The folks over at Talking Points Memo are rather convinced that the Iranian Dress Code story is “already debunked” (here and here). None of them speak a word of Farsi, as far as I know, but the word of Juan Cole is apparently good enough for them – better obviously than that of Farsi native speaker Amir Taheri, whose column first broke the story. Taheri has written a simple addendum which is pretty self-explanatory:
Regarding the dress code story it seems that my column was used as the basis for a number of reports that somehow jumped the gun. As far as my article is concerned I stand by it. The law has been passed by the Islamic Majlis and will now be submitted to the Council of Guardians. A committee has been appointed to work out the modalities of implementation. Many ideas are being discussed with regard to implementation, including special markers, known as zonnars, for followers of Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism, the only faiths other than Islam that are recognized as such. The zonnar was in use throughout the Muslim world until the early 20th century and marked out the dhimmis, or protected religious minorities. ( In Iran it was formally abolished in 1908). I have been informed of the ideas under discussion thanks to my sources in Tehran, including three members of the Majlis who had tried to block the bill since it was first drafted in 2004. I do not know which of these ideas or any will be eventually adopted. We will know once the committee appointed to discuss them presents its report, perhaps in September.
One of the things that startled me in this (you always learn more about Iran when reading Taheri) is that only Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism are recongized as minority faiths in Iran. What happened to Buddhism and Hinduism? Are they even beneath dhimmitude? Interesting.
Anyway, about the issue at hand, potential armbands or their equivalent, I guess the folks at TPM want to make this a liberal/conservative thing. I suppose I’m naive. I thought it was about human rights – or maybe basic morality.
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18 Comments
1. Fresh Air:Yes, Buddhism and Hinduism are not recognized, since they came after Islam.
Judaism and Christianity were given special status since they predated Islam and therefore their followers did not need to be put to the sword like Buddhists and Hindus, just dhimmified.
What a relief, eh?
May 22, 2006 - 10:08 pm 2. Word Guy:In terms of Buddhism & Hinduism, the issue is whether they’re considered ahl al-kit‚b, People of the Book. Originally, this category of protected fellow-monotheists solely meant Christians and Jews. However, as Muhammad’s armies advanced, they ran into large numbers of Zoroastrians in Persia. Since they were not readily assimilable, the definition of People of the Book was expanded to more or less include anyone with a revealed scripture. Consequently, many Hindus have lived as protected minorities under Muslim dynasties in India, and Buddhists have had that status some places in Southeast Asia.
However, I’m guessing that in the Islamic Republic, there aren’t sufficient numbers of Hindus, Buddhists, etc., to warrant their inclusion as a recognized minority (especially given the generally despotic, xenophobic, and Twelver Shiëite-centric nature of the Islamic Republic). They’d be in the generic “pagan” category which generally is accorded no appreciable rights.
But that’s just a (reasonably educated) guess.
May 22, 2006 - 10:13 pm 3. Ron Wrght:Roger,
I’m with you. Here’s some thoughts at my site and follow the related links to other posts.
RBT
*****
IRAN – Never Again – No More Stinking Final Solutions!
[...]
The world must never forget the “Big Lie” and “The Final Solution.” Also Hitler wasn’t the originator of this Evil and madness as some have noted this has strong Islamic historical roots.
We must stick on this story like stink on poop and run it to ground. There is no excuse in the free world for Final Solutions with the interconnectivity of the Net, the Blogos and the Army of Davids Effect
Lose the Army of Davids!
[...]
It ain’t over until the fat lady sings. The fat lady hasn’t sung yet.
Dr. Zin has returned home and is commenting. See this piece re the dangers of not dealing with Evil starring us in the face. There is historical precedence for this unlike Rathergate and “fake but accurate” nonsense of the LL and the MSM.
[...]
There is truth to this story and shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. President MAD and the Mad Mullahs as Dr. Zin notes are pursuing an incrementalistic strategy.
