Iranian cleric beaten and hospitalized by “badly covered” woman

In the northern province of Semnan, cleric Hojatoleslam Ali Beheshti spotted a woman in the street who was not sufficiently covered to his liking. When he ordered her to cover herself up, she beat him to a pulp.

“I fell on my back on the floor,” Beheshti said. “I don’t know what happened after that, all I could feel was the kicks of this woman who was insulting me and attacking me.” Since the 1979 revolution that brought Shiite Muslim religious leaders to power, women in Iran have been required to cover their hair and body curves in public with head-scarves and loose-fitting coats, to protect religious values and “preserve society’s morals and security.”

Gruesome photo here

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

Oh. Dear. What a shame.
- ocker3
  
  It couldn’t happen to a nicer man
  - shutz
    
    It wouldn’t have happened to a nicer man.
- AttackHamster
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgOMVdD_Ajw
petertrepan

I bet they’re rethinking the wisdom of requiring all women to cover their faces. Maybe they’ll require them to wear license plates next.
- petertrepan
  
  Policeman: “Sir, can you positively identify any of these suspects as your attacker?”
  
  Cleric: (points) “It was her, I’m sure of it!”
  
  Policeman: “Sir, those are laundry hampers. The suspects are against the other wall.”
- Just_Ok
  
  She was wearing a bezerka
  - Felton / Moderator
    
    I thought it was a knee-qab, or maybe a hi-jab.
    - Just_Ok
      
      Glad she wasn’t Scottish. Coulda kilt him
      - Whydopeoplehate
        
        Maybe he should just tell her that he’s sari?
      - Stickarm
        
        What he did was sarong.
        
        (For my part, I apologize to Mr. Pynchon.)
      - ihavenomouthandimustscream
        
        Charlie Mackenzie – “You know, Scotland has its own martial arts. Yeah, it’s called Fuck You. It’s mostly just head butting and then kicking people when they’re on the ground.”
      - Just_Ok
        
        and squeezing their bagpipes
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        A swift kick to the haggis and it’s all over.
      - Felton / Moderator
        
        and squeezing their bagpipes
        
        Bagpipes: the original drone warfare.
scatterfingers

Maybe the women should be wearing boxing gloves and soft shoes, too.
Laurence Brothers

Sic semper tyrannis.
huskerdont

I don’t condone violence, but… well, I guess I do condone violence.

I do hope there’s not a backlash.
- ldobe
  
  Oh, there will be. This cleric will probably go about whipping up a frenzy among conservative men, and send them out to roam the streets in packs beating and killing women in order to soothe this cleric’s fragile ego. He’ll think “hey, I can’t go one-on-one with a woman, but at least I can send out packs of men to go and beat women for me.”
  - C W
    
    Yeah, this is probably going to lead to more violence against women, not less :(
http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm

While I don’t think that beating people bloody is generally a good solution to anything, I’m having just a little difficulty coming up with any sympathy for the victim in this particular case.
http://www.nunoncastors.co.uk/ James

It’s terrible when people are violently and forcibly intolerant of your point of view, isn’t it?

Also, lols.
- petertrepan
  
  I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who is outraged. Please join me tomorrow at Lam-fil-A to eat kaftas in support of his religious freedom of speech.
dioptase

Iran: where the women wear veils and the clerics wear cups.
Chuck

Maybe he strayed across the border into a neighboring country and got beaten up by a jogger.
DrunkenOrangetree

Now women have a new super-hero costume that everyone should like.
Dave Nash

It isn’t that I don’t have sympathy for this pious fraud, it’s just that 6.7 of the 7 billion people on Earth are in front of him in my sympathy line.
Conrad Housand

Wow. She really beat the shiite out of him.
- http://www.nunoncastors.co.uk/ James
  
  http://sadtrombone.com/
  
  ^_^
Layne

Only way this could be any more promising is if it was the start of a trend: women pummeling misogynistic frauds.

The only surprising part of this story is that he actually stepped forward to admit that a member of the so-called “inferior sex” opened up a can of whip-ass on him.
- ldobe
  
  What would make this hilarious is if it turned out that it was like an MMA fighter, or an Israeli spy in a burqa. You know the gag, when a guy who thinks he’s hot sh*t tries to pick on someone who looks weak and small, but when they stand up turn out to be 6’6″ and full of steroids and bison hormones.
- EH
  
  There are men who walk around with sticks, for instance hitting the ankles of women who are showing them. They just walk right up and do it.
  - ldobe
    
    Well, I’m a white male in America, so I don’t have much experience being subjugated. But believe you me, anyone who would dare tell me to comply with religious law is an utter fool, and will be punished immediately and severely with all force and weaponry at my disposal. There’s not many things that set me into a rage. The imposition of a religious regulation on me is one of those things. If you have the audacity to tell me I’m “going to hell” for doing something that bothers your god, maybe your god will stop me from beating the piss out of you. If not, then perhaps I’m stronger than your god. Or perhaps, your god just doesn’t care. I’m an atheist, so I don’t care to argue why your god didn’t save you from me giving you a hernia and a ruptured liver.
    - petertrepan
      
      Weapons aside, women have less force at their disposal. I assume this is the reason you never hear of a culture where women subjugate men.
    - millie fink
      
      Meanwhile back in Iran . . .
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      But believe you me, anyone who would dare tell me to comply with religious law is an utter fool, and will be punished immediately and severely with all force and weaponry at my disposal.
      
