Here is the complete Reuters dispatch from Sunday, May 21, and a report from Gareth Smyth in Tehran in the Financial Times.
Iran
dress code law does not target minorities -
MPs
By Parinoosh
Arami
Reuters
Sun May 21, 2006 7:09 PM IST
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's new
dress code bill is aimed at encouraging designers to work on
imaginative Islamic clothing, lawmakers said on Sunday, dismissing a
report that the bill sought special outfits for religious
minorities.
Canada's National Post on Friday reported the draft bill approved
last week would force Jews, Christians and other religious minorities
such as Zoroastrians to wear colour-coded clothes to distinguish them
from Muslims.
A copy of the bill obtained by Reuters
contained no such references. Reuters correspondents who followed the
dress code session in parliament as it was broadcast on state radio
heard no discussion of proscriptions for religious minorities.
Senior parliamentarian Mohsen Yahyavi
described the Canadian report as "completely false".
"The bill aims to support those
designers that produce clothes that are more compatible with Islam,
but there will be no ban on the wearing of other designs," he told
Reuters.
Iran's Jewish MP Moris Motamed
also agreed the bill made no attempt to force special garments on the
minorities.
"There is no single word in the
bill about a special design or colour for the religious minority
groups," he said.
"Our enemies seek to create
tension among the religious minorities with such news and to exploit
the situation to their benefit," he added.
The bill has only been approved as an outline. The details must be agreed then sent to the Guardian Council, Iran's constitutional watchdog, for approval.
Iran has strict Islamic dress codes
under which women must cover their hair and hide the shape of their
bodies with loose-fitting clothes. Police and Islamic basij militias
intermittently clamp down on women who flout the rules.
Religious minorities are largely
tolerated in Iran, have freedom of worship and some exemptions from
the Islamic Republic's strict rules in the private spaces of their
own communities.
There are, however, certain
military and medical jobs they are barred from and there are
occasional scares for the 25,000-member Jewish community which has
expressed its fears about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's denial of
the Holocaust.
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Iran
denies 'mischievous' allegations on
Jews
Gareth Smyth in Tehran
Financial Times
Published: May 21 2006 20:26 | Last updated: May 21 2006 20:26
Iranian officials and politicians
have strongly condemned a Canadian newspaper report alleging that
Iran had passed a law requiring Jews to wear yellow badges on their
clothes.
The story also claimed Christians
and Zoroastrians, the two other main religious minorities in mainly
Muslim Iran, would have to wear badges identifying themselves.
"When I heard this, I immediately
felt it was a mischievous act, a fresh means of pressure against the
Iranian government," Maurice Motammed, the Jews' deputy in the
Iranian parliament, told the FT on Sunday. "We representatives for
religious minorities are active in the parliament, and there has
never been any mention of such a thing."
The story, published in Canada's
National Post on Friday, was also reported by the UPI news agency and
widely posted on websites.
It led Chuck Schumer, a US
senator to issue a news release calling the Iranian regime "lunatic"
and "pernicious". At a White House press briefing, spokesman Sean
McCormack said such a measure would be "despicable" and "carry clear
echoes of Germany under Hitler".
Chris Wattie, the reporter,
sourced his story only to Jewish groups and "Iranian exiles". He
quoted Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los
Angeles, saying the move was "reminiscent of the holocaust" and that
Iran was "moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis".
The Post story was drawn from a
column in the paper by Amir Taheri, editor of the state-owned Kayhan
newspaper under the Shah of Iran before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Mr Taheri claimed the law was "drafted two years ago" and had been
revived "under pressure" from President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad.
"The new codes would enable
Muslims to easily recognise non-Muslims so that they can avoid
shaking hands with them by mistake, and thus becoming najis
(unclean)," Mr Taheri wrote.
A contributor to various
newspapers including the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal and
Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, a leading Arabic-language newspaper, Mr Taheri is
an opponent of talks between the US and Iran.
He wrote in the New York Post
last month the US should "go for regime change in Tehran" as the only
way to stop Iran's drive to "dominate the region and use it as the
nucleus of an Islamic superpower which would then seek global
domination".
In Tehran, Hamid-Reza Asefi, the
foreign ministry spokesmen, said "a Zionist operation" was "active in
different countries, including Canada, to foment psychological war
and spread lies" about Iran.
"It's being done now because of
the nuclear issue to give a negative image of the Islamic Republic,"
he added.
Kenneth R. Timmerman is Executive Director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran.