Category — Freedom of Religion

What would you think if your daughter was permanently expelled from school for smiling during Assembly? And not only permanently expelled, but saddled with a criminal charge of “insulting the sacred”.

And what would you think if you complained about your daughter’s expulsion and you were charged with making “statements against the government for your pains? And not only charged but sentenced to jail?

Would it all seem like a bad dream?

Harsh reality for Iran’s Baha’is

Well, it is the harsh reality that Iran’s Bahá’í children and their parents face daily in their struggle against a grossly unjust state policy of preventing Baha’is from being educated.

And it’s what happened to Nasim Haqiqat, a Bahá’í high school student in Shiraz and her father, Enayatu’llah. Five other Bahá’í girls were also expelled from Hazrat Ma’sumih High School for smiling during morning prayer.

On appeal Enayatu’llah’s sentence was reduced to a one-year suspended sentence and a year’s probation. Lucky man!

Read the story

You can read the story at the end of Ahang Rabbani’s translation of the story about Mehran Bandi.

And you can read more about the rising tide of persecution of the Bahá’ís in Iran here.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Iran, Shiraz, high school, persecution, expulsion, education, human rights

Mehran Bandi

This article from the online news service Iran-Emrooz (Iran Today), translated by Ahang Rabbani, really shows the utter injustice that’s being meted out to Bahá’ís in Iran, just because they are Bahá’ís.

Mehran Bandi, who had his own computer business in Yazd, had never been in trouble with the law until Intelligence Ministry agents raided his company on 29 May 2008. (It so happens that 29 May is one of the most solemn of Bahá’í Holy Days.) The agents took computers and CD, sealed the premises, and carted Mr Bandi off to some unknown place of detention.

According to the article:

On 28 August 2008, according to verdict no. 87/286, the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Yazd charged Mr. Bandi with “congregation and collusion against internal and external security of the nation”, “statements against the Islamic Republic regime and in support of anti-revolutionary groups” and “inventory of satellite TV accessories”.  The court ruled that in accordance with clauses 500 and 610 of Islamic code, Mr. Bandi was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison and then 3 years exile away from the city of Yazd to Babak in Kerman.  In addition, the court ruled that the business license of Misaq-Kamand was suspended indefinitely and that Mr. Bandi was further sentenced to 5 years of prohibition from participating in public affairs or attempting commerce of any kind.

The place of business and inventory of Mr. Bandi, including all his work equipment and back accounts, as well as computer parts belonging to his clients, were seized by the Intelligence Ministry.

Spurious use of national security

Once again, the Iranian authorities have spuriously used so-called national security as the basis of their persecution of a Bahá’í. This is happening in a growing number of cases and is utterly unjust. Baha’is do not threaten national security - it would be utterly against the moral principles of the Bahá’í Faith to do so.

Sentenced to poverty?

Mr Bandi is serving his jail term in Yazd’s central prison. But even when he is released from jail he will not have suffered the whole of his punishment. After coming out of jail he will have to move to an entirely different city, where he will be in exile for a further three years.

And that’s not all. Mr Bandi’s business licence has been suspended and he is forbidden to engage in commerce for five years. How is he to earn a living?

The state authorities in Iran are making it ever more difficult for Bahá’ís to get or keep jobs. Bahá’ís have been declared “unclean” and are not allowed to work in a whole raft of industries, including anything that involves the handling or serving of food. Bahá’ís’ employers are frequently put under pressure to dismiss their Bahá’í employees. And Bahá’ís can’t pursue their employers in an Employment Tribunal for constructive dismissal - there’s no Employment Tribunal, and even if there were, it is highly unlikely that Bahá’ís would get a fair hearing.

This doesn’t bode well for Mr Bandi’s future.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Iran, Yazd, persecution, imprisonment, exile, Mehran Bandi

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I’m glad to report that the EU Presidency issued an unequivocal statement on Friday calling for the immediate release of Bahá’í and Christian Prisoners in Iran.

Declaration by the Presidency on behalf of the European Union on the situation of people belonging to religious minorities in Iran

The European Union is very concerned at the deterioration in the exercise of freedom of religion or belief, and especially the freedom of worship, in Iran, where the pressure on people belonging to religious minorities has worsened in recent months.

The European Union is deeply disturbed by the arrests since April of Iranian converts to Christianity and members of the Baha’i community. It calls for their immediate and unconditional release and the cessation of all forms of violence and discrimination against them.

This is good. It keeps the matter on the international agenda, but it is unlikely that Iran will actually release the prisoners (at least, not in response to the statement).

