I just tuned in to Tunisia’s Radio Jawhara FM, which is listed by the Streema global-radio aggregator as its most popular Tunisian station, and it happened to be playing “Happy” by Pharrell Williams. Tunisia is an officially, and predominantly, Muslim country; perhaps folks there are aware that another Muslim country, Iran, on Friday gave seven people suspended sentences for making a video of themselves dancing to that song, and were making an implied criticism of the hardline Iranian regime.

But I am suspicious about the Iranian incident itself. A few months ago, President Hassan Rouhani’s Twitter account responded to the incident by saying, “Happiness is our people’s right. We shouldn’t be too hard on behaviours caused by joy.” If this were a genuine sign of incipient social liberalization, I would of course welcome it. But I confess that it sounds to me like a stunt engineered for Western consumption, a cynical attempt to have a “Who am I to judge?” moment: See, the Iranian regime isn’t as bad as you think it is! In this case, the sentences to jail and 91 lashes were suspended. But as Canadian human-rights activist Irwin Cotler details, Iran’s war on women, political prisoners, journalists, and others, continues. (Even U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon earlier this year declared that Iran had made little progress on human rights since the supposed moderate Rouhani took power last year.)

So, good for them for not flogging some innocent people who made a video. But it’s not a defense against a criminal charge to say, “Hey, look at some crimes I didn’t commit.”