Buffoon of the Week Staff
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has reportedly issued a fatwa requiring all cartoon and animated women to wear hijabs. You cannot make this stuff up.
From the Hindustan Times:
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa on Monday stating that women in cartoons and animated features must be depicted wearing a hijab, according to the country’s Tasnim news agency. Tasnim reported that Khamenei answered a question posed by the news agency asking if observing compulsory hijab is necessary for characters in animated features.
And you thought American media was bad. Yeesh.
Reportedly, Khamenei responded, “Although wearing hijab in such a hypothetical situation is not required per se, observing hijab in animation is required due to the consequences of not wearing hijab.”
Yeah. Follow THAT “logic.”
Law Professor Jonathan Turley talked about this “looney tunes” fatwa on his blog, actually trying to make sense of the nonsensical:
The story stood out for me because of our own struggle with the issue of virtual porn. Some have argued that laws against child pornography should apply even when no actual child is depicted in a purely computer generated context. In a 2002 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against a provision of federal law that banned computer simulations and virtual pornography under the first amendment. In Ashcroft v. The Free Speech Coalition, Justice Kennedy in a 6-3 decision found that the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 was “overbroad” and swept within its prohibitions many valuable and artistic works.
Admittedly, this is an interesting issue. But, this is Buffoon of the Week – we’re just bringing up this news because it’s bat$#!t crazy!
Our Take…
As shown by Professor Turley, there is some scholarly value to pointing out the absurdity of this fatwa. How will it be enforced? Is there a cartoon version of Iran’s morality police?
What immediately came to our minds for us is that we are already on this path of censorship. Just this week, Disney Plus warned of offensive content in “The Muppet Show”, for goodness sakes. We’ll get to that tomorrow. Clearly, corporate America is already giving in to such politically correct nonsense like Coca-Cola’s “Try Not To Be White” training.
How much of a slippery slope are we on?
