An Iranian monarchist who filmed herself pulling the headscarves off Iranians in London fled to Israel after UK police announced they were investigating her.
The woman allegedly responsible is an Iranian pro-Israel activist called Bahar Mahroo, who later closed her Instagram and TikTok accounts and claimed she found the videos online. However, a reserve image search found no sources for the video, other than her Twitter account.
There is no reason to believe that this woman is not herself a Muslim. Not all Muslims are in favor of head scarves. Iran was a Muslim country while the Shah ruled it too despite head scarves not being required in Tehran at the time. Is she a horrible person? Did she do something unconscionable? Absolutely. But I think calling her a racist for what she did when she could be Muslim herself is going a bit too far.
Yeah I mean she seems to be frequently on pro-Israel protests, is a right wing supporter and an Iranian monarchist. Exiled Iranians are usually hardcore atheists and combining this with her political views and her ripping off hijabs off women’s heads I think this paints a pretty clear picture.
I’m honestly asking this- are they? I’ve never heard this before. Where did you get that information from?
Edit: I should add that I was fairly active in the atheist community in Los Angeles, which does have a large Iranian/Persian population, and I don’t remember them being prominent members of the community, but it’s been a long time now, so I might just be forgetting.
I grew up in Europe in a place with a lot of exiled Iranians and have a lot of colleagues/ university buddies from there. Have a friend still living in Iran as well. This is of course kind of anecdotal but I think in general it wouldn’t be a controversial take in European countries.
I think it’s also kind of implied because they were the losers of the revolution and more conservative/religious people just tried to keep their heads down. The Iranian regime sucks even by middle eastern standards but if you’re not opposing them you can kind of get by.
I’m not at all familiar with the American-Iranian community so it may be very different over there.
The same applies btw to the new wave of Turkish immigrants. Again very anecdotal but alone in my last workplace I had like 20-30 Turkish colleagues who came to the EU from Istanbul recently and I didn’t know a single of them who was religious. Not that it matters in this post but what I’m trying to say is that societies and migration are more diverse than how it’s portrayed in the media.
It’s definitely far more diverse. I’m sure there are very religious people who left Iran and also atheists. There is also a small but significant Armenian Christian community in Los Angeles that emigrated from Iran. Wikipedia tells me there are still Armenian Christians in Iran, which surprises me.
Ah you’re quick, edited something in still sorry about that.
Yeah I was also surprised, there’s also still Arab and Kurdish speaking people and a huge percentage of people actually are Azerbaijani not Persian.
It’s a cool country and I’d love to visit some day, just seems more difficult every year.
Rasicm does appear to be her motivation
What is Muslim to you? This is a prime example for how western people see Islam as a race, and therefore people from Iran are automatically classified as muslim.
There’s a very good reason to believe that this woman is not a muslim, and that’s the whole purpose of the article: she’s harassing Muslim women for the sole reason that they wear a piece of clothing showing that they’re Muslim. That you are unable to recognize this as what it clearly is, anti Muslim bigotry, is revealing your own bias against Muslims.
I was going to write a substantive response to this, but since you’ve already decided that I think Islam is a race when I told someone else below that they were mistaking Iranians for Arabs just shows you don’t really care and want to berate someone.
Do you have any other reason than the woman being Iranian for your remark that there’s no reason to believe she’s not a muslim? You don’t, so my comment stands. You decided that she being Iranian is a good reason to assume she’s Muslim, despite the article saying she was attacking Muslim women. We both know why, so stop clutching your pearls and have look at your own assumptions.
Sorry, I’m not going to have a legitimate conversation with someone who called me a racist when I said nothing racist.
Also, we have a civility rule here and you have broken it twice now. Please do not continue.
You can hide behind whatever rule you’d like. I’ve been more civil in my replies than your remarks call for. And it’s pretty clear in my unedited comments for everyone to see. Knock yourself out with whatever rule you need to hide behind, in order to avoid having an honest look at your own beliefs and biases.
As I suggested at the beginning, what you are looking for is not a discussion, it’s a person to berate. All you do is keep proving it.
However, I will indulge you:
I could point you to multiple different posts I have made where I have shown that it is clear that multiple ethnicities of people in different parts of the world are Muslims and they practice Islam in different ways.
Those posts were in response to two misogynists claiming that Muslim women who did not wear headscarves were either sinners or not Muslims.
One of them also said Iranians are Arabs.
And yet rather than attack them for their misogyny and one of them for saying something that really is racist, you attack me for daring to suggest that maybe an Iranian woman is a Muslim because we don’t know what she claims her religion is right now.
Just amazing.
I’d stick around and wait for your criticisms of their posts, but you’ve latched on to hating me and once you’re on that hate teat, I know how hard it is to let go.
