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May 19, 2006
Yellow Badges for Jews, Red Badges for Christians...
[ New UPDATE: (from Alcibiades) Thanks to Judith for updating and correcting while I was away. When I left town on Friday, no one was yet disputing the story, and I return to find it largely discredited, with one exception. Middle East expert, Amir Taheri's article which gives some detail on this issue, was published on Saturday, after the claims that it was incorrect had already circulated.
Hopefully, final clarification as to whether Taheri's claims are correct or not will occur during the week. At which point, I'll update more definitively. ]
[ UPDATE (from Judith): As of late afternoon this story is unconfirmed. Here is a roundup of attempts to get the facts. ]
Iran eyes badges for Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, so that Muslims can avoid them at sight and stay away.
The new law was drafted two years ago, but was stuck in the Iranian parliament until recently when it was revived at the behest of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...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.
You can't say Ahmadinejad doesn't say what he means or stand proudly committed to what he believes in.
Michael Rubin at NRO has more:
The Iranian people are far more tolerant than their leadership, but it is unfortunate that Ahmadinejad could cite ample precedent if he so desired: The Nazi practice of forcing Jews to wear a yellow star had its origins in what is now Iran and Iraq when a ninth century caliph forced his Jewish subjects to wear yellow patches. From time to time, subsequent rulers revived the practice. Shiite clerics long deemed any food touched by Jews to be unclean. While blood libel only took root in Iranian society after the sixteenth-century arrival of European ambassadors, as Iranian society wrestled with modernity, violent anti-Semitism grew. Pogroms wiped out the Jewish community in some towns and villages in Iranian Azerbaijan in the mid-nineteenth century, and serious pogroms also swept through Mashhad, a Shiite shrine city in northeastern Iran in which the current supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was born and raised. It was also in Mashhad that, despite the oft-cited mantra that there is no compulsion in Islam, Shiite clerics forcibly converted the remaining Jews to Islam under threat of death....With regard to the Christians, there have been many periods of oppression. Iranian governments sometimes looked at the Armenian Christian community as a fifth column and, in recent years, vigilante groups have assassinated evangelical Christians-there is some mention of this in recent State Department human rights reports. The Baha'i community is perhaps the most vulnerable and, of course, while there are functioning churches and synagogues in Tehran and Isfahan, the ruling authorities will not tolerate Sunni mosques in Tehran, a city of perhaps 14 million people.
Alcibiades | 05/19/06 at 10:45 AM | Categories: - Iran
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Comments
Er, the license plates in Israel? Have fun at the check points.
skip in Annapolis | May 19, 2006 12:28 PM
Judith,
Your readers might be interested in these two pieces at RBT.
RBT
*****
Update III:
Kenneth Timmerman just posted these updates to his original post:
UPI reported from Tehran that the Majles passed the law this week."This law recalls the Holocaust immediately to mind when Jews were forced to wear distinctive yellow Stars of David on their clothes," said American Jewish Congress Executive Director Neil Goldstein.
[...]
Sam Kermanian, of the Iranian Jewish Federation in Los Angeles, urged Jewish activists to caution in a mass email today. "So far the two reports we managed to obtain from our own independent sources from inside the country suggest that the original reports are false," he wrote. "Both Mr. Morris Motamed the Jewish member of the Iranian Parliament and Mr Parviz Yeshaya the former head of the community have strongly denied the reports."
Stay tuned....
Note: Mr. Kermanian has acknowledged to FDI that he currently does business in Tehran, but says that he has received a "waiver" from the Treasury Department to sanction his commercial activities.
www.iran.org
*****
Dr. Zin is on this story and will updating shortly
RBT just got off the phone with Dr. Zin of Regime Change Iran who was about to board a plane to return home from DC. He said he will be posting further on this story when he gets back home.
Dr. Zin said he first learned of this in 2004. Dr. Zin' sources have said until recently this has been in the context of a discussion on an Islamic appropriate dress code. The last he heard was it was't in writing but was making it's way through the lower levels of what serves as the Irainian legislative process. [ed note: A stacked deck :--)]
Dr. Zin said the President Ahmadinejad is in support of this dress code. Dr. Zin doesn't know if there is enough agreement to pass and implement it.
Stay tuned as Kenneth Timmerman said . . .
RBT
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| May 19, 2006 09:01 PM
THIS STORY NOT TRUE!
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)
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)
Hass | May 20, 2006 01:48 AM
hey, this was fake, i hope you mention it in your next post.
nobody | May 21, 2006 06:12 AM
what are these lies mean. if you think this is true, just ask iranian jews or christians.
Iranians are more thoughtful than you liers .
Alice Poma | May 21, 2006 08:28 AM
