Iran's Nazi Dress Law

[ramin2999]

Hi guys can anyone form Iran comment on this subject

Some news orginizations have reported that Iran has passed a Dress Code for non muslims so the can be identified. Sounds somthing like Nazi Germany.

Anyways to me it sounds insane because i really dout somthing like this has passed. Plus throgh some of my own research i dont think its credible.
But i want to know what people in Iran Know about this.

P.S
Dont mined the title i just wrote it like that so i get your attention and you guys would respond.

here is the article
http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/4846.html
ot just type in Iran on google news

[Rasputin]

the complet articles about this topic ( i replied yesterday evening about this subject in News Politic Thread! ) .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/20/AR2006052000467.html

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3252830,00.html

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=102360

Thx to Mr ramin for his colaboration!

[Sepideh_UK]

the complet articles about this topic ( i replied yesterday evening about this subject in News Politic Thread! ) .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/20/AR2006052000467.html

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3252830,00.html

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=102360

Thx to Mr ramin for his colaboration!

I aint in Iran but meh dad's family says yea apparently there is something like this going around!!

[ares]

It's possible that some of the legislatures would have proposed such a dress code. But it's implementation is very unlikely.

[Sepideh_UK]

TRUE!!

[mahsaak]

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvaaaaaaaaaaaa khak bar saram che chizayeeee

[Rasputin]

Yellow journalism and chicken hawks
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - A story authored by a prominent US neo-conservative regarding new legislation in Iran allegedly requiring Jews and other religious minorities to wear distinctive colored badges circulated around the world last weekend before it was exposed as extremely dubious.

The article by a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Iranian-American Amir Taheri, was initially published in last Friday's edition of Canada's National Post, which ran alongside the story a 1935 photograph of a Jewish businessman in Berlin with a yellow six-pointed star sewn on his overcoat, as required by Nazi legislation at the time. The Post subsequently noted



denials of the story.

Taheri's story, however, was reprinted by the New York Post, which is owned by media baron Rupert Murdoch, and picked up by the Jerusalem Post, which also featured a photo of a yellow star from the Nazi era over a photo of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

Another neo-conservative publication, the New York Sun, also noted the story on Monday, claiming that the specific report that special badges were required by the legislation had been "incorrect". At the same time, however, the Sun quoted two Iranian-American foes of the Islamic Republic as suggesting that dress requirements for religious minorities were still being considered by Iran's ruling circles. It offered no evidence to support that assertion.

The story, which was also noted in the Australian press, comes at a moment of rising tensions between Iran and both Israel and the United States over Tehran's nuclear program, which, according to the latter two, is designed to produce nuclear weapons. Both the US and Israel have suggested that they may take military action against nuclear-related targets in Iran unless ongoing diplomatic efforts to freeze Tehran's program bear fruit.

Juan Cole, president of the US Middle East Studies Association (MESA), described the Taheri article and its appearance first in Canada's Post as "typical of black psychological operations campaigns", particularly in its origin in an "out-of-the-way newspaper that is then picked up by the mainstream press" - in this case, the Jerusalem Post and the New York Post. A former US intelligence official described the article's relatively obscure provenance as a "real sign of [a] disinformation operation".

Taheri's original article, "A color code for Iran's 'infidels'", dealt primarily with new legislation that it said was designed to ensure that Iranians wear "standard Islamic garments" that removed ethnic and class distinctions and that eliminated "the influence of the infidel" - presumably meaning the West - "on the way Iranians, especially the young, dress".

But it also noted in passing that it would "envisage" separate dress codes for religious minorities - Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians - who would be required to adopt distinct color schemes to make them identifiable in public "so that [Muslims] can avoid shaking hands with them by mistake, and thus [become] najis" (unclean).

In particular, he explained, religious minorities will "have to wear special insignia, known as zonnar, to indicate their non-Islamic faiths. Jews will be marked out with a yellow strip of cloth sewn in front of their clothes, while Christians will be assigned the color red. Zoroastrians end up with Persian blue as the color of their zonnar," he wrote.

While Taheri did not evoke the Nazi precedent in his column, the National Post asked its readers at the end of the piece, "Is Iran turning into the new Nazi Germany? Share your opinion online at national post.com."

That was compounded by the Post's publication of a front-page article by Chris Wattie that quoted unidentified "human-rights groups" as "raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear colored badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims".

