Canada’s National Post reports that Iran may require Jews and Christians and other minorities to wear coloured badges to identify themselves as non-Muslims. The implications and historical resonance are as obvious as they are horrific:

Iran's roughly 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth… ‘This is reminiscent of the Holocaust,’ said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. ‘Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis.’

True enough. But what many may not realise is that the yellow star by which the Jews in Nazi Germany were branded has wider and deeper origins. Indeed, it started under Islam, when Jews living under Muslim rule in the eighth and ninth centuries were forced to wear first a distinguishing mark and then a piece of yellow cloth, variously a belt, a turban and a badge. This sign of ‘dhimmi’ status was subsequently adopted in medieval times in Europe and in Britain, where Jews were forced to wear a yellow badge.

The Nazi yellow star was merely the latest reworking of that historic global obscenity. Until now.

Posted by melanie at May 19, 2006