Wave of Acid Attacks in Iran

bbbunnamed“I was never more scared than I am now. I am scared of going to class, doing normal chores, driving a car, and even walking in the street. I am really afraid of motorcycles. Do you know what will happen to my life if one of these people throw acid in my face?” Azita, a university student in Isfahan, anxiously told me. Her neighborhood, Jolfa, has become a target of a new wave of acid attacks against young girls. Women are not even safe in their cars, as the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) has reported that in October 15, witnesses saw an incident of an acid assault by a motorcyclist on a 27-year-old woman who was in the car with her car window left open.

I was born in this neighborhood — to be more specific, in Hakim Nezami — and lived in this area of Isfahan for two years of my youth. Although the issue of acid attacks against women has been prevalent, and on the rise, particularly in countries such as India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, I have never heard of acid being a threat or an issue targeting women in the Islamic Republic until these recent developments.

Reportedly, a series of acid attacks mainly by motorcyclists has been carried out against Iranian women because they were badly veiled and their hijabs did not meet the Islamic dress code of the Islamic Republic. The acid assaults in countries such as India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan have been more aimed at female victims, who, according to the aggressors, cause their family to lose honor due to premarital sex or “indecent behavior” with the opposite sex.

According to the imposed dress code of the Islamic Republic of Iran, women are supposed to wear a complete hijab, preferably a black chador, which covers their heads, necks, and bodies. The cloth should be loose in order to not expose the frame of the body. As a result, anything beside this criteria is marked as a bad hijab. The punishment for not wearing the hijab has ranged from arrests to lashings, fines, torture, and imprisonment. In the beginning years of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and 1980 when the hijab was imposed, secular female movements protested but many women were stabbed as a result. The fear and use of brutal force centralized the dress code imposed by the Iranian regime.

The overwhelming majority of Iranian women opposed this forceful theocratic law by pushing the boundaries set by the state. Over the years, they have slightly changed the dress code by wearing colorful, small, and thin veils, which hardly cover the hair and exposes some hair in the front and back. In addition, young girls have been slightly exposing some skin (ankles, arms, etc.), along with wearing tight coats, shirts, and clothing that reaches mid-thigh.

Since millions of girls across the country have been resisting the theocratic and Islamic social order, the government has found it impossible to arrest all these women and put them in jail. Notwithstanding this fact, the Iranian regime has had moral and Islamic vigilantes in the streets, who randomly arrest and drag women to the police station and the “Amre Be Maroof va Nahi az Monkar” office: the Center for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

The major question to address is why and who these abusers are who are attacking innocent women with acid for not wearing the hijab properly? From my perspective, and having lived in the Islamic Republic, I do not think that ordinary Iranian people, even the religious ones who are not connected to the government, would commit such acts. Culturally, socially, and historically speaking, acid attacks have never been a method of torturing innocent women for not complying with dress code in the Iranian society. Iranian citizens are well educated and many of them favor Western secular ways of living to the status quo and theocratic, authoritarian Islamic rule.

One speculation and presumption behind these egregious human rights abuses can be traced to the Iranian regime itself. Under the presidency of the “moderate” cleric, Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian parliament has recently given more power to moral police, vigilante Islamic groups, and moral patrols in the streets, by passing laws that grant freer rein to these groups to monitor and spy on the society. Some of these powerful moral and militant groups, which have gained more power from the Iranian parliament, are Basij and Ansar e Hezbollah (the Supporters of the Party of God).

Some motorcyclists have been noted to ride large bikes and have conservative appearances. Some motorcyclists are also causing women to believe their faces are being burned by throwing water and cleansers into their faces. This is more a method of imposing fear in the society. Outrageously, militant and fundamentalist groups such as the Basij, Ansar e Hezbollah, intelligence, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, view women’s improper dress as the underlying reason behind these acts against them. As a result, for them these kind of egregious abuses are totally justified.

Since the Islamic Republic is incapable of controlling and imprisoning millions of women who are challenging the Islamic power structures of the regime, the acid attacks might be a new method employed by governmental vigilante groups to impose fear in the society, particularly in women, and coerce women to comply with the Islamic dress code of the Islamic Republic.

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  • http://johnnyangeladvocacygroup.net JohnnyAngel Advocacy Group

    This is the real war on women !! Where are libunists on this ? Silence

    • Softly Bob

      Evil doesn’t like to complain about evil.

    • Pete

      You want to know where the libunists are?

      Really?

      I think these libunists are brain damaged.

      “Besides which, Muslim women are fighting for their rights over their clothing choices all over the globe where they’re curtailed by cultural standards.

      Like everything else within Islam, clothing standards is one of those things that will be discussed and revised during a reformation.

      Blah … blah, blah, … blah. bklach, blah, … blah”

      - Americana

      Seems like the women are fighting and losing.

    • CapitalistPig

      “Professional Courtesy”

  • Pete

    New era burkha wear

    Women of the Ummah, survive Islam, buy and wear safety goggles.

    It is a dangerous Islamic world out there!

