Tehran Women's Rights Protest Turns Ugly

How sadly ironic to have to report this after I just finished this post.

From Persian Journal, Iran:

Seventy people were arrested during a women's rights protest in the Iranian capital, Justice Minister Jamal Karimi-Rad said. "Forty-two women and 28 men were arrested on Monday in an illegal gathering," Rad told reporters. However reporters put the number way higher than what mullahs' Justice Minister announced.

"Some of them may have been released and some of them could be here under temporary arrest," added the minister, who gave his weekly news conference at mullahs' notorious Evin prison.

On Monday, scores of Iranian women held a rare demonstration calling for improved rights. Some carried banners saying: "We want the right to divorce, the right to testify in the court and the right to be judges."

Under mullahs' pathetic islamic law, married women have to go through a lengthy process to be granted a divorce, and the testimony of two women is equal to that of one man.

More from Reuters UK:

A Reuters correspondent at the protest saw women and men being put into buses and others being beaten back with batons.

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"I want to know why the blood money for a murdered woman is half that for a man," said a woman who wanted to be identified only as Leila. "I am against laws that openly discriminate against women."

"Blood money" is compensation paid to the family of slain person.

Reading this makes my blood boil...as a woman, an American, and a human being. It also makes me think of this comment, quoted in a local newspaper article after Iranian-American artist Amir Normandi's provocative exhibit on the oppression of women under Islamic tradition was shut down within hours last October because Muslim students objected to the images.

Salma Habed, 20, of Hoffman Estates said some of the pieces continued with the stereotype that Muslim women are oppressed.

“We go to school. We have careers. It’s not like we’re oppressed like some people feel for some reason,” Habed said.

Pick up a paper, girlfriend. Open a search engine. You don't have to look very far to see Muslim women being oppressed.

Amir Normandi isn't "continuing with a stereotype" of women's oppression under Islam. He's shining a light on it.

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