Image of Ahmadinejad consoling Chavez’s mother angers Iranian clerics
Apparently, showing compassion to a grieving mother is a sin in Islam.
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 .
So let's pretend it never happened...
Some of Ahmadinejad's supporters insisted the image was fake, digitally altered from a different photo showing the Iranian leader embracing an older man. But as The New York Times noted, the man-hug image was quickly debunked as a Photoshop job.
And my favorite online comment:
Wow, you Muslims seem to go out of your way to show that you hate women. He was comforting a bereaved woman who had just lost her son. Get over your knee-jerk misogyny. It's not like he bent her over the coffin to give her a ride - it was a hug.
Story here.