I  2009-10 oplevede Iran masseprotester, optøjer og en truende revolution eller måske endda borgerkrig i kølvandet på Mahmoud Ahmadinejads genvalg som præsident. Mens de protesterende råbte valgsvindel og død over diktatoren svarede styret igen med vold og mord ved styrets bølle arme, den såkaldte Basij og affærdigede opstandende som startet og koordineret af zionister og CIA. Selv om opstanden fik en martyr i  Neda Agha Soltan holdt styret fast og udnyttede det til at rydde ud i oppositionen ved en række anholdelser og attentater.

Selv om opstandende ikke handlede om for og imod islam er den iranske befolkning splittet i et skizofrent forhold mellem de herskende konsekvente muslimer og en veluddannet liberal vestliggjort ungdom. Det er svært at se det som andet end et symptom på en voldsom identitetskrise når Irans egne myndigheder anslår at ca. 5 mill. iranere er narkomaner og mange flere tager stoffer jævnligt. Men, hvad myndighederne ikke taler om er det totale sammenbrud i de seksuelle normer, hvis man skal tro The Date Reports Zoe Mendelson

I asked if girls in Iran have sex before marriage and one of the men speculated that 10 or 15 years ago only 10 percent of girls would, but that now the percentage is probably closer to 90. I was genuinely shocked, and tried to play it off like I wasn’t such an ignorant American thinking that Persian women were just bundled up virginal victims. And then things got even realer.

The woman chimed in, “In Iran it’s hard core. People think they’re so repressed. But because they are so repressed, they go to extremes to compensate. Have you seen what Iranian girls look like? They’re totally dressed up and made up and with the hair… they take advantage of things more. They’ve got like three boyfriends, they’re always screwing around… it’s like intense. It’s like orgies and shit. Seriously.”

I was dumbfounded. “Three boyfriends?” I asked. “Yes! More!” Replied one of the men, “They’re always lying!” he said, feigning spite, and then in a high-pitched voice said, “I love you. I love you. You’re the only man for me.” The other man laughed and nodded.

“How do they do that, if there’s no bars —“ I started to ask. They were starting to catch on to my astonishment and were all smiling.

“There are bars; they’re just at home. Everything is private. We make our own vodka. In the capital city, in Tehran, it’s like drugs and orgies,” one of the men explained.

“Orgies?!” I asked. “Like really?!” And they all nodded yes. At this point they were all grinning because they must know how misconceived the rest of the world’s vision of life in Iran is. The woman said she hadn’t been to any but she had heard about plenty. Then one of the guys with a knowing smirk said that yes, parties sometimes do turn into orgies. I pointed out that he was smiling and he laughed.

I thought they might be putting me on, but a Spaniard I met later who had just come from Iran verified all of this and beyond.

“Yes well, if everyone drinks so much so much and there’s a lot of drugs…” He explained that since Tehran is so close to Afghanistan, which produces a huge amount of drugs, “Iran is the gateway of drugs to the West. You can get anything you want.”

The female cousin mused: “Iranians are very influenced by American culture. They’re obsessed. Illegally, of course, but everyone’s on to it. Movies, TV, everything. Anything that’s out there.  And they overdo it. They say, ‘Oh, Americans have sex casually, lets have sex casually times 10.’”  Both men agreed. I was floored.

I was genuinely shocked, and tried to play it off like I wasn’t such an ignorant American thinking that Persian women were just bundled up virginal victims. And then things got even realer.

The woman explained, “basically the country is divided into two halves: the supporters of the government and the liberals. There’s public life where everyone is covered. You can’t laugh in public. You can’t hold hands with someone or you’ll get arrested. And then there’s the private life of the liberals, and it’s very indulgent. My family, my uncle, he has a mansion and they have massive parties, sex, everything goes.”

The Spaniard told me he had been to crazy parties in Tehran and that as soon as the girls walked in, “se quitaron todo,” they took off everything. He said they wore short shorts and dresses, “casi nada.”

I just kept saying, “really?!” and it was starting to make the men laugh. “Really!” they kept answering. They also assured me of the presence of a massive gay underground community in Tehran as well as the prevalence of prostitution.