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Christians, Iran, religious freedom, minorities, persecution, human rights, EU

Regular readers will recall that I cried “shame” in this post at the “dialogue” dinner that some of the churches were holding for Iran’s President Ahmadinejad in New York. I wondered how these church leaders thought it appropriate to “dialogue” with the persecutor of all kinds of minorities in Iran - including the largest non-Muslim religious minority, the Bahá’ís - and asked:

How come these New York “diners with the devil” are not prepared to speak truth to power and to tell Ahmadinejad that Iran’s denial of freedom of thought, conscience and religion to its citizens is utterly unacceptable?

One reader emailed me and said she thought I should have waited for the outcome of the dialogue before making a judgement about it. Well, perhaps I should have waited. Perhaps.

Commitment to religious freedom

Dr Bill Vendley, Executive Director of Religions for Peace, one of the sponsoring bodies for the iftar dinner and dialogue, mentioned the Bahá’ís in his introductory remarks at the dinner, according to a Religions for Peace press release. In speaking of the core convictions of Religions for Peace, this is what he is reported to have said:

The commitment to honor the God-given dignity of every person and the commitment to work for the related inalienable rights for all. For us, the rights of freedom of religious belief and practice are central and apply equally to all believers:  whether they be the followers of indigenous religions, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Bahá’ís or others. Our diverse cultural heritages must be respected, and there should be no exceptions when it comes to states affording full legal rights to all believers. We deplore any government’s laws or practices that penalize and threaten the freedoms of belief and practice. Belief is a matter of conscience before God, and States must provide the legal protection to practice and change one’s religion according to conscience.

Strong language - will it do the trick?

That’s good strong stuff, and I’m very glad that he said it. He did “speak truth to power” (which I feared no one would do). But - and forgive me for being sceptical (I refuse to own up to being cynical) - I don’t suppose that this will have made the slightest difference to Ahmadinejad’s views or his determination to remove the Bahá’ís from the face of the earth.

Ahmadinejad, the Hidden Imam and the Bahá’í Faith

If you want to understand why Bill Vendley’s words will make not a jot of difference to Ahmadinejad, you should read (and please read it thoroughly), this excellent analysis by Mohebat Ahdiyyih in Middle East Quarterly, of Ahmadinejad’s messianism (his Mahdism to be more accurate), his devotion to the return Shi’ism’s Hidden Imam (also known as the Mahdi, the Enlightened One) and why this entails the destruction of the Bahá’í community.

I intend to take a closer look at Dr Ahdiyyih’s analysis in another post.

The failure of dialogue

I have witnessed the failure of dialogue.

The much vaunted EU-Iran human rights dialogue that was going to resolve Iran’s human rights problems some years ago ran into the sand. Over successive meetings with British government officials who had started out full of enthusiasm for the dialogue I saw them become more and more morose about it, until they abandoned any belief in this process.

Why? Because the Iranians ran rings around them, played them along, but refused to discuss a number of substantive human rights issues, including their persecution of the Bahá’ís. And this was in the days of that supposed reformer, Mohammed Khatami.

And I have personally participated in a Christian-Muslim “dialogue” session with Mr Khatami, hosted in Lambeth Palace by the Archbishop of Canterbury and chaired by Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali.

Speeches were made. Khatami spoke fine words about “dialogue between civilizations”, but nothing resembling dialogue took place. when I questioned Khatmi about the treatment of the Bahá’ís in Iran, he obfuscated. In fact, a Shi’i scholar based in London chipped in first and told me that no one liked the Bahá’ís and the Bahá’ís would just have to get used to it.

So much for unconditional “dialogue”.

Reward and punishment

The Bahá’í sacred writings are explicit in saying that justice (which is a matter of giving everyone his just desserts) depends on two things: reward and punishment.

Dialogue which has no foundation in justice - which is just a way of continuing to get your own way without suffering the consequences for evil - is not real dialogue. I was admonished by one Church of England official for having ruined the day with Khatami, who had, allegedly, refused to fulfil the rest of the day’s engagements. My fault, apparently.

I raised this accusation with one of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s close advisers. His reaction was rather different. How can we have dialogue, he asked, if we cannot talk honestly about things such as the persecution of religious minorities and other human rights abuses?

I don’t think we should reward the commission of evil with pretend “dialogues” that allow the perpetrators to continue their egregious behaviour.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Iran, Ahmadinejad, Khatami, human rights, persecution, dialogue, Religions for Peace. WCRP, justice, Mahdi, Hidden Imam, Islam, Shia, Shi’ism

I was cheered to read this forthright article in FrontPageMagazine.com today. Faith McDonnell, the director of Religious Liberty Programs at the Institute on Religion & Democracy in Washington DC, points out the breathtaking contradiction (not to say hypocrisy) underlying the support that a group of churches is giving to President Ahmadinejad of Iran by holding an invitation-only iftar dinner for him in a prestigious New York hotel.

