like the one in this photo of a Jewish man with his children alongside a deportation train at the Warsaw ghetto circa 1940.
Posted on 05/19/2006 2:55:11 AM PDT by Squawk 8888
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.
"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."
The law, which must still be approved by Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi before being put into effect, also establishes special insignia to be worn by non-Muslims.
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.
"There's no reason to believe they won't pass this," said Rabbi Hier. "It will certainly pass unless there's some sort of international outcry over this."
Bernie Farber, the chief executive of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said he was "stunned" by the measure. "We thought this had gone the way of the dodo bird, but clearly in Iran everything old and bad is new again," he said. "It's state-sponsored religious discrimination."
Ali Behroozian, an Iranian exile living in Toronto, said the law could come into force as early as next year.
It would make religious minorities immediately identifiable and allow Muslims to avoid contact with non-Muslims.
Mr. Behroozian said it will make life even more difficult for Iran's small pockets of Jewish, Christian and other religious minorities -- the country is overwhelmingly Shi'ite Muslim. "They have all been persecuted for a while, but these new dress rules are going to make things worse for them," he said.
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.
A spokesman for the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa refused to comment on the measures. "This is nothing to do with anything here," said a press secretary who identified himself as Mr. Gharmani.
"We are not here to answer such questions."
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has written to Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, protesting the Iranian law and calling on the international community to bring pressure on Iran to drop the measure.
"The world should not ignore this," said Rabbi Hier. "The world ignored Hitler for many years -- he was dismissed as a demagogue, they said he'd never come to power -- and we were all wrong."
Mr. Farber said Canada and other nations should take action to isolate Mr. Ahmadinejad in light of the new law, which he called "chilling," and his previous string of anti-Semitic statements.
"There are some very frightening parallels here," he said. "It's time to start considering how we're going to deal with this person."
Mr. Ahmadinejad has repeatedly described the Holocaust as a myth and earlier this year announced Iran would host a conference to re-examine the history of the Nazis' "Final Solution."
He has caused international outrage by publicly calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map."
Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons, but Tehran believed by Western nations to be developing its own nuclear military capability, in defiance of international protocols and peace treaties.
The United States, France and Israel accuse Iran of using a civilian nuclear program to secretly build a weapon. Iran denies this, saying its program is confined to generating electricity.
If they enact this then it'll be interesting seeing how the rest of the world explain it away and try to insist that it really isn't all that bad.
This goes way beyond bizarre. It's almost like the Iranian mullahs sit in a big circle-jerk with each one in turn trying to outdo the last speaker by suggesting an even more outrageous thing to announce to the world.
I wouldn't be surprised if they actually do this on purpose. It would serve two purposes. The first is to see exactly what the bounaries are. The second is to try to distort and extend those boundaries. The latter occurs though a cycle of shock, outrage, discussion, and (ultimately) acceptance and approval. Kind of like what we go through with our culture. One decades]'s shock (e.g., floating the idea of gay marriage or citizenship for illegals in the 90s) becomes another decade's accepted idea.
At this point, it doesn't seem like they have any limits. Your guess is as good as mine.
God willing, Yes!
And every muslim except the blind californian ones will reply yes it does.
.....an original idea?
I've been thinking similar thoughts.
Yesterday, I reread Yeat's poem Slouching to Bethelehem and it gave me cold shivers. It seems so prophetic for what we are on the edge of, or at least matches my mood:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Of course, the Beast Yeats was talking about was never really asleep, for that darkness wallowed through all the centuries of Christiandom, but now it seems to be at such a peak.
The center cannot hold.
Things fall apart, all over the world.
Lord have mercy.
Interesting Idea.
I wonder what America will do once the jews are rounded up in Iran. hmmm
Ping!
You know, I used to think that the mark of the beast would be an RFID chip or something similar. but its really just going to be these crazy muslims tattooing themselves so they can buy and sell their goods without worrying about selling to jews and christians.
Yes, your points are well made, and it's like deja vu, Germany 1930s.
