Having outraged the international community by denying the Holocaust and Israel’s right to exist, Iran’s combative President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has launched an offensive against new Western targets — George Michael, Eric Clapton and the Bee Gees.
In a decree that threatens to turn the clock back to 1979, when Iran was gripped by the Islamic revolution, Ahmadinejad has ordered state broadcasters to stop playing ”decadent” Western music and favour ”fine Iranian music” instead.
The order, issued by the high council of cultural revolution, which the president heads, is the strongest signal yet that Ahmadinejad intends to match his ideological rhetoric with a cultural and social crackdown. It follows a ban on Western films on television and will increase fears that Iran is entering a new era of isolationism when international suspicions are high over its nuclear programme.
The ban will affect an eclectic swath of Western artists, including George Michael, Eric Clapton and the Bee Gees, whose songs are frequently heard on national television and radio.
Instrumental versions of Michael’s Careless Whisper, Clapton’s Rush and the Bee Gees’ How Deep Is Your Love are commonly broadcast as accompaniment to a range of Iranian programming.
”The promotion of decadent and Western music should be avoided and the stress put on authorised, artistic, classic and fine Iranian music,” the decree states.
It urges broadcasters to play ”relaxing themes and memorable music from the revolution”.
The order could herald the reversal of a cultural thaw begun under the previous reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami, in which CDs by bands and artists such as Pink Floyd, David Bowie and Radiohead sold in Iranian music stores.
Ahmadinejad, an Islamist hard-liner, promised to re-establish ”Qur’anic” cultural values before he unexpectedly won last June’s presidential election. In the early years of Iran’s Islamic regime, all music apart from revolutionary themes was banned on the order of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, spiritual leader of the revolution. That led to the exodus of popular Iranian musicians to the United States, where many still record. Their songs continued to be widely played in Iran.
The purge against Western music could be extended to public performances. Under Khatami, a limited number of live rock and pop concerts were allowed with the permission of the culture and Islamic guidance ministry. However, the ministry is now controlled by Ahmadinejad’s appointees. — Guardian Unlimited Â