Parastoo Ahmadi sang while wearing a sleeveless dress during a concert livestreamed on her YouTube channel in December 2024. Iran’s laws ban public performances by women and require them to wear headscarves and modest clothing.
Iran’s judiciary launched proceedings against the 29-year-old after the video went viral, gaining millions of views, saying the performance was “in violation of the country’s legal and cultural regulations”.
Pretending it’s religion that’s enabling these evils distracts from the real evil in the room. Religion is merely a distraction, a tool to achieve the goal. The goal is always control and power. By placing the focus on religion, you’re saying that if we ‘solve’ religious extremism (this is a very racist train of thought that I can get into if you’d like), we’ll get rid of these terrible actors, while you and I and everybody with an inkling of critical thinking skills know damn well that if it wasn’t religion they’d use something else as that tool. Shared trauma is a big one that’s used often.
We need to remove these evil tools even if they are going to then use others.
You want to remove religion? Won’t you be just another oppressive asshole then? What’s the difference between a regime that forces their religion onto people and a regime that forbids people from following their religion? Both are extremely authoritarian, you’re just pretending it’s for a more noble cause, while a religious person would say they’re doing it for the more noble cause. You’re no different.
Why would anyone not let Nazis do whatever they want? Don’t want to be a Nazi, do we?
The paradox of tolerance strikes again.
Tell me you don’t know what the tolerance paradox is without telling me you don’t know what the tolerance paradox is.