"This is reminiscent of the Holocaust," Wattie quoted Rabbi Marvin Heir, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, as telling him. "Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis."

The story also quoted one Iranian exile living in Toronto as confirming the story, as well as Canadian Jewish leaders and Prime Minister Stephen Harper as denouncing the legislation and suggesting that it was consistent with other recent moves made by Tehran.

Similarly, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, who, however, denied any specific knowledge about the alleged measure, called it "despicable" and reminiscent of "Germany under Hitler".

In fact, however, the legislation contained "absolutely no mention of religious minorities", according to Hadi Ghaemi, the chief Iran researcher for Human Rights Watch, who said it included "only generalities with regard to promoting a national dress code and fashion industry that should be subsidized and supported by the government".

The article - and especially its attribution to "human-rights groups" - was particularly unfortunate, he said, because "it plays into the hands of the Iranian government that wants to discredit human-rights issues that are raised at the international level".

The actual legislation was indeed "a troubling development", but not for the reasons cited by the Post, he said, because "its main target is most probably Iranian women".

Other denunciations were quick to follow. One Jewish representative in the Iranian parliament, Maurice Motamed, insisted that color requirements for ethnic minorities had "never been proposed or discussed in parliament", let alone approved. "Such news," he told the Associated Press, "is an insult to religious minorities here.

"This report is a complete fabrication and is totally false," he told The Australian newspaper. "It is a lie ..."

Two Israel-based Iran experts, Menashe Amir and Meir Javedanfar, also denounced the original reports about the legislation, suggesting in a follow-up article in the Jerusalem Post on Monday that they were based on outdated speculation about the impact on non-Muslims of the adoption of Islamic dress standards.

Nonetheless, the Sun, without endorsing the specific contents of the National Post articles, refused to drop the story, quoting "a leading spokesman for Iranian Jews", the secretary general of the Iranian American Jewish Federation in Los Angeles, Sam Kermanian, as thanking "the world for its outcry" over the original reports and praising Taheri as "someone with fantastic credibility".
Taheri is a member of Benador Associates, a public relations firm that lists a large number of leading neo-conservatives, including American Enterprise Institute associates Richard Perle, David Frum, Michael Ledeen, Michael Rubin and Joshua Muravchik, among its clients.

Major boosters of the war with Iraq, Benador clients, who also include former Central Intelligence Agency chief James Woolsey and former Israeli minister Natan Sharansky, have also called for the US administration to take a hard line against Iran.

The newspapers that so far have run the story are similarly identified with a hard line against Tehran. The National Post, which was bought by CanWest Global Communications from Conrad Black, a close associate of Perle's, is controlled by David and Leonard Asper, who have accused the Canadian Broadcasting Corp of being anti-Israel, according to Marsha Cohen of Florida International University, who has closely followed the badges story.

Similarly, the Sun has taken positions consistent with the right-wing Likud Party in Israel on Middle East issues, while Murdoch owns the strongly pro-Israel Weekly Standard and Fox News, in addition to the New York Post.

"I think the way these stories played - particularly the references to the Holocaust - was designed to arouse and play upon concerns and accusations that Ahmadinejad is another Hitler who needs to be dealt with accordingly," noted Cohen, who added that the Iranian president's questioning of the Holocaust and aggressive statements about Israel had made such stories more credible.

[Sepideh_UK]

Cool, Thanx REDWINE

[Rasputin]

National Post apologizes for anti-Iran story

A Canadian newspaper apologized on Wednesday for a story that said Iran planned to force Jews and other religious minorities to wear distinctive clothing to distinguish themselves from Muslims.

The conservative National Post ran the story on its front page last Friday along with a large photo from 1944 which showed a Hungarian couple wearing the yellow stars that the Nazis forced Jews to sew to their clothing.

The story, which included tough anti-Iran comments from prominent Jewish groups, was picked up widely by Web sites and by other media.

"Is Iran turning into the new Nazi Germany? Share your opinion online," the paper asked readers last Friday.

But the National Post, a long-time supporter of Israel and critic of Tehran, admitted on Wednesday it had not checked the piece thoroughly enough before running it.

"It is now clear the story is not true," National Post editor-in-chief Douglas Kelly wrote in a long editorial on page 2. "We apologize for the mistake and for the consternation it has caused not just National Post readers, but the broader public who read the story."

