Aadel Collection
The Persecution of Iran’s Baha’is: A Congressional Hearing (World Order – Spring 1982)
BP000276
Iforlil. Order
A BAHA'I MAGAZINE • VOLUME 16, NUMBER 3 • PUBLISHED QUARTERLY
Editorial Board:
FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH
BETTY J. FISHER
HOWARD GAREY
GLENFORO E. MITCHELL
•
Consultant in Poetry:
WILLIAM STAFFORD
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Copyright © 1982, National Spiritual As-
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All Rights Reserved, Printed in the U.S.A.
ISSN 0043-8804
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
I The Threat of Genocide
Editorial
3 About This Issue
6 Opening Statement
by Congressman Don Bonker
.
8 A Chronology of Concern
statement of
Congressman Edward J. Derwiaski
9 Expressing the Sense of Congress
statement of
Congressman For:ney H. Stark, Jr.
.
14 Three Years of Horrors
statement of Judge James F. Nelson
.
19 The Roots of the Hatred
statement of Professor Firuz Kazemzadeh
26 An Eyewitness Account
statement of Ramna Mahrnoudi Nouranj
.
31 Reactions of American Bahá'Is
statement of Glen ford E. Mitchell
35 The Assault Upon Iran's Bah 'Is
statement of the National Spiritual Assembly
of the Bahd'Is of the United States
,
46 Appealing to the World's Conscience
book review by Firuz Kazemzadeh
48 Art Credits
.
.
- I-
THE THREAT OF GENOCIDE
The Threat of Genocide
EDITORIAL
T HE MURDERS continue. Men and women are arrested and put on
trial on trumped-up charges, or disappear without leaving a trace.
Month after month, open and secret executions take place. The bodies
of the victims, unceremoniouslY dumped in morgues and cemeteries,
often bear marks of torture. Children are ridiculed, insulted, and os-
tracized in schools. Some have been kidnapped and placed with Muslim
families to be raised as Muslims. Houses are set on fire; property is
looted; the old and the sick are deprived of care; the young and vigorous
are denied work. Thousands wander homeless, strangers in their native
land.
Through the green forests of Mazandaran, on the barren shores of the
sea of Uman, by the snow-capped Alburz, in the shadeless heat of the
Lut, in cities and towns, villages, and hamlets, is heard the blood-curdling
cry: Recant! Recant!
Recant and 1iv .
Recant and save yourself from torture and rape.
Recant and join those who have killed your family, your friends.
In the ancient and long-suffering land of Iran no other voices can be
heard. But what of the world? Will it again remain silent in the face
of such inhumanity? Will it not be stirred by the threat of genocide?
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About This Issue
ON MAY 25, 1982, the Subcommittee on Human
Rights and International Organizations of the For-
eign Affairs Committee of the United States House of
Representatives heard the testimony of six witnesses
concerning the persecution of the Bahá'Is in Iran.
The hearing indicated the growing awareness of the
American people and its elected representatives of
the tragic events that have already cost well over a
hundred lives, made thousands homeless, and caused
untold suffering to a peaceful religious community
of some 400,000 members.
The significance of the testimony and of the forum
in which it was presented have prompted us to pub-
lish the entire prepared testimony in the form in
which it was submitted to the Subcommittee (with-
out following the style of transliteration of Persian
and Arabic words ordinarily used by World Order). j
The abbreviated oral statements, as well as the ex-
change of questions and answers that occurred in the
session and was recorded stenographically, are not yet
available but will be published by the Congress be-
fore the end of the year. Because of the extraordinary
nature of the material published in this issue, we
have dispensed with our usual practice of including
an Interchange.
THE EDITORS
4
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6 WORLD ORDER: SPRING 1982
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS Sinc
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND must C
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS bring 2
public
OPENING STATEMENT do mo
HONORABLE DON BUNKER ti
that B
“Religious Persecution as a Violation of Human Rights” be
Part 111—The Baha'is Baha'is
May25, 1982
W E HAVE STARTED a series of hearings on Religious Persecution as a
Violation of Human Rights. The first two hearings have been gen-
eral in nature, laying the framework as to the scope of the problem, how
widespread it is, and what constitutes religious persecution.
