Pussy riot, Iranian style

This thing here is the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It's your standard green-white-red horizontal tricolour, with the words 'God is Great' added, in Kufic script, to the edges of the colour bands (just in case the aggressive piety implicit in the words "Islamic Republic" was too subtle for you). But what's going on with that weird  symbol in the middle? Glad you asked:

Designed by Hamid Nadimi, and officially approved by Parliament and the Leader Grand-Ayatollah Khomeini on 9 May 1980, this Emblem is a highly stylized composite of various Islamic elements: a geometrically symmetric form of the word Allah ("God") and overlapping parts of the phrase lā ʾilāha ʾillà l-Lāh, ("There is no deity but God"), forming a monogram in the form of a tulip it consists of four crescents and a line. The four crescents read from right to left the first crescent is the letter aleph, the second crescent is the first laam; the vertical line is the second laam, and the third and fourth crescents together form the heh. Above the central stroke is a tashdid (a diacritical mark indicating gemination) resembling "W". The tulip shape of the emblem as a whole memorializes those who have died for Iran and symbolizes the values of patriotism and self-sacrifice, building on a legend that red tulips grow from the shed blood of martyrs.

Not only is all that symbolism about blood and self-sacrifice bang on the money, given the brutal human rights abuses for which this crackpot theocracy is famous, but the suggestive design of nested crescents around a vertical central stroke has also prompted some irreverently creative re-imagining. Here's Iranian-born secularist and human rights campaigner Maryam Namazie, explaining how she incorporated the flag of the Islamic Republic into her recent nude protest for International Womens' Day (some images may be considered NSFW, although to my mind a woman's standard reproductive equipment is infinitely less offensive than the banner of an oppressive, fanatical, blood-spattered tyranny):

I didn’t want to just hold the Islamic regime of Iran’s flag so I cut out the Allah in the centre of the flag and let it show my vagina instead. Much better, don’t you think?

Congratulations, Hamid Nadimi. You are personally responsible for the most gynaecologically memorable piece of design since the front end of the Ford Edsel. Everyone can now remember the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran as 'that one with the lady bits on it.' You must be so proud.