Update: Story of Iran’s Coloured Badges is False
On Friday, Canada’s National Post put up a story claiming that the government in Iran had just passed a law requiring all religious minorities to wear coloured badges to identify themselves. The story was picked up and swirled around by just about everyone including Yahoo, MSNBC, and others. Now, based on information from, well, just about everyone in the world, it seems that it all came out of a draft law aimed at encouraging Islamic dress. And while many are worried about the law in its current form, there is no mention of religious minorities in it.
More tellingly, if you go back to the links to the National Post that I put up yesterday, (here and here) you’ll find nothing but blank pages (though alarmingly, the op-ed piece that started it all is still up).
May 21st, 2006 at 11:53 pm
I guess sometimes we should be careful with our reaction to news stories less we become a tool for prapaganda. In this day and age we need to be quite careful as stories to promote anger and stir up animosity towards one nation or religion to another are rampent. I hear them as drum beat towards conflict and war and the sound seems increasing day by day. The idea is to sow doubts in peoples minds, overflood people with information (regardless of it being true or faulse), repeat it over and over until a majority who do not stop and concider for themselves to what aim such information is being propagated believe the “other side” to be evil. In some cases, reporters will report whatever is mentioned without proper investigation, because either the reporter wishes the statement to be true, or because their job requires quick turnaround and they have not time to investigate. It is not the first time that certain exiles would fabricate or exaggerate stories about their native land to gain support against it.
I understand this original post made in this blog was posted in “disbelief” and hoping the story to be false. But we should be carful not to play into the hands of those that have a political aim.
Now saying that, there is no exaggeration about the plight of the Baha’is in Iran and we do not have a political aim in bringing attention to this fact. All we hope for is that each human being is to be respected and treated fairly, upholding the principles of equality, justice, compassion, and love regardless of their religion and belief. We hope the governments around the world will uphold justice which could not be done if tainted by prejudice. Not being involved in politics does not mean we don’t care about the betterment of the governments. I think that is why Abdu’l-Baha penned the “Secret Divine Civilization” anonymously to the Persian government at that time, to encourage fairness, justice, wisdom, education, decipline, and to be free of corruption and selfish desires. Of course, that equally applies to all the governments around the world.