Several clerics sitting as MPs in the Iranian parliament have criticised the Tehran police chief for showing excessive zeal by ordering a crackdown on women's high boots, a newspaper said on Wednesday.

No officials have the right to mix religion with emotions and issue decrees and implement them on behalf of clerics, clerical MP Seyed Hadi Tabatabai said: Such behaviour tarnishes Islam.

The police last week launched what was termed a "winter" crackdown on unIslamic dressing, to follow an unusually vigorous summer drive against women whose clothing was deemed overly flimsy.

Tehran police chief Ahmad Reza Radan said women who wear high boots with their trousers tucked-in would be targeted by the moral police, as well as those who sport hats instead of headscarves and short tight winter coats.

Iranian police have closed down 24 Internet cafes and other coffee shops in as many hours, detaining 23 people, as part of a broad crackdown on immoral behavior in the Islamic state.

The action in Tehran province was the latest move in a campaign against fashion and other practices deemed incompatible with Islamic values, including women wearing high boots and barber shops offering men Western hair styles.

Using immoral computer games, storing obscene photos ... and the presence of women wearing improper hijab were among the reasons why they have been closed down, Colonel Nader Sarkari, a provincial police commander, said.

Sarkari told the official IRNA news agency that police had inspected 435 coffee shops in the past 24 hours, and 170 had been warned.

Many young Iranians are avid users of the Internet, some using chat rooms to socialise with the opposite sex. Mingling between sexes outside marriage is banned and many Web sites considered unIslamic are blocked by the authorities.

In a separate campaign, IRNA said police had inspected 275 restaurants in the capital to check compliance with a new ban on smoking in public places. The ban includes water pipes, known in Iran as qalyan, offered in some outlets. Of those, 138 received a warning and 17 were shut down, police official Mohammad Reza Alipour said.

Iranian police have arrested 49 people during a crackdown on what the Islamic republic deems "satanic" clothes.

Mahmoud Rahmani, head of police in the northern city of Qaemshahr, where the arrests took place, denounced Iranians who wore western-style clothes and haircuts: Police confronted rascals and thugs who appeared in public wearing satanic fashions and unsuitable clothing.

He added that five local barber shops were closed and twenty more warned for promoting western hairstyles. These are believed to include spiky haircuts.

Periodic crackdowns on western styles have been a feature of Iran since the Islamic revolution brought the ayatollahs to power in 1979.

Western businessmen used to regularly face having their ties clipped by zealous revolutionary guards as neckties were viewed as decadent.

Planet Earth has not (yet) been destroyed by a terrifying Boobquake experiment - one Indiana student's response to Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi's insistence that immodestly dressed women provoke earthquakes.

Sedighi recently declared: Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupting their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes.

Jennifer McCreight declared: On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that's your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake.

McCreight's picture speaks for itself, and thousands of other females have thrown their weight behind the effort to either provoke a major catastrophe or prove that Iranian clerics have a poor grasp of the fundamentals of the physics of plate tittonics.

The Sun God is displeased with Iranian police

Brig Hossien Sajedinia, Tehran's police chief, said a national crackdown on opposition sympathisers would be extended to women who have been deemed to be violating the spirit of Islamic laws. He said: The public expects us to act firmly and swiftly if we see any social misbehaviour by women, and men, who defy our Islamic values. In some areas of north Tehran we can see many suntanned women and young girls who look like walking mannequins.

We are not going to tolerate this situation and will first warn those found in this manner and then arrest and imprison them.

Iran's Islamic leadership has in recent weeks launched a scaremongering campaign to persuade the population that vice is sweeping the streets of the capital. National law stipulates that women wear headscarves and shape shrouding cloaks but many women, particularly in the capital, spend heavily on fashions that barely adhere to the regulations.

Planet Earth has not (yet) been destroyed by a terrifying Boobquake experiment - one Indiana student's response to Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi's insistence that immodestly dressed women provoke earthquakes.

Sedighi recently declared: Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupting their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes.

Jennifer McCreight declared: On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that's your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake.

