Tie a yellow ribbon...
Let's take a look at a plausible story behind the furor over the reports of Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians being required to identify themselves with yellow, red, or blue ribbons (respectively). Start over at Meryl's to get a summary:
Human 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.
Now, there's a lot of flack that this is a hoax, but I have my own conspiracy theory. First, let's look at some statements.
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.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."
Asharq Alawsat gives us some background on the law:
I noted with interest that the Iranian parliament approved a draft bill for "national dress law" on Monday, which is expected to replace Western-style dress. The bill is one of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's projects. According to IRIB, the law has yet to be finalized as it needs to be approved by the Guardians Council.The new law stipulates that financial aid must be given to Iranian dressmakers and designers to encourage them to focus on producing clothes that correspond to the "national and Islamic identity of Iran." A committee, which includes representatives from the ministry of culture, the ministry of trade and the cultural committee in parliament, as well as government television, is expected to be established. It will be responsible for defining the new national dress. Meanwhile, the ministry of trade has received orders to impose higher taxes on imported clothes and Iranian banks will have to give out loans for local designers and clothes manufacturers.
Men in Iran would dress like their counterparts abroad, except they would not wear a tie as it is banned, while women would have to respect the laws on national dress.
From the Globe and Mail:
Iran's only Jewish MP, Maurice Motamed said the report, published yesterday in Canada, is a complete fabrication. "It is a lie, and the people who invented it wanted to make political gain," he told Agence France-Presse in an interview from Tehran.Mr. Motamed said he was present in parliament when a bill to promote "an Iranian and Islamic style of dress for women" was tabled. "In the law, there is no mention of religious minorities."
YNet has a more direct quote:
“The dress code program being discussed in parliament has no relation to religious minorities. These reports are a flat out lie,” says Iranian lawmaker Imad Efrog, who proposed the “National Uniform Law.” Efrog, who apparently also read Israel and the world’s heated reactions to the report, told Canadian newspaper The Calgary Sun Saturday to tell the west to check their information on the law first, “and you will see there are no conditions for religious minorities in Iran.”
As I tie all of these together, I see a plausible path to the report of colored ribbons. Iran has decided to mandate a national uniform. That part no one disagrees with. Now historically, how does Iran enforce laws like this? By having religious police and other hardline groups do it on the street. So we have a dress code that only applies to Muslims - but how is our hard-working religious cop supposed to esily identify someone exempt from that rule? Presumably, they wear a badge. So it seems like a perfectly reasonable expectation that, at some point, someone suggested that, if a member of an official religious minority did not want to be flogged for not wearing Islamic dress, they could wear a ribbon instead.
Of course, given the lack of transparency outside of liberal democracies, I doubt we'll ever know. I just wonder if Ahmadinejad is smart enough to bury that provision, if it exists, before the law is approved.
