May 19, 2006
What a Relief!
Wow… The big talk all day has been this story, about the new Iranian dress codes:
A colour code for Iran’s ‘infidels’
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. The new codes would enable Muslims to easily recognize non-Muslims so that they can avoid shaking hands with them by mistake, and thus becoming najis (unclean).
[insert standard Nazi reference here]
Yeah, that would be pretty bad. There aren’t very many worse emotional images than the Jews in Germany forced to wear the Star of David as an “identification”. Thankfully, it appears that this little portion of the law doesn’t actually exist. So we can all breathe easier.
Or can we?
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.
…
According to Ahmadinejad, the new Islamic uniforms will establish “visual equality” for Iranians as they prepare for the return of the Hidden Imam.
A committee that consists of members from the Ministry of Islamic Orientation, the Ministry of Commerce and the Cultural Subcommittee of the Islamic Majlis is scheduled to propose the new uniforms by next autumn. These would then have to be approved by the “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei before being imposed by law.
Wait… So the government is going to mandate uniforms?
It looks like justbarkingmad has seen this before, and knows where it leads:
What is true is that the Islamic Majlis, the Iranian religious legislature, did pass a law requiring everyone in Iran to wear Approved by Allahtm clothing. Now we’ve seen this before in China. Everyone wore those cute little jackets and pajama pants.
And a lot of people died.
The collective blogosphere is breathing that sigh of relief. But when a government has grown intrusive enough to mandate uniforms, I think it’s a big red flag, that they’re willing to mandate a whole lot more. For all those people who defend the Iranian regime, acting like it’s really a “democracy”, take a closer look.
Democracy is a word that people here in America take very seriously. In some respects, Iran is actually a democracy, but democracy and freedom are only somewhat related to each other. Iran is a democracy under the Islamic constraints (i.e. whatever the mullahs say), and America is a democracy under classical liberal constraints enshrined in our Constitution. There’s a big difference.
There’s trouble brewing in Iran, whether you believe they’re trying to pull the “identification” thing for religious minorities or not. When the time comes that American politicians start debating a “national uniform”, you’re going to see me moving the hell out.
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Hopefully we will still have English as our standard language. There’s debate on that in Congress right now….What’s next?
Lucy,
We’ve never had English as our “standard language” or our “official language”. They’re debating whether or not to start having a standard language.