If it were truly Christianity it could not be forced. I would propose you are referring to something more accurately described as politically selfish dogmatism made possible by the current state of the culture's biblical illiteracy mixed with people's general need to resolve their identity crisis.
I'm an American Christ-follower with a degree in biblical theology. In my view, there is a "brand of Christianity" that has nothing to do with following Christ. It's borrowed the name but not much else.
> The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death..."
Yes, I must have missed all the Christian leaders coming out against the extremists in the media and in online communities
I can't hear what isn't there. The extremists have been taking over the political parties and nobody has said or done anything. If you claim otherwise, perhaps you can inform me with citations
It doesn't matter if you think they don't represent your views. The extremists are the ones in media constantly, they're the ones in the public eye. They're representing Christianity to the public at large. That is the important point
We're dealing with earthly matters, here, not heavenly ones. God may be in charge in the metaphysical sense, but particular individuals are in charge in the physical sense.
Heads of churches, pastors, the pope, directors of Christian schools, all sound to me like Christian leaders. They all have an incredible amount of influence over the laymen.
Many of them have been, and continue to be actively involved in bringing us to the current state of affairs. Many others are deafeningly silent on the matter. Some of that silence is principled (in the apolitical sense), but much of it is also opportunistic.
I happen to disagree with this. The only real Christian leaders are those who are following Christ. In all authority, authority is granted. Leadership is essential, and Christians are warned to be on the lookout for wolves among the sheep.
English is not my native language but to me a Christian is a _follower_ of Christ. Christ is the leader.
Edit:
> “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah.
I can understand your view on it. My hope is to broaden your understanding of what Christian means so that you might ultimately say "so-called Christians".
The difficulty in your argument is you are suggesting that those who are NOT like these so-called Christians who are extreme and incendiary, be LIKE those and oppose/crush their efforts.
As we say in America, it's a free country. There is freedom of speech and it is the responsibility of the listener to work to make sure they are not being duped. Assuming you are a thinking person, allow me to share my view more.
I am a Christ-follower. I follow Christ. I don't follow Christians, organizations or politicians. A life of following Christ is a life of submission to Christ. I therefore will not be expected to do something contrary to what he has said to do. He has said to love my enemies and do good to those who persecute me or give him a bad name. I have been told to expect that there will be those who pretend to be real Christians but are not and are only doing things for their selfish gain. I have been told to expect that there will be times when I am criticized or ridiculed for simply identifying as a Christian.
So, as a Christian, I understand your point of view of them, but you might be misunderstanding me.
See, I think I understand what it means to actually follow the ideals of Christ. I think it's a pretty good way to be. But that isn't my point here.
My point is that the image of Christianity is being twisted and used in the public eye and I haven't seen any actual Christians come out and condemn the behavior.
We have all these self proclaimed Christians in government, claiming to have God on their side. They keep getting voted in. Why do we still have homeless people? Why are there billionaires who take advantage of the poor? Why are they trying to control who can marry and how much control people have over their own bodies? Why do we have people going hungry while corporations throw away food to protect their profits? If these self proclaimed Christians in government really were, would they be writing and voting for legislation that help to enable the state of society that seems to be antithetical to what Christ taught?
I hear no actual Christians saying anything about it, but they keep voting. The result is people actively being harmed with Christ's name being thrown on top
> If these self proclaimed Christians in government really were, would they be writing and voting for legislation that help to enable the state of society that seems to be antithetical to what Christ taught
Maybe you should befriend some right-wing Christians and discuss this with them instead of complaining about them in this left-wing echo chamber? I suspect you don't really understand their perspective, and I don't think you truly care to. But, if you did want to actually understand, that would be my recommendation.
You mention many of the ideals valued in contemporary society, especially by people who identify as liberal/progressive-and you seem to think they are “ideals of Christ”-but how likely do you think it really is that a 1st century CE founder of a Jewish apocalyptic sect would have actually agreed with those contemporary ideals? Even if you are convinced that they are entailed by his (reputed) teachings - how likely would he have been to agree with that entailment if it had been presented to him? And do you approach any other pre-modern religious leader in the same way?
But what did they see as the answer to social problems? Changes to government policies, or divine judgement in the afterlife and at the end of the world?
Rather than being a religion of the poor and downtrodden, early Christianity spread primarily among the middle and upper classes - and while it encouraged charity, and personal decisions to voluntarily renounce wealth, it never presented that as mandatory for its followers - if it had, it would never had succeeded as it did.
So why are there people who call themselves Christians who want to make the US a theocracy? The people that those vote for enact incredibly harmful policies in the name of religious morality
A theocracy is a political system in which religious leaders have formal control over the state, and the state directly favours the doctrines of a particular established religious sect–it is standard in a theocracy for the head of state to be a cleric (bishop, mullah, ayatollah, lama, etc). Among internationally recognised sovereign states, there are only three contemporary examples of theocracies – Afghanistan (whose de facto head of state is the Supreme Leader of the Taliban, Hibatullah Akhundzada, an Islamic scholar); Iran (whose head of state is its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei); and Vatican City (whose head of state is, of course, the Pope). I'm not aware of any significant movement advocating the adoption of such a political system in the United States.
Preacher, some of us have tried reading the fascist piece of fiction known as the old testament.
There's is no christianity brand that is not compromised exclusively of hypocrites. You follow a book that literally tells us certain people should rule us all.
I’m an atheist but this argument is weak: Christianity explicitly breaks with the Old Testament and Christians of the non-fascist persuasion would non-unreasonably say that the problem is the people who are trying to make laws based on their religion (which Jesus explicitly told his followers not to do) and especially based on the superseded Israelite law.
It doesn’t take much scrutinization to understand the underlying motivations of those who speak nostalgically of the rule of pro-western dictatorships. They come from families which used to profit from the theft of the colonized lands and were forced to flee (with whatever they managed to steal) once said lands were liberated.
