This content was created by Dennis Prager. This content was uploaded by Dennis Prager. This is a YouTube commentary titled "Iranian Woman Whipped For Standing Up For Her Human Rights" (created 2024-01-08T21:29:17Z). It is a spoken monologue by Dennis Prager describing and reacting to the reported 74-lash punishment of Roya Hashmati for alleged hijab violations, summarizing related reporting (Daily Telegraph, BBC Persian), referencing the Mahsa Amini–triggered protests in Iran, and offering personal views on religion, secularism, and women’s rights (including an anecdote about meeting an Iranian atheist in Australia). The piece is opinion/editorial in tone and focuses on Iran’s treatment of women and broader cultural/religious implications.
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Here's a country that is behind the attempt to annihilate Israel and create another Holocaust: Iran. From the Daily Telegraph: Iranian woman whipped 74 times for refusing to wear hijab. 33-year-old was charged with encouraging permissiveness after several Tehran outings. Roya Hashmati, 33. You know, she didn't even wear a head covering on her way to prison. See, this is a hero. She should be the man of the year— the person of the year, excuse me. An Iranian woman received 74 lashes for refusing to wear the hijab, defying the strict dress code even as she was taken to be whipped. 74 lashes. I mean, I could see that necessitating hospitalization. I could see that creating scarring. Roya Hashmati. Well, are you going to put the, put the article up on my website? It's a beautiful woman. My heart breaks. And if she weren't beautiful, my heart would break too, just for the record. But I do have eyes, and I report what I see. Roya Hashmati was charged with encouraging permissiveness after appearing unveiled on several occasions in the capital. Is it unveiled or no head covering? I'm curious. You have to wear— you have to wear a veil in Tehran? I think they got this wrong. Her penalty of 74 strokes of the lash was carried out in accordance with the law and with Sharia. That's Islamic law. And for violating public morals, the judiciary's Mizan online website said late on Saturday. Ms. Hashmati was also reportedly ordered to pay a fine of 12 million rials. Rials of the Iranian currency. You know how much 12 million rials is? £225. You realize, I mean, they should reconfigure their currency. I mean, go to the grocery store, you, you spend millions of rials. How's that for depressing? The convicted encouraged permissiveness by appearing disgracefully in busy public spaces. Yeah, they were wrong about the veiled line, the Telegraph. They have to be careful. It's a good paper. All women in Iran have been required by law to cover their neck and head. Shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, whippings for breaching the dress code are uncommon, although officials have increasingly cracked down on those defying the rules after the practice surged during anti-government protests that began in late 2022. The mass demonstrations were triggered by the September 2022 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd arrested for an alleged breach of the Islamic Republic's strict dress code for women. During the protests, female demonstrators cast off their headscarves or even burned them. Yeah, they killed a woman for not wearing a head covering. As the lashes struck my body, I whispered, in the name of woman, in the name of life, dawn will come. BBC Persian quoted her as saying, well, Well, by the way, it's very interesting she didn't do in the name of God. What Iran has produced is probably the highest percentage of atheists in young people of any country in the world. The percentage of young Iranians who are atheist might be greater than in Finland. My wife and I were in Australia. Why were we there? Well, I guess I was there to give a speech. Why do I go anywhere, basically? And we had— we were going to go to the Sydney Opera. We did go to the Sydney Opera, but prior, either prior to or right after, we sat outside at a beautiful café. And a beautiful waitress came over to our table and we began talking to her and I asked her where she was from. She said Iran. I said, are you Muslim or Christian? And because a fair number— or Jewish, I think I even added Jewish because a lot of Iranian Jews outside of Iran, and she said, "Well, I was born Muslim," or, "I was raised Muslim, but I'm an atheist." When religion is presented as despicably as it is in Iran, as a source of evil, it is. Religion, see, I'm quite in the middle here. The end of religion in America is the end of America. The end of religion in Iran is not the end of Iran. It would be a renaissance for Iran. Circumstances determine things. If you kill a person while robbing them, it's murder. If you kill a person while defending your family, it's self-defense. I would love to see more secularism in Iran and I would love to see more Judeo-Christian religious life in the United States. I don't believe that's complex. My bottom line is what is good, what promotes good. To think that the— my God. Basically, for the last 2,000 years, the West has given women more rights than Iran does today.
