Tehran, we have a problem!

Guest post by Fredrik Dahl

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Wearing a brightly colored headscarf and high-heeled boots, the woman refused to be bundled into the police van without a fight.

Protesting loudly and even trying to escape, her standoff with Iranian police cracking down on women violating the Islamic dress code lasted several minutes.

But the outcome of the drama shortly after dusk on a cold winter's day on Tehran's most famous boulevard was never in doubt.

Two female police officers in head-to-toe black chadors pushed her into the white vehicle which then drove off into the bustle of tree-lined Vali-ye Asr Avenue.

"Hijab problem," one male onlooker said, referring to the clothes women must wear in Iran to cover their hair and disguise the shape of their bodies to conform with Iran's Islamic laws.

Based in Tehran for the past year, I have often written about police detaining women who challenge the dress codes that have been more strictly enforced under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But this was the first time I saw it happening.

To judge by the passers-by who stopped in the lamplight on the snowy pavement, or the people peeping out through the windows of the neighborhood grocery store where I was buying milk, my curiosity was shared.

The dark-haired woman, who appeared to be in her 30s, argued in a high-pitched voice with a burly, bearded male police officer towering over her in his green uniform.

When his female colleague put a hand on the woman's shoulder to lead her into the van, she angrily pushed it away and shouted. Then suddenly she turned and tried to run away.

She did not get far. The two female officers grabbed her and shoved her into the police vehicle. The door was slammed shut and the van disappeared into Tehran's evening rush hour.........!

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site http://www.god-101.com/

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com

Aqsa

Over the course of the last fifty years Canada has become one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world and the City of Toronto is far and away THE most social, cultural, ethnic, racial and religiously diverse city on the planet.

We get people from all over the world coming here to start a new life for themselves and the only thing that is asked of them is that they leave their old religious and cultural hang-ups behind.

No, we are not the great "Melting Pot" that the United states is, we are instead more of a soup that uses all the ingredients from the many immigrants who come here to flavour the Canadian mentality with it's distinctive character.

Gone are the days when each culture kept to themselves and did not intermingle with other groups and beliefs.

Now all that is required of our new arrivals is a basic respect for Canadian institutions and rule of law.

Several years ago there was a concerted effort by Muslims to implement "Sharia Law" into the fabric of Canadian Society and thank God for cool heads who rejected this attempt at changing the face of Canada and it's legal system.

Accommodation's can and are made for cultural and religious practices, but only in the context of fitting in with the generally accepted parameters of what it considered the "Canadian Norm!"

In other words, we don't like first generation immigrants trying to change what "was" and "is" into what they believe it "should be!"

The reason for this will be explained in a little story I am about to tell you.

Aqsa Parvez came over to Canada from the Middle-East with her family and is a second generation Canadian.

Her father, Muhammad Parvez, 57, is a first generation immigrant who still holds the customs and beliefs of his home country dear and "religiously" follows them at home and in the community.

Aqsa Parvez's friends told authorities that the teen had been having arguments with her father because he allegedly wanted her to wear a traditional Hijab. >(Head Cover)

"She kinda wanted to go a different way from the way her family wanted her to go," said one friend. They also said that she wanted to escape the family conflict by running away.

All this came to a head yesterday afternoon when her father caught her walking around the neighborhood without her Hijab on and dragged her home with him.

We are not sure what happened next, but when it was all over Aqsa lay dying on the kitchen floor.

It's safe to say that she will be buried wearing her Hijab!

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God at www.God-101.com and the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com

Christian Values!

Opinions are starting to polarize in Europe concerning the head scarf debate and the influence of Islam on the population in general.

A Munich court on Monday upheld a ban on Muslim teachers (All two of them!) wearing head scarves in schools of the State of Bavaria under a law that says teachers' attire must be in line with "Western Christian" values.

A Berlin-based Islamic association had complained about the law, which authorities in the conservative-run state of Bavaria have used to ban head scarves while allowing Roman Catholic nuns to continue to wear their head-covering habits in schools.

The Bavarian Constitutional Court ruled Monday that the application of the law in the state neither violated religious freedom nor was discriminatory.
An Islamic head scarf represented a "deliberate separation from western values, and that is not compatible with our constitution," Wolfgang Bosbach, a legislator for Chancellor Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, said on television.

However, a lawyer for the Islamic Religious Community said some of its members were considering taking their case to the Federal Constitutional Court, Germany's highest court.

The Bavarian law forbids teachers from wearing clothes or other items during lessons that seem to express views "incompatible with the basic values of the constitution and its educational goals, including Western Christian educational and cultural values."

Personally, I don't care because as these three pictures prove, there's not really much of a difference one way or the other, is there!

But, this is another example of how repeated demands by a minority for expression of their beliefs and culture can lead to a backlash from the majority!

Ask the Jews, or the Blacks, or the Italians, or the Irish, or the Chinese, or the Sikhs, or the East Indians, or the Pakistanis, or the Native Americans, or people from Iowa, etc. etc!

It seems the only thing that will cure this is TIME!

Just as it did all the other times!

Your "Choir Boy" scribe;
Allan W Janssen

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) www.God-101.com