The westener who defends such rule are racists unable to grant the oriental people the right to live and organize in a manner of their choosing. It is a “the-white man’s burden” and into the “heart of darkness” brand of racism which justifies itself by painting the East as backwards. But why is the East backwards? Is it because the East does not buy up the hedonistic materialism that the West has always been peddling as “liberalism” and instead prefers its own culture?
So ironic that the first intervention to claim a “public place for women” is one which paints the destruction of brothels negatively as a consequence of the religious gaining too much power. Is there any doubt that those who are claiming to be “enlightened” truly prefer a world where people in general — and women especially —remain objects of sexual desire which are used to herd people through endless cycles of aesthetically-driven consumerism?
> The westener who defends such rule are racists unable to grant the oriental people the right to live and organize in a manner of their choosing.
Now, now, some hold democracy in contempt generally, not just for foreigners. Others believe that people have a right to live and organise in a manner of their choosing, not that they must be governed in a manner pleasing to Westerners.
> Others believe that people have a right to live and organise in a manner of their choosing
"I hate the government, not the people" is a thinly-veiled neocolonial trope when applied to sovereign nations like Iran. It translates to "I don't like it when those people govern themselves".
And then when challenged on this they will say “no no, those countries are oppressing their people and limiting their freedom”.
Ignoring how those governments operate in an adversarial environment of nations where if you don’t sell out your people you face endless assignation or coup plots by the Israeli Mossad or the American CIA.
People today don’t realize the extent of the present evil and the depth of the historical of the west. Take communist China. How can you ignore the fact that Britain was literally a cartel for opium sales in China? When the emperor banned opium to get ahead of the epidemic what did “Great” Britain do? Respect the sovereignty of the Chinese people?
Possibly, but not necessarily. On the other side you have that pattern of "True, they are brutally oppressed, but that must be what they all want if the oppressor is of their own ethnicity, right?" It's perfectly fine to have an opinion about the form of government in a foreign country that isn't all positive.
What you deem oppression is entirely cultural. It's your choice to project that on others.
The Western liberal views the Iranian woman as oppressed because they can no longer freely sell their bodies.
The Iranian revolutionary may view the Western sex worker as oppressed because capitalism effectively forces them to sell their body to buy shelter and food. Or something about spiritual oppression. I don't really know, to be honest.
> It's perfectly fine to have an opinion about the form of government
About as fine as caring about what your neighbor is doing in their bedroom. Which is to say, pretty weird, albeit normalized in imperialist societies. It's literally none of your business.
But they don't govern themselves, do they? There's no sense where you can say that the people of Iran are free to govern themselves and do so. You can hardly say that about western liberal democracies, let alone Iran.
It's possible (as a Westerner) to disapprove of totalitarian theocracy such as what exists now in Iran while simultaneously not believing it would be a good idea to interfere, especially militarily or through illegal covert action.
The West has deeply undermined itself with this interference. Quite a few people around the world actually did want what the West had to offer until the bombs and coups came and pushed them into the arms of domestic totalitarians.
All you have to do is turn it around. Imagine if the USA had a brutal dictatorship and China invaded us to "fix" it. How well do you think that would go over?
Edit: Sanctions are a little better but grossly over-used. I think they should be reserved for cases of violation of international law, such as Russia invading Ukraine, to exact a financial penalty for that. Otherwise sanctions tend to just harm the average people of a country. The Iranian dictators and mullahs are rich. It's the people who feel the sanctions. If anything sanctions make it harder for the people to organize any alternative to their current government by keeping them in brutal poverty.
Also to really understand how the West fucked up Iran you have to go back to before the Shah when the bogie man of communism was used as an excuse to intervene the first time. Read up on that history.
> It doesn’t take much scrutinization to understand the underlying motivations of those who speak nostalgically of the rule of pro-western dictatorships. They come from families which used to profit from the theft of the colonized lands and were forced to flee (with whatever they managed to steal) once said lands were liberated.
This is the IRI propaganda line that you are repeating and you are adding your own unique bits of outright 'errors'.
Let's start with the "colonized" lands. Iran was never colonized. It had a pseudo-feudal order, with landowning Iranian families and tenant peasants in villages. Of course this is entirely news to you (which makes you a useful unwitting IRI asset) but in the late 60s, one of the reasons the so-called Ayatollah Khomeni attacked the Shah was Land Reform.
The other reason was the evil Shah gave the vote to women, right to divorce, and all other necessary social support so that being 'cut off from family' did not determine a future outside of society.
And again as an evil man he removed the requirement to swear on the Quran for official procedures -- he said any divine book, Torah, Bible, Qur'an will do.
Clearly he was an evil dictator and had to go!
My family:
My father born to a provincial merchant, with no religious affiliation. He happened to get the top score for the national examination, after which he got his PhD, and later with two other engineers from Tehran university started their company that went on to build some of the major high-voltage infrastructure in Iran. He also taught in the engineering school. Clearly we are oppressors longing for the good old days when we could unjustly enjoy the fruits of our minds and abilities. (Btw, this same father of mine came to US starting at 0 again and again proved himself a man of distinguished ability. These people are Iran's loss.)
So yes, we miss the meritocracy, we miss the freedom, and not lastly I personally miss the aesthetics.
> ironic that the first intervention to claim a “public place for women”
Too bad you can't read this - try a translator (this is from this year):
بسم ا لله ا لر حمن ا لرحیم
قال رسول الله(ص):النّکاح، ُ سُنَّتی، فَمَنْ رَغِبَ عَنْ سُنّتى فَلَيسَ مِنّى.
