How About Escargot Instead of Osyters?
Oct 29th, 2009 by pedestrian
A poster you’ll see across Tehran and in many government buildings across Iran. No, the translation is not mine.
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This is just too funny not to share. Although I think the humor gets lost in my translation. Gives new meaning to the word “choice”.
A cleric, Hojjatoleslam Panahiyan was speaking about the hijab (the veil) on IRIB1 yesterday. Someone called in and asked: “women chose to put on the veil after the revolution [no they didn't, it was forced on them] so why don’t they allow us to choose now?”
He replied: “women didn’t choose the hijab back then, they were overwhelmed by the religious environment [that was created after the revolution.]”
He continued: “of course, it’s not right for women to choose the hijab just because they are overwhelmed by the circumstances and it’s better if women choose to wear the hijab in different conditions too.”
“The best way to promote the hijab is to have ladies who enjoy wearing it describe it for other ladies.”
He also asked “writers and directors to show the beauty of the hijab to society.”
Everything is so simple with these folks.
What exactly is the point to pearl in a shell? Pearl are precious and liked because of their beauty outside of the shell. Seems like a wrong massage to be sending out if the translation is indeed correct.
Arty, I agree with you about it not making sense, but from their perspective, they mean that the woman is the pearl and the hijab is the shell that “protects” her “beauty”/”fragility”/”vagina” … whatever!
Try not to think too hard about it, nothing they do really makes that much sense
The argumentation of the quoted cleric reminds me somehow of the 50s in the Federal Republic of Germany, when I was still a child. This suffocating atmosphere – in particular with regard to the gender question, to women !!!
Thanks to god, either some prudent people of the Allied occupational administration or some prudent individuals among the then responsible Germans had seen to it that death sentence – the main political argument of the Nazi-government – had vanished. The “spirit of death” permeating society could slowly fade out. The “spirit of life” came to the fore. But lots of people were still thinking that way. I remember the comments in newspapers ” ….(beetroot off ! the editorial staff). ….” – meaning “the criminal, just mentioned, ought to be beheaded” in the opinion of the editorial department of that newspaper.
Another factor which much later alleviated this choking atmosphere on all levels was the Catholic religious reform instigated by the Council of Bishops, called “The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, or Vatican II” 1962-1965 modernizing somehow the religious outlook.
The third alleviating event was then the youth and student rebellion at the end of the sixties/beginning of the seventies.
Without these three stages, one could perhaps report (some?) German news identical with the reports you are posting.
Postscriptum
Having pondered on your text, I feel forced to draw the following conclusion:
From the way your report and comment on the quotes by this cleric I have to deduce that a considerable number of, if not lots of people in Iran have a similar mental-spiritual distance to the inner core of his statements.
So there seems to be a (preached/mediawise communicated) ideology convinced (for/in/by itself and its propagators) to be mainstream on the one hand,
and – in contrast to this (falsely assumed as mainstream, purportedly mainstream) thinking – a widespread different, contrastive way of thinking (factually probably mainstream.
That’s unique, somehow unimaginable and unheard of – for me as a non-Iranian and foreigner at least; I absolutely cannot imagine at all that something like that has ever been conceivable in German history ! :
A society (nearly completely) built on irony ???
There must be innumerable, billions of jokes, of kinds of teasing, of comic allusions, and indeed a hidden, silent (but Gargantuan) laughter, where every day is – some minutes/hours long – some sort of stand-up comedy.
[If my deductions and suppositions are correct, that is - and that's the question !!!]:
A sensible answer to my question will only the wind or an Iranian be able to give.
A society (nearly completely) built on irony ???
German, if not anything else, I hope that reading this blog will make you realize how true your statement is!