Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is under fire from the country’s clerics over a photo of him consoling the mother of Hugo Chavez at the late Venezuelan leader’s funeral—physical contact that’s considered a sin under Iran’s strict Islamic codes.
The photo, released by Venezuela’s Miraflores Press Office, shows Elena Frías’ right hand clutching Ahmadinejad’s left, her head against his, as they stand near the flag-draped coffin of her son at a military academy in Caracas, Venezuela, on Friday.
The image drew the immediate fury of Tehran’s religious conservatives. “No unrelated women can be touched unless she is drowning at sea or needs medical treatment,” Hojat al-Islam Hossein Ibrahimi, a cleric at the Society of Militant Clergy, said, according to Iran’s Al-Monitor.
Some of Ahmadinejad’s supporters insisted the image was fake, digitally altered from a different photo showing the Iranian leader embracing an older man.
To Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s critics in the West, the image of him clasping hands with the grief-stricken mother of Hugo Chávez at her son’s funeral last week in Caracas might have seemed like a rare glimpse of a firebrand politician’s softer side. But the clerics who rule Iran saw something very different: proof that the Islamic Republic’s official representative had flouted that nation’s absolute ban on physical contact between unrelated men and women.
As the Iranian press blogger Arash Karami explained, the reaction to the photograph was swift and furious from religious conservatives. One of them, Hojat al-Islam Hossein Ibrahimi of the Society of Militant Clergy of Tehran, called on the authorities to ensure that the candidates to replace Mr. Ahmadinejad in the coming election be carefully screened to ensure that they understand what is prohibited by the laws of Shiite Islam. “In relation to what is allowed and what is forbidden,” he added, “we know that no unrelated women can be touched unless she is drowning at sea or needs medical treatment.”
In response, some supporters of Mr. Ahmadinejad, including a cleric who was part of his entourage at the funeral and witnessed the interaction, insisted that the photograph of the president apparently hugging Mr. Chávez’s mother, Elena Frías, was a forgery, created by digital manipulation. Others circulated online what they said was the image before it was altered in Photoshop, showing Mr. Ahmadinejad in the same embrace with an older man.
Unfortunately for Mr. Ahmadinejad’s camp, those assertions were quickly rendered inoperative by a series of countervailing truths.
First, the photograph of the president consoling Ms. Frías was not distributed by a Western news organization seeking to cause him trouble, but by the Venezuelan government, which provided identical copies of the image to three leading photo agencies. Second, a conservative Iranian news site, Entekhab, proved in short order that the image of the president with the older man was, in fact, the fake. A side-by-side comparison produced by Entekhab showed that this image had been created by lifting the head of Mohamed El Baradei, the former chief of the United Nations nuclear agency, from a previously published photograph of him greeting another Iranian official with a kiss in 2007.
Image of Ahmadinejad consoling Chavez’s mother angers Iranian clerics
by Dylan Stableford
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/ahmadinejad-image-hug-chavez-mother-photoshop-133036230.html
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is under fire from the country’s clerics over a photo of him consoling the mother of Hugo Chavez at the late Venezuelan leader’s funeral—physical contact that’s considered a sin under Iran’s strict Islamic codes.
The photo, released by Venezuela’s Miraflores Press Office, shows Elena Frías’ right hand clutching Ahmadinejad’s left, her head against his, as they stand near the flag-draped coffin of her son at a military academy in Caracas, Venezuela, on Friday.
The image drew the immediate fury of Tehran’s religious conservatives. “No unrelated women can be touched unless she is drowning at sea or needs medical treatment,” Hojat al-Islam Hossein Ibrahimi, a cleric at the Society of Militant Clergy, said, according to Iran’s Al-Monitor.
Some of Ahmadinejad’s supporters insisted the image was fake, digitally altered from a different photo showing the Iranian leader embracing an older man.
Image of Ahmadinejad Clasping Hands With Chávez’s Mother Angers Clerics, So His Supporters Turn to Photoshop
By ROBERT MACKEY
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/image-of-ahmadinejad-clasping-hands-with-chvezs-mother-doctored-by-his-supporters/?hp
To Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s critics in the West, the image of him clasping hands with the grief-stricken mother of Hugo Chávez at her son’s funeral last week in Caracas might have seemed like a rare glimpse of a firebrand politician’s softer side. But the clerics who rule Iran saw something very different: proof that the Islamic Republic’s official representative had flouted that nation’s absolute ban on physical contact between unrelated men and women.
As the Iranian press blogger Arash Karami explained, the reaction to the photograph was swift and furious from religious conservatives. One of them, Hojat al-Islam Hossein Ibrahimi of the Society of Militant Clergy of Tehran, called on the authorities to ensure that the candidates to replace Mr. Ahmadinejad in the coming election be carefully screened to ensure that they understand what is prohibited by the laws of Shiite Islam. “In relation to what is allowed and what is forbidden,” he added, “we know that no unrelated women can be touched unless she is drowning at sea or needs medical treatment.”
In response, some supporters of Mr. Ahmadinejad, including a cleric who was part of his entourage at the funeral and witnessed the interaction, insisted that the photograph of the president apparently hugging Mr. Chávez’s mother, Elena Frías, was a forgery, created by digital manipulation. Others circulated online what they said was the image before it was altered in Photoshop, showing Mr. Ahmadinejad in the same embrace with an older man.
Unfortunately for Mr. Ahmadinejad’s camp, those assertions were quickly rendered inoperative by a series of countervailing truths.
First, the photograph of the president consoling Ms. Frías was not distributed by a Western news organization seeking to cause him trouble, but by the Venezuelan government, which provided identical copies of the image to three leading photo agencies. Second, a conservative Iranian news site, Entekhab, proved in short order that the image of the president with the older man was, in fact, the fake. A side-by-side comparison produced by Entekhab showed that this image had been created by lifting the head of Mohamed El Baradei, the former chief of the United Nations nuclear agency, from a previously published photograph of him greeting another Iranian official with a kiss in 2007.