آستان قدس رضوی جهت ارتقای فضای معنوی جامعهٔ و ایجاد شرایط مناسب روحی و آرامش خیال برای برادران زائری( خصوصا برادراني كه از كشورهاي اسلامي ديگر، عراق، سوریه، لبنان... آمده اند) که در مدت زیارت حرم مطهر امام هشتم از همسر خود دور می باشند اقدام به برگزاری مرکز صیغه های کوتاه مدت در جوار حرم رضوی نموده است.در این راستا از کلیهٔ خواهران باکره که سن آنها بین ۱۲ تا ۳۵ سال است دعوت به همکاری مینماید . هر یک از خواهران بر اساس قرارداد ۲ ساله ای که با آستان قدس رضوی منعقد مینمایند موظفند که ماهانه حد اقل ۲۵ روز به صیغه برادران زوار در آیند.مدت قرار داد جزو سابقه اشتغال متقاضی محسوب میگردد مدت هرصیغه از ۵ ساعت تا ۱۰ روز متغیر میباشد .مبلغ پرداختی بابت هر صیغه بدین شرح است:
صیغه های ۵ ساعته: مبلغ پانصد هزار تومان
صیغه های ۱ روزه صدو هفتاد و پنج هزار تومان؛ ٢ روزه سیصد هزار تومان؛ ٣ روزه چهارصد و پنجاه هزار تومان و از ۴ روز تا ۱۰ ر...
Here's a partial translation as it is directly related to "prostitution" in Iran:
"The holy state of Razavi [i.e. Khorasan] in order to improve the spiritual atmosphere of the society and create suitable mental conditions and peace of mind for the pilgrim brothers (especially the brothers who came from other Islamic countries, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon...) who during the pilgrimage to the Holy Shrine of the 8th Imam are detached from their wives, has started organizing a center for short-term concubines [Sigheh marriage] near the Razavi shrine. In this regard, all virgin sisters between the ages of 12 and 35 are invited to cooperate."
Now you're likely curious as to the rates of this 'holy' prostitution system? Here you go:
صیغه های ۵ ساعته: مبلغ پانصد هزار توما
5 hour marriage: 500,000 Tomans.
صیغه های ۱ روزه صدو هفتاد و پنج هزار تومان
1 day marriage: 175,000 Tomans.
etc.
So how does this work?
"After the 2-year contract expires, if the sisters are not 35 years old, they can be on the waiting list for permanent concubines if they wish. Sisters over 35 please do not register due to their age. The sisters are obliged to deposit 5 percent of the received amount of each concubine to the holy shrine. All interested sisters are requested to send 2 full-length photos (with Islamic hijab), the latest academic degree, virginity status and a certificate of complete mental and physical health from the health organization of the city where they live to the address below (for sisters less than 16 years old, official consent of father or paternal grandfather or uncle is required)"
Anything to help our Muslim brothers from Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, and soon comarades from Russia. Iranians should be delighted to be free from the yoke of the evil "dictator" Shah. This, after all, is clearly progress.
Your argument is oddly one-sided and does not include any of the issues with the Shah. At least try to look at it objectively. I understand you hate the current regime, we all do, but it seems you are unable to view history correctly because of it.
The article you linked is written by a little known author, Abdullah Safi, who wrote articles against atheism. He clearly dislikes the Shah rule. What reason do we have to trust him?
Furthermore, even if we trust him to be unbiased (I don't), he only says that people who were fighting against the Shah (the armed rebels, the Communist supporters, etc) didn't enjoy a good life. He doesn't say that the Shah gave trouble to the regular people who weren't trying to overthrow the government.
I just Googled and found an article so I am sure there are better sources, however it shouldn't be controversial to say that the Shah, who came in power through a foreign coup, was a dictator. It is the reason why the revolution was able to succeed. Obviously life under the Shah was much better than after the revolution but that is not to say there were not problems before it.
I don't think anyone claims that there were no problems in Iran under the Shah. Or in the US for that matter.
FWIW, every single person I talked to who lived in Tehran during the Shah said it was great. However, I know It's a biased sample. For one, none of them were Communist sympathizers. And even more importantly, they all emigrated. Maybe if I talked to people who live in Tehran now, they'd also say it's great, who knows.
Of course I did. I lived there and also avail myself of original source material that is entirely closed to you, such as Harvard's Iran Oral History project.
& So what that he was a dictator? He wasn't dictating a course of national destruction; he was dictating a revival of an ancient nation. The historical record of Pahlavi dynasty is exceptionally clear. You just need to grab hold of the National Geographic issue dedicated to "Persia" from just before Pahlavi dynasty and compare to Iran they created 57 years later. From a complete basket case to a nation that was seen to be a threat to Western imperial structures (as soon as he helped create OPEC) in the so-called Middle East.
And who was opposing him? A regressive clerical class -- a class -- that had a strangle hold over what passed for Iranian education and judiciary since the Saffavids, and their substantial network of two digit IQ illiterates that saw pictures of khomeini in the moon. And the past 44 years are exhibit A in why Iranian must eradicate the cleric from Iran and Islam once and for all. The second group, young people who where sent to West, entirely on the Iranian goverments' dime btw as all their education and room and board was covered (!), and instead of returning (like some) to help develop Iran they became "marxists", and later "Islamic-Marxists". (That last bit should shed some light on their conceptual and intellectual ability and integrity). Finally, we had the mini-army of all the descendants of various Qajar aristocracy that just wasn't happy with having an uppity soldier's family (Reza Shah) putting an end to the disaster that was Qajar dynasty.
~
p.s. for interested Persian speakers, this is a fantastic resource:
You have no case, just "dictator" bad. For you to make a case is to point to any (any) historic precedent when drastic social reform happened without confronting reactionary and regressive forces.
This is like arguing that there’s no difference between broken leg and a heart attack. The Shah’s government certainly had problems but you really need to provide a knowledgeable argument rather than just asserting equivalence.
