UPDATE: This turns out to be an exaggeration of an actual bill which would only target women’s clothing.
Just off the wire. Treat as questionable, though sadly not unbelievable:
Iran eyes badges for JewsHuman rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country’s Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.”This is reminiscent of the Holocaust,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. “Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis.”
Iranian expatriates living in Canada yesterday confirmed reports that the Iranian parliament, called the Islamic Majlis, passed a law this week setting a dress code for all Iranians, requiring them to wear almost identical “standard Islamic garments.”
[...] Iran’s roughly 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth.
If this turns out to be true, I can only hope it gets a lot of air time in Germany. Nothing would be able to convince everyday Germans to support harsh sanctions or even military action against Iran than such stark Nazi parallels.
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Comments to this entry
Sonagi
May 19, 2006
8:21 pm
purpleslog
May 20, 2006
3:52 am
hass
May 20, 2006
5:36 am
Iran: Lawmakers Debate Women's Clothing
Associated Press May 20, 2006
... Emad Afroogh, the legislator who sponsored the bill and is chairman of Parliament's Cultural Committee, said that the Canadian report was untrue and that the measure sought only to make women dress more conservatively and avoid Western fashions. Another lawmaker, Morris Motamed, a Jew, also said the Canadian report was false.
ALSO NOT TRUE Holocaust "historian" Edwin Black claimed that Iran was responsible for the Holocaust. But see Iran, Jews and the Holocaust: An answer to Mr. Black by Dr Abbas Milani of Stanford University.
More about Jews of Iran:
1- Jews in Iran Describe a Life of Freedom, Christian Science Monitor, February 03, 1998
(http://csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/durableRedirect.pl?/durable/1998/02/03/intl/intl.3.html)
2- Polish Jews were given refuge in Iran during WWII
Associated Press
Thursday, November 23, 2000
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53268-2000Nov22?language=printer)
3- Iranian Jews PREFER Tehran to Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem Post Nov. 3, 2005
(http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1131043721479&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)
Rommel
May 20, 2006
8:50 am
Rommel
May 20, 2006
8:51 am
Naman Mantra
May 20, 2006
1:43 pm
Younghusband
May 20, 2006
2:11 pm
Eleanor
May 21, 2006
5:28 am
If indeed the legislation "only" targets women by legislating what they can/can't wear, is that substantially better? While it may not quite be equally reprehensible, it is part of a trajectory of bodily marking categories of people. You either accept that in toto or you don't. I don't.
As an aside, having formerly lived in Yemen, I can attest to the fact that similar bodily marking exists there (with regard to Jews and to women - the Christian minority is sufficiently underground so as not to matter to this debate). There's little or no outrage over this, mainly because (a) it's a legacy of tribal custom, though also reflected in national law; (b) Yemen is on the global periphery in a way that Iran is not, economically and militarily.
The bottom line is that Islamic law supports the principle of bodily marking distinctions between categories of people, and applying different legal stadards to each. In some places/times, this has meant that minorities have had greater flexibility and freedom of dress, in others less. In either case, it is a distinctly illiberal posture.