in the Islamic Republic, as well as any social gathering between both sexes. Under the law in Iran, men and women are not allowed to mix at close quarters in Iran, unless they are family members.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
In Iran, a capital city split between liberal and hard-line
October 11, 2007
By: SALLY BUZBEE - Associated Press
TEHRAN, Iran -- The shops are full of Western pop music and movies -- the latest Harry Potter film, even "The Simpsons." Young women stroll the streets in skinny jeans and short coats, their heads barely covered, arm-in-arm with boys in muscle shirts and spiky hair.
This is affluent north Tehran, where clerics are rare, lifestyles are relatively liberal and Iran's growing isolation from the world is a source of deep anxiety.
Not far to the south, though, in a dilapidated bureaucratic building near the city's government center, and farther to the south in Tehran's sprawling poorer neighborhoods, things are different.
Near downtown, as a hard-line official talks about his dislike of the West and the continued power of the Islamic revolution, the call to prayer echoes through an open window. On a nearby wall, a map showing Iran's closest ally Syria and its top enemy Israel hangs prominently.
It is the paradox of Tehran today -- a city and people surprisingly cosmopolitan and far different from Western stereotypes, paired with an ultraconservative government working to consolidate its power and at sharp odds with the West.
Yet, whether modern or strictly traditional, many Iranians share one thing: A strong national pride and desire for respect from the outside world, sharpened by their sense of being under siege.
"The world does not understand us," said Shahryar Eivazzadeh, in his early 30s, who works at a software company in north Tehran. Many young people may dislike the current government but they shudder at the thought of attack by the West, he said.
"Not everything is so bad here," he said of the criticism Iran faces. "It's not that simple."
In part, the strong nationalism stems from the 1980s Iran-Iraq war and the vivid, frequent references to it across state media. TV images of weeping mothers, exhausted and heroic soldiers and martyred civilians are a stark reminder of how Iran suffered the last time it was invaded.
During key times, such as the recent anniversary of the war's start, hard-liners may deliberately use such images to shore up their influence. But even educated middle-class Iranians say their country sits in a rough neighborhood, surrounded by Arab countries that are not friendly, and that Iran needs ways to defend itself.
Such shared national sentiment aside, much of Tehran feels split.
Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won many votes in the conservative, poorer southern neighborhoods of Tehran, where people responded to his populist call for sharing the country's oil wealth.
Little of that sharing has happened, however, and even former Ahmadinejad supporters in parliament and the media have raised complaints about his economic performance.
In the city's more upscale and modern north, the criticism is much sharper: Some shake their heads in disgust when the president's name comes up.
In one office building the morning after Ahmadinejad's recent speech at Columbia University, a middle-aged employee laughed ruefully and told a friend, "It's better not to know" what Ahmadinejad had said. "We don't deserve such a guy," he said, asking that his name not be used. The hardest-line newspapers, however, were full of praise.
The same divisions play out on the streets.
Even before the 1979 Islamic revolution and during the period immediately after, Tehran's northern neighborhoods, especially the affluent suburbs stretching up into the foothills that ring the city, were a more Westernized bastion, where women often dressed in Western clothes, supporters of the shah's regime lived in villas and even some fast-food restaurants flourished.
The south was home to the poorer and more conservative, many of them economic migrants from Iran's provinces who came to find work and crowded into small apartments, sometimes in neighborhoods with no working sewage systems.
The bulk of protests and street fighting surrounding the revolution occurred in the city's center, especially around Tehran University and the long boulevard now called Vali Asr, but supporters of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini recruited many of their "foot soldiers" from Tehran's southern neighborhoods. And Khomeini, on his return to the country from exile, based his headquarters there.
Over the years, and particularly after reformist President Mohammad Khatami came to power in the late 1990s, personal freedoms again exploded in the city's north as women began dressing more liberally and modern shops sprang up.
Even after the reform movement stalled and Ahmadinejad was elected in late 2005, the northern neighborhoods have remained something of a haven for the more liberal and well-off -- with modern freeways, new and often graceful high-rise apartment buildings and green parks.