You might want to read the entire thread before commenting. The argument here started with a statement that under the Shah there were problems for regular people. And someone posted in return a video implying it was like paradise. I stated it is obviously much worse under the current regime but pointed that OP was correct that there were major problems under the Shah as well. Not sure why that is so controversial.
I did, actually. Rather than trying to dismiss my comment as not having read the thread, consider that you might need to make a good argument before trying to “rest your case”.
> Yeah the Shahs rule was a paradise for regular people...
No it's not. That's a tactic the regime used to silence any opposition for a long time after the revolution. I can't tell you how many times I have turned on the TV and heard something along these lines. Nowadays, however, they have new favorite bogeymen.
Shah was a garden variety dictator backed by the United States. You can find the likes of him in today's Saudi Arabia, for example. It certainly was not paradise for regular people.
But Islamic Republic on the other hand is a theocratic dictatorship. It's like an octopus that wants to wrap its tentacles around every matter of people's personal lives. From their bedroom to the women's bodies to the clothes they wear. Ironic for them, as a result, the current generation who were born after the revolution are more pro-US than ever and unfortunately are even more sympathetic to Shah than one might expect; which is not surprising.
So Shah's misdeeds are no excuse for the demons who have forced themselves upon the country right now.
Context: I was born and used to lived in Iran in a non-Musilm family whose members were in opposition to both Shah and the new regime alike.
>"Shah was a garden variety dictator backed by the United States."
The support of the Shah was very much an Anglo-American concern. The coup to oust Mosaddegh was much the US as it was the the UK, Churchill and Eisenhower, MI6 and CIA.
Kind of true. But the Shah was no champion of anybody's right:
> ... Police reports from the Muzaffarī period (1896–1907) show that the most common punishment for women caught selling sex was a practice known as nafie-balad. This was a form of forceful banishment or eviction from the city targeted at sinful, criminal and undesirable subjects and those who defy social and moral conventions of the society ... Public discontent came to a head at the end of the 1910s with the first series of petitions in 1919 calling for sex workers to be banished from Tehran.
> The political figure and writer Hassan Ezam-Qodsi notes that sex workers from Qajariyah alley in Tehran were moved to this new neighbourhood in order to avoid sexual assaults on "respectable" women in the city ... One day, all the women suspected of selling sex were gathered and moved by military trucks to a nearby caravanserai outside of Tehran’s wall: “the wayward women were all thrown in there like sheep... later, houses were built and a neighbourhood took shape which was named Shahrinaw”.
> The district offered its services as usual until the 1940s when public dissatisfaction surged again ... In this period, the practice of nafie-balad was again deployed as a tool to address the public concern over the rapid spread of sexually transmitted diseases ... the result of an STD test undertaken by Pasteur Institute of Tehran in 1929 showed that 43 per cent of the 3,498 participants were tested positive ... Eventually, in 1953 the municipality bowed to public pressure and ordered the erection of a two-and-a-half-metre tall brick wall around Shahrinaw, restricting entry to a rusty metal gate on the southern edge of the neighbourhood. While the gate was open to men seeking illicit pleasure, women were allowed neither in nor out.
Democracy pretty reliably leads to persecution of religious minorities. I’m not aware of any exceptions in the Muslim world but the pattern held in early modern Europe too. Greater popular involvement in government meant the ruling class couldn’t protect useful but unpopular minorities. Thus everyone who isn’t Sunni supporting Assad in Syria. They know that the good outcome of the US winning is getting out alive. Or see the treatment of the Rohingya in Burma or Tamils in Sri Lanka. Absent a commitment to liberalism that requires generations of propaganda work national self-determination is bad news for religious or ethnic minorities.
Please point to a democratic country where people are prohibited from praying five times a day, or are otherwise prohibited from having private religious beliefs? (Religious practices that harm others, or force others to participate, such as ones that require non-consensual subjugation of women don't count.)
I know in the states, at least, pausing your job to pray could easily get you fired. Is it against the law of the land to fire someone for their religious beliefs? Probably. Do shitty workplaces do it anyways? Almost certainly. If they even hire you in the first place.
Have to fast during Ramadan? Job performance suffers because you aren't eating? Companies will absolutely go out of their way to make you miserable.
You might not be banned from practicing, but you better believe you aren't really protected either.
I got curious and found the author's dissertation with even more details about Shahrinaw, including more images, scenes from old Iranian films, letters, and more.
It would be nice if the author had included some GPS coordinates for the place, would be good to have a look in Google Maps satellite view what the place looks like now (since I assume Street View isn't allowed in Iran)
> Eventually, in 1997, the space was finally put to use again when the Tehran Municipality inaugurated the Razi park and cultural complex, which includes a variety of public services such as a library, movie theatre, artificial lake and an amusement park. It’s a far cry from the area’s previous functions. Nonetheless, some traces of the demolished neighbourhood remain visible on the street edges...
> Sex trafficking and sex work can be distinguished (i.e. one can have sex work without sex trafficking).
Note that this contradicts nearly all official usage of the term "sex trafficking", which just refers to sex work. Far and away the most common kind of sex trafficking is a woman working independently trafficking herself.
Sorry, but if they weren't forced, coerced, or tricked/otherwise manipulated into into it, then they're not being "trafficked." There has been an attempt over the past several years, at least in the US, to redefined the meaning of the word to encompass all forms of sex work. To say that someone, working alone and of their own free will, is "being trafficked", is absolutely absurd and is what we were discussing.
The idea that a woman can traffick herself if she is interested in doing sex work is nonsense. Sex work and sex exploitation are not the same thing. (Though I do not deny there exists exploitation in much of sex work.)
