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Things have changed in the Muslim world in the past few decades. Not to something new, as you might expect. But things have changed back to the way things were centuries before. For example, check out these Iranian students at The University of Tehran in 1971. Note the bright colors, cutting-edge fashions, short skirts, and stylish haircuts:
Iran now has laws that require women to wear the hijab. Women who refuse to comply with the Muslim dress code face fines, imprisonment, and worse. An Iranian woman named Amini was sent to a "re-education center" where she later died in a way that most of us would prefer not to contemplate. So now women are not free to wear current fashions as they did in the picture above from the 1970s. Women in Iran now dress a bit differently:
No wonder Muslims are having trouble getting along with the West these days, right? If Muslims have left modern times to return to the customs and laws of hundreds of years ago, they may struggle to understand Western society.
True. But there's another reason.
Check out this picture of American female college students from the early 1970s:
Similar fashions as the picture at the top from Iran in the early 1970s. So, 50 years ago, coeds in Iran and America had a lot in common.
That would appear to be less true today, if you look at this picture of an example of American college women today:
Yes, I know. There are still American women who are actually women.
But as the trans movement dominates the press, and we have men competing in women's sports, participating in women's beauty pageants, and attending women's colleges. This has led many around the world to think that, in America, there are significant numbers of people who can't even figure out if they're a man or a woman.
So the Muslim world moves from 1970 to 850 AD. At the same time as America moves from a world-leading culture to, um, to whatever is going on right now.
My point is it's not just that the Muslim world moved 1,000 years away from us. We've also moved, in a very different direction. Americans often say that the Muslim world has gone crazy. But Muslims are saying that about us, too.
And we both have a point.
I'm not sure what has caused all these remarkable changes, all over the planet, over the past few decades. But the whole world seems to be going bonkers, all at the same time.
Historians are going to look back at the end of Western Civilization and wonder what the heck happened.
Discussion (48)
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It’s a crazy world.
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That purse does not go with that top or that skirt.
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We can’t see shoes though. His accessories might be matching.
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One side behaves as if the past/traditions don’t matter, while the other behaves as if the past/traditions are the only thing that matters. Roughly.
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That is interesting. That's what happened in Afghanistan too, before and after the Taliban.
It must be the case that the Taliban-like Muslims have taken over Iran.
That explains a lot. I thought Iran was doing better in heading toward modernity. But I guess not.
The extremists are hard on everyone, but they are especially hard on women. The suicide rate is going up, just as it did in Afghanistan:
I think the hardest thing to deal with in this life is loss. It harder to lose something than to never have had it. For women in Afghanistan and Iran, the loss of a more modern life is too much to bear after having enjoyed some freedom.
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