The mullahs are expanding their crackdown on infidel cultural pollution. Unibrows will now be mandatory: Iran bans Western haircuts, eyebrow plucking for men.

TEHRAN, Iran (Reuters) — Iranian police have warned barbers against offering Western-style hair cuts or plucking the eyebrows of their male customers, Iranian media said Sunday.

The report by a reformist daily, later confirmed by an Iranian news agency, appeared to be another sign of authorities cracking down on clothing and other fashion deemed to be against Islamic values. “Western hairstyles … have been banned,” the newspaper Etemad said in a front-page headline.

It came a week after police launched a crackdown against the growing number of young women testing the limits of the law with shorter, brighter and skimpier clothing ahead of the summer months. Under Iran’s Islamic Sharia law, imposed after the 1979 revolution, women are obligated to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes to disguise their figures. Violators can receive lashes, fines and imprisonment.

The student news agency ISNA quoted a police statement as saying: “In an official order to barbershops, they have been warned to avoid using Western hair styles and doing men’s eyebrows.”

(Hat tip: sonicboom.)

UPDATE at 4/29/07 12:10:49 pm:

The hair obsession is not just an Iranian thing: Maan News Agency.

Bethlehem - Ma’an – The Supreme Fatwa Council of Palestine has issued a fatwa permitting men’s and women’s hairdressers to operate on condition that they do not break Islamic law.

The fatwa stated that women can be employed as hairdressers as long as they only cut the hair of women that want to look attractive for their husbands and not other men or foreigners; this would be Haram (forbidden).

It also stated that if a foreign man is present in the hairdressers, women must be prohibited from entering it.

The council urged the Palestinian Muslims to avoid “suspicion” and to follow the religious rules and rituals according to Islamic law.

The fatwa also said that men can work as barbers and activity in the barber shops is not prohibited in any way, as long as it is not against Islam.

(Hat tip: Israellycool.)