How can a community as significant as the Baha’is in Iran be absent from histories of their own country? Prejudice on the part of Iranian scholars? Ignorance on the part of Iranian historians? An unwillingness in an Islamic country to acknowledge a faith community’s part in helping to develop a modernize Iran in the late 19th century and early 20th century just because that community’s religion is post-Islamic?
Last night the UK Baha’i community’s Office of External Affairs hosted the launch of a pioneering academic book that starts to set this omission right. The Baha’is of Iran: Socio-Historical Studies, edited by two UK Baha’is, Dr Dominic Brookshaw and Dr Seena Fazel and published by Routledge.
Central to this study is the pioneering character of the Baha’i community in the late 19th and early 20th century, with chapters examining the role of women in the Baha’i community; the impact of Baha’i-run schools on Iranian society, Baha’i contributions to public health initiatives; and the influence of Baha’i thought and the actions of individual Baha’is on the Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1911.
Conversion to the Baha’i Faith is another important theme, as contributors investigate the phenomenon of large scale conversion to the Baha’i Faith from the Jewish and Zoroastrian communities.
Finally, although persecution of the Baha’is has drawn the attention of the Western media, until now few scholars working in the field of Iranian studies have chosen to write on the history or details of this persecution. Here, five prominent figures in the field redress this balance and look at different aspects of this persecution, including its historical background, the attitude of secular Iranians, persecution before and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and human rights perspectives.
This is an important volume, particularly at a time when the Iranian Baha’i community faces increasing persecution from the Iranian regime and threats of worse to come should the Iranian parliament pass a new law that will mandate the death penalty for those who convert from Islam to another religion, not to mention a slew of other gross human rights violations that would become legal, should this penal code become law.
You can read about Iran’s draft penal code here.
Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Middle East, Iran, persecution, apostasy, Brookshaw, Fazel, Routledge
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This is another major step forward in helping the world at large and more importantly the academic world see the grave situation the Baha’i community if Iran finds itself in.
Governments continue to pass resolutions against the injustices being heaped upon the Baha’is, human rights agencies continue to cry foul at the ongoing persecution of the peaceful Baha’i community, non-Baha’i Iranians are speaking out publicly in blogs and in internet journals about the situation of the Baha’is in their homeland, the UN has been vocal as well.
The publication of scholarly works such as this will serve to draw the attention of scholars and academics and other people of capacity to the plight of the Baha’is and hopefully open a dialogue at the highest levels of academia that will help even further to focus the attention of the world on the situation of the Baha’is in Iran.
Peace,
Jim Ferguson
Thanks for your spot-on comment, Jim. It is essential that academics and other people of capacity begin to recognize the reality of the contribution Baha’is – individually and as a community – have made to the development of Iran and, indeed, to many other parts of the world. When people begin to recognize the extraordinary steadfastness of the Iranian Baha’is under the most difficult of circumstances they will also come to recognize the importance of defending the Baha’is, whether or not they accept the truth of the Baha’i Faith as a religion.
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