Personal diary of John Barnabas (aka Barney) Leith
Posts tagged as:
A mob has attacked the Baha’is in the southern Egyptian village of Showraniah, burned their homes and expelled them from the village.
Things appeared to be improving for the Baha’is in Egypt following the decision by the Supreme Administrative Court that will allow Baha’is to obtain ID cards without having to lie about their religious affiliation.
Incitement [...]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
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 [...]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
The Khaleej Times reports that the Iranian parliament is about to debate a draft bill which would make certain blogging activities punishable by death.
MPs on Wednesday voted to discuss as a priority the draft bill which seeks to “toughen punishment for harming mental security in society,” the ISNA news agency said.
The text lists a wide [...]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Slovenia, as the EU Presidency, has issued the following statement on behalf of the EU and a number of other countries, expressing grave concern at the draft penal code that the Iranian parliament is currently considering.
25.02.2008
Declaration by the Presidency on behalf of the EU concerning the consideration of a draft Penal code in Iran
The European [...]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
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 [...]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Today’s edition of The Economist has a story about what may be a modest increase in religious freedom in Egypt.
Last year Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti, who is the government’s highest religious adviser, declared that nowhere in Islam’s sacred texts did it say that apostasy need be punished in the present rather than by God [...]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Yazd, Iran, originally uploaded by KiaPix
The EU Presidency (Slovenia) has made a Declaration on behalf of the European Union on the deteriorating situation of the religious minority Baha’i in Iran:
The EU expresses its serious concern at the worsening situation of ethnic and religious minorities in Iran, in particular to the plight of the Baha’i. According [...]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
I was astounded to read this on the IRNA (Islamic Republic News Agency) website today:
Iranian Constitution has granted full freedom for religious minorities in the country, Foreign Ministry official said.
He said that Iranians from religious minorities enjoy religious, educational, cultural, social and economic freedom.
The remarks were in reaction to concern expressed by British Foreign Office [...]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
