Hell Time

In Iran you can literally go to hell:

Iran International reported Tuesday that the exhibit is meant to “offer a visceral experience of the afterlife—particularly the torments of hell.” If it’s remotely realistic, this place could be more than a little hair-raising, as the Qur’an dwells lavishly and repeatedly on the torments of hell, saying: “Indeed, we have prepared fire for unbelievers. Its tent encloses them. If they ask for showers, they will be showered with water like molten lead that burns their faces. Calamitous the drink and evil the resting-place.” (18:29) Wait, there’s more: “But as for those who disbelieve, garments of fire will be cut out for them, boiling fluid will be poured down on their heads, by which what is in their bellies, and their skins too, will be melted, and for them are hooked rods of iron.” (22:19-20) And: “Indeed, those who disbelieve our signs, we will expose them to the fire. As often as their skins are burned up, we will exchange them for fresh skins, so that they may taste the torment.” (4:56) There is much more of this sort of thing, but you get the idea. And so the oddly named Heaven Time theme park at the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps base in the northern Iranian city of Fouman allows visitors to walk across “a suspended bridge surrounded by real gas flames—meant to simulate the searing heat of hell. Actors in grotesque costumes moan and writhe amid the fire and smoke, while loudspeakers blast Quranic verses describing punishments for sin and disbelief.” As if that weren’t fun enough, the exhibit also “includes a dramatization of grave questioning by Nakir and Munkar—two angels in Islamic theology believed to interrogate the dead.”

Iranian tourists went to hell and all they got was a lousy T-shirt...