Iranian TV Star Could Face Stoning

This is one of those stories that gives me hope ... but for all the wrong reasons.

In Iran, according to der Speigel, the hottest selling product in the shops and kiosks around Tehran is a grainy two-year-old porno film that apparently shows a hugely popular Iranian film andTV star Sahra Amir Ebrahimi with her boyfriend, doing moves that make the Mullahs mad.

Over 100,000 of the DVDs have sold at the hefty price, for the Iranian ruin of an economy, at $13 each.

In her role on the hugely popular soap Narges, Ebrahimi is the devious intrigue player, dressed modestly in ankle-length coats and head scarves. In the film, she wears just a bit less. The film apparently became public when her boyfriend sold his old computer, with the old, nasty clip still on the harddrive.

Disposing of the "all the wrong reasons" side of this tale that I refered to in the lead, pornography would never be my first choice for the spark of a revolution. Revolution? The Imams' rule overturned? Ahmadinejad tossed aside?

Maybe.

Ebramimi is popular on television because she's too brash for the Mullahs, and that poses an interesting dynamic if the Mullahs move against her. She owes much of her popularity to the oppression that shackles Iran -- so can the Mullahs go Sharia on her?

Well, they sure should want to. She's now a hussy, the embodiment of all the evil of the West that the Mullahs want to crush in the name of Allah -- and that's got Iran's cantankerous attorney general very interested, according to der Speigel:

In the Ebrahimi case, the DVD's producers even face the prospect of capital punishment. Iran's much-feared attorney general, Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi, has gotten involved in the investigation, and he's demanding death by stoning -- a controversial punishment in Iran. Dorri-Najafabadi is arguing that the porn flick promotes prostitution, a thoroughly demonized activity in the country.

If Ghorbanali decides to go after Ebrahimi and the penalty is stoning, it will set up a hugely emotional battle of wills in Iran against those who have the power and are using it to impose Islamic repression on the people, and a people who once were more free -- even free enough to get caught up in addictive, demeaning porn -- and would like to recapture that freedom.

I keep hoping the people of Iran will free themselves. I doubt that it will be porn that sparks the revolution ... but wouldn't that be an ironic turn of events?

Related Tags: Sahra Amir Ebrahimi, Iran, Sharia, Islam, Porn