Muslim clerics encourage Iranian youth to find joy in economic war

Iranian youth have used social media to share music and dancing videos and many have been detained for doing so.

By TZVI JOFFRE
IRANIAN SUPREME Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivers a speech during a ceremony marking the death anniversary of Islamic Republic founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in Tehran on June 4, 2017 (photo credit: REUTERS)
IRANIAN SUPREME Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivers a speech during a ceremony marking the death anniversary of Islamic Republic founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in Tehran on June 4, 2017
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Muslim clerics in Iran are encouraging Iranian youth to find joy in the economic conflict with the United States, according to Radio Farda.
"Joyous were the Iranian youth engaged in military battles, and the joy of our youth today is stepping into economic war," Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda said at Friday prayers in Mashad, Iran, referencing the eight-year Iraq-Iran War that killed and injured millions and heavily affected the country's economy.
"Cheerfulness among youth will not materialize through illegitimate music and dancing of a handful of vagrant girls," Alamolhoda added.
The Ayatollah was referencing videos of schoolgirls dancing to rap that spread on social media. Public dancing, especially by women, is strictly forbidden in the Islamic Republic and the videos are currently being investigated, according to Radio Farda.

On May 24, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made similar statements during sermons across the country.
Iranian youth have used social media to share music and dancing videos and many have been detained for doing so, according to Radio Farda.
In July, Iranian State TV broadcast a video of a girl "confessing" to sharing videos of her dancing to Western pop and rap music without the obligatory Islamic dress code, which requires women to cover their hair and body in public.
The girl was sentenced to four years in prison and 80 lashes by the Islamic republic's judiciary.

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Iranian religious officials have attacked frivolity throughout the Islamic republic's history, according to Radio Farda.
"Music stupefies persons listening to it and makes their brain inactive and frivolous. Music is no different from opium," Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic republic, told Radio Darya, a radio station that played songs for vacationers in northern Iran, in July 1979, soon after he returned from exile at the start of the Islamic republic.


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