This kind of appeasement is ongoing, but it’s particularly grotesque in light of the recent freedom protests in Iran.
“Swiss Envoy’s Visit To Iranian Shrine Triggers ‘Hijab-Gate’ Controversy,” by Antoine Blua, Iran Wire, February 23, 2023:
The head-to-toe black outfit worn by the Swiss envoy to Tehran during her visit to a Shia shrine this week has sparked outrage both inside and outside Iran, as the country has been swept by five months of nationwide protests demanding more freedoms and women’s rights.
The Iranian authorities have unleased a brutal crackdown on the anti-government protest movement, killing more than 520 people and illegally detaining over 19,000, activists say. Following biased trials, the judiciary has handed down stiff sentences, including the death penalty, to protesters.
Hard-line Iranian media widely published photos showing Swiss Ambassador Nadine Olivieri Lozano meeting clerics in the central city of Qom on February 22. She was wearing a long black veil that covered her head and the rest of her body.
According to Iranian media, Olivieri Lozano’s visit was intended to familiarize herself with the Islamic culture, art and architecture of the shrine.
Kijan Espahangizi is a Swiss-Iranian historian at the University of Zurich and a member of the Free Iran Switzerland solidarity collective. He tells IranWire that the outcry caused by the pictures of Olivieri Lozano has been very strong among Swiss-Iranians.
Espahangizi says articles in the Swiss press questioned the ambassador’s outfit choice, suggesting it revealed a false understanding of Switzerland’s neutrality and disrespect for the popular protests in Iran.
“We are shocked by these pictures because the ambassador was not wearing only a headscarf but a long, black veil. Everybody who knows Iran knows that even small differences in the headscarf have a meaning. For us it’s very clear that either the ambassador has no knowledge of these differences, and it would be total incompetence, or they did it deliberately, which would mean a disinterest in the developments taking place in Iran or that they are supporting the narrative of the regime that wants to legitimize its Islamist theocracy in the eyes of world.”
Darya Safai, an Iranian-Belgian member of Belgium’s parliament, tweeted, “While millions of Iranian women are fighting for women’s rights and knowing that thousands have been killed for it, she wears a hijab and makes publicity for the oppressors.”
“Disgusting,” she added.
Human rights lawyer Hillel Neuer said Olivieri Lozano had become a “star of the murderous regime’s propaganda.”
“While women in Iran are being beaten, blinded, tortured, raped and killed for daring to protest the compulsory hijab laws, she is complicit in her head-to-toe chador and hijab,” Neuer tweeted….
Donovan Nuera says
THe only explanation that I have, after years of observations, is that Western liberal women, having grown up in the 1970-1980s whene it was cool to denigrate Bible Thumpers (and branch out and castigate Catholics especially), they did not think they would need to ever crack open a learner’s guide on the koran because they thought all of these religions were the same and equal and if islam was against the Church, even better. Plus they have this fetish about exotic fabrics.
(Similarly, this is why you never hear a US female politician comfortably spout off facts from WWII (battles, planes, names of ships, generals, heroes, etc..) as they just are not interested in stuff like that. They always come across stiff and cardboard and fake as they were just handled a bullet-pointed account of a WWII fact or gave a false story about a “relative” who “liberated [insert name of any prison camp]” Unless you have someone like Ann Coulter , who said out loud what normal people felt after 9/11 about converting the conquered muslims, as your “envoy” to a muslim country, don’t keep putting up the charade of “powerful tomb raider GRRRLSSS” as envoys. They always put on the exotic fabric scarf things. Every time!!
somehistory says
I saw in the news that Anglelina Jolie and her children all cut their hair in support of the Iranian women protesting the tyranny.
And then, there are those who don’t have a clue, like the idiot in the article. It is “disgusting” and worse; it enables evil.
https://hollywoodlife.com/2023/02/21/angelina-jolie-cuts-daughters-hair-art-exhibition-women-iran-photos/?utm_source=related-article&utm_pageType=article-with-linked-gallery
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Except that she supports islamic supremacy when done by the Palis. Wonder what’s so special about Iran in her book?
somehistory says
I wondered that too, as my memory seemed to recall something unfavorable re; her some time previously. I just couldn’t be sure I was remembering correctly or it was another hollywood person.
