A senior cleric in Iran believes women's immodesty has some part in the occurrence of earthquakes in their country.
According to cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighil, who is the country's acting Friday prayer leader, was quoted in a Tehran publication on April 16 saying that women's sexually provocative clothing and promiscuity are directly causing the natural disasters:
"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes."
Iran is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, and the cleric's unusual explanation for why the earth shakes follows a prediction made two weeks before by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that a quake is certain to hit the capital city ofTehran and that many of its 12 million inhabitants should relocate.
Seismologists have warned for at least two decades that it is likely the sprawling capital will be struck by a catastrophic quake in the near future.
Some experts have even suggested Iran should move its capital to a less seismically active location. Tehran straddles scores of fault lines, including one more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) long, though it has not suffered a major quake since 1830.
In 2003, a powerful earthquake hit the southern city of Bam, killing 31,000 people - about a quarter of that city's population - and destroying its ancient mud-built citadel.
Women in the Islamic republic are required to cover themselves from head to toe, but many younger girls rebel against the rules and wear scarves that show much of their hair and tight coats."A divine authority told me to tell the people to make a general repentance. Why? Because calamities threaten us," Sedighi said during a prayer sermon that week.
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