the range of what can be included in the notion “cultural crime” has shrunk since the early 1980s. What in the 1980s was punishable as a cultural crime had turned in the late 1990s into a daily scene on the Tehran streets. In the early 1980s, a young man would frequently be warned and “corrected” by the Islamic club or moral police for wearing a short-sleeved shirt or clothes of a “delightful color,” or for talking to a namahram (unrelated) girl. In the late 1990s, the atmosphere was considerably more relaxed, particularly after Mohammad Khatami won the presidential election in 1997. Nevertheless, a new wave of harassment and terror was launched in the summer of 2002, when special black-uniformed police units equipped with black four-wheel-drive vehicles appeared in numerous northern and eastern districts of Tehran. More violent than before, these units have begun a war against such fesad-e akhlaqi (ethical corruption) as aloudegi-ye souti (sound pollution), loud music in cars and “depraved” private parties in Tehran.2 The anti-“cultural crimes” policies grew tougher after the victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005.
After the Revolution the Iranian clerics embarked on a comprehensive project to desecularize the judicial system, which had been affected by seven decades of Western-inspired modernization. They also had to mold it to fit a centralized theocracy,3 which implied fundamentally transforming the principles of Shiite law. Central legislation by the state replaced the ad hoc legal interpretation carried out by Islamic jurists (see Arjomand 1989). Clerics, however, occupied powerful positions in the legal system. In the Islamic judicial system, ethical and moral regulations replaced the civil code of law in all spheres, including criminal justice. New criminal laws were introduced to enforce Islamic morality and values. The transformation of society into an ummat (Islamic community) was followed by a reduction of the individual’s status from a legal subject as a citizen to a “servant of God.” The new legal system as adjusted for “God’s servants” is based on criminalization of sins. By making an increasing number of moral offenses criminal, legal reform has progressively reduced the autonomy of the individual (see Sanadjian 1996). When shariat (the Persian version of Arabic sharia) was extended to cover public law, the distinction between the illegal, the immoral, and the sinful disappeared. Thus, crime, vice, and sin become synonymous.
The Islamic Penal Code divides punishments into three categories: hodud, qessas, and taazir. Hodud is for crimes that endanger the moral order, such as adultery or drinking alcohol. Punishment of hodud is mandatory and is prescribed by the Qur’an. Qessas is for crimes against the person, for instance, homicide, punishments for which are mentioned in the Qur’an and hadiths. Finally, taazir is for all crimes for which there are no specified penalties in the Qur’an or hadiths. Thus, taazir, the criminalization of acts and the punishment given for them, is left to the discretion of the judge (see Bassiouni 1982). Islam views taazir as subject to rehabilitative and corrective punishment. Public flogging not only punishes the sinner/criminal with severe physical pain, but is also a “tangible preventive measure.”4
JUDICIAL VIGNETTE
The 18th Chapter: Crimes Against Chastity and Public Ethics
Article 638: Anybody who demonstrates unlawful [haram] conduct in public places will be sentenced to prison for between ten days and two months or to up to 74 lashes. And if his or her conduct is not punishable but nonetheless harms public chastity s/he is sentenced to prison between ten days and two months or to up to 70 lashes.
(a) Unveiled women who appear in public places and in the public’s sight unveiled will be sentenced to prison for ten days to two months, or a fine.
Article 640: The following persons will be sentenced to prison from three months to one year and to a fine of 1,500,000 Rial to 6,000,000 Rial and to up to 74 lashes:
(1) anybody who trades, distributes, or demonstrates in public paintings, drawings, text, pictures, publications, signs, films, cassettes, or anything else that harms public chastity and ethics.
Anybody who personally or through somebody else imports or exports, rents, or is the intermediary in the trading of the above-mentioned goods.5
OCCIDENTOPHOBIA
Since popular culture is seen as a manifestation of “Weststruckness,” it has been regarded as the main source of cultural crimes. Mojtaba Navab-Safavi, a radical Islamist operating in the 1940s and 1950s, identified Western imports such as the cinema and romantic novels and music as a “melting furnace, which melts away all the wholesome values and virtues of a Muslim society. . . . Moviehouses, theaters, novels, and popular songs must be completely removed and their middlemen punished” (Navab-Safavi 1357/1987: 4, 11, quoted in Naficy 1992: 179–80). After the Revolution, all forms of modern popular culture were banned and the entire industry of popular culture went underground or into exile. Los Angeles, with a huge concentration of Iranian pop artists, has been turned into a site for the production of the Iranian popular culture (see Kelley and Friedlander 1993; Naficy 1993). Irangelesi is the common term used to refer to this culture.
During the Revolution all emblems of Western popular culture were attacked as symptoms of impurity. Cinemas, nightclubs, discos, luxury restaurants, liquor stores, bars, music studios, malls were burned down or closed. In the opinion of Ayatollah Khomeini, the Pahlavis had tyrannized people by corrupting their minds: “Spreading the means of pleasure, and preoccupying people with unveiling, European clothes, cinema, theater, music, and dance” (Khomeini 1323/1944, quoted in Paidar 1995: 121). The first major event of symbolic importance to the Islamic Revolution happened when Cinema Rex in Abadan was burned down on August 10, 1978, and over 300 persons were killed inside it. Less than a year later as many as 180 cinemas had been burned, demolished, or shut down (Naficy 1992: 183).6
It was even worse in the case of music. All popular music, foreign or Iranian, was banned. At first, only military and revolutionary songs were allowed, but later on the clergy began to tolerate classic Western and Iranian. Classic Persian music is usually associated with spirituality and Sufism and is even referred to as “authentic music” (musiqi-ye asil). Popular Iranian music, in contrast, is seen as a “light” (sabouk) and “superficial” (sathi) imitation of Western pop music. Popular music is seen as harmful primarily for its hybridity and inauthenticity, and second for its relation to sexuality and immodesty. In the late 1990s a so-called Islamic popular music (mosiqi-ye pop-e eslami) was introduced to combat influences from Irangelesi culture.
A prevalent opinion among young Tehranis is that after the end of the war the authorities needed a new enemy. This enemy has been found in what the Islamic state has labeled the project of “cultural invasion” (tahajom-e farhangi). The invasion is perceived to be conducted by the Great Satan, that is, the U.S., and its “indigenous agents,” in order to demoralize young Iranians. Although “cultural invasion” has been a key term in the revolutionary discourse since the early 1980s, the political significance of the notion increased considerably after the war. Later, in the second half of the 1990s, it became the main political tool of the conservative forces. The propaganda of the state claims that a “cultural invasion” is more dangerous than military ones are. Mesbah Yazdi, the spokesman of the hard-liners, sees continuity between the military war and the cultural war:
We should believe that the previous war [Iran-Iraq war] is taking place today in the cultural sphere. If we had been defeated in that war, we might have lost territory, but if we are defeated in this war, it will mean the loss of our religion and faith and domination by the enemy’s corrupted culture.7
The youth are believed to be the main target of the invasion, the weak point of the ummat. The minister of education, Mohammad Ali Najafi, claimed, “It is our duty to combat the invasion of our culture that threatens the juvenile population. We should create a safety shield to
