Iranian
draft law to encourage women to wear Islamic clothing
Khaleej Times - 20 May, 2006
A draft law being considered by Iran’s parliament
encourages the wearing of Islamic clothing to protect the country’s
Muslim identity, according to a copy of the bill obtained by The
Associated Press on Saturday.
The 13-article bill, which
received preliminary approval a week ago, makes no mention of
requiring special attire for religious minorities.
On Friday,
a Canadian newspaper, The National Post, quoting Iranian exiles,
said the law would force Jews, Christians and other religious
minorities to wear special patches of colored cloth to distinguish
them from Muslims.
The report brought immediate criticism
from the United States, which is locked in a standoff with Iran over
its nuclear program.
State Department spokesman Sean
McCormack said any such measure would be “despicable” and carry
“clear echoes of Germany under Hitler.” He would not comment
further, saying he didn’t “have all the facts” on the
bill.
The bill raised fears among women that the hard-line
government led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is planning to crack
down on social freedoms won in Iran during the previous, pro-reform
government.
Laws in place since the 1979 Islamic Revolution
require women to wear “chador” _ meaning a headscarf to cover their
hair and a long overcoat the hide their shapes.
But in the
past decade, enforcement has grown lax, and women _ particularly in
the capital, Teheran _ commonly wear scarves that leave almost their
entire heads bare and short, form-fitting jackets instead of
overcoats.
The bill makes no specific mention of women but
says it aims to “encourage the public to abstain from choosing
clothes that aren’t appropriate to the culture of Iran,” according
to the copy received from the parliament’s press office.
It
tasks the Culture Ministry and state media to promote Iranian styles
of dress and to discourage clothing “that does not conform with
Iranian-Islamic culture.”
It also would give economic
incentives to producers making Islamic-style clothing and impose
tariffs on clothes imports.
The bill does not call for police
or other bodies to enforce stricter styles of dress for women. In
the past, religious police and paramilitary militias would castigate
women in the streets if any of their hair was showing or if their
clothes were too revealing, though such enforcement has been rarer
in recent years.
Ardalan Parvin, a women’s activist and
journalist in Iran, said women won’t accept it if they try to step
up enforcement now.
“It is clear that this plan is designed
to fight the Western dress code adopted by so many of Iran’s youth,”
she said. “But I don’t think that they can just eliminate the
Western dress altogether. It’s going to be very
difficult.”
The law does not define the Islamic-Iranian style
that it will encourage or directly impose a particular uniform, as
the National Post article suggested.
The Post also said that
the law required Jews to wear a yellow strip of cloth sewn into
their clothes, Christians to have a red one and Zoroastrians to wear
blue. The copy of the bill received by AP makes no mention of
minorities.
“Such a plan has never been proposed or discussed
in parliament. Such news, which appeared abroad, is an insult to
religious minorities here,” Iranian Jewish lawmaker Morris Motamed
told the AP.
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