ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Position of Women from the Viewpoint of Imam Khomeini (r.a.) The crimes perpetrated against women and the plots devised against them by imperialism and the Pahlavi regime Loss of self-esteem and Westernisation Loss of self-esteem and Westernisation They disseminated propaganda with the aim of making you ladies lose your self-esteem and of Westernising you.

Beauty products had to come from the West, the latest fashions had to be brought in from the West, and you had to change every day in keeping with the changes in fashion. Everything of yours came from the West. This is what they propagated and everyone fell into this habit (of copying the West). If word arrived that in England, for example, such and such was the fashion, and then all previous models would have to be discarded in favour of the new one.

When they were designing a dress for Farah, for her coronation I think it was, the designers flew back and forth many times at immense cost all for the sake of one dress! What is amusing then is that according to the newspapers, she used to say ‘our children share their clothes, the younger wearing the elder’s hand-me-downs’!!

This said by someone who sends her designers abroad three times simply to get the design right, and spends I don’t know how much, 150,000 tumans or so, on the design of just one dress! What was their aim behind all this? They simply wanted to shut your eyes (to other things). (410) 3 May 1979 (12 Urdibihisht 1358 AHS) They (the Pahlavis) completely did away with promoting human values in Iran, replacing them instead with values from the West.

And it wasn’t the good Western values they proceeded to spread among us, rather the corrupt ones. It was perhaps during the period of the son (Muhammad Riza) that most of our spiritual values were destroyed. But in his time (the time of the father, Riza Shah), one could say the oppression was more noticeable. They tormented the women more then, as indeed they did all the people.

(411) 2 July 1979 (11 Tir 1358 AHS) I can say that during the reigns of this father and son, our ladies suffered more than any other segment of society. Perhaps most of you cannot remember what they did to the ladies in the time of Riza Shah, what calamities they created on the plea of wanting to make Iran like Europe, of wanting to modernise Iran and bring half of its population into society. You have no idea what they did to the ladies.