Friday, May 19, 2006
IRAN: NO CLOTHING ID PLOT
Iranian politicians reject Canadian claims (repeated in Australia) that new laws would require Iranian Jews to wear “a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes”:
In Tehran, legislator Emad Afroogh, who sponsored the bill and chairs the parliament’s cultural committee, told The Associated Press on Friday there was no truth to the Canadian newspaper report.
"It’s a sheer lie. The rumors about this are worthless,” he said.
Afroogh said the bill seeks only to make women dress more conservatively and avoid Western fashions ...
Iranian Jewish lawmaker Morris Motamed told the AP: “Such a plan has never been proposed or discussed in parliament. Such news, which appeared abroad, is an insult to religious minorities here."
At Iran’s mission to the United Nations, a diplomat, speaking anonymously because he was not allowed to make official statements, called the report “completely false."
Seems so. This story should be widely stomped, lest it grow into a right-wing version of the Plastic Turkey fable.
UPDATE. More from Canada’s National Post, which published the original claims:
Several experts are casting doubt on reports that Iran had passed a law requiring the country’s Jews and other religious minorities to wear coloured badges identifying them as non-Muslims ...
Sam Kermanian, of the U.S.-based Iranian-American Jewish Federation, said in an interview from Los Angeles that he had contacted members of the Jewish community in Iran — including the lone Jewish member of the Iranian parliament — and they denied any such measure was in place.
Mr. Kermanian said the subject of “what to do with religious minorities” came up during debates leading up to the passing of the dress code law.
“It is possible that some ideas might have been thrown around,” he said. “But to the best of my knowledge the final version of the law does not demand any identifying marks by the religious minority groups.”
UPDATE II. The New York Sun.
UPDATE III. Dave S.:
Well, as Juan Cole would say, “The story of the yellow ID tags for Jews turns out to be a hoax. However, it is one of those hoaxes that bespeaks a reality ...”
Or how about plasticturkeychump Jeff Alworth: “Whether or not the ID-tags-for-Jews story was fake has little bearing on its purpose as metaphor.”
So there.