If a young man or lady were to dress from head to toe in European fashion...

If a young man or lady were to dress from head to toe in European fashion, this showed that they were really somebody, whereas if they were to dress like the other Muslims, they would be considered extremely backward. European styles were the criteria, the type of clothes one wore, these determined backwardness or progressiveness. Everything we used had to be from the West. They turned us into a country of consumers.

(417) 8 March 1982 (17 Isfand 1360 AHS) Those who can remember those days know only too well what this criminal traitor did with the aid of his perfidious agents who had no homeland, and what measures they took to lead the innocent women astray, to turn them into consumers and drag them into corruption in order to expedite the success of their plans.

It is enough for the present generation, who did not experience those black days, to look at the books, poems, writings, plays, songs, newspapers and magazines of that period and the centres of corruption, the gambling houses, liquor stores and cinemas which are all vestiges of those times.

Alternatively, they can speak to those who lived through that period and ask them what acts of oppression and betrayal were carried out against women, this segment of the population that nurtures human beings, in the guise of advancing their position. (418) 14 April 1982 (25 Farvardin 1361 AHS) When you looked at society, at men and women both, you saw that it was their appearance that determined their worth: what kind of clothes they wore, how they were tailored, what kind of make-up they wore.

Whoever dressed better and with greater chic was held in higher esteem by the people. A woman who copied the European style of dress and make-up commanded more respect and admiration from most other women than those who didn’t. The value system was based on the material. (419) 26 December 1982 (5 Dey 1361 AHS) Throughout the not-too-distant past, especially in the recent centuries, we were deprived of progress in any form.

Perfidious statesmen, and the Pahlavi family in particular, along with the dissemination of propaganda discouraging domestic achievement and instilling in the people a lack of self-worth and a feeling of self-contempt, worked together to stop us doing anything that would ensure our development. They imported goods of every sort, preoccupying the men and women, particularly the young generation, with all kinds of make-up, styles and luxury goods imported from abroad.