Sure, but even if dangerous it is a space that is concretely theirs in the sense that in the absence of any women in public it can’t be a red light district. Contrast with a museum, which could ban all women from entry and still be a museum.
But while I get how this space would grant the women inside some freedom they could not otherwise have, I wonder how much its existence mattered for the women outside its walls.
Here, on the page 9 of this dissertation, we have a newspaper from before the revolution that describes the area as "cages" for women, most of whom are "caught in mental and/or familial issues and crisis", "some of whom never see daylight". The older ones, who apparently could leave, ended up "becoming child caretakers for younger prostitutes". In the middle of this "women's space", there was an open air "garbage dump", and "mattresses were made from the cotton of discarded sanitary napkins".
So yeah, a "prison" "concretely" belongs to the inmates.
I know a handful of women, they do sex work out of there free will. Some work just one day a week, some full time. The only thing they have in common, none of these work on the street. Some even are married for a long time.
Yeah, "public space for women" is such bs! Especially when the women were forced there and not allowed to leave:
> Police reports from the Muzaffarī period (1896–1907) show that the most common punishment for women caught selling sex was a practice known as nafie-balad. This was a form of forceful banishment or eviction from the city targeted at sinful, criminal and undesirable subjects and those who defy social and moral conventions of the society ... One day, all the women suspected of selling sex were gathered and moved by military trucks to a nearby caravanserai outside of Tehran’s wall: "the wayward women were all thrown in there like sheep… later, houses were built and a neighbourhood took shape which was named Shahrinaw" ... Eventually, in 1953 the municipality bowed to public pressure and ordered the erection of a two-and-a-half-metre tall brick wall around Shahrinaw ... While the gate was open to men seeking illicit pleasure, women were allowed neither in nor out.
----
Perhaps I am being puritanical here, but I've never understood this obsession of some trying to associate women's right with prostitution. Everywhere in the world, even in countries where prostitution is legalised / regulated, it is only the desperate and economically weak women who are pushed into this trade and it invariably gives rise to a parallel and illegal industry of sex trafficking and forced prostitution. Worse, where it is legalised, the administration and police largely ignore such illegal sex trafficking as prostitution is now an "economic activity" (until of course there is a public outcry and / or international outrage - Denmark made child pornography illegal only in 1980's!).
Even where religious sanctions for prostitution are available, the prostitutes are both admired and looked down upon by some and face repeated sexual violence (God’s Wife, Every Man’s Woman: The Lives of 'Joginis' in South India - https://thewire.in/rights/photos-sexual-slavery-ban-telangan... ). I do know that there have been periods in the Islamic empire and in Asia, where courtesans, who also sometimes prostituted themselves (often not out of choice), had some semblance of respect and rights largely because they were also highly talented artists (singers, dancers, musicians etc) but mainly because they had the patronage of the rich and the powerful. But once that patronage was lost, they were often vilified by society despite their talents. (All said, I am really unsure on whether glorification of prostitution in the media is good or bad though).
I think the logic behind calling it a "public space for women" is that women weren't allowed in public life before that, so it was better than nothing. Not for all women of course.
And no, not all sex work is the result of sex trafficking.
Fascinating how in the modern west all efforts are taken to commoditize the human body in every way imaginable, and even overwrite the history of efforts to treat the human body with respect. The false equivalency stating that a public space for women must necessarily be a place that allows prostitution is horrific.
Criminalizing sex work hurts women. It forces them to operate without protection, without regulation, and under threat of criminal prosecution.
So yes, it's very much a women's rights issue, as legalizing and regulating the industry would allow women who are interested in the work to do so with protections and without fear of jail time. They can operate with relative security.
Aren't feminists the ones who clearly refer to their bodies as a symbol of their freedom ?
As for "prostitution" : the term can mean many different things for different people...
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] threadI'm an American Christ-follower with a degree in biblical theology. In my view, there is a "brand of Christianity" that has nothing to do with following Christ. It's borrowed the name but not much else.
> The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death..."
It's only reasonable to assume that due to inaction, the ideas are supported
I can't hear what isn't there. The extremists have been taking over the political parties and nobody has said or done anything. If you claim otherwise, perhaps you can inform me with citations
It doesn't matter if you think they don't represent your views. The extremists are the ones in media constantly, they're the ones in the public eye. They're representing Christianity to the public at large. That is the important point
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2023&ve...
Heads of churches, pastors, the pope, directors of Christian schools, all sound to me like Christian leaders. They all have an incredible amount of influence over the laymen.
Many of them have been, and continue to be actively involved in bringing us to the current state of affairs. Many others are deafeningly silent on the matter. Some of that silence is principled (in the apolitical sense), but much of it is also opportunistic.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%2020%3A28%...
Edit: > “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah.
The difficulty in your argument is you are suggesting that those who are NOT like these so-called Christians who are extreme and incendiary, be LIKE those and oppose/crush their efforts.
As we say in America, it's a free country. There is freedom of speech and it is the responsibility of the listener to work to make sure they are not being duped. Assuming you are a thinking person, allow me to share my view more.
I am a Christ-follower. I follow Christ. I don't follow Christians, organizations or politicians. A life of following Christ is a life of submission to Christ. I therefore will not be expected to do something contrary to what he has said to do. He has said to love my enemies and do good to those who persecute me or give him a bad name. I have been told to expect that there will be those who pretend to be real Christians but are not and are only doing things for their selfish gain. I have been told to expect that there will be times when I am criticized or ridiculed for simply identifying as a Christian.
So, as a Christian, I understand your point of view of them, but you might be misunderstanding me.
My point is that the image of Christianity is being twisted and used in the public eye and I haven't seen any actual Christians come out and condemn the behavior.