It is very well known that Iran persecutes Bahá’ís, Christians, Jews and Muslims. The Iranian parliament is soon to pass a new penal code which will make apostasy an offence that will attract a mandatory death sentence, and there is no doubt that this law will be used against Bahá’ís and others the Iranian authorities and religious leaders want to get rid of.

“Dialogue” with a persecutor

So, asks Faith McDonnell, how is it that the American Friends Service Committee, the Mennonite Central Committee, the Quaker United Nations Office, Religions for Peace, and the World Council of Churches – United Nations Liaison Office can bring themselves to dine and “dialogue” with the perpetrator of these persecutions, the leader of a country in which religious freedom is off the menu?

She concludes:

Perhaps it would be worth it to hold your nose and dine with the devil if it meant an opportunity to speak out about Iran’s repression and persecution, to be a voice for those who are suffering, and to demand that Islam offer reciprocity for the freedom of religion and decency of treatment that Muslims have received from Christians, Jews, and Baha’is. With Iran on the verge of a new level of repression, and religious minorities in Iran facing a new level of siege because of the proposed apostasy penal code, an American Christian leader is needed to speak with courage and forthrightness over a dinner plate.

They should speak truth to power

Courageous non-Bahá’í Iranians, such as Nobel Prize-winning lawyer Shirin Ebadi, are risking their reputations and even their lives to speak out for the Bahá’ís (see the Bahá’í International Community’s statement on Iran’s disinformation campaign against Mrs Ebadi here). How come these New York “diners with the devil” are not prepared to speak truth to power and to tell Ahmadinejad that Iran’s denial of freedom of thought, conscience and religion to its citizens is utterly unacceptable?

They are shaming themselves, they are shaming those they claim to lead, and they are undermining the efforts of human rights defenders - particularly those who campaign for the much denied human right of religious freedom

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Iran, apostasy, persecution, human rights, religious freedom, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Ahmadinejad

These pictures from Iranian media sources apparently showing people after Friday prayers in Tehran signing the anti-Bahá’í petition I wrote about in this post.

Now, I cannot read Persian, so I have to rely on those who kindly pointed me in the direction of these photos. It’s impossible for me to say whether the petition is for real or whether it is a stunt on the part of the Iranian authorities.

But either way, it is not a good omen for the already beleaguered Bahá’ís in Iran.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, persecution, petition, Tehran

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On Wednesday Shahabnews.com, an organ of the Islamic Republic of Iran which prides itself on being a mixture of fundamentalism and reformism, announced that a petition would be circulated at Friday prayers today in Tehran calling for the dissolution of the Bahá’í administration.

As the estimable Ahang Rabbani says on his new site Iran Press Watch: The Bahá’í Community, says:

The report stated that this Friday, 19 September, a petition will be made available for people to sign during the Friday prayer gathering in Tehran, which will be led by the Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, demanding a dissolution or ban of the Baha’i administration in Iran.

It was alarming that this news was announced at the same time that the media was told that Ayatollah Khamenei would be presiding over Tehran’s congregational prayer, suggesting a link between the two events.

The portion of the petition which the media quotes suggests that this is a step towards further grave actions that the government or its agents are contemplating towards the Baha’i community of Iran.  That is, it appears that the government, through the influence of the elements of the Hojjatieh Society in its ranks, is setting the stage for claiming that wholesale sanctions on all Baha’is in Iran is the will of the people, thereby making it appear as if the government is merely carrying out the popular will (as expressed through the forthcoming petition) by imposing further restrictions on the Baha’i community.

But what Bahá’í administration?

One puzzle in all of this is that there is no Bahá’í administration, since it was dissolved in the 1980s. There are ad hoc leadership bodies at national and local levels (it was the national leadership group that was arrested in May and which remains in prison as I write), but it seems unlikely that this is what the petition is referring to.

A Bahá’í who is in a good position to know about these things has said:

As you all know there are no Bahá’í administration in Iran.  The text is referring to something that the government has concocted for itself.  Specifically, the Iranian government is perceiving (and therefore promoting) the Faith as a well-organized religion which has a sophisticated spy network (which is most likely what they mean by Tashkilaat, a term that has traditionally been used to describe the machinery of the communist Tudeh party).  Most likely, it is this perceived network that the article is referring to, which of course does not exist.  Therefore, this whole thing is a set-up from start to finish.  The initiators of the petition are not known, the purpose is to dismantle a (spy) network that doesn’t exist, and the result is nothing but to incite Iranians against the Faith.

By the time you read this, the petition, if it exists, will already have been circulated in Tehran. It will be interesting to see what develops. It  is all deeply worrying.

Read all about it!