RBT has this further analogy. A frog will die in a pot of boiling water if brought slowly to a boil!
[...]
This is what we’re all taking about [RE the Mad Mullahs' Dress Code]. This is where the Mad Mullahs of Iran are going, if you extrapolate the thoughts of others who have the personal experience and knowledge to know [e.g. Bernard Lewis - see link below].
This is the terminal point or end game of Iranian President MAD, Imam Yazdi, and their crew from the 12th Century.
I don’t give a damn what the LL, MSM, UN, and the others who are in denial or want to appease this Evil starring them in the face, think or may say!
There is no moral equivalency of Islamofascism in the modern world. This is Tolkien’s war of Good vs. Evil.
See my comments in this excellent thread over at Winds of Change started by A.L.:
[...]
Read More
May 22, 2006 - 10:34 pm 4. adhoc:Sorry, but the excuse that there’s a grain of “truth”– or even more– in his original story doesn’t excuse Amir Taheri who in that first story stated categorically that these “ideas” which may or not be adopted were already a firm mandatory part of the law.
It reminds me too much of those friends-of-holocaust-deniers of the world like the off the wall anti-zionist Gilad Atzmon, who claim that though the Protocols may not actually be true, they do portray the realities.
In the UK, we also have the notorious reporter Andrew Gilligan who defended publishing an inaccurate story claiming that the UK government deliberately falsified its evidence on the threat from Iraq on the grounds that journalists need to be given a margin of error.
The open, self-proclaimed threats from Iran are bad enough; they don’t need over-egging with untrue reports.
May 22, 2006 - 11:00 pm 5. W.J.A:> What happened to Buddhism and Hinduism?
Dude, look at a map of the Middle East lately? Ain’t exactly a hotbed of East Asian religons. By that logic, the Iranians should make up badges for Scientologists and Wiccans, too.
May 22, 2006 - 11:01 pm 6. JK Ribera:It could be that Mr. Taheri over-stated his argument, as some have said. But if he is correct that such things are even under discussion, it is highly disturbing and therefore worth writing about.
May 23, 2006 - 12:38 am 7. JeremyR:Have you ever checked a map? Iran is right next door to Afghanistan, which is right next to Pakistan, which is basically India. While I doubt there was much flow of Hinduism into that region, Bhuddism did (remember those statues the Taliban blew up).
Anyway, the deal with Zoroastrianism is that while it’s not related to Islam like Judaism or Christianity, it still is basically monotheistic (technically dualist, but Islam has the devil as well), so it gets included. Not to mention, it’s the native Persian religion before Islam invaded.
May 23, 2006 - 1:29 am 8. David Thomson:Melanie Phillips has blogged on this controversy. There is a possibility that the Islamic hard-liners in Iran are putting up a trial balloon. My guess is that this idea will not be enacted in the immediate future.
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001711.html
ìAnyway, about the issue at hand, potential armbands or their equivalent, I guess the folks at TPM want to make this a liberal/conservative thing.î
The TPM folks, in their heart of hearts, believe that there is rarely, if ever, a justification for employing violence in the war on terror. Americaís enemies are actually victims of our allegedly imperialistic policies and misguided support of Israel. A little more understanding and compromise on our part will go a long way. Is the TPM crowd a group of marginalized leftists? Nope, these individuals represent the ìmainstreamî of todayís national Democratic Party. The same holds true of Juan Cole.
May 23, 2006 - 3:44 am 9. Ray Zacek:I personally think law should mandate that public intellectuals such as Cole or Chomsky or Cornell West, to name but a few, should wear funny hats, red clown noses, and other such paraphernalia, to properly distinguish them and their function in society.
May 23, 2006 - 4:45 am 10. Alexandra von Maltzan:Sorry, em, no he did not.
Taheri’s sentence no 1) “The law mandates the government to make sure that all Iranians wear “standard Islamic garments” designed to remove ethnic and class distinctions reflected in clothing, and to eliminate “the influence of the infidel” on the way Iranians, especially, the young dress.”