The story was based on a column by Iranian expatriate writer Amir Taheri, who said a law being debated by Iran's parliament would force Jews to sew a yellow strip of cloth to their clothes. Christians would wear a red strip while Zoroastrians would wear a blue one.

Iranian legislators dismissed the story.

The story and the column appeared at a time when the international community is pressuring Tehran over its nuclear program. Iran is also under fire for comments by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he doubted the scale of the Holocaust.

Asked about the Post story last Friday, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Iran "is very capable of this kind of action." He added: "It boggles the mind that any regime on the face of the Earth would want to do anything that could remind people of Nazi Germany."

A spokesman for Harper said the prime minister had started off his comments with the words "If this is true."

[Rasputin]

Iran summons Venner over PM's remarks

Iran summoned Canada's ambassador to Tehran to explain his prime minister's remark suggesting the Iranian government might make religious minorities wear special clothes, a diplomat said on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the remark last week in response to an article in the National Post that said Iran's religious minorities would be forced to wear garments that distinguished them from Muslims.

Iranian lawmakers, including the country's sole Jewish parliamentarian, have flatly denied the National Post story saying there is no mention of discriminatory measures against religious minorities in a new dress code bill.

"Ambassador Gordon Venner was summoned on Sunday afternoon, May 21," a Canadian diplomat said.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has sparked fears in the international community by denying the Holocaust, in which the Nazis and their allies killed six million Jews, and by calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

"Unfortunately, we've seen enough already from the Iranian regime to suggest that it is very capable of this kind of action," Harper had told reporters, but tempered his remarks by saying he did not know whether the story was true.

"It boggles the mind that any regime on the face of the Earth would want to do anything that could remind people of Nazi Germany," he added.

The National Post apologized on Wednesday and acknowledged its story was untrue.

Diplomatic relations between Ottawa and Tehran have been icy since 2003 when Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi died in custody in Tehran. Ottawa has also consistently taken a robust line on Iran's disputed atomic program.

[baba jun]

kaashki yeki mitunest inaaro kholasasho benevise ke manam mikhundam, va garna ta 6 sobh (alan inja 10:20 shabe) bayad faghat inaro bekhunam

[ares]

kholasasho ine ke ruznamae kanadai ettela'ate nadurust gozarish kard va, bayad va shayad, ruznamehai digar ham unra pakhsh kard.

[baba jun]

mersi Ares jun, damet khaili garm, manam fekr nakonam ke in akhbaar dorost bashe, faghat mikhaan jave zede irani dorost konan, yek khabareo pakhsh mikonan badam takzibesh mikonan amma in vasat 1000 ta dige khabaro tekraar kardan va onam beh natijeie k mikhaastan residan
valla dar n ke dar iran dar hale hazer hichi dorost nist, shekki nist amma in khabar gozaari ha ham cherto pert ziaad minevisan

[Sepideh_UK]

Hala Ruznaameye Canadai az Iran ozr khahi karde lol

[Rasputin]

The National Post has said that a story it ran that claimed religious minorities in Iran would be forced to wear special color-coded badges is in fact not true.
The Canadian Press reports that the National Post, a conservative newspaper in Canada, announced Wednesday that the story, which stirred memories of the Holocaust, was wrong.

The Press also reports that the Iranian government summoned the Canadian ambassador to Tehran Wednesday to deal with the fallout of remarks made by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper that he had based on the National Post story. Mr. Harper had said that such a dress code would remind people of Nazi Germany.

Iranian legislators denied any such provision existed in a bill to encourage Islamic dress. A copy of the draft law obtained by the Associated Press made no mention of religious minorities or any requirement of special attire for them.
"We apologize for the mistake and for the consternation it has caused not just National Post readers, but the broader public who read the story," Douglas Kelly, editor-in-chief of the National Post, wrote in a Page 2 column. Mr. Kelly said the story was based on a column by Amir Taheri, an Iranian author and journalist, and two expatriate Iranians living in Canada. "We should have pushed the sources we did have for more corroboration of the information they were giving us," Mr. Kelly said.

The New York Post also ran the story over the weekend, under the full-page headline "Fourth Reich." The Associated Press reports that the original story created an international uproar.

