Islamists react noisily to attack on Modesty Policewomen

ShahrzadNews:Fanatical Iranian religious fundamentalists have reacted with high dudgeon after a group of young girls attacked two female members of the Modesty Police.

Last week the conservative Fars news agency – run by the Revolutionary Guard – published an interview with a Mrs. Shams, who claimed that a ‘badly-dressed’ young woman she tried to caution had attacked her and pulled down her Islamic chador in full view of a gathering crowd.

Fars fully exploited the story for its own propaganda purposes, interviewing Seyed Ali Taheri, spokesman for the Majles’ (parliamentary) Cultural Committee. He told the news agency: “Following the very sad news of the public disrobing of a member of the Modesty Police, we expected an appropriate response from the authorities, but regrettably this has not been forthcoming. We are in discussions with the head and deputy-head of our committee.”

Ruhollah Husseinian, an extremist MP who was named as an accomplice in the murder of Iranian intellectuals in the 1990s and has himself boasted of the fact, told the Majles: “MPs have sworn on the Koran to protect Islamic values. In spite of this, during the holy month of Ramadan a veiled Muslim woman who cautions a vile woman about her un-Islamic dress is set upon, beaten up, and worse still has her hejab removed in public. Meanwhile the police stand by and do nothing. Why has no-one responded to this pious woman’s humiliation?”

It should be mentioned that a woman recently filed a sexual harassment complaint against Husseinian. Though the case was widely reported in Iranian newspapers, it never reached the courts.

Meanwhile the Fars news agency published a letter which it said had been signed by 10,000 highly-educated Iranian cultural and social figures, though it named none of them. Addressed to chief-of-police Ismail Ahmadi-Moghadam, it asked him to uphold law and order and deal with ‘those who insult Modesty Police vigilantes’. The agency added that it had received reports about another attack on two female vigilantes.