Oh.. our women's part is going to be more active ;) Leila has referred me to an Idea ! Thank you Leila email

You know "Ayatollah"? It means "god's sign" and in Islam HE is a person who studied Islam for many years and other people can trust him about the Islamic rules. There are also some "Grand Ayatollah"s. These are the people with the MOST possible understanding of Islam and every shi'i Muslim HAS TO choose one of this persons as her/his reference and obey HIS ideas and ask him, her/his Islamic questions.
One of these grand ayatollahs is Makarem Shirazi. Luckily he has an multilingual website: http://www.makaremshirazi.org/english. I was surfing his English weblog and reached this question:

It is correct that the Holy Quran has authorized corporeal punishment of the ladies refraining their marital obligations?

and the answer ? The answer starts with women are very valuable in Islam and then but in some occasions... but the most shocking part is the last part :

It is remarkable that as per psychologists, there is a state of masochism in some women which is sometimes intensified, and appears as a mental crisis. In such critical and exceptional cases, mild punishment is effective in their mental relief.

!!! have a look yourself !!!
p.s. It seems that his site is built with PHP Nuke but the designer has ripped off the software's GPL license ! I wrote a letter to this great religious leader and mentioned this and asked him not to use stolen software.

Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (called Sepah or Sipah)definition in Wikipedia is the pro-islamic militia of Iran and is separate from, and parallel to, the Iranian army. This military group announced that they are holding a seminar called "Women and Internet in the Third Millennium" !
This is last part of its Directors' message:

Women on one hand are responsible for treating their children and on the other hand as a spouse have moral responsibilities .
So paying attention to the condition of women's society is very effective in the whole society.
We really appreciate those researchers , scientists and attached people who help us with achieving this goal

Many cyberactivists and journalists are angry about this. We say in a country in which many many feminist and womens organizations are filtered (you can not access to those site in Internet) and you can not even google the word "women" because "It contains pornographic results", how you can conduct an conference by the censorship forces called "women and internet in the third millennium" ? and look at the fun part: if you search for the name of conference in any search engine you'll blocked by the "Access to this site is Denied" message because the name of the conference contains the rude word "women" !

We can not do anything about this because Sepah is very dangerous, nobody is brave/silly enough to demonstrate there and we do not even have the permission to enter the salon! We only can send emails to the head of the conference and ask "how you can call a conference women and the internet in the third millennium while the word women and many many womens sites are censored on the Internet ?" and for sure, he will not answer. But we are doing so because we believe that it is good for him TO KNOW THAT SOMEBODY DOES NOT BELIEVES IN HIS LIES.

Kaveh Golestan was an Iranian famous photojournalist who murdered three years ago in Iraq. Nowadays his family and friends gives an annual "kaveh golestan" award to photographers in the memory of the man who said

" I want to show you images that will be like a slap in your face to shatter your security. You can look away,turn off,hide your identity like murderers,but you can not stop the truth. No one can."

Kaveh Golestan

This year, the "one photo" sections winner is Mansour Nasiri for his photo from Police attack to women's demonstration in HafteTir sq.. This is the photo:



I am glad that a photo from this event is the winner. This will lead to more media (Internet) coverage, although this year "ministry of Islamic guidance" did not let "kaveh golestan" organization to exhibit the photos in a public place or even publish the photos in a collection as a book.

If you want to see the other photos from this competition, visit golestanaward.com photo gallery but keep in mind "بعدی" is "next" so you have to push the red Persian word below the photos (just before the >> sign) to go to the next page. good luck !

Cool ! Although I'm not into religion leaders but I always interested in Dalai Lama because of his active role in human rights.

As you may know Iranian women's rights activists have initiated a landmark campaign to collect one million signatures to demand an end to legal discrimination against women in Iranian law (It is obvious that this meaningful and gramartically correct sentence is not written by me ! I've copied it from Nobel Women's Initiative News site).

After police crushed down our legal demonstration, this is our new way to have contact with people and the world and let them know about our brutal laws. This is a GREAT project and I think this mission is very difficult to accomplish, but we have to work, we have to try and we have to build the future ;)

In Iran wearing hijab is obligatory.It means every woman in Iran have to wear Chador or Scarf+Mano (kind of long, large dress).

This phenomen have been a controversory issue all time after the Islamic revolution because most of the women (specially younger generation) doese not beleive in this kind of obligatory hijab so they doese not take it serious. In streets there are some police whos function is arresting Bad-Hijabs and making them wear it tigh so no body part or no hair may be seen.

The story was like this until we heard about the "Islamic-Hijab-Show"s ad in newspapers and governmental controlled radio an Tv. Islamic regime had lots of propaganda. They were saying "At last we designed some islamic hijab for our good muslim people who are interested also in fashion !". What a great Idea ! Lets have a look...



wow... sexy ! don't you this so ? this reminds me of 1001 nights stories.






As you can see, no male audience is allowed in the show !!! Although there are going to be "Islamic Hijab"s !



Sad part for me ? They claim Hijab is for womens own safety. Hijab helps muslim women not to attract mens attention. Know think about this orange / flowerish Manto ! This will attract more mens attention than an ordinary T-shirt and jeans.