      And you’d be in prison ten minutes later and on the scaffold in a month.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Agenbroad/100002463876063 James Agenbroad
      
      “If you have the audacity to tell me I’m “going to hell” for doing something that bothers your god, maybe your god will stop me from beating the piss out of you.”
      Take a chill pill. Somebody SAYING that is hardly any kind of justification for beating the crap out of them. It is mixing in the threat of violence and state action COMPELLING one to dress in accordance with somebody else’s religious beliefs that suffuses this beat down with schadenfreude.
      - ldobe
        
        That’s absolutely true, and for some reason I got really worked up and emotionally involved in the report, so I posted something generally pretty stupid and definitely hyperbolic.
        
        Let me rewrite what probably would be closer to what would happen:
        
        If someone told me to conform to their absurd religious definition of modestly it would likely end with a shouting match and them running away as I pick up something heavy to throw.
        
        If they tried to physically MAKE me conform it would very quickly progress to maximum violence on my part with no graduated steps.
        
        I simply don’t tolerate anyone physically trying to make me do something against pricipal or will. It happened before when I was 16 at church, with a pastor who wanted everyone on their knees praying. Some idiot comes by the pew and puts a hand on my shoulder to push me down. I went batsh*t on him, and I was right to. He had to fet a few stitches, and had a concussion from hitting his head on the pew falling over when I stomped his ankle with all the force I had. My parents FORCED me to go to church, but that guy ended up paying for it. In the end the guy I injured blamed my parents for the whole incident and the pastor for the “policy of compliance enforcement”
      - EH
        
        Violence, even the maximum kind, is no match for the law. At the very least they have more maximum violence at their disposal than you do.
      - ldobe
        
        Reply to EH
        Also true. It was fortunate that I was a minor, who had objected to being forced to go to church in the presence of both my parents and a member of the church, also fortunate that this was in America, and also fortunate that I resorted to violence only after a member of the clergy attemped to physically “correct” me in my ways.
        
        If a number of those conditions weren’t met, I would have likely ened up with a JD record. And I understand that violence is often unnecessary or not justified, but if you are coerced into a situation you wouldn’t ever be in voluntarily, and a person tried to physically force you into a position you didn’t wish to be in, in America you are entitled to the right of self defense in most cases. And you may attack the person who is abusing you without invitation or permission. It’s a fundamental freedom we have. If someone tries to force you to the ground illegally, you are automatically entitled to fight back.
        Nobody asked me to be there, I was coerced with threats of disownership by the family and being kicked out of the house, and nobody informed me that my non-compliance would result in a physical attempt at “correction.” I made a scene and injured an idiot who thought he was some kind of shepard correcting a sheep. But it turned out he was trying to correct a polar bear, compared to his asinine assumptions of superiority and utter indifference to the fact that I bristled and gave him a glare as he approched to “show me god’s will”. As it turned out I was right, he was wrong, and my religiously brainwashed parents were and are still wrong.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    I had a couple of American coworkers who grew up in Jeddah. They were always getting hit on the head by the morality police when they went out without their heads properly covered.
joeposts

Hell hath no fury like a woman “badly covered.”
Guido Núñez-Mujica

Ninjab women rule!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=817134618 Gary L. Dryfoos

He said he’s ready to go out and do it again. Headline should have been “Cleric not beaten severely enough”.
- http://indigestible.nightwares.com/ Warren
  
  Now that is funny.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

I’ve got to say I really admire the cleric for having the courage to admit he was beaten up by a girl.
CSBD

I think there is a good chance he is lying about who beat him up to make a political/religious point.
- EH
  
  Hojatoleslam “Wide Stance” Ali Beheshti?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Christopher-Lee/100001074475538 Christopher Lee

Well, I hope he had a Cure Light Wounds spell ready.
- http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog
  
  C’mon man, I’m still at work.
simonbarsinister

Religious rule for women to hide themselves = Men who couldn’t possibly stop themselves from losing control and raping women if they saw their ankles.