Trouble keeping up with all the stuff coming down the pike, Thankfully, i can recall that islam is bad all of the time, no matter from where or by whom.
Aum says
A Big win for the Mullahs.
PRCS says
Along with this recent incident:
US ambassador to Lebanon wears hijab during meetings with pro-Hizballah officials
https://jihadwatch.org/2022/12/us-ambassador-to-lebanon-wears-hijab-during-meetings-with-pro-hizballah-officials
Walter Sieruk says
It’s terrible that the government officials of Switzerland are striving in the quest for appeasement of the vicious regime of Iran with brutal and oppressive misogyny.
As observes by Iran’s Islamic “morality police” of Iran even go so far as to raise a terrible horrendous brutal fuss over a little bit of hair showing on a woman’s head not only proves true the old saying that “Evil is always looking for an excuse.” But this also further exposes the malicious and oppressive misogyny of Islam and of that Islamic tyranny of Iran.
For that vicious and cruel “mullah regime” of Iran is brutal and cruel violator of human rights. Especially regarding the human rights of girls and woman.
For example, to imprison women for not wearing the hijab is but one part of the anti-female tyranny of this tyrannical “mullah regime” of Iran.
That ruthless cruel brutal heinous Islamic regime of Iran that is so unfittingly has the word “Republic” in its title ,for its called “ The Islamic Republic of Iran” [ I R I].
That brutal cruel Islamic tyrannical regime of Iran is full of ruthless malicious misogyny.
On the topic of this Islamic tyranny of Iran a former Muslim revealed that “The IRI system recognizes women as dependent upon men and incomplete human beings who need to be supervised and controlled by men and the State. This author further exposed that “Women are created for the purposes of giving pleasure to men and child bearing – functions that confine them to the home” This is a male Chauvinistic as can possibly be.
In addition this writer further makes it known that “The IRI legal system still retains traditional patriarchal bias that can be described as nothing but systemic subordination of women , which is undoubtedly a human rights violation .”
This author further reveals that “Iran is of what Islamic fundamentalists desire, an Islamic State, and the consequence of achieving it “State Terror. Instead of utopia, Iran is an Islamic totalitarian nightmare…” and “the Islamic Republic of Iran exists and operates as what every Islamic fundamentalist dreams of, an Islamic state ruled by Sharia …What followed its establishment was the inevitable consequence and inexorable logic of its Islamic premises; state terrorism, a merciless tyranny.” [1]
This heinous Islamic has been also exposed by another author who was born and lived in a Middle Eastern nation for many years. She wrote “Female freedom and independence is one of the greatest sins in Islam…” and “Women in Islam are considered unclean, deemed inferior even to dirt.” [2]
All this is wicked, unjust and misogynistic to the extreme. Islam had not regard for human life, regardless of what the apologists for this religion will claim.
[1] THE ISLAM IN ISLAMIC TERRORISM BY Ibn Warraq. pages 345-347.
[2] THEY MUST BE STOPPED by Brigitte Gabriel pages 62, 172
Walter Sieruk says
It’s awful that the officials of Switzerland are “caving in” with efforts of appeasement of the vicious regime of Iran with brutal and oppressive misogyny.
That heinously cruel and murderous Islamic tyranny of Iran is very brutal and vicious to the Iranian people. Especially regarding females. Both girls and women.
The murder of Mahsa Amini is very sad and tragic and that horrendous evil of her being murdered is because of the oppressive vicious brutal cruel and deadly misogynistic Islamic regime of Iran.
That action of male Muslim who are officials murdering defenseless, helpless women in cold blood is a heinous and hideous has occurred before and if that murderous Islamic regime isn’t overthrown such wicked killing will continue
Another example of such callous despicable heartless anti-female evil is when a teenage girl in Iran was talking to her boyfriend on the phone and then the Islamic state “police” walked over to her and shot her dead. They did that wicked and malicious thing to her because she was talking to her boyfriend and they also didn’t like her clothing. [1]
That was a clear cut case of murder and vicious Islamic madness by Iran’s Islamic state “ police”, who call themselves the “Revolutionary Guards”, they got away with their hideous and malice –filled evil because the mullahs as well as other villains in power in that tyrannical Islamic regime.
[1] A TIME TO BETRAY by Reza Kahlili page 240