Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s so-called “National Security Advisor” is no unblemished government official. Merely spouting and supporting Biden’s insane and misguided foreign policies across the board is bad enough. But still, he may have a point in condemning the untimely demise of Mahsa Amini, 22, an Iranian who allegedly was harmed by Iran’s police when she was taken into custody for allegedly not wearing a proper hijab or maybe none at all.

Sullivan has called for an investigation of her demise. Yes, an investigation is proper, so nothing like her death happens again, although, admittedly, few, for now, know exactly what happened, and it’s not impossible that the police did her no direct harm. But isn’t it a reasonable thing to find out?

Yes, Sullivan, like most every functionary in the U.S. government nowadays, is a hypocritical monster. Why hasn’t he and Biden, for example, absolutely demanded or instituted a formal investigation of journalist Sherrine Abu Akleh’s murder by a Zionist sniper in Jenin in the West Bank last Spring? And she also happens to be an American citizen! So, on this basis alone, Sullivan, trying to score “brownie points” against Iran by bringing up the death of Mahsa Amini, is, by the contrast of only modest and maybe questionable merit by him at least. But not entirely so. Because if she was, as alleged by some, “beaten” by police, those who did the alleged deed ought to be held to account.

No young woman or girl should ever die for an improper dress if that’s what actually happened. Just as no American should ever be beaten or killed by police in the U.S., as many innocents have been, and many of them who were murdered by police did not directly threaten anyone. In the U.S., this happens frequently, and once in a while, police perps are made accountable for such, but for sure, not often enough. And this matter in Iran hits on a personal level, too.

Personal because for years, I have been close friends with an internationally notable and widely respected and awarded Iranian journalist-photographer who, I hear now, simply wants to abandon her country when her country literally needs to retain talented artists and citizens like she had been. This incident involving Mahsa Amini has cemented her wish to leave Iran. And no question, there are many sages and talented Americans who want to get out of the U.S., too, for reasons of misguided government policies and repressions, including the repression of “free speech” in the U.S. that has long claimed to support it but no longer seriously does as once it did. Julian Assange’s incarceration and possible extradition to the U.S. for accurate reporting is a case in point. (And the same can currently be said for the recent demise of “free speech” in Europe, too, especially over the matter of Ukraine and U.S. sanctions on Russia and any other country that objects to U.S. policies overseas.) Is the entire world turning into a totalitarian, fascist, global monster?

Islam, since its inception by Allah through the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century in Arabia has always promoted a code of modesty for all people regardless of sex, and the hijab for females, as in Iran, can be described as just one of many possible outer manifestations of a person’s inner commitment to worship Allah. And there is no question that a majority of Muslim females wear the hijab with pride in predominantly Muslim countries and often in the West, too. (I once had an adult Iranian student in a college class in 2000 who explained this perfectly well to me, and she made a lot of sense aside from being a top student.)

In fact, since the arrival of Covid 19 in 2020, I have often worn a mask in public locations to avoid catching the disease, even though I have been aware that it may not obviate illness. Nowadays, in public places like a high-end food store in North Carolina where I work eight hours every week, I have lately noted that maybe 35 percent so of customers wear a surgical mask. It’s no longer required. But what have I learned about wearing a mask often in public: I like it! It’s no burden at all. In fact, it affords a kind of personal privacy that can be compelling and pleasant. If I were a Muslim female, I could easily imagine wearing a hijab in public would likewise give me the same kind of modest, simple, and personal privacy.

The sole thing that may be “wrong” with the hijab in Iran or any other largely Muslim realm, instituted to one degree or another for many centuries in various locations as a way to demonstrate modesty in public as properly suggested by Islam, is the degree to which common “authorities”, police or otherwise, in Iran or anywhere else may literally, and sometimes even harshly, punish females (or even males by grossly immodest behaviors such as nudity) who don’t show basic respect to the Islamic concept of personal modesty and respect before Allah and to society at large. One could argue that the best way to deal with females in Iran who may be seen in public with no or an improper hijab is simply to have a conversation with them about their immediate motivations to discern what they are thinking and why, and at worse or at most, perhaps fine them very modestly, as if they had run a red light at an intersection?

In fact, given the moronic, hypocritical reactions people like Jake Sullivan, along with the organs of propaganda in the U.S., can demonstrate by throwing a blanket of condemnation over Iran or Islam, it’s best that ANY Muslim country try to avoid feeding the propagandists in the U.S. government and its captured media. (And look at Saudi Arabia, a U.S. “ally”, where females (and males) are treated far, far worse than in Iran and in most every other country on earth and given long prison terms even for Tweets critical of the regime and some of its policies. Does the U.S. object to such madness in Saudi Arabia? Sadly, no. Does it object to a cowardly Apartheid regime in Palestine where half or more of the entire population west of the Jordan River has no human rights at all? No.

Iran, it may be said, may sometimes appear to make too much of enforcing the hijab mandate, but frankly, this is no business of non-Iranians. Every deep culture has its own particular nuances and interpretations of decorum and expectations of citizens, and they should, in general be respected as part of a world that IS happily diverse and variegated. Critique ought to be solely reserved for the degree of harshness applied to enforcement, especially when such involves anything like hijab or dress code where there is no objective harm done by a female who may sometimes chafe at it, as in the possible case of deceased Mahsa Amini.

And the U.S. public, in any event, mirroring Washington’s hypocrisy and warmongering and worldwide cruelty, has been losing many semblances of decorum and modesty and self-reflection as “leaders” march the U.S. towards almost inevitable societal and political disintegration.