Nevertheless, the Ahmadinejad era has brought changes: Officials have cracked down on private freedoms in recent months, including stopping women on the streets for not properly covering their heads.
Yet in northern neighborhoods, young men still throng to hip hair salons at indoor shopping centers, the stylists and their customers on full display to passing young women, through plate-glass windows. Underground rock bands draw fans, and pre-Revolutionary music plays from car stereos.
In Tehran's sprawling metropolitan area of 9 million, an estimated 60 percent of the population is younger than 25, and thus born sometime after the 1979 Islamic revolution.
At outdoor cafes in the northern foothills, families talk about the hassles of heavy traffic and gasoline rationing and their fears of being priced out of the city's inflationary housing market. They swap sarcastic quips about the president, apparently unconcerned if someone overhears.
They also express some gloom about the future: Tips for obtaining a bank account in nearby Dubai are traded intently, at a time when U.S. government pressure on European and Asian banks to stop transactions with Iran has dried up access to the outside world economy.
Only miles to the south, however, many women still wear the long, enveloping black chador as they go out to shop or take children to school. Pictures of Khomeini and the current supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, stare down from murals on many streets.
And hard-line figures like Hossein Shariatmadari, close to Khamenei, cast Iran's differences with the United States as an unending ideological struggle between their Islamic theocracy and a plundering, arrogant America.
Speaking in his office near the city's government center, the map of Syria and Israel on a wall nearby, Shariatmadari said Iran is strong enough to resist whatever the United States might throw its way.
Even if Iran curbed its nuclear program, the United States would merely come after Iran for something else, he said. The point is moot anyway, he said, because Iran will never give up the nuclear program.
"We simply want to control our own resources, run our own affairs," he said. "The mistake that the U.S. administration makes is to threaten Iran ... They don't understand the Iranian nation."
By: SALLY BUZBEE - Associated Press
TEHRAN, Iran -- The shops are full of Western pop music and movies -- the latest Harry Potter film, even "The Simpsons." Young women stroll the streets in skinny jeans and short coats, their heads barely covered, arm-in-arm with boys in muscle shirts and spiky hair.
This is affluent north Tehran, where clerics are rare, lifestyles are relatively liberal and Iran's growing isolation from the world is a source of deep anxiety.
Not far to the south, though, in a dilapidated bureaucratic building near the city's government center, and farther to the south in Tehran's sprawling poorer neighborhoods, things are different.
Near downtown, as a hard-line official talks about his dislike of the West and the continued power of the Islamic revolution, the call to prayer echoes through an open window. On a nearby wall, a map showing Iran's closest ally Syria and its top enemy Israel hangs prominently.
It is the paradox of Tehran today -- a city and people surprisingly cosmopolitan and far different from Western stereotypes, paired with an ultraconservative government working to consolidate its power and at sharp odds with the West.
Yet, whether modern or strictly traditional, many Iranians share one thing: A strong national pride and desire for respect from the outside world, sharpened by their sense of being under siege.
"The world does not understand us," said Shahryar Eivazzadeh, in his early 30s, who works at a software company in north Tehran. Many young people may dislike the current government but they shudder at the thought of attack by the West, he said.
"Not everything is so bad here," he said of the criticism Iran faces. "It's not that simple."
In part, the strong nationalism stems from the 1980s Iran-Iraq war and the vivid, frequent references to it across state media. TV images of weeping mothers, exhausted and heroic soldiers and martyred civilians are a stark reminder of how Iran suffered the last time it was invaded.
During key times, such as the recent anniversary of the war's start, hard-liners may deliberately use such images to shore up their influence. But even educated middle-class Iranians say their country sits in a rough neighborhood, surrounded by Arab countries that are not friendly, and that Iran needs ways to defend itself.
Such shared national sentiment aside, much of Tehran feels split.
Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won many votes in the conservative, poorer southern neighborhoods of Tehran, where people responded to his populist call for sharing the country's oil wealth.
Little of that sharing has happened, however, and even former Ahmadinejad supporters in parliament and the media have raised complaints about his economic performance.
In the city's more upscale and modern north, the criticism is much sharper: Some shake their heads in disgust when the president's name comes up.