We have all these self proclaimed Christians in government, claiming to have God on their side. They keep getting voted in. Why do we still have homeless people? Why are there billionaires who take advantage of the poor? Why are they trying to control who can marry and how much control people have over their own bodies? Why do we have people going hungry while corporations throw away food to protect their profits? If these self proclaimed Christians in government really were, would they be writing and voting for legislation that help to enable the state of society that seems to be antithetical to what Christ taught?
I hear no actual Christians saying anything about it, but they keep voting. The result is people actively being harmed with Christ's name being thrown on top
Maybe you should befriend some right-wing Christians and discuss this with them instead of complaining about them in this left-wing echo chamber? I suspect you don't really understand their perspective, and I don't think you truly care to. But, if you did want to actually understand, that would be my recommendation.
Ideals don't matter when you vote for politicians that enact harmful policies.
Rather than being a religion of the poor and downtrodden, early Christianity spread primarily among the middle and upper classes - and while it encouraged charity, and personal decisions to voluntarily renounce wealth, it never presented that as mandatory for its followers - if it had, it would never had succeeded as it did.
There's is no christianity brand that is not compromised exclusively of hypocrites. You follow a book that literally tells us certain people should rule us all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4M_EJzjItk
While the revolution obviously resulted in a much worse situation, the Shah was a dictator. https://historyofyesterday.com/the-shah-of-iran-was-not-a-sa...
The westener who defends such rule are racists unable to grant the oriental people the right to live and organize in a manner of their choosing. It is a “the-white man’s burden” and into the “heart of darkness” brand of racism which justifies itself by painting the East as backwards. But why is the East backwards? Is it because the East does not buy up the hedonistic materialism that the West has always been peddling as “liberalism” and instead prefers its own culture?
So ironic that the first intervention to claim a “public place for women” is one which paints the destruction of brothels negatively as a consequence of the religious gaining too much power. Is there any doubt that those who are claiming to be “enlightened” truly prefer a world where people in general — and women especially —remain objects of sexual desire which are used to herd people through endless cycles of aesthetically-driven consumerism?
Now, now, some hold democracy in contempt generally, not just for foreigners. Others believe that people have a right to live and organise in a manner of their choosing, not that they must be governed in a manner pleasing to Westerners.
"I hate the government, not the people" is a thinly-veiled neocolonial trope when applied to sovereign nations like Iran. It translates to "I don't like it when those people govern themselves".
Ignoring how those governments operate in an adversarial environment of nations where if you don’t sell out your people you face endless assignation or coup plots by the Israeli Mossad or the American CIA.
People today don’t realize the extent of the present evil and the depth of the historical of the west. Take communist China. How can you ignore the fact that Britain was literally a cartel for opium sales in China? When the emperor banned opium to get ahead of the epidemic what did “Great” Britain do? Respect the sovereignty of the Chinese people?
What you deem oppression is entirely cultural. It's your choice to project that on others.
The Western liberal views the Iranian woman as oppressed because they can no longer freely sell their bodies.
The Iranian revolutionary may view the Western sex worker as oppressed because capitalism effectively forces them to sell their body to buy shelter and food. Or something about spiritual oppression. I don't really know, to be honest.
> It's perfectly fine to have an opinion about the form of government
About as fine as caring about what your neighbor is doing in their bedroom. Which is to say, pretty weird, albeit normalized in imperialist societies. It's literally none of your business.
The West has deeply undermined itself with this interference. Quite a few people around the world actually did want what the West had to offer until the bombs and coups came and pushed them into the arms of domestic totalitarians.
All you have to do is turn it around. Imagine if the USA had a brutal dictatorship and China invaded us to "fix" it. How well do you think that would go over?
Edit: Sanctions are a little better but grossly over-used. I think they should be reserved for cases of violation of international law, such as Russia invading Ukraine, to exact a financial penalty for that. Otherwise sanctions tend to just harm the average people of a country. The Iranian dictators and mullahs are rich. It's the people who feel the sanctions. If anything sanctions make it harder for the people to organize any alternative to their current government by keeping them in brutal poverty.
Also to really understand how the West fucked up Iran you have to go back to before the Shah when the bogie man of communism was used as an excuse to intervene the first time. Read up on that history.
This is the IRI propaganda line that you are repeating and you are adding your own unique bits of outright 'errors'.
Let's start with the "colonized" lands. Iran was never colonized. It had a pseudo-feudal order, with landowning Iranian families and tenant peasants in villages. Of course this is entirely news to you (which makes you a useful unwitting IRI asset) but in the late 60s, one of the reasons the so-called Ayatollah Khomeni attacked the Shah was Land Reform.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Revolution
The other reason was the evil Shah gave the vote to women, right to divorce, and all other necessary social support so that being 'cut off from family' did not determine a future outside of society.
And again as an evil man he removed the requirement to swear on the Quran for official procedures -- he said any divine book, Torah, Bible, Qur'an will do.
Clearly he was an evil dictator and had to go!
My family:
My father born to a provincial merchant, with no religious affiliation. He happened to get the top score for the national examination, after which he got his PhD, and later with two other engineers from Tehran university started their company that went on to build some of the major high-voltage infrastructure in Iran. He also taught in the engineering school. Clearly we are oppressors longing for the good old days when we could unjustly enjoy the fruits of our minds and abilities. (Btw, this same father of mine came to US starting at 0 again and again proved himself a man of distinguished ability. These people are Iran's loss.)
So yes, we miss the meritocracy, we miss the freedom, and not lastly I personally miss the aesthetics.
> ironic that the first intervention to claim a “public place for women”
Too bad you can't read this - try a translator (this is from this year):
بسم ا لله ا لر حمن ا لرحیم
قال رسول الله(ص):النّکاح، ُ سُنَّتی، فَمَنْ رَغِبَ عَنْ سُنّتى فَلَيسَ مِنّى.