The United States, which is locked in a standoff with Iran over its nuclear program, criticized the bill. The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, a Jewish human rights group, had sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan asking him to investigate, according to the National Post.
The Australian reported that Iran's only Jewish MP, Maurice Motammed, called the original story "a complete fabrication."

Mr. Motammed said he had been present in parliament when a bill to promote "an Iranian and Islamic style of dress for women" was voted. "In the law, there is no mention of religious minorities," he added.
MPs representing Iran's Jewish, Christian and Zoroastrian minorities sit on all parliamentary committees, particularly the cultural one, he said. "This is an insult to the Iranian people and to religious minorities in Iran," he said.

Jim Lobe of the progressive Inter Press Service follows the trajectory of the piece, and how a false story made its way into some of the leading conservative papers in Canada and the United States.

Juan Cole, president of the US Middle East Studies Association (MESA), described the Taheri article and its appearance first in Canada's Post as "typical of black psychological operations campaigns", particularly in its origin in an "out-of-the-way newspaper that is then picked up by the mainstream press" - in this case, the Jerusalem Post and the New York Post. A former US intelligence official described the article's relatively obscure provenance as a "real sign of [a] disinformation operation".
The Jewish Week of New York reports on how a "flawed confirmation" from Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, to an editor at the National Post led to the story being published.

How did it happen? Looking back, one can see that with the confrontation between Iran and the Bush administration escalating over the nuclear issue, frequent outrageous statements against Israel and Jews issued by Iran’s president, and the daily drumbeat in the media shaping public opinion as tensions build, the setting was ripe for running with a story that seemed to confirm an Iranian government following a Nazi script.
Some feared a replay of the kind of mis- or dis-information that primed Americans for war with Iraq. Others noted that the National Post was owned by the Asper brothers, who are known for their conservative and pro-Israel stands. “You can’t have a war without a good disinformation campaign,” opined Mathew Yglesias, of the liberal American Prospect Magazine.

In her blog, azerbic, Antonia Zerbisias of the Toronto Star looks at the public relations firm Benador Associates, of which Mr. Taheri is a member. The Jewish Week also describes the firm as "a boutique firm specializing in promoting neoconservative figures such as Taheri, Michael Ledeen, Richard Perle, Charles Krauthammer and others who supported the Iraq war and 'regime change' in Iran now."

Meanwhile, in another story with Holocaust overtones, Germany is facing an Iranian problem of its own.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad loves soccer, and says he might come with his country's team to Germany for the World Cup. Iran is one of 32 nations, including the US, that has qualified for this year's tournament, the biggest sporting event in the world. The Boston Globe reported Monday that the possibility that Mr. Ahmadinejad may attend has some German officials in an uproar, especially since Iran will play its first game in Nuremburg, "where Adolf Hitler set the stage for the Holocaust with massive Nazi rallies and passage of the Nuremberg laws, which stripped citizenship from German Jews." The Iranian president has denounced the Holocaust and regularly attacks Israel's right to exist.

Some German leaders and editorialists have demanded that the government ban the Iranian leader. But Chancellor Angela Merkel and her ministers so far have taken the position that Ahmadinejad cannot be turned away if he arrives with his country's official sports delegation, even though his presence would surely trigger international outrage and protests from Israel.
"He would be allowed," said Interior Ministry spokesman Christian Guenther Sachs. "Since he is head of state with a team in the World Cup, we would not be in a position to prevent him from coming." That's a far cry from saying Ahmadinejad is welcome.

A visit would put Germany in a no-win position. On the one hand, if the Iranian president visits, German officials feel they would have to "scold" him for his views, considering many of those views would be illegal in Germany. The US would also put Germany under pressure to say something.

On the other hand, Germany is loath to tamper with its "fine-tuned relations with the Islamic world," and would have to accord Ahmadinejad all the flourishes as a visiting head of state. Not to mention the oil question.

...Germany would plainly prefer not to have to ruffle a leader who sits on some of the world's richest oil and natural gas fields -- deposits that may prove vital to Europe's energy future. There's talk of building pipelines from Iran to Europe. Moreover, Iran is an important market for Germany, which sells some $5.6 billion worth of automobiles, electronics, and other goods to the country. So, very few German leaders want to forbid Ahmadinejad from coming before he even announces any plans for a soccer jaunt.