I'm pinging Jackson and Alouette because this is terribly interesting and the more opinions here the better.
This is a very disturbing regime.
It's an outrage!
that's some picture, Dallas
Less than 25 000 Jews. Not sure of the Christian numbers.
http://www.iranian.com/History/2000/May/Jews/index.html
The conquest of Islam in seventh century put an end to freedom of religion throughout the area. All polytheistic and pagan religions were banned all together with all the other Near and Far Eastern religions. Islam does not recognize these as true religions. All major and minor deities were eliminated as false gods. In the house of Kaba, which contained 110 such deities alone, all were banished. The followers of these religions became 'koffar ' and were given the choice to either convert or die.
Allah a term used by local Christian tribes, meaning god, became the only sovereign god, the almighty. Islam was the last and the most superior of all religions and Muslim males were made superior to all others including Muslim females. Christianity and Judaism were accepted as the only other true religions and their holy scripts were accepted as such. However despite a large number of Christian and Jewish tribes in Arabia, their freedom was substantially restricted and their legal status lowered. They were given the right to practice their religion if they paid a discriminatory religious poll tax called 'jizya'. In the Qoran, these people are called dhimmis (ahl-e zimmeh). Later Zoroastrians of Iran were included as well. The Qoran discourages Muslims from becoming friends with Christians and Jews and calls the latter liars, dishonest and violent. With Christians, they are forbidden from any participation in building Mosques. Mixed marriages were banned for Muslim women. While Muslims could not become slaves, all others were subjected to slavery as purchased slaves or war booty. Later on Christians and Jews were banned from riding horses while carrying arms and could not increase their numbers through conversion of others. They were segregated and their houses could not exceed those of Muslims in height (the Jewish quarter in Kerman is the best example).
Shariat courts became the only legal vessel and the Qoran gave Muslim males superior legal status. For instance, if a Jew or a Christian killed a Muslim, both 'ghessas' (physical punishment) and 'diyeh' (monetary compensation) would apply. If a Muslim killed a Jew or a Christian, there was no ghesas -- they only pay diyeh, which is half of what the Jew or the Christian would have to pay. There is no punishment for killing koffar (non-believers) or mortad (Muslims who converted to other faiths).
In short, all except Muslim males became second class citizens (dhimmis). When Jerusalem was conquered, the Covenant of Ummar made religious discrimination an institution. Ummar believed Arabia should be purely Muslim and Arab. The large Christian and Jewish communities of Arabia mainly in Najran, Khaybar, Hijaz and Medina were expelled to the conquered territories and their properties confiscated. His bias, brutality and discriminatory actions contributed to his assassination by a Persian slave.
The situation worsened by the time of Harun Al Rashid in eight-century AD. The overwhelming population of the area at the time was Christian, Zoroastrian and Jewish. Their houses of worship were destroyed, they could not build any new ones and jizya was increased substantially. Payment of the jizya was furthermore to be accompanied by signs of humility and recognition of personal inferiority.
On payment of the tax a seal, generally of lead, was affixed to the payee's person as a receipt and as a sign of the status of dhimma. By the time of Caliph Al Motevakel in ninth century, non-Muslims were all excluded from employment in government sectors, banned from Muslim schools, had to live in closed quarters and were forced to wear colored ribbons to indicate they were non-Muslims. Jews had to wear yellow ribbons (Vasleh Johudaneh); a practice that persisted till the end of the 19th century in Iran.
That's really scary. They want them identified so the Muslims know who they are and can kill them on sight. Instead of being locked in a "border war", we need to be focusing on dealing with Iran, militarily.
"dhimmitude is a slow and painful death of the spirit"
The Iranian people have been suffering this slow death of the spirit for 27 yrs.
In one sense yes, it is depressing and fearful; OTOH, it may be "positive", in that it encourages us to take the bastards out sooner, rather than later
Actually, non-muslim shop windows have had designations on them for yrs.
like the one in this photo of a Jewish man with his children alongside a deportation train at the Warsaw ghetto circa 1940.
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