Feminist activist in Iran sentenced to 24 years in prison for removing hijab.

For the most part Islam was spread by trade and intermarriage. Long before Islam the Arabs of the Arabian peninsula conducted trade with Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, Yemen, Persia and the Levant. Those relationships existed before Islam.

Trade was quite extensive.. Everything from salt and pearls, to hides, to frankincense and myrrh, textiles, dates and so on.

 

That is a topic I will let others handle as you and others here have the requisite information and knowledge about the issues. None of what I would have to say about the situation faced by African Americans in the US would cover new ground, regardless of how you might respond to it and whether you would agree with me or not. But being 'black' in Iran would be more a curiosity than a point of being subjected to any ideologically inspired form of discrimination.

To be sure, the same way Iran never had the same history of justifying enslavement of blacks based on their race and the ideologies which inspired various other forms of prejudice, our culture is also not as indoctrinated in its opposite: the kind of 'political correctness' that makes it difficult to make simple observations (even if sometimes grossly false or ignorant) about someone who is black. An Iranian parent might not welcome their son/daughter marrying a black individual, the same way they might not approve of a marriage with many others. The same family would, on the other hand, feel grossly disgusted with the hatred of blacks in America, because there is simply no ideological indoctrination for him/her that has tried to somehow prove "blacks" are "inferior" to "whites" or somehow deserving of being treated poorly. Instead, if he/she might not approve a son or daughter marrying a black person, it boils down to the same kind of considerations he/she would have in discriminating against all sorts of other people that wouldn't be considered appropriate as suitors or husbands/wives for their children.

 

What legal protections against discrimination against blacks are you referring to?

 

Where? In Iran or the US?

 

Anyway, while Iran doesn't have the kind of case law to beef up these constitutional provisions as the US, with its system of judicial review has in interpreting its 14th Amendment equal protection clause, and even though Iran also doesn't have (in the context of racial discrimination, which has no corresponding history in Iran, something akin to America's Civil Rights Act), here are the relevant constitutional provisions in Iran relating to any discrimination based on ethnicity/race as well as on gender.

 

It is

 

Wait, you mean the select group of people behind the glass? Okay, sure, I suppose that is public, but I thought you were talking about OUT in public.

 

You referred to legal protections against discrimination against blacks in the US that do not exist in Iran.

 

The US had a history of discriminatory practices and laws against Blacks (which Iran didn't), which the US then tried to overturn and reverse through a series of laws, case law and regulations following the Civil Rights movement -- laws, case law, and regulations which go beyond any corresponding or analogous laws in Iran. We simply don't have that many Afro-Iranians, nor the same history, to have the issue be a significant one in Iran. What we basically have is general constitutional prohibition against discrimination based on ethnicity/race and a prohibition for preferential treatment on the basis of color, language etc.

 

So what is the "protections" part?

Is this for Public Accommodations?

 

It sounds as if you have decided to just believe the left's LIES about blacks, such as the police hate them and kill them disproportionately to whites.

You mean specifically BECAUSE the person is black?

 

What do you mean "even IF?" It is a FACT that there is ABSOLUTE legal protection for someone practicing their religion as long as in practicing it they don't break a law.

 

It follows in the sentence you cut in half: principally the measures enacted following the civil rights movement, as well as case law which reinterpreted the equal protection clause differently (starting with Brown v Board of Education earlier and culminating in cases which gave you what became, more or less, the prevailing constitutional standards).

In the context of the constitutional issues under the equal protection and due process clause: No. Those constitutional provisions require "state action" to be applicable. But under the Civil Rights Act and other regulations, yes, but also discrimination in employment etc.

As I said, I don't want to get involved in the issue in this thread. Discrimination against blacks, however, is real and not just reflected in cases of police abuse in the US. As a result, you do have in the US its opposite too: politicization of the issue where the effort to combat and reverse the effects of this history of discrimination has led to something that isn't found in countries which don't have either side of the political divides in the US: those who still cling to racist notions, whether openly in the closet, fighting for the rights of 'whites'. And those in the opposite who want to have a monopoly on the issue of what constitutes discrimination, racism, and the recipes for countering it, using 'political correctness' as a means to stifle free debate on the subject.

In Iran, culturally, what doesn't really exist is 'hatred' or 'hostility' against other people because of race -- and ideologies that try to justify such hatred. That is the main difference. However, that doesn't mean people, on an individual level, don't discriminate constantly on a host of factors relating to their preferences in social and cultural matters. Including on superficial things like skin color and other physical attributes and more so when there are economic and cultural issues attached to those distinctions.

