Quote:
Originally Posted by noodle
Dude, that is just ridiculous!!! I know this isnt the thread for it, and we're not supposed to speak about it, but what you just wrote here is a joke!
Having read a lot about Iran and Iraq, I can safely tell you that since the Islamic revolution and the Khomeini protection in Iran, Tehran has 11 functioning synagogues, many of them having Hebrew schools. There is a Jewish hospital, an old-age home and a cemetery. There is a Jewish representative in the Iranian parliament. There is a Jewish library with 20,000 titles. All of this for a comunity of around 25,000 in the country!
As for the last part, "always have", when did always start for you? People seem to forget that the middle east was a peaceful place for centuries until the west (English and French mainly) came and disturbed the peace. In Iraq, Muslims, Christians and Jews lived happily together for centuries.
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The Jews suffer from official inferior status under Iranian Law and are not protected by police or the courts. The amount of financial compensation a Jew can receive from a Muslim in case of murder or accidental death of a relative is equal to one-eighth of that which would be paid if the victim was a Muslim.
In practice this means that a life of a Jew in Iran has very little value. In addition, since Iranian courts routinely refuse to accept the testimony of a Jew against a Muslim, most cases of this sort are not even prosecuted and the police do not even investigate such claims. As a result of their legally inferior status, Jews find themselves outside the protection of the courts and police. This is not simply a perception on their part, but rather, sadly, a harsh reality. In none of the cases of the murder of Jews in Iran has a perpetrator ever been found, much less prosecuted.
Jews are excluded from most government positions. Virtually all government entities (most sectors in Iran are government-owned) have a "Muslim only" policy and they print this requirement in their job notices in newspapers. This formal exclusion of Jews from large areas of employment is badly damaging to the Jews.
Most private companies, thanks to the anti-Semitic media campaign in Iran, do not hire Jews either. Most Jews are forced into self-employment, but due to general public prejudice, few buy anything from them. The US State Department Religious Freedom Report of 2001 confirms that Jewish businesses have been targets of vandalism and boycotts.
However, the most widely publicized example of the Islamic Regime views on the Holocaust came again from Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who in March 2001, denied the Holocaust and called the survivors of the death camps "a bunch of hooligans who emigrated to Palestine."
Iran has also become the world headquarters for the publication of a constant stream of European and American revisionist historians who have denied the existence of the Holocaust. Primary among these are the works of Roger Garaudy, a French revisionist to Shia Islam. Garaudy's books have been widely translated and distributed in Iran, in part not by the fundamentalists, but rather by the so-called reform circles.
While the Islamic Republic does not guarantee the right of free speech and protest to any of its citizens, the situation, because of the Islamic Law, is considerably worse for the Jews. If an Iranian Muslim criticizes the Islamic Republic, he himself can be punished; if a Jew does it, under the laws of the Islamic Republic his actions may legally affect the well being of the entire Jewish community.
Do I have to say anymore about Iran?