  • Pete

    Set the motorcyclists up.

    Display a woman and set her up for an acid attack. It will take a brave woman, but they are already braver than people who go about surreptitiously maiming women on fast getaway motorcycles.

    When the motorcyclists comes by stick a bar between the spokes.

    Okay that won’t work. But you get the ideal. These undercover morality police will not like it if they take casualties especially, if they break their necks and are a quadriplegic for life. It would be very bad for moral.

    The woman would have to be dressed like a stunt person. Maybe the stuff they use to protect themselves from fire could be applied to a woman before they shoot an on fire scene.

    Of course if you are caught the Iranian authorities will kill you.

    Maybe if the acid attacker is fixated on throwing the acid they won;t see a n oil slick, a pothole, nails, loose pavement. it would be very bad if they had to make a hard turn on such a surface. i would feel so bad for them.

    Maybe if they were stunned and the crowd saw the attack and saw the attacker laying there they would beat him to death. What will the Iranian government do if th e attacker”s name gets known and his employer’s name is also known?

    • SCREW SOCIALISM

      The Shahs regime didn’t treat women like the fascist ayatollahs do.

      DEATH to fascist iran!

      LONG LIVE PERSIA!

    • cree

      You’d make a good underground resistance fighter. Got a flashback to the WW2 underground against the Nazis. Or better, a Continental revolution soldier sabotaging the British.

      • Pete

        “Rafizadeh is also a senior fellow at the Nonviolence International Organization based in Washington, DC”

        I believe in nonviolence. I believe that some of the people working for the regime could be changed via means of persuasion. I believe this is necessary. I believe that people are obligated to try. This is water. It is one tool in the toolbox.

        I also believe in fighting fire with fire. When we fight real forest fires do we not use 3 or more techniques? We use water, fire retardant, fire break, & backfires.

        To He!! with those people who say do not fight fire with fire. We fought fire with fire in WW2. What would Tojo or Hit!er have done with Ghandi? Sometimes you have to be violent.

        Fighting fire with fire is the other big tool in the toolbox.

        Anyone who asks you to only ever use 1 tool is a deceiver and are not to be trusted.

  • SCREW SOCIALISM

    Give Persian women automatic weapons to defend themselves.

    • SCREW SOCIALISM

      DEATH to Fascist Iran!
      HANG the Fascist ayatollahs!

      LONG LIVE PERSIA!

  • Pete

    I am not volunteering anyone. I am volunteering an ideal.

    A guy could dress up in drag, a burkha.

    This would be il-legal, because the evil people are in control of the law.

    So what I am suggesting is terrorism against a terroristic government. Cells.

    It is not unknown for people to throw or suggest a concrete block be thrown at a speeding car, when the police do nothing about speeders. I have never suggested it, but I remember my neighbor talking about it. If we had lived in a rural setting and someone’s kid had been hit and no action was taken, I could see said neighbor do more than just talk.

    Bullies do not like to get hurt. If you hurt a bully they will lash out harder. But if you keep the pressure up they will desist after a time or be gone.

    ***
    Ballot box.

    We elected Obama in 2008. when the Persian Spring, the green Revolution, came that poser did absolutely nothing. He did far more for the Muslim Brotherhood 2 years later.

    • John Pallyswine

      HERE IS MY IDEA: Burn every mosque, burn every Koran, deport every Muslim to saudi arabia, all their assets are to be seized and given to a society to assist Arab Christians escape from those filthy places and Israel to invest in Iron Dome.

      • John Pallyswine

        Along with the Muslims, deport the Progressives/Liberals and ordinary leftists

  • Hard Little Machine

    Isn’t is funny how when a whole nation rises up to install sharia they actually go about it. I guess maybe the Iranian middle class’s duck & cover strategy of secretly having house parties with booze and secretly owning satellite dishes and praying to Allah no one finds out has sort of backfired on them. It’s your Frankenstein monster, YOU tame it.

  • Metatrona

    Throw acid at the perps’ groins.

  • Atikva

    If the Iranian women haven’t capitulated after the atrocities inflicted on them by the ayatollahs regime during the 2009 elections, it’s not a wave of acid attacks that will make them surrender now.

    Remember Neda Agha-Soltan, slain during a rally, remember Tarameh Moussavi, kidnapped, tortured and gang raped so savagely that her interiors got ripped off? I didn’t hear a peep from Mrs. Clinton at the time, neither about these atrocities nor about the ones perpetrated every day now against women in the Middle East. Obviously, she was more successful defending the rapist of a 12-year girl back in the 70s, but I can’t start fuming when I hear or read one of her moronic supporters mention her as a women’s rights champion.

    Some champion, indeed!

  • Atikva

    Don’t talk nonsense, will you? Go ask these women defying the ayatollahs at the peril of their life why they do it, they will put you to shame. And don’t even try to make a parallel between America and Iran as far as women are concerned, you have been ridiculous enough as it is.

  • Atikva

    Some of them do, but the Iranian women seem to be more intelligent, more resistant to indoctrination.