In one office building the morning after Ahmadinejad's recent speech at Columbia University, a middle-aged employee laughed ruefully and told a friend, "It's better not to know" what Ahmadinejad had said. "We don't deserve such a guy," he said, asking that his name not be used. The hardest-line newspapers, however, were full of praise.
The same divisions play out on the streets.
Even before the 1979 Islamic revolution and during the period immediately after, Tehran's northern neighborhoods, especially the affluent suburbs stretching up into the foothills that ring the city, were a more Westernized bastion, where women often dressed in Western clothes, supporters of the shah's regime lived in villas and even some fast-food restaurants flourished.
The south was home to the poorer and more conservative, many of them economic migrants from Iran's provinces who came to find work and crowded into small apartments, sometimes in neighborhoods with no working sewage systems.
The bulk of protests and street fighting surrounding the revolution occurred in the city's center, especially around Tehran University and the long boulevard now called Vali Asr, but supporters of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini recruited many of their "foot soldiers" from Tehran's southern neighborhoods. And Khomeini, on his return to the country from exile, based his headquarters there.
Over the years, and particularly after reformist President Mohammad Khatami came to power in the late 1990s, personal freedoms again exploded in the city's north as women began dressing more liberally and modern shops sprang up.
Even after the reform movement stalled and Ahmadinejad was elected in late 2005, the northern neighborhoods have remained something of a haven for the more liberal and well-off -- with modern freeways, new and often graceful high-rise apartment buildings and green parks.
Nevertheless, the Ahmadinejad era has brought changes: Officials have cracked down on private freedoms in recent months, including stopping women on the streets for not properly covering their heads.
Yet in northern neighborhoods, young men still throng to hip hair salons at indoor shopping centers, the stylists and their customers on full display to passing young women, through plate-glass windows. Underground rock bands draw fans, and pre-Revolutionary music plays from car stereos.
In Tehran's sprawling metropolitan area of 9 million, an estimated 60 percent of the population is younger than 25, and thus born sometime after the 1979 Islamic revolution.
At outdoor cafes in the northern foothills, families talk about the hassles of heavy traffic and gasoline rationing and their fears of being priced out of the city's inflationary housing market. They swap sarcastic quips about the president, apparently unconcerned if someone overhears.
They also express some gloom about the future: Tips for obtaining a bank account in nearby Dubai are traded intently, at a time when U.S. government pressure on European and Asian banks to stop transactions with Iran has dried up access to the outside world economy.
Only miles to the south, however, many women still wear the long, enveloping black chador as they go out to shop or take children to school. Pictures of Khomeini and the current supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, stare down from murals on many streets.
And hard-line figures like Hossein Shariatmadari, close to Khamenei, cast Iran's differences with the United States as an unending ideological struggle between their Islamic theocracy and a plundering, arrogant America.
Speaking in his office near the city's government center, the map of Syria and Israel on a wall nearby, Shariatmadari said Iran is strong enough to resist whatever the United States might throw its way.
Even if Iran curbed its nuclear program, the United States would merely come after Iran for something else, he said. The point is moot anyway, he said, because Iran will never give up the nuclear program.
"We simply want to control our own resources, run our own affairs," he said. "The mistake that the U.S. administration makes is to threaten Iran ... They don't understand the Iranian nation."
Reading might enlighten the president of Iran
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NYTimes.com: 'No Gays in Iran'? An Aide Says, Make That 'Not Many'
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Iran Clarifies Leader's Remark on Gays
October 11, 2007
Iran Clarifies Leader’s Remark on Gays
By REUTERS
TEHRAN, Oct. 10 (Reuters) — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran was misrepresented by Western news media when he was quoted saying there were no homosexuals in Iran, and actually meant there were not as many as in the United States, an aide to Mr. Ahmadinejad said Wednesday.
Addressing Columbia University last month, Mr. Ahmadinejad replied to a question about homosexuals in the Islamic Republic, saying, “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.” Speaking through a translator, he also said, “In Iran we don’t have this phenomenon.”
The remarks drew widespread criticism in the West.
