Shah of Action

Quite alone in the courtyard of a mosque, Her Majesty the Queen of Persia recently raised her veil, as the day was hot.

From the roof a zealous Moslem priest espied this sacrilege, howled to the rabble: "A woman has desecrated the shrine!"

With difficulty the Persian police got the Queen out, spirited her home by limousine.

Next day was Friday, the Moslem sabbath. To a mosque jammed with zealots the priest raged against "accursed Christians and the adoption of their vile habits by some Persian women." With the tirade at its height, suddenly the congregation was startled by the ring of spurs on the stone mosque floor.

In marched a tall, tough, wiry man who has travelled the hard road from private soldier to Shah of Persia (TIME, July 22, 1929). He does not propose to be another Amanullah of Afghanistan, to be driven out for being "too modern," "too Christian" (TIME, Jan. 21, 1929). He is not a Christian. With relentless military stride His Moslem Majesty made for the Moslem priest.

In the royal right hand was a heavy whip. With the royal left His Majesty seized the priest by his beard, dragged him from the pulpit, flung him screaming on the flagstones. Lash after lash, lash after lash, lash after lash. . . . The priest at length ceased to scream, fainted, lay as though dead. To the faithful His Majesty then stated that Her Majesty never lifts her vail in public, thereupon strode from the mosque with clinking spurs while fellow priests revived the flogged zealot.

Piously His Majesty once exclaimed: "Alas! Mohammedanism was formerly like a great sea but now it has been divided into little pools of water."

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