The Iranian regime is acting even more bizarre than usual, for this year they’ve banned Valentine’s Day. The Wall Street Journal—of all places—reports on the stupidity of theocracy:
In another sign of its ever more improvisational approach to governance, the Iranian regime has outlawed Valentine’s Day. “Symbols of hearts, half-hearts, red roses, and any activities promoting this day are banned,” announced state media last month. “Authorities will take legal action against those who ignore the ban.” . .
. . . The Iranian state has pronounced against unauthorized mingling of the sexes, rap music, rock music, Western music, women playing in bands, too-bright nail polish, laughter in hospital corridors, ancient Persian rites-of-spring celebrations (Nowrooz), and even the mention of foreign food recipes in state media. This last may sound comically implausible, but it was officially announced by a state-run website on Feb. 6. So now the true nature of pasta as an instrument of Western subversion has been revealed. . .
. . In the end, Iran’s rulers face an impossible task. Their genesis myth of a society based on a codified schema of sacred laws looks neither codified nor sacred. It convinces no one. Instead, the regime seems dedicated above all to stamping out joy wherever it may accidentally arise—a sour, paranoid struggle against irrepressible forces of nature, change, the seasons, music, romance and laughter. The Iranian people can take comfort: No earthly authority has won that particular contest for long.
I don’t often read the WSJ, so I was surprised that they published something this hard on theocracy. But maybe they just don’t like Muslim theocracy. . .
Meanwhile, in the past few days Iranians have mounted their biggest anti-government protest since 2009.
h/t: Malgorzata
“lmprovisational” is perhaps the best adjective describing my country of birth. The clerics are always vague about what is allowed and what is not. That is perhaps to enhance the terrorizing effect of crackdowns, by keeping people guessing.
Back when I lived there Valentine’s day was virtually unknown. Once it became popular the regime saw as part of the foreign cultural imperisalism and sought to counter it by proposing their own version- the marriage anniversary of a Shiite saint. Only it never caught on.
Today the mood in Iran was not one for celebrations, though. There were popular protests, inspired by what happeed in Egypt. And of course, a bloody crackdown and mass arrests followed, as always.
That film absolutely floored me.
dammit – that was supposed to be in response to “A Serious Man”, mentioned at svts’ post #6.
I suppose it doesn’t help that V-Day was originally a Catholic celebration.
Isn’t Valentine now dropped from the Roman Catholic approved saints list?
Malaysia has a similar take on Valentine’s Day. They feel that encouraging romantic encounters between people will produce immoral behaviour.
Public displays of affection are bad, very bad and of course they are really big on not letting unmarried women wander around without a male relative along to guard their chastity.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12443104
Ayatollah Khomeini is reported to have said:
“Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious. …” (Political thought and legacy of Khomeini, Wikipedia, 20 November 2010)
No fun until you’re dead! So just hold it all in until then, and you’ll get one hell of a party.
Not that it surprises me but, sheez. That is awful.
Somehow, I’d love to listen in on a conversation between the Ayatollah Khomeini and Richard Feynman…
Somehow I doubt you’d be listening for very long.
This twisted sentiment reminds me of some of the things Mother Theresa is on record as saying. What is it with the glorification of suffering that all these religions share?
More to the point, it’s the glorification of other people’s suffering.
Clean up your back yard!
NOW!!!!
And here in Sweden, the indian war on Valentine was all the rage:
“The dreaded Sri Ram Sene is changing stripes. It has decided to give up violence. But that’s where the good news ends. The right-wing extremist formation is still against public displays of affection, women in short skirts and couples in public embrace. And against Valentine’s Day of course.
From today, the Delhi unit of the Sene will organise a three-day awareness campaign starting from north campus of Delhi University and will cover colleges across the city. Its members will tell whoever will care to listen (and even those who won’t) that Valentine’s Day is against Indian culture and that youngsters should stop celebrating such occasions. Instead, they should celebrate Basant Panchami.
