2006 Iranian Sumptuary Law Controversy - Refutation

Refutation

In Chris Wattie's follow-up article "Experts say reports of badges for Jews in Iran is untrue", the National Post quotes Meir Javedanfar, an Israeli expert on Iran and the Middle East:

Meir Javdanfar, an Israeli expert on Iran and the Middle East who was born and raised in Tehran, said yesterday that he was unable to find any evidence that such a law had been passed. “None of my sources in Iran have heard of this,” he said. “I don’t know where this comes from.” Mr. Javdanfar said that not all clauses of the law had been passed through the parliament and said the requirement that Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians wear special insignia might be part of an older version of the Islamic dress law, which was first written two years ago. “In any case, there is no way that they could have forced Iranian Jews to wear this,” he added. “The Iranian people would never stand for it.”

...as did the news radio station AM 940 Montreal.

"ndependent reporter Meir Javedanfar, an Israeli Middle East expert who was born and raised in Tehran, says the report is false. "It's absolutely factually incorrect," he told The New 940 Montreal. "Nowhere in the law is there any talk of Jews and Christians having to wear different colours. I've checked it with sources both inside Iran and outside." "The Iranian people would never stand for it. The Iranian government wouldn't be stupid enough to do it."

The National Post also quotes the London-based Iranian commentator Ali Reza Nourizadeh:

"Ali Reza Nourizadeh, an Iranian commentator on political affairs in London, suggested that the requirements for badges or insignia for religious minorities was part of a “secondary motion” introduced in parliament, addressing the changes specific to the attire of people of various religious backgrounds. Mr. Nourizadeh said that motion was very minor and was far from being passed into law. That account could not be confirmed."

According to Sam Kermanian, secretary general of the Iranian American Jewish Federation, his contacts in the Iranian Jewish community, including Maurice Motamed, said that there was no such law. The New York Sun quoted Kermanian as saying that "We have not been able to confirm the accuracy of the report, nonetheless we are pursuing this issue with concern"

According to Agence France-Presse,

"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.

According to the Toronto Star,

"In a phone interview from Tel Aviv, Israeli commentator and Iranian exile Meir Jawadnafar angrily dismissed the story as "baseless." Toronto-based Iranian blogger Hossein Derkhshan said he could find no evidence of any such plans. Repeated calls to Post editor-in-chief Doug Kelly went unreturned. The paper's website ran a story headlined "Experts say report of badges ... is untrue.""