Den beskrivelse af  harmonerer godt med at iranerne er holdt op med at reproducere sig selv. For en enkelt generation siden fødte den gennemsnitlige iranske kvinde 7 børn; nu er det 1,5. Islam møde med moderniteten er hårdt. Iran, som Persien før det har altid haft civilisatoriske ambitioner. Det iranske projekt  med at hævde sig som en regional stormagt kan kun ske som moderne nationalstat, men det udelukker en islamisk identitet. Hvis Iran gerne vil bygge atomvåben og droner og føre cyber-krig er de tvunget til at videreføre shahens politik og sikre befolkningen den uddannelse, der underminerer den muslimske livsstil. Når først folk har anet mulighederne for egen formåen er islam ikke længere et trygt sammenhold, men klaustrofobisk stilstand. Og klaustrofobien får civiliserede persiske piger til i protest at smid sløret i en aktion der kaldes Stealth Freedom

Now some Iranian women (…) have taken to Facebook to post photos of themselves veil-less. Instead of wearing the veils, they’re wrapping them around their necks, holding them up or flying them like ceremonial flags. The veils are everywhere except where the government says they’re supposed to be—on women’s heads, covering their hair.

A Facebook post earlier this month from liberal Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad sparked the movement, which has grown under the hashtag #???????????? (translation: #stealthfreedom). It has spawned a Facebook page of its own, which gathered over 30,000 likes in its first five days.

The movement’s creator, Alinejad, lives in exile in the United Kingdom, where she works for OnTen, a satirical news show that’s broadcast into Iran by Voice of America’s Persian Service. “I just asked women to send selfies of their private moments of freedom,” she says. “When I was in Iran, I would take my head scarf off when I was out in a field or some place private, and I wondered how many Iranian women [did the same]. Apparently a lot.”

Og Wall Street Journal skriver

Mothers and even grandmothers have even joined the cause posting pictures. In one, three generations of women stand on a boulevard lined with trees. Their headscarves are casually draped on their shoulders.

The grandmother writes, “We wish that the new generation tastes this most basic freedom before their hair goes gray. Is this too much to ask?”

In some of the pictures a male family member joins the woman, as a signal of approval to ward off criticism in a patriarchal society. Some men even write encouraging comments below the pictures and praise the women for their courage.

“Iranian women may not have a lot of freedom but they have always known how to go around the system and find it,” said Masih Alinejad, a prominent Iranian journalist in London and the founder of the page.

Ms. Alinejad is best known for her gutsy interviews with Iranian officials and reporting on the regime’s human rights violations. She said that the idea to create this page came to her after receiving a flood of comments from her female Iranian fans on a picture of herself joyously running down the street in London, her curly dark hair swept upward by the wind.

Women wrote to her saying they were envious of her freedom to not wear the veil. They told her that sometimes, in stolen moments of liberation, they too, shed their scarves.

Ms. Alinjead then posed a question on her public Facebook page asking if women cared to share such pictures. At first she thought she would post them on her own page but pictures flooded her inbox, more than 50 a day, from ordinary women who were not activists or dissidents. She decided the women needed to be seen and heard with their own separate page.

“Social media has turned into a mirror for Iranian women to be able to reflect the realities of their lives,” said Ms. Alinejad.

Iran er en kampplads mellem moderniteten og islam. Islam er en fremmed religion, der har besat Iran og således er Iran et billede på, hvorledes en europæisk islamsk virkelighed ville se ud. Men iranernes oprør ville ikke eksistere var det ikke for at de kunne bruge Vesten som spejl via bl.a de sociale medier, der minder iranerne om at de også engang var mennesker og ikke slaver. Vestens frihed er det lys de søger mod for at komme ud af tunnellen. Hvis Vesten skulle blive islamificeret - og det bliver vi ikke - vil alt hensygne i mørket. Men lad os hellere slutte med det dannende billede af det iranske kvindelige individ, der lader hånt om moralpolitiets slaver og går med sit slør som hun vil…