That’s not all. Couples who will still go out and make merry on Valentine’s Day will be videotaped and the videos will then be put up on YouTube so that they are shamed in front of the entire world. Members of the Sene will carry both ordinary cameras and spycams to catch the ‘culprits in action’.”
Aww! That is cute, YouTube Valentines. Mew!
Figures:
“Vasant Panchami (Devnagari:वसन्त पञ्चमी), sometimes referred to as Basant Panchami or Shree Panchami (Devnagari:श्रीपञ्चमी), is a Hindu festival … [Wikipedia]
OT: Jerry, I just got around to watching A Serious Man and must insist that you give us a review. This is just up your alley: a Jewish academic toiling in your backyard, emerging into the stoner 60s. But more importantly, this must be the greatest sacrilegious or indeed blasphemous film on the Jewish faith. Where Woody Allen merely kvetches, the Coens are utterly contemptuous.
Throughout the Book of Job—of which the film is allegorical—Job “sinned not” even after satan killed Job’s children with a great windstorm, but in the Coen’s A Serious Man, “Danny Gopnik” == Job’s son and classmates are all (implicitly) killed by a midwestern tornado only after Job succumbs to satan’s temptation. This is after the stoned Bar Mitzvah and a sequence of pathetic rabbis, the last of which recites Jefferson Airplane’s lyric “When the truth is found to be lies, And all the joy within you dies” on the occasion of Job’s son becoming a man and entering the faith.
There must be a gold mine of concealed Jewish blasphemies in this film, but I don’t have the necessary background or yiddish vocabulary to tease them all out.
The script is written on multiple levels. For example, Gopnik is a physics professor specializing in QM, and sure enough, the script is rife with concealed allusions to QM.
This film deserves a close reading, and you’re just the midwestern academic atheist Jew for the job. Please let us know what you think.
That movie impressed the hell out of me.
Suppressing Nowrooz is the least likely to work (it is a big traditional holiday in Iran across religious boundaries). Suppressing it is a bit like trying to suppress Thanksgiving in the US.
Where’s Kemal Ataturk when you need him?
And, once again, HL Mencken is spot-on:
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
— H L Mencken, A Book of Burlesques, “Sententiæ” (1920), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations.
Just went and read the article linked to in the post–go read it if you haven’t!
“Iran’s theocrats scramble daily to apply systemic tourniquets to spontaneous outbursts of nondenominational fun”
Hilarious! I had no idea the Wall Street Journal could be so amusing…
IIRC St Valentine’s Day is also banned in Saudi Arabia. The religious police go round looking for heart shaped chocolate boxes and red roses and drag people off to gaol!
I’m so glad my ancestors decided to turn left when they got out of Africa.
It’s not like that’s a surprise or anything. Saudi Arabia’s the country where it’s a capitol offense if a woman doesn’t cover herself up in a layer of fabric the size of a tent before she sets foot outside.
And they they tell you that they have more respect for women than Westerners.
They possibly didn’t – the may well have gone straight ahead or even to the right & only later gone left!
https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/lan/en/atlas.html
😉
While I agree that a government shouldn’t take a stand, here, Valentine’s Day would be one of the holidays I’d gladly get rid of. Along with Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and all the other Days the floral & candy industry have tried to foist on us…
In Indonesia, normally fairly relaxed, they have an almost laughably conservative body called the Majelis Ulama Indonesia (Indonesian Religious Scholars Council) which loves banning things. They too have just announced that Valentine’s Day is haram (forbidden).
Someone should do a study of how much attention is paid to their edicts.
I’d also love to see a comparative study of the fun quotient of each religion. There are differences but the average would not be high.
In English folk belief it was the day when birds were supposed to pair up.
…whereas in America –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Valentine_Day_massacre.jpg
So no one is allowed to test if a value is less than three on this day?
Maybe they were intending to stamp out Venereal Disease and got confused by the intitials.
“So now the true nature of pasta as an instrument of Western subversion has been revealed. . .”
It’s not western food, it’s Pastafarianism that they fear.