NICOSIA, Reuter: Spiritual Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini said the person responsible for a radio interview in which a woman allegedly called a soap opera actress a better role model that the prophet’s daughter could face execution, the Iranian news agency said.
Khomeni, quoted by the Iranian News Agency Iran, said Iranian radio had broadcast a shameful programme on Saturday about the ideal Islamic woman.
The person who has aired it is to be punished and expelled and those involved must also be punished. If proven there was a deliberate insult…the person who has made the insult receives a death sentence,” Irna quoted Khomeini as saying.
The Agency gave no details of the programme, broadcast on the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed’s daughter Fatima, in which women were interviewed about their role in society under Islam. But the daily said the section that caused offence was an interview with a woman who said she could not accept the Prophet’s daughter Fatima as a model because she lived 1,400 years ago. The woman preferred the female star of Japanese TV soap opera, she said.
But parliamentary speaker Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, speaking at the closing session of a conference on Islamic women in Tehran, gave a different version.
He said the reports he had seen indicated the interview had said women would be disappointed if they choose Fatima as their model because they would never be able to emulate her pure character.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 10, 1989
