“Why have you so visibly brought your hair forward towards your face?”

The International Business Times gives us an account of what it’s actually like to be a teenage girl stopped and abused by the new undercover police in Tehran:

In the video, the teenager said: “As two young students, today my friend and me have decided to go shopping for new shoes for school and we also decided to see the new line of school supplies. So we headed for the bazaar.

“As we approached bazaar, we saw two Fati-Commandoes. They were specifically waiting at the entrance of the bazaar. In order not to be noticed by them, we decided to go by the parking.

“In the meantime, we decided to conceal our hair that was sticking out of the headscarf and tried to clear the make-up that we were wearing. Much to our chagrin, they ended up seeing us and they confronted us quite badly. One of them shouted: “Why are you playing hide-and-seek with us? Come here.’ They took us [towards the entrance] by force.”

By force – because of their makeup and headscarves. Imagine going to Safeway for some tomatoes and getting shoved around by cops who didn’t like your sweatshirt. Now imagine that at age 12.

The pair apologised, telling the female officers they would pay more attention to how they dressed in future, the teenager explained, adding: “One of those Fati-Commandoes asked her: “Why have you so visibly brought your hair forward towards your face?”

“I intervened by telling them: ‘Well, I don’t think my friend should be scolded like that. She is only 12 years old and she is a bit young to face such harsh verbal attacks. She is not even in pursuit of looking attractive − she is just a minor”.

“However, they seemed to have no intention of giving up. They took us towards a man, who was presumably associated with the Morality Police as well. As I came face-to-face with him, he shouted: ‘You, girl! What kind of an appearance is that?'”

The girls were also reportedly threatened with detention, with one of the morality police telling them: “Let’s imprison them so that we can make an example of them. They will never dare to come out dressed like this,” adding: “My daughter, you should retain your chastity, your purity.”

All this, all this shoving and threatening and shouting and terrorizing, over what two teenage girls are wearing on their heads.

As with so many things, I suspect hidden motives. I suspect the bullshit about chastity and purity is just a thin veil – a hijab in fact – for contempt and hatred of women. The religion teaches them to hate women and then gives them pretexts for putting their hatred into practice. Oh boy, a chance to humiliate women in public. The women cops have it just as badly.

 

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