Mick Hartley

A few years back it was dogs:

A conservative Iranian cleric has denounced the “moral depravity” of owning a dog, and called for the arrest of all dogs and their owners.

Dogs are considered unclean in Islamic law and the spread of dog ownership in Westernised secular circles in Iran is frowned upon by the religious establishment.

“I demand the judiciary arrest all dogs with long, medium or short legs – together with their long-legged owners,” Hojatolislam Hassani is quoted as saying in the reformist Etemad newspaper.

Now he’s talking about women:

A top Muslim cleric in Iran, Hojatolislam Gholam Reza Hassani said on Wednesday that women in Iran who do not wear the hijab or Muslim headscarf, should die.

“Women who do not respect the hijab and their husbands deserve to die,” said Hassani, who leads Friday prayers in the city of Urumieh, in Iranian Azerbaijan.

“I do not understand how these women who do not respect the hijab, 28 years after the birth of the Islamic Republic, are still alive,” he said.

“These women and their husbands and their fathers must die,” said Hassani, who is the representative of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei in eastern Azerbaijan…

It is believed that his statements and the arrests could spark a fresh crackdown on women who do not repect the Islamic dress code in Iran.

Thousands of women in Iran have already been warned this year for their “un-Islamic dress” such as wearing tight, short coats and skimpy headscarves.