Personal diary of John Barnabas (aka Barney) Leith
From the monthly archives:
Today is the 800th anniversary of the birth of Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi’s birth in Balkh (in present-day Afghanistan). Charles Haviland of the BBC went to Balkh to find out if Rumi’s influence is still alive there, as he tells in this story.
Baha’u’llah, Founder of the Baha’i Faith, quotes from Rumi’s Mathnavi in His mystical work [...]
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Michael Cromartie, Chair of the US Commission on International Freedom (USCIRF), has just written to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rize urging her to advocate a strong mandate for the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief. The mandate is currently under consideration by the UN Human Rights Council.
USCIRF is gravely concerned that the [...]
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Ahmadinejad meets Christian leaders in New York. Photo ©New York Times
According to this story in the New York Times, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held
a friendly, even warm, exchange yesterday with Christian leaders from the United States and Canada convinced that dialogue is the only way to prevent war.
The meeting on 26 September was organized by [...]
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A Voice of America journalist questioned President Ahmadinejad of Iran about his country’s persecution of the Baha’is at a recent press conference at the UN headquarters in New York.
In his question the journalist refers to the respect that Ahmadinejad shows to the divine prophets in his speeches and then says: “one of the Divine [...]
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So there we were, standing around our dining table, Mary, Bev, Lindsay, Valerie, Erica and I, laughing and relaxed. On the table, a large sheet of paper, covered in scribbles. Our scribbles. Each of us had picked up a coloured marker pen, made a mark at the edge of the paper and then we’d taken [...]
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When I was a young Baha’i in the 1960s and 1970s, we all longed to meet those very special individuals known to Baha’is as “Hands of the Cause”. These were people chosen for their great spiritual capacity to encourage, guide and protect the Baha’i community. They had no administrative powers; they were not decision-makers; they [...]
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Yesterday the Baha’i World News Service posted a story about the latest horror suffered by the Baha’is in Iran.
Gravestones in the Baha’i cemetery near Najafabad, Iran, were left in a heap by a bulldozer that destroyed the burial ground some time between 9 September and 10 September 2007
The destruction of the Baha’i cemetery in Najafabad [...]
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Bani Dugal and Zena Sorabjee
What links a hugging saint, a ground-breaking scientist who took on the multinationals, a French Resistance heroine who took on the Gestapo, a judge who took on Saddam Hussein, a high flier who was educated by an elephant, a spiritual giantess who danced with Fred Astaire, the original Cosmopolitan Girl, a [...]
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New York-based human rights organization Human Rights Watch has just issued a press release calling on the Iranian government immediately to end practices aimed at barring Baha’i students from attending universities. Said Joe Stork, HRW’s deputy Middle East director:
This week, as universities begin the new academic year, hundreds of Iranian students will be absent from [...]
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Because the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Asma Jahangir, was unable to attend the end of the Human Rights Council’s debate on her mandate on 17 September (the assessment of her mandate had been postponed), she submitted her final remarks to the Council in writing.
Ms Jahangir makes a number of recommendations [...]
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