“What Ahmadinejad said was not a political answer,” said Mohammad Kalhor, the media adviser to Mr. Ahmadinejad. “He said that, compared to American society, we don’t have many homosexuals.”
Iran Clarifies Leader’s Remark on Gays
By REUTERS
TEHRAN, Oct. 10 (Reuters) — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran was misrepresented by Western news media when he was quoted saying there were no homosexuals in Iran, and actually meant there were not as many as in the United States, an aide to Mr. Ahmadinejad said Wednesday.
Addressing Columbia University last month, Mr. Ahmadinejad replied to a question about homosexuals in the Islamic Republic, saying, “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.” Speaking through a translator, he also said, “In Iran we don’t have this phenomenon.”
The remarks drew widespread criticism in the West.
“What Ahmadinejad said was not a political answer,” said Mohammad Kalhor, the media adviser to Mr. Ahmadinejad. “He said that, compared to American society, we don’t have many homosexuals.”
Ahmadinejad Says Comments About Gays Were Misunderstood
From Fox News
Ahmadinejad Says Comments About Gays Were Misunderstood
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Are there gays in Iran?
Maybe. Maybe not.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asked about the issue of homosexuality in his country during his controversial appearance at Columbia University two weeks ago, said there aren't.
Or maybe he said there are. It's hard to tell.
The Iranian leader, through a spokesman, sought Wednesday to clarify his remarks, which generated both anger and laughter during his visit to New York.
Two weeks ago, when asked if there were gay people in his country, Ahmadinejad said, through an interpreter:
"In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country. We don't have that in our country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have it."
On Wednesday, Ahmadinejad's media adviser, Mohammad Kalhor, told Reuters what the president really meant to say was that the United States had a larger gay population than Iran. He said Ahmadinejad was simply misunderstood by Western media.
"What Ahmadinejad said was not a political answer," Kalhor told Reuters. "He said that, compared to American society, we don't have many homosexuals."
So, as they say in New York ... Let's go to the videotape.
FOXNews.com has reviewed a video copy of the speech through a Farsi interpreter.
When asked about gays in the Islamic Republic, Ahmadinejad replied:
"In Iran, firstly, we do not have homosexuals like you have here [in this country]. In our country, such a thing does not exist."
Kalhor told Reuters that Ahmadinejad did not intend to imply that there are no homosexuals in Iran. Rather, he said, the president wanted to say that homosexuality is not as common as it is in the West because of cultural and religious differences.
Homosexuality is punishable by death in the Islamic Republic.
Human rights groups have posted pictures of homosexuals purportedly being hanged in Iraq.
FOXNews.com's Adelle Nazarian contributed to this report.
Ahmadinejad Says Comments About Gays Were Misunderstood
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Are there gays in Iran?
Maybe. Maybe not.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asked about the issue of homosexuality in his country during his controversial appearance at Columbia University two weeks ago, said there aren't.
Or maybe he said there are. It's hard to tell.
The Iranian leader, through a spokesman, sought Wednesday to clarify his remarks, which generated both anger and laughter during his visit to New York.
Two weeks ago, when asked if there were gay people in his country, Ahmadinejad said, through an interpreter:
"In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country. We don't have that in our country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have it."
On Wednesday, Ahmadinejad's media adviser, Mohammad Kalhor, told Reuters what the president really meant to say was that the United States had a larger gay population than Iran. He said Ahmadinejad was simply misunderstood by Western media.
"What Ahmadinejad said was not a political answer," Kalhor told Reuters. "He said that, compared to American society, we don't have many homosexuals."
So, as they say in New York ... Let's go to the videotape.
FOXNews.com has reviewed a video copy of the speech through a Farsi interpreter.
When asked about gays in the Islamic Republic, Ahmadinejad replied:
"In Iran, firstly, we do not have homosexuals like you have here [in this country]. In our country, such a thing does not exist."
Kalhor told Reuters that Ahmadinejad did not intend to imply that there are no homosexuals in Iran. Rather, he said, the president wanted to say that homosexuality is not as common as it is in the West because of cultural and religious differences.
Homosexuality is punishable by death in the Islamic Republic.