We have had that confirmed.
Immediately followed by sentence no 2) “It also envisages separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct colour schemes to make them identifiable in public.”
We know that this has been “envisaged” and discussed. We also know that this is nothing new. It may have been a part of earlier versions of the law. The code was only abolished in 1908, and historic precedent is very comfortable with this idea dating back as far as Caliph Omar II in 717AD.
Much has been made of the fact that the law makes “no mention” of it. Just because a document “makes no mention” of something does not mean it is not – under a definition of “standard” – “implied.”
This is hardly cause for a credibility check of the supposed “secondary motion” (this has been confirmed) that fits the pattern of laws that Iran has already instituted.
The very fact that it is envisaged, discussed and considered is bad enough. These guys are just warming up.
I would rather believe Taheri’s sources in Iran than the left wing apologists, who are busy looking for “the good in Ahmadinejad” and Islam, and confirmation of Iran’s peaceful intentions, rather than recognizing it as a da’wa (an invitation to convert to Islam), a prerequisite for waging war, which it actually is.
Someone told me the other day on a leftie blog that Ahmadinejad did not say that he will annihilate Israel, and that this is a right-wing, pro Jewish conspiracy to sabotage the Farsi translation and to encourage warmongering. And all this with a straight face.
Let me stand with Taheri on this any day of the week, what I see as opposition to his view on this, even on the right, I do not like. But then I have been labeled as a Nazi for daring to agree with him. The mind boggles, elevating me to dizzy heights of recognition.
May 23, 2006 - 6:20 am 11. dclydew:Iran, without dress codes, seems like a serious problem in the making. With them, it sounds like catostrophe in the making. However, I’m sure it will sit and spin around congress with big speeches and little action, just like Darfur. To think, we once were the champions of human rights around the world. These days we appear as the champions of beuracratic bullshit and the heros of partisan politics.
May 23, 2006 - 7:16 am 12. Ron Wrght:Alexandra,
Nice to see you commenting in this thread.
We stand together on this issue.
I guess we weren’t asleep or ditching history class and see some relevance in learning from human behavior in the past :–)
Again this goes beyond comparisions with Nazism. Many historical scholars are commenting this practice has deep historical roots for all infidels in the foundation of Islam in the 7th/8th Centuries.
Also seldom discussed the Nazis were in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
Call a “spade a spade.” Evil is Evil.
May 23, 2006 - 7:47 am 13. ed:Hmmm.
1. Islam, Judaism and Christianity all derive from the Old Testament, and thus they are all people of The Book.
This enables, theoretically, jews and christians to live in Islamic countries by adopting a submissive role a la dhimmitude.
2. Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, etc etc are not of The Book, i.e. derived from the Old Testament, and so are considered to be pagans. For pagans there is forced conversion to Islam, slavery, death or exile.
3. Anyone who thinks that muslims can tell hindus what to do is fooling himself. Fundamentalist Hinduism is a lot nastier than fundamentalist Islam. Jihadist will cut your head off. Hindu extremists will burn you alive and toast marshmallows on the fire.
May 23, 2006 - 9:10 am 14. dclydew:ed,
Yep… exstremists in any religion seem capable of horrific atrocities. It so happens that Islam is ascendant in the cycle of “crazy bastards who think they know God’s Will”, in different times and in different places other religious crackpots have played at the same game.
No matter what religion, no matter what time period, we should ALL (Republican, Democrat or Non-Zombie) be able to stand against religious extremists taking life and liberty from people that disagree with them.
May 23, 2006 - 9:39 am 15. ajf:Jeremy, you’re misinformed. Zoroastrianism is recognized as the original monotheistic religion (no fire worshipping either.) Judaism and Christianity are both derivative. And islam is just a filthy cult…
May 23, 2006 - 3:39 pm 16. Steven E. Ehrbar:Who counts as “People of the Book” differs according to who’s doing the determining.