آستان قدس رضوی جهت ارتقای فضای معنوی جامعهٔ و ایجاد شرایط مناسب روحی و آرامش خیال برای برادران زائری( خصوصا برادراني كه از كشورهاي اسلامي ديگر، عراق، سوریه، لبنان... آمده اند) که در مدت زیارت حرم مطهر امام هشتم از همسر خود دور می باشند اقدام به برگزاری مرکز صیغه های کوتاه مدت در جوار حرم رضوی نموده است. در این راستا از کلیهٔ خواهران باکره که سن آنها بین ۱۲ تا ۳۵ سال است دعوت به همکاری مینماید . هر یک از خواهران بر اساس قرارداد ۲ ساله ای که با آستان قدس رضوی منعقد مینمایند موظفند که ماهانه حد اقل ۲۵ روز به صیغه برادران زوار در آیند. مدت قرار داد جزو سابقه اشتغال متقاضی محسوب میگردد مدت هرصیغه از ۵ ساعت تا ۱۰ روز متغیر میباشد . مبلغ پرداختی بابت هر صیغه بدین شرح است:
صیغه های ۵ ساعته: مبلغ پانصد هزار تومان
صیغه های ۱ روزه صدو هفتاد و پنج هزار تومان؛ ٢ روزه سیصد هزار تومان؛ ٣ روزه چهارصد و پنجاه هزار تومان و از ۴ روز تا ۱۰ ر...
"The holy state of Razavi [i.e. Khorasan] in order to improve the spiritual atmosphere of the society and create suitable mental conditions and peace of mind for the pilgrim brothers (especially the brothers who came from other Islamic countries, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon...) who during the pilgrimage to the Holy Shrine of the 8th Imam are detached from their wives, has started organizing a center for short-term concubines [Sigheh marriage] near the Razavi shrine. In this regard, all virgin sisters between the ages of 12 and 35 are invited to cooperate."
Now you're likely curious as to the rates of this 'holy' prostitution system? Here you go:
صیغه های ۵ ساعته: مبلغ پانصد هزار توما
5 hour marriage: 500,000 Tomans.
صیغه های ۱ روزه صدو هفتاد و پنج هزار تومان
1 day marriage: 175,000 Tomans.
etc.
So how does this work?
"After the 2-year contract expires, if the sisters are not 35 years old, they can be on the waiting list for permanent concubines if they wish. Sisters over 35 please do not register due to their age. The sisters are obliged to deposit 5 percent of the received amount of each concubine to the holy shrine. All interested sisters are requested to send 2 full-length photos (with Islamic hijab), the latest academic degree, virginity status and a certificate of complete mental and physical health from the health organization of the city where they live to the address below (for sisters less than 16 years old, official consent of father or paternal grandfather or uncle is required)"
Anything to help our Muslim brothers from Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, and soon comarades from Russia. Iranians should be delighted to be free from the yoke of the evil "dictator" Shah. This, after all, is clearly progress.
Like I said: those nostalgic for the Shah almost always are of an elite class that profited from status quo.
Character is destiny.
Furthermore, even if we trust him to be unbiased (I don't), he only says that people who were fighting against the Shah (the armed rebels, the Communist supporters, etc) didn't enjoy a good life. He doesn't say that the Shah gave trouble to the regular people who weren't trying to overthrow the government.
FWIW, every single person I talked to who lived in Tehran during the Shah said it was great. However, I know It's a biased sample. For one, none of them were Communist sympathizers. And even more importantly, they all emigrated. Maybe if I talked to people who live in Tehran now, they'd also say it's great, who knows.
& So what that he was a dictator? He wasn't dictating a course of national destruction; he was dictating a revival of an ancient nation. The historical record of Pahlavi dynasty is exceptionally clear. You just need to grab hold of the National Geographic issue dedicated to "Persia" from just before Pahlavi dynasty and compare to Iran they created 57 years later. From a complete basket case to a nation that was seen to be a threat to Western imperial structures (as soon as he helped create OPEC) in the so-called Middle East.
And who was opposing him? A regressive clerical class -- a class -- that had a strangle hold over what passed for Iranian education and judiciary since the Saffavids, and their substantial network of two digit IQ illiterates that saw pictures of khomeini in the moon. And the past 44 years are exhibit A in why Iranian must eradicate the cleric from Iran and Islam once and for all. The second group, young people who where sent to West, entirely on the Iranian goverments' dime btw as all their education and room and board was covered (!), and instead of returning (like some) to help develop Iran they became "marxists", and later "Islamic-Marxists". (That last bit should shed some light on their conceptual and intellectual ability and integrity). Finally, we had the mini-army of all the descendants of various Qajar aristocracy that just wasn't happy with having an uppity soldier's family (Reza Shah) putting an end to the disaster that was Qajar dynasty.
~
p.s. for interested Persian speakers, this is a fantastic resource:
https://library.harvard.edu/collections/iranian-oral-history...
I rest my case.
Read the thread.
Peter the Great was a dictator too.
No it's not. That's a tactic the regime used to silence any opposition for a long time after the revolution. I can't tell you how many times I have turned on the TV and heard something along these lines. Nowadays, however, they have new favorite bogeymen.
Shah was a garden variety dictator backed by the United States. You can find the likes of him in today's Saudi Arabia, for example. It certainly was not paradise for regular people.
But Islamic Republic on the other hand is a theocratic dictatorship. It's like an octopus that wants to wrap its tentacles around every matter of people's personal lives. From their bedroom to the women's bodies to the clothes they wear. Ironic for them, as a result, the current generation who were born after the revolution are more pro-US than ever and unfortunately are even more sympathetic to Shah than one might expect; which is not surprising.
So Shah's misdeeds are no excuse for the demons who have forced themselves upon the country right now.
Context: I was born and used to lived in Iran in a non-Musilm family whose members were in opposition to both Shah and the new regime alike.