I don’t ‘hate’ you, you’re just a commenter on Lemmy. I pointed out the obvious bigotry in your assumption of the woman being Muslim because she’s Iranian, despite the article making it clear she was harassing Muslim women. And you have done absolutely zero to dispell that conclusion. Assuming that my criticism is ‘hate’ just makes it clear that you’re unwilling to examine your own ideas from a critical perspective. Criticizing the civility of my comments reinforces the same conclusion. I’ve been very matter of fact, criticizing the substance of what you’ve written. I haven’t made any personal attacks as far as I can see. But you just keep doing the holier than thou thing.
Pointing to other bigoted comments doesn’t change the bigotry in your assumption, it just points to even more bigoted assumptions. Yeah, yours is more nuanced, but a more nuanced bigotry doesn’t mean it’s not bigotry.
Again, you assumed an Iranian woman is Muslim despite the article making it clear she was being bigoted against other muslim women. Ask yourself why you made that assumption if not because in your view, Iranian=muslim.
I assumed nothing. What I said was this:
Lying about what I said in order to continue to berate me is not a good way to go about doing things and I do not advise you either lie or call me a bigot again unless you wish to take a long break from this community. Rule 5 in the sidebar is very clear:
You are engaging with neither good faith nor respect. And you will have one more opportunity to do so.
Incidentally, I literally talked about Iranian Armenian Christians in another comment, making your lie an extremely silly one.
I’ve spent a good 60 seconds looking at this picture trying to figure out what it is supposed to mean and I still don’t know.
It’s a reference to Redditors circlejerking about the same picture of an Iranian woman wearing a bikini in the 1960s. The rest of the country was not dressed like that at all but it makes for a good propaganda story about how the west liberated Iran by overthrowing their government.
For more information https://www.reddit.com/r/Izlam/comments/8tpg4l/imagine_thinking_you_understand_the_history_of_a/
And no Muslim that practices the faith will tell you wearing a Hijab is optional for Muslim women. It is not a contested opinion among any scholar either.
Cool, I wasn’t doing that. I was explaining why she might be a Muslim and still be against them.
I look forward to seeing you tell all those millions of religious Turkish women who do not wear anything on their head that they are not Muslims. I hope you forward me their responses when you let them know you have decided what their religion is.
Edit: South Asian women too.
Even if they don’t wear hijab, they’ll acknowledge that it’s obligatory and what they’re doing is, in fact, haram. If you say hijab isn’t obligatory without an excuse like not knowing the correct ruling you do, in fact, cease to be a Muslim according to Sunni Islam consensus.
Ah, you speak for these women do you? Are you even a woman yourself?
Your interpretation of Islam is not the only interpretation of Islam.
There is no scholar disputing this. Turkey is heavily secularized you might have heard of a guy called Atatürk.
If a woman doesn’t want to wear a Hijab that’s up to her. But you don’t claim this is a contested subject among any Islamic scholars or part of Islam. It’s stated extremely clear.
It is extremely clear based on your interpretation of Islam. Clearly not the case in South Asia or in Turkey. Let me guess- In Pakistan, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, women are unIslamic.
This is some hardcore misogyny you have going on.
There’s no mention of Hijabs in the Quran and “dress modestly” is very much relative. You also may or may not see Turks drinking plum wine but they’re definitely drinking beer and most definitely Raki.
Yes alcohol is now halal too. Everything is halal if a Turkish person does it. That is what I have learned today.
As I said, there is no debate about this among scholars whatsoever. Every scholar except sheikh barsoap agrees that covering the hair is obligatory.
https://blog.hautehijab.com/post/10399809-ask-haute-hijab-is-hijab-really-mandatory-fard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijab#Alternative_views
“Clear and decisive scholarly consensus” my ass. There might be if you’re ignoring everyone who disagrees.
My bad I did not know about sheikh Karen. These Christian Europeans know so much more about Islam.
So you picked out one non-Muslim (a scholar of comparative religion) among the many Muslims, with doctorates in Islamic Law from Arab universities and everything, to dismiss all of it.
I tried not to but I have to start to doubt your intellectual honesty. Not towards me, I don’t care, but towards yourself.
There is, in fact, a clear mention of hijab in the Quran. More than one in fact.
I can’t believe I’m getting involved in this but then you can surely show where it’s mentioned clearly?
Surah al nur, verse 31.
It then explicitly assumes that they’re wearing a headcover. The main debate around this verse and similar ones is whether the face and hands must be covered or not, and not whether everything else must be covered.
Aha and which translation did you choose?
Do you speak Arabic? More explicitly, to an extent that would allow you to understand the nuances in a verse like that?
I’m asking because I still don’t see any proof that it is clearly written anywhere.
If you follow the madhhab of YouTube and you rely too much on Sheikh Wikipedia, you may draw this conclusion but it’s really more nuanced than this and I thought we’re past this kind of radicalism where only one opinion is valid and everyone else goes to hell since ISIS got busted more or less.
It’s a bit tortured, I think. Tourist is visiting a scenic vista which we might call reality, and chooses to take a photograph of a photograph of that same vista, preferring the curated and potentially slanted view that it presents.