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Ayatollah Khamenei Tells Iranians to Forswear Music
By Paul Wachter - AOL News(Aug. 3) -- Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Monday added an odd foe to the enemies list of the Islamic republic: music. "Although music is halal [permissible under Islam], promoting and teaching it is not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic," Khamenei said. His pronouncement came in response to a request from a ruling by a young man who asked the religious leader whether he should start music lessons, The Guardian reports. "It's better that our dear youth spend their valuable time in learning science and essential and useful ...
Iran Takes the Scissors to Western Hairstyles
By Theunis Bates - AOL News(July 6) -- Worried that Western ideas might be seeping into -- and onto -- the heads of their nation's young men, Iran's religious leaders have issued a catalog of acceptable "Islamic" male haircuts. Ponytails, spikes, mullets and Mohawks are now forbidden, but Elvis-style locks, floppy fringes and Simon Cowell-esque flattops get the ayatollahs' seal of approval. The entire selection of state-sanctioned styles will be revealed later this month at Tehran's Modesty and Veil Festival, whose organizers -- with help from Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance -- designed the hair guide. ...
444 Days: The Iranian Hostage Crisis Remembered
By Dana Chivvis - AOL NewsThirty years ago today, hundreds of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Iran, took 66 Americans hostage, and set off an international incident whose consequences still affect us today. In its November edition, GQ magazine presents an exhaustive oral history of the hostage crisis, gathered by 10 reporters from interviews of more than 50 people involved, including hostages, hostage-takers and policymakers. What emerges is a compelling story of the rise of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and the West's continuing failure to quell it. It goes like this. In the early morning of Nov. ...
Ayatollah Khamenei: U.S. and Britain Didn't Back Election Opposition
By David Sessions - Politics DailyIran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, now says there is no proof Western nations were directly linked with the uprising against his government -- a statement that seemed to contrast with his regime's rhetoric during Iran's explosive election earlier this year. During and after the controversial election in June, Khamenei accused the Western media and the British government of working with the opposition leader Mir Hussein Mousavi to overthrow the Iranian regime. Hossein Shariatmadari, a Khamenei adviser, insisted that Mousavi was a "foreign agent" working for the United States. But ...
Iran's Former President Calls for Protesters' Release
By Ria Misra - Politics DailyTens of thousands gathered around Iran's Tehran University as former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani called on the government to release the protesters arrested since Iran's disputed presidential election in June.CNN reports Rafsanjani said: "Let the enemy not laugh at us and criticize us. We must sympathize with those who have suffered damages. The system cannot lose them. If the system reapproaches them they will come back to us." As Rafsanjani spoke as part of a Friday prayer service, police were aiming tear gas at protesters outside. Rafsanjani is not the first influential political ...
Iran: A Government on the Verge?
By Ria Misra - Politics DailyAs the rest of the world has watched the turmoil in Iran unfold, one of the takeaways for many people has been the ideological splits between Iran's government and Iran's people. But, as the crackdown has accelerated, the future of the dissidents has been looking more and more uncertain. Now, a split between the government and the politically pivotal clerics may be the critical leverage that finally forces not only the overturning of the election results, but maybe of the ayatollah as well. The New York Times reports that Iran's politically influential group of clerics, the Association of ...
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Popularity Problem
By Ria Misra - Politics DailyMahmoud Ahmadinejad has decided who is to blame for the unrest in Iran. Is it the officials who rigged the election totals so that many cities had voter turnouts of over 100 percent? The militia members who attacked the protesters in the streets? Himself? No, Ahmadinejad has decided the fault lies with Barack Obama. ...
Imaginary Numbers in Iran's Election
By Ria Misra - Politics DailyHow do you create a phony 11 million-vote lead? That was the question that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei posed to the Iranian electorate on Friday in one of his rare political addresses. The answer he was hoping to hear was that you don't, that the very size of the victory margin should be enough to kill off any allegations of fraud. Well, it turns out that one way to create a phony 11 million-vote lead is by having more votes than voters. ...
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