Many news outlets have reported last night’s explosion at the Hoseyniyeh Shohada mosque in the Iranian city of Shiraz. According to the BBC report:

Most of those inside the Hoseyniyeh Shohada mosque when the explosion took place were young boys and girls affiliated to the Rahpoyan-e Vesal Association, which “holds weekly meetings every Saturday regarding misguided groups, including Wahhabis and Bahais”, [the] Fars [news agency] said.

The Aljazeera story mentions the arrests last year of Baha’is in Shiraz who were working with poor children:

Fars reported that the mosque hosted weekly speeches denouncing Wahaabism – a version of Sunni Islam - and the outlawed Bahai faith. Iran is a predominantly Shia country.

Iran had been the cradle of the Bahai faith in the middle of the 19th century. After the Islamic revolution in 1979, the faith was banned and the country’s constitution does not recognise it as a religious minority.

Bahai detentions

Last year, Bahai communities abroad said some of followers of the faith were detained in Shiraz while working with poor communities there.

It’s worth noting the language that Aljazeera uses in the last paragraph immediately above. It does not acknowledge the truth of the stories about the arrests of Baha’is in Iran, but subtly makes it look as if this is just something that we Baha’is outside of Iran have claimed, but without justification.

Here’s a story from the Baha’i World News Service about these arrests.

It is both disturbing and sadly typical that the people in the mosque at the time of the explosion were “young boys and girls affiliated to the Rahpoyan-e Vesal Association”. This organization has been putting out a lot of anti-Baha’i propaganda and is busy spreading the kind of prejudice and incitement against Baha’is that would be considered Islamophobic in the UK were an equivalent organization to incite people against Muslims.

Of course, I’m not blaming the young people - and I am very sorry that they have been caught up in such a terrible event. What is morally reprehensible, though, is that official and semi-official organizations are trying to shape young minds to be hostile towards members of faith communities that are not official recognized in Iran.

No doubt more there will be a great deal of obfuscation from the authorities in the coming hours and days before we learn what actually happened, who is responsible and why.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, `Iran, Shiraz, mosque, Islam, explosion