Needless to say the girls failed to induce an earthquake. Inquiring minds need to know why

Experimental Analysis

Based on article from independent.co.uk
Based on article from telegraph.co.uk

Kazem Sedighi sparked widespread derision with his pronouncements in a prayer sermon last month linking earthquakes with women's dress. In a new sermon yesterday, he has defended and elaborated on his claim.

Some ask why (more) earthquakes and storms don't occur in the Western world, which suffers from the slime of homosexuality, the slime of promiscuity and has plunged up to the neck in immorality, he said.

Who says they don't occur? Storms take place in the US and other parts of the world. We don't say committing sin is the entire reason but it's one of the reasons.

Sometimes, God tests a nation. (God says) if believers sin, we slap them because we love them and give them calamity in order to stop their bad deeds.

And those who have provoked God's wrath, He allows them (to commit sins) so that they go to the bottom of hell.

Iran's combative president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has attacked a key policy of his supporters in the religious establishment.

Ahmadinejad baffled conservatives in the ruling elite by declaring his opposition to the annual summer crackdown on immodest appearance and behaviour in the young.

In a television interview marking the anniversary of his re-election, Ahmadinejad said he did not approve, and that the police actions were designed to create tumult.

The government does not agree with this behaviour and will respond to and control it as much as it can, he said. It is an insult to ask a man and woman walking on the steet about their relation to each other. Nobody has the right to ask such questions.

Mohammad Taqi Rahbar, the leader of the conservative religious grouping in parliament, said Ahmadinejad was betraying the people who voted for him and taking the side of the opposition Green Movement: Those who voted for you were the fully veiled people, he said. The badly veiled 'greens' did not vote for you, so you'd better consider what pleases God is not pleasing a number of the corrupt.

The Iranian authorities have signalled ominously that this summer's crackdown against those deemed to be dressed or behaving immodestly will be particularly harsh.

Mashhad, Iran's second biggest city, announced plans to massively increase fines for women who fail to observe the obligatory dress code, from 50,000 tomans (Dh180) to 1.3 million tomans (Dh4,780) – roughly US$1,300 – a significant sum in a country where a teacher's monthly salary is around $500.

And the interior minister, Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, declared recently that enforcement of the Modesty and Hijab plan would be pursued more seriously this year.

But, analysts say, the clampdown risks heightening social tensions at a time when much of the populace is already seething, whether from economic or political dissatisfaction – or both.

Hardliners have alleged that resistance to the dress code is being encouraged by the opposition green movement. Tehran's police chief, Hossein Sajedinia, was quoted by Iran's Mehr news agency last Tuesday saying that street mannequins and harassers are organised and they must be seriously dealt with.

Mannequin is the authorities' scornful term for women who flout the dress code by wearing figure-hugging coats and thrust-back headscarves, sporting a dash of make-up or flashing a bare ankle.

Sajedinia said police have been equipped this year with cameras to film immodestly attired women, with the footage to be used as irrefutable evidence in court.

Real mannequins – dummies in the windows of women's clothes shops – are also under fire: those with curves are outlawed. Dutiful shopkeepers saw off heads and breasts.

In a tub-thumping sermon in Mashhad recently, a hard-line ayatollah, Ahmad Alam al Hoda, declared: Badly veiled women and girls are like the foot soldiers of the United States. Knowingly or unknowingly, he added, such women were fighting on the enemy's front.

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Approved islamic hairstyle

In an attempt to rid the country of decadent Western cuts, Iran's culture ministry has produced a catalogue of haircuts that meet government approval.

The list of banned styles includes ponytails, mullets and elaborate spikes. However, quiffs appear to be acceptable, as are fashioning one's hair in the style of Simon Cowell or cultivating a 1980s-style floppy fringe.

The journal of Iranian hairstyles approved by the ministry of [culture and Islamic] guidance was previewed at a government-approved hairdressing show in Tehran.

The proposed styles are inspired by Iranians' complexion, culture and religion, and Islamic law, said Jaleh Khodayar, who is in charge of a Modesty and Veil Festival later this month at which the guide will be promoted.

Update: New for 2011

21st June 2011.

Necklaces have just been added to the list of western fashion accessories banned for men.