Iran Bars Music in Private Schools, May Impose University Code and Saudi youths in trouble over MTV reality show

Two items appeared in the news recently that many would see as not related.  However even though one concerns Saudi Sunni Whabbists and the other concerns Iranian Shiites, they are connected by their ultra conservatism in Islam. Despite their declared hatred of each other, both versions of Islam work to impose Sharia on all of humanity and are united under the banner of Mohammed. 

It is important to note that the most radical elements of Islam are taking over the more moderate schools of Islam and will in time, dominate dar Islam.  For Westerners to believe that western values can coexist with moderate Islam is at best naive.  Moderate Islam is under just as intense attack as is Western civilization by the extreme versions of Islam. 

Below are the two latest examples of just how extreme the two houses of Islam are.

First from Iran:

FROM BLOOMBERG.COM:

Iran Bars Music in Private Schools, May Impose University Code

By Ali Sheikholeslami

June 1 (Bloomberg) -- Iran has barred private schools from teaching music, saying it clashes with the establishment’s Islamic values, following a push to enforce moral standards that may lead to a national dress code for university students.

“The use of musical instruments is against the principles of our value system,” Ali Bagherzadeh, head of the private- schools office in the Education Ministry, said in a phone interview from Tehran today. Iran’s 16,000 private schools have 1.1 million students, the Islamic Republic News Agency said.

Iran has set aside $1.5 billion to promote “moral conduct,” including enforcement of its dress code for women, “to solve the cultural and social ills” in society, Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar said on May 10. His comments followed the introduction of a code of conduct at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences that bans loud laughter, nail polish, high heels and immodest clothing for women and men.

The police will “deal firmly” with violators of Iran’s laws on moral conduct, Mohammad-Najjar said. A cleric at Tehran’s main Friday prayers, Iran’s largest, said in April that women who dress immodestly cause earthquakes.

Teaching music in state schools has always been prohibited, Bagherzadeh said. A school that teaches music may be permanently closed and its director barred from opening another school, he said. The ban applies to the use of all instruments, including those played in traditional Iranian music, Bagherzadeh said.
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And from our Saudi "allies":
FROM TODAY.MSNBC.COM:

Saudi youths in trouble over MTV reality show
Lawsuit has been filed for crime of ‘openly declaring sin’

By Souhail Karam
updated 6/1/2010 7:55:15 AM

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia's religious police are trying to bring to court three Saudi youths for challenging the kingdom's austere lifestyle on an MTV reality show — a new test of the country's stated commitment to reform.

Divisions have emerged within the influential religious establishment, including the religious police body itself, over long-held restrictions that have been enforced in the world's leading oil producing country and key U.S. ally.

An official at the Jeddah court confirmed the filing of the lawsuit for the crime of "openly declaring sin" and said it would take at least one week for the Islamic sharia court to decide whether to proceed with a trial or dismiss the case.

The Saudi judiciary system, based on an austere reading of Islamic sharia law, reserves harsh punishments for such offences that could involve lashes with whip and years of imprisonment.

Aired last month, MTV's "True Life — Resist the Power, Saudi Arabia" followed how three Saudi youths and a heavy metal band cope with the strictures they encounter in their daily life in Jeddah, seen as the kingdom's most liberal city. The kingdom is ruled by the Al Saud family in alliance with clerics from the austere Wahhabi school of Islam who oversee mosques, the judiciary and education, as well as run their own coercive apparatus, the religious police.

Interior ministry police and the religious police work together to make sure unrelated men and women are kept apart, women are covered from head to toe and that sharia law is implemented, including a ban on alcohol.

"We are not free to live as we like,"
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