In the 'real Iran', which I have tried to introduce to you, the many issues on which people discriminate to choose what they consider better and what they consider worse, is reflected most in the kind of suitors they might turn down or encourage for their children. A 'westernized' Iranian family may reject someone from a traditional, religious, background. And the reverse: a traditional family may reject a 'westernized' one. Almost all families will look into economic issues. Many will look into what their own children will also look into as well: what features, physical or otherwise, they find less or more attractive. It is not confined to being "black" or just skin color. Height, weight, more or less attractive features etc. All of it may be considered and no reason to pretend otherwise either.

 

There are no absolutes in life, even if Justice Black might have implied otherwise. In any case, as I am not disputing the actual sense you have on this issue, and the point is something else which we don't need to get into here, I will let you feel about the issue as you wish.

 

Not in life, but in law. There is no law that limits the free exercise of religion in the US, whereas in Iran and many other parts of the world there is. And are you referring to a Supreme Court ruling?

 

Even in law, the standard is not an absolute one in any of the areas where the protections are even greatest. While Justice Black, for instance, thought that First Amendment rights are 'absolutes', in reality the applicable standards weight in the governmental interest and the means used against the restriction at issue. Those standards basically have a 3 tier-system of review, the highest one called 'strict review', where a compelling state interest needs to be shown and the means chosen needs to be strictly tailored to satisfy that compelling state interest. Just because some practice, for instance, is couched as being part of a 'religious ritual', doesn't mean the practice has to be legal. Say there is a religion that believes in 'human sacrifice' (killing a human being) as part of some ritual. You aren't going to afford the "exercise" of that 'belief' protection. And in the first amendment, freedom of expression arena, even prior restraint on speech (the kind of proscription which is the least tolerated) is still possible to prevent a 'serious' and 'imminent danger' to national security or harm to the public or, in Justice Stewart's concurring opinion in the Pentagon Papers case, if the publication of information would "surely result in direct, immediate, and irreparable damage to our Nation and its people.”

But, in any case, I am not here to discuss American constitutional standards. I just noted in passing that the legal protections on these issues in the US was definitely stronger than in Iran, which we both agree. The details aren't the issue I want to engage in with you more than I have.

 

It happened out in public.

 

What, on the street?

 

The point is that there are no laws on the book in the US that limits the free exercise of religion in the US, whereas in Iran and many other parts of the world there is.

 

I'm talking about Iran. You said, "what we basically have is general constitutional prohibition against discrimination based on ethnicity/race and a prohibition for preferential treatment on the basis of color, language etc." And I'm asking if this is for Public Accommodations. I imagine that it at least applies to government not being able to discriminate.

Well certainly not by government or in the private sector. Other than police abuses, do you mean discrimination by white supremacists?

I'm sure that it's not confined to just skin color, but that doesn't mean that it isn't racist to reject someone because of their skin colour.

 

We can and go back and forth on a lot of these issues, but regardless of what I say here. unless you get to visit Iran, you will never realize how true this statement I quote below really is. True, even though there are hundreds of thousands of Iranians, or even millions, who would like to immigrate from their own country in search of a paradise painted for them with signs pointing westward. This despite the fact that if there is any sign of paradise anywhere, it is still found in Iran -- notwithstanding all the lies, ugliness, and darkness (of both foreign and domestic origin) that have managed to cover it up.

But of course, among the mostly laudatory comments and reactions, there was also this comment which was equally true and all the more authentic in broken English as the voice of many young Iranians -- young people caught in the crossfire of lies, who like to reject both but haven't found how that can be done without ultimately siding with one or the other.

https://yomadic.com/iran-tourism-2017/

 

I'm not saying that Iran is a bad country. I'm just making the point that there's no meaningful religious freedom.

 

This:

 

This:

 

You are partially right, but draw wrong conclusions from it. The issue isn't about Iran so much, as ultimately about the US itself. How can a country with a constitutional system that it has, be a state that lies so much to its own people? How it can become a state that promotes these liars and stifles the voice of those who don't tow the line? Iran is an amazing country,with plenty of things for you to see, but the greatest reward visiting Iran isn't about what you learn about the country itself. It is what you learn about your own country and everything you have believed so far.