I think the problem isn’t with the women. Somehow here in the “west” our women and men get along just fine without losing control.
- rhodian
  
  um, seen any rape statistics lately?
  - http://twitter.com/cjporkchop cjporkchop
    
    That’s much more to blame on rape culture and sick individuals than ladies walking around with bare ankles.
    
    You might as well say that it’s America’s rampant consumption of pork that’s to blame for rape.
    - rhodian
      
      Whoa there, I haven’t said anything about what’s to blame for rape (rapists) – I was making a comment on the suggestion that ‘…here in the “west” our women and men get along just fine without losing control’.
      - http://twitter.com/cjporkchop cjporkchop
        
        Bad wording on my part.
        
        Corrected: You might as well say that it’s America’s rampant consumption of pork that *incites* rape.
      - rhodian
        
        I’m not talking about what incites rape (NOTHING). I’m objecting to the suggestion that rape doesn’t happen here, as given in the words “our women and men get along just fine”.
  - Petzl
    
    Uh, we’re talking about the non-issue of “loose clothing inciting rape” not the issue of rape in general. Which by the way is obviously much worse in Iran because it’s much harder to report and much harder to convict.
    - http://twitter.com/cjporkchop cjporkchop
      
      Bad wording on my part.
      
      Corrected: You might as well say that it’s America’s rampant consumption of pork that *incites* rape
    - rhodian
      
      I’m not talking about that, since, as you say, it’s a non-issue. I’m suggesting that the figures don’t support the assertion that rapes don’t happen in the “west”.
- L_Mariachi
  
  They’re not worried about themselves losing control, they’re insecure and thus pathologically worried about other guys ravishing their propert^Wwomen. (I’m generalizing of course, but in an attempt to understand where that attitude comes from.)
http://twitter.com/randywalters Randy Walters

I paused for a few moments, trying to analyze the emotions I was feeling after reading this story. I’ve never in my life been a violent person; I believe Gandhi’s statement that “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind” is true, and always will be.

Still, there are – without question – individuals who are in desperate need of having the living $%&*#@! beaten out of them, and there is a profound feeling of satisfaction when it happens in such a poetic manner.

Lysistrata had the right idea; adding a little not-so-gentle persuasion to the mix makes for an even more convincing argument. I hope it catches on. Can you imagine? The sublime justice of seeing these troglodytes hoist on their own petard, as it were.
K-9

Violence is never the answer.

Unless you’re living under tyranny, then it’s definitely the way to go.
- Petzl
  
  Like India or South Africa, to name a few? Non-violence under tyranny was definitely the way to go.
dolo54

That wasn’t a burkha, that was her ninja mask! Also “yay”
John Maple

I guess she is guilty of littering then since she left him lying in the street.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/TGZ75URQ6DKTCNXV3RV36ZKALQ Matthew

Now that’s what I call a clerical error.
- Petzl
  
  I wish I had said that.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/TGZ75URQ6DKTCNXV3RV36ZKALQ Matthew

This guy should be the host of the Iranian version of “What Not to Wear!”
http://twitter.com/AbelUndercity Abel Undercity

Note to Iranian clerics: Next time, leave Wonder Woman be.
http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith

My cousin worked as a nurse in Saudi Arabia for five years. She told me that one day a member of the religious police approached her in a shop and snapped cover your hair to which she responded cover your arse and walked out. I suppose she must have been pretty sick of Saudi by then.

I imagine that local women hear this kind of thing all the time, like every day for some and the repetition can drive people mad.
miasm

The Cleric had the audacity to claim that his beating constituted the worst day of his life.
This is rather, a more enthusiastic form of what some Buddhists call ‘grandmotherly kindness’ and he should be glad of the correction.
- Just_Ok
  
  worst day of his life…so far.
Petzl

Problem here is that the Iranian fascist state can always deal violence back much greater than it receives. They publicly hang people off of tow trucks and fire truck ladders. For things like adultery. How much more brutal will they be when someone challenges the religious status quo like this. It’s literally treason to them. Look for there to be demonstration hangings of women in the near future.
http://flarenut.livejournal.com/ paul

So is there any sourcing that suggests this story is true? Think of all the stories where a convenient social scapegoat has killed/kidnapped/beaten a perfectly righteous person in a way that confirms all of their pre-existing beliefs about why members of that group need to be kept under strict control, by force if necessary.
http://profile.yahoo.com/ZIMCPH25GTEN64AFQRDUBH7X4U dee dee

The next time he opens his big mouth, maybe it would be just to put a piece of gum in it.. Just sayin…
http://francisjav.tumblr.com/ FrancisJav

He messed with the wrong “badly covered” ninja!
http://www.nogunarmy.com/ monstrinho

sadly with Iran internet being almost completely blocked he’ll probably never know that the entire western world pointed and went HAHARR! like Nelson Muntz.