THE NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
January 18. 1982
If Iran Is Really Listening
So they aren't deaf, after all. One of Iran's mul-
lahs — Ayatollah Musavi Ardebeli — recently called
a news conference to deny Western reports about the
slaughter of adherents of the Bahai religion. It was
not true, he said, that eight Bahal leaders were se-
cretly executed on Dec. 27. And if “one or two Ba-
hais” have been killed recently, the murders “were
not carried out by official bodies.”
Yet there is testimony from Bahais outside Iran
— including names, dates, places — that at least ill
members of the faith have been executed over the
past two years. These wholesale killings are the re-
venge of mean-minded zealots against a stigmatized
religion that originated in Iran a century ago. The
Bahais apparently cannot be forgiven their devotion
to peace and toleranáe, their belief In opportunities
for women and, not least, their prominence in the
professions.
The first victim reported shot on Dec. 27 was said
to be Jinus Mahinoud, a physicist who headed Iran's
Meteorology D partment. Her son, in Los Angeles,
plausibly insists that his mother was kil!ed because
her scientific eminence “stuck in the thIoat-of- the
current rulers of Iran.”
Ayatollah Musavi Ardebeli, the President of
Iran's Supreme Court, could easily disprove the
charges about a new wave of terror. Let him produce
Mrs. Mahmoud and the other named victims. The
impression spreads that in the new Iran, there is lit-
tle tolerance and no mercy for either religious or
political dissenters. It is an impression that the world
Is eager to lose.
BP000603