I think these desings sucks ! If they want to be good muslims, there is no need to this kind of "out bra"s (are these jackets?) and if they want to be sexy, attractive and seductive what is this joke with Islam ?!

Have a look at this Mini-Chador !





In the entrance's top you can read "My homelands women" ! I think this is ridiculus because if my homelands women are muslim they do not wear this kind of fashion/funny hijab and if they are not strict muslims, they wear ordinary cloths or non Islamic fashions.

Manijeh Hekmat is one of the good Iranian movie directors. She have been directed the "Prison of women" and some other great movies and I like her works. For directing any movie - as any other thing - you have to get a license from government and Manijeh Hekmat did not got one for her new movie. What did she do ? Instead of saying "OK ! I'll do other another job" she said "OK ! I'll do another job, I'll sell cigarettes in the street in front of the Islamic guidance ministry from now on !".

I think this a marvelous idea. I have to go there and chat with her and buy some cigarettes and start smoking :D

Photos of police attack to peaceful gathering of Iranian women. for more info read the previous article.
Photos are from Kosoof.com

Today women organizations were going to demonstrate in Tehran/Iran. They were going to start the gathering at 17 o'clock and police have knew about this. In recent days government was trying to threaten NGOs and activist by saing they will be arrested and organazations will be closed.


papers reads: we condemned any kind of discrimination



Women were there at 17:00 and the plan was sitting in a park and showing some mottos about their problems which includes:

HumanRightsFirst: The laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran continue to treat women as second-class citizens, and deem the value of the life of a woman as half that of a man's. Women are denied equal rights in many elements of family life, including marriage and divorce, child custody, and inheritance laws.

Police did not let people to sit on the park floor and while talking, started to beat women using batons and sprayed tearing gas and red ink(!) on them. They've even sprayed this red ink in peoples face. At this point passerbys stopped to watch the struggle and asked about the reason but police also attacked them and confrontation started ! Police attacked walking people and they answered. Police have arrested more than 60 persons including activists and ordinary people.

All the area was full of screams and fight sounds and batons. My wife has a baton sign on her arm but says everything is OK and she is proud living her ideals.

We have to wait for coming days to see the consequences. The most dangerous time is not demonstration itself, but the next days. We have to aware not letting our friends get arrested, support the arrested ones and defend our non governmental organizations. Oh ! we have to also think about our censored sites and weblogs.


here is our new concept: policewomen with Chador and Baton.
Pay special attention to her sign on her sleeves beacuse of not having shoulders !


At last police made all people to leave the place but you can not answer somebody who is looking for primary rights (as simple as monogamy) with batons forever.

I've got some news of todays womens demonstration. These women are gathering to ask for equal rights. Human rights firs says :

Iranian Women Demand Equal Legal Status

The laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran continue to treat women as second-class citizens, and deem the value of the life of a woman as half that of a man's. Women are denied equal rights in many elements of family life, including marriage and divorce, child custody, and inheritance laws.

On Monday, June 12, Iranian women will gather in Tehran to demand equal rights, including equality of women before the court and in family law, the banning of polygamy, an increase in the age of legal responsibility for girl and boy children to 18 years old, and the reform of employment laws which disadvantage female employees .

Activists campaigning for women's rights in Iran have asked Human Rights First to encourage our supporters to show solidarity with their peaceful demand for an end to all forms of legal discrimination against them.

Send a message to the Iranian authorities in support of the demonstrators and calling on the Iranian government to protect women exercising their basic rights to freedom of expression and assembly from all kinds of brutality and repression to which they have been subjected in the past.

In the previous gathering, police have attacked to women using batons and kicks. Government also have been called some activists and participating NGOs and said them not to participate or be ready for arrest and shutting down your organazations.

Latest news is in this post

Just an hour ago, three feminist sites are censored (Filtered) in Iran !

• www.Hastiandish.org is an feminist NGO which helds workshops and advocate for equal rights. Their previous site (www.hastia.org) was censored once and about one year ago, they've switched to this new site. Now this one is censored too.


• www.HerLandMag.com is also a website of a feminist group which is censored previousely. After their first site (www.IFTribune.com, a women news portal) was blocked, they've started this new site which is a weekly magazine.


• www.ParastooD.com is another famous weblogger in Iran. She is a feminist journalist. Her weblog is one of the most famous weblogs in Iran.
  

In one hand I have to say "I don't know why these site are blocked" but in the other hand I have to say "It is obvious why Ahmadinejad filters these sites". None of these sites ever wrote about violence or sexual contents. They were defending womens rights and asking for equal rights. These websites were among main websites who reflects todays events. Today is 12 June and all women groups and activist are going to demonstrate in streets demanding equal rights. Government have been called most of them and announced them "If you participate, we'll arrest you!" or "If this demonstration takes place, we'll shut down your organazation". This is ridiculus but is REAL.

Three months ago, police attacked women in 8th of march and beat them with battons. I wish health and security for every woman participating in this demonstration !

p.s. Around six months ago, ahmadi jenad announced that nobody is allowed to promote feministic, liberalistic and nihilistic ideas in Iran !