New dress code in Iran: Jews and Christians must wear badges

[MrVisible]

Originally Posted by MaggieL

Not a germane question until you show me where Taheri lied. His words, not third-hand commentary.

Sigh.

From the article you posted as the original source, which appears under Amir Taheri's byline:

WHILE Iran's economy appears to be heading for recession, one sector may have some reason for optimism. That sector is the garment industry and the reason for its optimism is a law passed by the Islamic Majlis (parliament) on Monday.

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.

It also envisages separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct color schemes to make them identifiable in public. The new codes would enable Muslims to instantly recognize non-Muslims so that they can avoid shaking hands with them by mistake, and thus becoming najis" (unclean).
...
Religious minorities would have their own color schemes. They will also have to wear special insignia, known as zonnar, to indicate their non-Islamic faiths. Jews would 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.

At no point in the article is there any indication that any of this is Taheri's speculation. It's reported as established fact.

And who would be more knowledgeable about, and more outraged by the passage of such a law than the Jewish representative on the Iranian parliament, Maurice Motamed? What does he have to say about this?

From Agence France-Press:

"This report is a complete fabrication and is totally false," Maurice Motammed told AFP in Tehran. "It is a lie, and the people who invented it wanted to make political gain" by doing so. .... 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.

The paper that printed the original story issued a retraction and an apology. There is no evidence for the claims stated in the article. There is considerable evidence against it.

That counts as a lie in my book.

So, is the man who fabricated this story a reliable and competent expert, worthy of being consulted by the White House?