Anyway, you can read more about this here, on Ahang Rabbani’s blog.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Iran, persecution, Khamenei, Hojjatieh

Three Bahá’ís in Yemen are under imminent threat of deportation to Iran, according to this story from the Bahá’í World News Service and this AP story on the Jerusalem Post website. If they are sent to Iran they may well face imprisonment or torture.

According to the Bahá’í World News Service:

The three Baha’is were arrested in June, apparently in relation to their belief in and practice of the Baha’i Faith, along with a Baha’i of Iraqi origin.

The three Baha’is of Iranian origin who were arrested are Mr. Zia’u'llah Pourahmari, Mr. Keyvan Qadari, and Mr. Behrooz Rohani. A fourth Baha’i, Mr. Sayfi Ibrahim Sayfi, was also arrested and faces the possibility of deportation to Iraq.

The three Baha’is of Iranian background all have successful businesses in Yemen, and their families are well established there.

Bahá’í communities around the world are concerned for the safety of these Bahá’ís and the Bahá’í International Community is working through diplomatic channels to ensure their release.

Bani Dugal, the Bahá’í International Community’s principal UN representative, said:

“Our hope has been to prevent this case from becoming a major human rights matter, over the issue of religious persecution. Deportation to Iran would certainly be a matter for international concern, and such an action would be out of character with the Yemeni government’s past record on human rights issues.

“Under international laws on the freedom of religion, there is no question that Baha’is – and others in Yemen – should be free to practice their faith. While the situation is still unfolding, we stand by the right of Baha’is in Yemen and elsewhere to practice their religion in all aspects, without the fear of being forced to leave their adopted country,”

There are some 250 registered Bahá’ís in Yemen and, up to now, the Bahá’í community in Yemen has been relatively free to quietly practice its faith.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Yemen, Iran, deportation, persecution, human rights, religious freedom

The Jerusalem Post has reported that six Bahá’ís in Yemen have been arrested.Says the Post:

Though not officially banned in Yemen, the Bahá’í religion is considered by some Muslims as heresy.

These arrests come on top of the detention of nine people for converting from Islam to Christianity. Conversion from Islam to any other religion is illegal in Yemen.

This is a very worrying development and another sign of extent to which the human right of freedom of religion or belief is being flouted in various countries across the world.

From Fox News

This Fox News story has more details about the arrests of the converts to Christianity and a little bit more about the Bahá’í Faith.

The Baha’i faith was founded by the Persian nobleman Baha’u'llah, who claimed to be a new prophet in the series that included Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. Islam considers Muhammad to be the last of the prophets.

Mansour Hayel, vice president of the Omar al-Gawi Political Forum that advocates for human rights and civil liberties in Yemen, blamed the arrests on the growing influence of extremist Muslim groups in Yemen.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Islam, Christianity, Yemen, arrest, religious freedom, human rights

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Is Shirin Ebadi’s daughter a member of the Bahá’í Faith? This was the claim made by IRNA, the Iranian news agency, recently, But the claim is completely untrue.

According to Africasia.com (which has published a story from AFP), Iranian Nobel peace laureate has lodged a complaint with the court about IRNA’s false claim:

Ebadi accused the state news agency of “spreading lies, insults and defamation.”

She said the allegation against her daughter was connected to her decision to defend seven Bahais arrested on charges of having contact with Iran’s arch-foe Israel.

An outspoken critic of the human rights situation in Iran, Ebadi said in April that she had received death threats pinned to her office door — one of which was signed “The Association of anti-Bahais”.

“Looking at the news which has come out, we know who feeds ideas to those who threaten to kill me,” she said on Monday.

Who’s defaming whom?

I find it outrageous that calling someone a Bahá’í can be used as an insult in Iran. In fact, worse than an insult, it’s a threat to the person’s safety, since the authorities in Iran are intensifying their persecutory activities against the Bahá’ís there.

Compare this with the success of moves by Islamic countries to get the UN Human Rights Council to pass a resolution condemning defamation of religion in March 2007 (read the Reuters story here), and I have to wonder at the rank hypocrisy of those who voted for the UNHRC resolution and then use the name of a religious minority persecuted by an Islamic state as a smear against an excellent human rights defender.

Dr Ebadi has made it very clear that she and her daughter are Shi’i Muslims. And for this reason - amongst others - I admire her courage in defending the seven detained members of the Iranian Bahá’í leadership group even more. (Read my post about how she spoke up for the Bahá’ís in Iran when answering questions I put to her at Chatham House.)

Not blame, but praise

We’ll know things have changed in Iran when the word “Bahá’í” is no longer a term of abuse but becomes a word of praise.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Iran, Shirin Ebadi, persecution, defamation of religion

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