Sluts and earthquakes

Hojjat ol-eslam Kazem Sediqi, the acting Friday prayer leader in Tehran, delivered a televised sermon at the Tehran University campus mosque last week. Given the wretched den of sin and iniquity in which he was speaking (all institutions of higher learning are like this), it is perhaps unsurprising that he chose to sermonize on the "prevalence of degeneracy" in modern society. Every generation of hypocrites laments the lapsed morals of the generation following theirs, nothing new there. When the degenerate youth asks why they need to behave exactly as their parents claimed they did, the elder generation rarely has anything convincing to say. But last Friday Sediqi put his finger on the real reason that strict Islamic morality is necessary, at least for women:

"Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society which increases earthquakes," he explained.

Tens of thousands of people have died in Iran earthquakes in the last decade.

More than 25,000 people died when a powerful earthquake hit the ancient city of Bam in 2003.

You heard it here first: 25,000 people died because some hussy pushed her veil an inch back to feel the sun on her forehead.

This is hilarious, but the "Unveiled women cause adultery" argument makes me crazy.  Male arguments for the necessity of the veil always puzzle me, because they are an admission of profound moral weakness. The veil is actually an insult to men: the statement it makes is that men are so very fallible that the very hint of a strand of hair will inevitably drive them into a lustful frenzy, after which point they cannot be held responsible for their own actions. It ascribes less agency to members of the male sex than most people ascribe to small children. For one of the most patriarchal religions in the universe, that's just... weird.