The support of the Shah was very much an Anglo-American concern. The coup to oust Mosaddegh was much the US as it was the the UK, Churchill and Eisenhower, MI6 and CIA.
> ... Police reports from the Muzaffarī period (1896–1907) show that the most common punishment for women caught selling sex was a practice known as nafie-balad. This was a form of forceful banishment or eviction from the city targeted at sinful, criminal and undesirable subjects and those who defy social and moral conventions of the society ... Public discontent came to a head at the end of the 1910s with the first series of petitions in 1919 calling for sex workers to be banished from Tehran.
> The political figure and writer Hassan Ezam-Qodsi notes that sex workers from Qajariyah alley in Tehran were moved to this new neighbourhood in order to avoid sexual assaults on "respectable" women in the city ... One day, all the women suspected of selling sex were gathered and moved by military trucks to a nearby caravanserai outside of Tehran’s wall: “the wayward women were all thrown in there like sheep... later, houses were built and a neighbourhood took shape which was named Shahrinaw”.
> The district offered its services as usual until the 1940s when public dissatisfaction surged again ... In this period, the practice of nafie-balad was again deployed as a tool to address the public concern over the rapid spread of sexually transmitted diseases ... the result of an STD test undertaken by Pasteur Institute of Tehran in 1929 showed that 43 per cent of the 3,498 participants were tested positive ... Eventually, in 1953 the municipality bowed to public pressure and ordered the erection of a two-and-a-half-metre tall brick wall around Shahrinaw, restricting entry to a rusty metal gate on the southern edge of the neighbourhood. While the gate was open to men seeking illicit pleasure, women were allowed neither in nor out.
Have to fast during Ramadan? Job performance suffers because you aren't eating? Companies will absolutely go out of their way to make you miserable.
You might not be banned from practicing, but you better believe you aren't really protected either.
https://open-education-repository.ucl.ac.uk//799/1/Sadaf_Tab...
It would be nice if the author had included some GPS coordinates for the place, would be good to have a look in Google Maps satellite view what the place looks like now (since I assume Street View isn't allowed in Iran)
> Eventually, in 1997, the space was finally put to use again when the Tehran Municipality inaugurated the Razi park and cultural complex, which includes a variety of public services such as a library, movie theatre, artificial lake and an amusement park. It’s a far cry from the area’s previous functions. Nonetheless, some traces of the demolished neighbourhood remain visible on the street edges...
Isn't it all sex trafficking and generally a pretty dangerous place for any woman?
Note that this contradicts nearly all official usage of the term "sex trafficking", which just refers to sex work. Far and away the most common kind of sex trafficking is a woman working independently trafficking herself.
https://humantraffickinghotline.org/what-human-trafficking/m...
The less legal sex work is, the more underground it needs to be. The more underground it is, the less recourse women have to address exploitation.
But while I get how this space would grant the women inside some freedom they could not otherwise have, I wonder how much its existence mattered for the women outside its walls.
Here, on the page 9 of this dissertation, we have a newspaper from before the revolution that describes the area as "cages" for women, most of whom are "caught in mental and/or familial issues and crisis", "some of whom never see daylight". The older ones, who apparently could leave, ended up "becoming child caretakers for younger prostitutes". In the middle of this "women's space", there was an open air "garbage dump", and "mattresses were made from the cotton of discarded sanitary napkins".
So yeah, a "prison" "concretely" belongs to the inmates.
https://open-education-repository.ucl.ac.uk//799/1/Sadaf_Tab...
In know, this is not the norm, but it does exist.
> Police reports from the Muzaffarī period (1896–1907) show that the most common punishment for women caught selling sex was a practice known as nafie-balad. This was a form of forceful banishment or eviction from the city targeted at sinful, criminal and undesirable subjects and those who defy social and moral conventions of the society ... One day, all the women suspected of selling sex were gathered and moved by military trucks to a nearby caravanserai outside of Tehran’s wall: "the wayward women were all thrown in there like sheep… later, houses were built and a neighbourhood took shape which was named Shahrinaw" ... Eventually, in 1953 the municipality bowed to public pressure and ordered the erection of a two-and-a-half-metre tall brick wall around Shahrinaw ... While the gate was open to men seeking illicit pleasure, women were allowed neither in nor out.
----
Perhaps I am being puritanical here, but I've never understood this obsession of some trying to associate women's right with prostitution. Everywhere in the world, even in countries where prostitution is legalised / regulated, it is only the desperate and economically weak women who are pushed into this trade and it invariably gives rise to a parallel and illegal industry of sex trafficking and forced prostitution. Worse, where it is legalised, the administration and police largely ignore such illegal sex trafficking as prostitution is now an "economic activity" (until of course there is a public outcry and / or international outrage - Denmark made child pornography illegal only in 1980's!).
Even where religious sanctions for prostitution are available, the prostitutes are both admired and looked down upon by some and face repeated sexual violence (God’s Wife, Every Man’s Woman: The Lives of 'Joginis' in South India - https://thewire.in/rights/photos-sexual-slavery-ban-telangan... ). I do know that there have been periods in the Islamic empire and in Asia, where courtesans, who also sometimes prostituted themselves (often not out of choice), had some semblance of respect and rights largely because they were also highly talented artists (singers, dancers, musicians etc) but mainly because they had the patronage of the rich and the powerful. But once that patronage was lost, they were often vilified by society despite their talents. (All said, I am really unsure on whether glorification of prostitution in the media is good or bad though).
And no, not all sex work is the result of sex trafficking.
At least, that's how I understood it.
To be honest, it's such a masculine thing to begin with.
So yes, it's very much a women's rights issue, as legalizing and regulating the industry would allow women who are interested in the work to do so with protections and without fear of jail time. They can operate with relative security.