Iran complains to FIFA after US national team modifies flag | Hacker News Reader

Iran complains to FIFA after US national team modifies flag

siasat.com

I don't understand why someone would go to the bother of that. Is it just a christo-fascist thing to remove other religions or is there some other motive at work? There's a quote about "support for the women in Iran fighting for basic human rights" but I don't see the connection.

Is that version of Iran's flag used elsewhere by protestors or their supporters?

The article quotes a “US Footballer” that the change was made to show solidarity with women in Iran fighting oppression.

I don’t think teams should modify flags or other features of identity, especially not to make a political statement.

It seems like an odd thing to do here. Despite that I agree with the sentiment, oppose theocracy in Iran, and support the people risking their lives to affect peaceful change.

I feel like it’s a slippery slope where every team is applying an AR layer for whatever they want to support- changing flags, putting horns on players, changing names, obscuring female skin, etc

Wondered who the "US footballer" is, but I guess that's what happens when the article goes through translation twice. Looking for the exact quote, it's uttered by U.S. Soccer media officer Michael Kammarman: https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/us-soccer-briefly-r...

So is a flag with Allah removed a widely used symbol of their fight against oppression?

I think a much stronger message could have been made if teams turned out wearing hijabs before the match, taken them off on the field and set fire to them. Probably would have upset the sponsors though.

Using the correct, official flag isn't exactly rocket science...

I started writing a note about how this was probably an overworked web designers who just cleaned up artifacts - and then, nah, they have left the script and in as blurry artifacts and just white-out over the symbol. It may well be cock up but honestly it's looking more like conspiracy.

It would appear to be entirely intentional

>The intent of the posts was to show "support for the women in Iran fighting for basic human rights", U.S. Soccer media officer Michael Kammarman told a news conference on Sunday. Players were not consulted on the decision to alter the flag.

At least they did not put a fish symbol on it.

But whoever did this clearly have no clue about the inclusion of the Shadah on the flag - it is like erasing "In God We Trust" from the US dollar.

Wasn't the religious phrase a relatively recent addition to the dollar (1950s)? I saw a recent survey about whether people think it should be removed again. It strikes me as bizarre that money should feature religion when most religions have specific rules against money, but then I'm in the UK and we're largely a secular society.

I assume at least 50% of US voters would agree, but it is one of those things that extremists are willing to put a lot of effort into fighting and so the majority will let them have it because there are bigger problems. Especially since physical currency is less and less relevant.

If I were of the Christian persuasion (most definitely atheist) then I'd be wanting the phrase taken off money too - it seems entirely opposite to the recorded teachings of Jesus, but then I have questions about the validity of various pastors that seem to be remarkably rich.

The US is a rather religious country that identifies as Judeo-Christian compared to it's peers where church attendance and religious self-identification are headed towards the doldrums.

Ironically, the European countries you might be referring to as peers all seem to have official churches where the government plays a role, whereas the US does not.

Huh? What do you mean? Here in Germany afaik that’s only the church tax which is open for any religion, including Islam .

with certain caveats about how it’s clearly aligned to the structure of the major Christian church organizations.

That is what I mean, that kind of thing would be considered crazy in the US. Or things like the official church in UK or Denmark.

Offering a way to centrally manage tithes for your church is so far away from "official churches" that it’s a lie.

It was only added to the paper dollar, beginning with silver certificates, in 1957. (Which itself, in its current small bill form had only been issued for about 30 years at the time)

Yes but the "God" in our case, is in fact the Federal Reserve. They are the Creator here.

To be charitable, it seems as though the Iranian flag was simply made easy to see for Twitter posts. Doesn't seem to have a malicious undertone to it.

That seems over-charitable to me. It's a very specific change and the article implies that it was intentional

>US footballer told CNN on Sunday that it wanted to change the official flag for 24 hours to show “support for the women in Iran fighting for basic human rights” but always planned to go back to the original flag.

Iran’s true flag is perfectly easy to see on Twitter, removing words from it is actually harder because people familiar with the flag will be confused.

I don’t think the editing was malicious, just stupid.

The US flag has too many stars in it - hurts my eyes - let's make it one big star.

Agreed, and make it yellow/gold for better visibility, also remove the blue and the white for better contrast.

The "Star Spangled Banner" won't have the same feels anymore :).

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