The original definition was limited to the Jews, Christians, and “Sabians”, who in Islamic theology are followers of genuine Prophets (Islam claiming Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, John the Baptist, and Jesus as Islamic prophets, among others). Sabianism today is usually identified today with Manadaenism, a Gnostic faith practiced historically in parts of Iraq and Iran, that recognized John the Baptist as a prophet.
As Islam expanded, and new religions were encountered, new definitions came along. Zoroastrianism, which has a good God, prophecy, angels, Heaven, Hell, an evil prinicple, a Last Judgment, and a prophesied coming of the Messiah, was a natural fit. (Secular historians argue that Judaism imported many of these concepts from Zoroastrianism, and that is how they came to be in Christianity and Islam).
The native religions of India were more difficult. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism were all clearly deeply incompatible with the theistic assumptions of the traditional Book religions, being “pagan” mixtures of polytheism, pantheism, and panetheism. But they also had what were claimed to be revealed scriptures. As a practical matter, Islamic rulers who couldn’t convert such subjects called them Peoples of the Book, while more conservative interpretations denied that status.
Finally, there are the Sikhs (started in India) and Bahais (started in Iran). While both have theologies and scriptures that would have qualified them as People of the Book had they been encountered earlier, both postdated Islam’s founding and are fairly clearly derived from Islam. So they faced persecution, though practical accomodations were sometimes made by rulers not willing to bear the price of religious persecution.
Iran under the Islamic Republic follows the original-plus-Zoroastrianism rule (I don’t recall how Mandaeans are treated) for who is allowed to live under Muslim rule. All other religions are either paganism or heretical perversions of Islam, and are therefore at war with Islam. This in practice is mostly a problem for Bahais, since few Hindus or Buddhists live in Iran.
May 23, 2006 - 8:47 pm 17. mythusmage:A further complication for Hinduism is that it’s not really a religion per se, but a hodge-podge of different practices, beliefs, and (for all intents and purposes) religions.
Hinduism is an example of what you get when you try to reconcile the beliefs of many different settlements, from villages to cities. Keep in mind that Middle Kingdom Egypt had something like 5 different sun gods, and that’s after consolidating the dozens of Egyptian sun gods that had been worshipped before.
What we call Hinduism is really what we could call Academic Hinduism. It’s the Hinduism of the scholar and the elites. It is this Hinduism that relies on scripture. Village Hinduism is a very different thing. In effect a different religion, at the very least, and more like many distinct religions when you get right down to it.
In Academic Hinduism Kali (for example) is an aggregation of many female gods covering many different areas of interest. In Village Hinduism Kali is Mother Earth, goddess of the field and fertility. (You know, the fact Academic Kali is a rampant sadist says a lot about academia in India.
). Village Kali is as opposite Academic Kali as it’s possible for a deity to be.
So when a Muslim has to consider Hinduism the question arises of which Hinduism are we talking about. The Hinduism of the Rig Veda, the Hinduism of a Tamil village, or the Hinduism of the Punjab?
Setting down religious law is so much easier when the only neighbors with a potentially competing faith is a tribe of Jews.
May 23, 2006 - 11:07 pm 18. tioedong:Hinduism is paganism, and not allowed.
May 24, 2006 - 5:40 amZorastrianism is monotheism and allowed.
Christian and Jews are allowed as people of the book.
Bahais are a Muslim offshoot, and considered heretics, and are actually persecuted…
Bahai library
As for dress codes, women already have a dress code.
Finally, to defend the Mullahs, at least Christians and Jews can practice their faith. This is not true in Saudi Arabia…Arroyo just brought several hundred prisoners back here to the Philippines…many had been arrested for having rosaries, bibles, bible study, (also drinking alcohol, or gambling)…she was touted as a great hero, but if she had guts, she would have asked why a million Philippinos have no religious rights when they work in SaudiArabia…