Human rights groups have posted pictures of homosexuals purportedly being hanged in Iraq.
FOXNews.com's Adelle Nazarian contributed to this report.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Designer Abayas by Versace, Hermes, Armani?
Gulf News Archive
Subtle design on traditional outfit has allowed women to step out in style over the decades.
Intricate Details on Abayas is Heigh of FashionDubai: Almost 30 years ago today, Dubai played host to the region's first international fashion fair - Motexha.
More than 80 manufacturers from nine European countries descended upon the city to showcase their latest spring and summer collections.
So it's no surprise the world of abayas was also injected with style, colour and detail.
Emirati mother-of-two, Hama Al Shaibani, is in her 40s, and remembers trying on her first abaya like it was yesterday. "It was about 30 years ago and I was begging my mother to let me wear an abaya," she said. "I wanted to look like my sisters and was desperate to wear one. I know I didn't understand why it was worn and it was only about looking older."
Her mother eventually gave in and tailored one of her old ones to fit Hama. "I was only about 12 years old. But when I was 14 or 15 it became something real. I knew why I was wearing it and it meant something very important to me. Even so, I still spent an awful lot of time trying to iron on Mickey Mouse patches to the sleeves."
To many Westerners an abaya looks like it comes in one colour, one style and one variety only - black, black and black.
But look closer and you will be amazed at the intricate detail, style, fitting and type available to women.
Designed by Calvin Klein, Christian Dior, beading and embroidery by some of the most highly-acclaimed artists in the world, slim fit, wide fit, long fit, wide sleeves, thin sleeves - the choices are endless.
"There is no doubt that style and fashion has affected the way the abaya has evolved but we should also consider that style and individuality is something which is already in us," Hama added.
Today, shops and malls are packed with boutiques doing a brisk trade in funky new abaya designs, ones with bold designs, some that are a little transparent, with shorter hems, and many with elaborate trimmings and even slogans embroidered on the back.
Popular
According to designer Mohammad Al Elbaz there is also a new kid on the block. An abaya which is more like a dress. "This abaya-dress is popular among expats in the region due to the extreme heat during summer. Black is the traditional colour for abayas, but muted shades of brown, blue and green are also becoming very popular.
"Emiratis tend to like their designer abayas by the likes of Versace, Hermes, Yves Saint-Laurent, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Giorgio Armani."
Dubai-based designer Mohammad Bahrani for Eve N Black really pushed the boundaries by holding a fashion show in coordination with Swarovski and it was a hit. His designs were almost Gautier-like with peepholes and lattice-like openings in the back and sides of his black abayas, with the average abaya costing $5,000. Burberry in the UAE is working on producing a 'Gulf Chic' range of branded abayas, head scarves and sandals.
"The explosion of abaya chic with slick fashion shows and hot ad campaigns reflects the desire of Muslim women to define their own identity," Mohammad said.
Abaya styles in the Gulf have evolved much like fashion anywhere in the world. Some twenty years ago, the all-in-one abaya that started at the head made way a decade later for the 'Abaya ala al kitf', abaya that started at the shoulders. Edging closer to the turn of the century, the (almost) figure-hugging French abaya was the most wanted, fastened with buttons at the top. Until about a year ago it was still the abaya chosen by the hip and trendy, but has recently made way for the retro original style abaya of 30 years ago.
"It's funny because I studied in the United States and I have friends who talk about the 60s and 70s. You see the fashion of that day has come back and the same thing has now happened with abayas.
"My two girls are 20 and 21 and the trend today has reverted right back to the kind of abaya I was wearing at 17. The figure-hugging style is out and the baggy-straight ones are all coming back into fashion. It's amazing to see how the fashion just goes around in circles - a bit like Western fashion," Hama said.
While styles are changing, decorations are becoming more elaborate, with fur or feather trimmings, beading and crystal designs, crochet, lace, and leather beautifully incorporated in black raw silk, crepe, velvet, gabardine, chiffon, georgette and cotton.
This year a five-day event called Abaya and Shayla Fashion was a massive hit during Dubai Summer Surprises. Fashion from whatever year has its followers.
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