Iranian Chapter of the He-Man Woman Haters Club has a meetin'.

The Meeting will now come to order as charter member Mullah Wifebeater calls upon "the government to intervene decisively against these whores..."

A top Iranian cleric from the northeast, Ayatollah Ahmad Elmalhoda, has reportedly called feminists "whores and foreign spies".

"These whores, clutching a piece of paper in their hands to gather signatures, are working for foreign powers and want to destabilise the Islamic Republic," said Elmalhoda.

He is the highly influential prayer leader in the northeastern holy Shia city of Mashad.

Elmalhoda has called on the government to "intervene decisively against these whores, because it is improper to leave them to act with impunity."

A few weeks ago, Elmalhoda said women who do not wear the Islamic veil as instructed "turned men into animals."

Verbal attacks against feminists in Iran are also being accompanied by a vast judicial offensive. Eight feminists involved in a campaign to gather "a million signatures in favour of equality" were recently given jail terms of various lengths and sentenced to public floggings. (ed. note: the sentences have since been suspended)

The Iranian authorities have in the last two weeks censured twelve websites close to the feminist movement.

.....