Today we start looking at specific examples of religious persecutions around
the world. The first case to be considered is that of the Baha'is in Iran.
The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which recognizes and
protects the Jewish, Christian, and Zorastrian minorities in that country, never-
theless denies recognition to Iran's largest religious minority, the Baha'is. As
a result, Iran's 300,000 Baha'is are deprived of any form of protection under
the law.
From the time of its birth in 1844 and at no stage in its history has the
Baha'i faith been granted recognition as an independent religion by the Iranian
Government or under the Iranian Constitution. The Baha'is have been con-
sidered heretics within Islam since their religion was founded 138 years ago
in Iran.
Since the inception of the Baha'i faith, they have lived in a climate of
constant repression characterized by frequent outbreaks of violence and blood-
shed. In the early days, over 20,000 Baha'is were killed. Under subsequent
regimes including the former Pahlavi's (Shah), the religious persecution of
the Baha'is continued.
Now once again in post-revolutionary Iran, differences in religious ideology
are being used by fanatical elements to justify violent attacks on the Baha'i
community. In March of 1980, two Baha'is were executed for teaching the
Baha'i faith. Fourteen more were executed in June of 1980 for practicing their
religion. In August of the same year, 14 members of the Baha'i administrative
body disappeared. Last December 8, members of the Baha'i national assembly
were executed and in January, six members of the local governing body of
Tehran were executed. Baha'i shrines and cemeteries have been desecrated,
administrative centers and savings confiscated. A systematic effort appears
under way to eliminate the Baha'i religion from Iran.
The Baha'is are gentle and peace-loving. In accordance with the tenets
of their faith, they uphold the divine origin of all the major world religions,
rather than being narrow in scope.
OPENING STATEMENT
Since the United States has no leverage with the Iranian government, we
must do all we can through other countries that have influence in Iran to
bring an end to the persecution of the Baha'is. Through private channels and
public exposure we must continue to pressure the Reagan Administration to
do more and the Iranian government to put a stop to this genocide.
In the last two years the Subcommittee has made every effort to make sure
that Baha'is are granted asylum in the United States. Every effort must also
be made to call to the attention of world public opinion the plight of the
Baha'is. This hearing will promote that process.
7
4.
.., .,,.
I.
S WORLD ORDER: SPRING 1982
A Chronology of Concern
STATEMENT OF HON. EDWARD J. DERWIN-
SKI BEFORE SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN
RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZA-
TIONS AT HEARING ON MAY 25, 1982, ON
RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION AS A VIOLATION
OF HUMAN RIGHTS—THE BAHA'IS
M R. CHAIRMAN, I am pleased that you
are holding hearings and concentrating
on the issue of the Baba'is. I believe that this
ongoing tragedy which the Baha'i community
is suffering in Iran is a story that has not
been told vigorously and often enough and
is, in fact, one of the great tragedies of our
times.
The Baha'i community called my attention
to their fears in Iran shortly after the radical
regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini took con-
trol in that country. At this point, I would
like to have inserted in the record the letter
I received on February 15, 1979, from Glen-
ford F. Mitchell, Secretary of the National
Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the
United States.
I have been concerned with the plight of
Iranian members of the Baha'i faith for some
time. On June 26, 1981, I appealed to Kurt
Waldheim, then Secretary General of the
United Nations, for his help in alleviating
their suffering. May I insert a copy of that
letter in the record at this point. The U.N.
Subcommission for Prevention of Discrimina-
tion and Protection of Minorities voted iS
to 0 in condemnation of the Iranian persecu-
tioh of the Baha'is.
On July 24, 1981, 1 addressed the House,
denouncing the cruelty and excesses of the
Iranian regime and calling for particülár at-
tention to the continued persecution of the
Baha'is. On September 15, 1981, I placed in
the Congressional Record a column by Pro-
fessor Firuz Kazemzadeh entitled “For
Baha'is in Iran, a Threat of Extinction.” I
ask that these items be included in the
record at this point. I also asked you as
Chairman of the Subcommittee on Human
Rights and International Organizations to
hold hearings on the situation of the Iranian
Baha'is, and I am very pleased this is now
being done.
There are relatively few Baha'is in the
United States. The attention of the media is
now riveted on the situation in the Falkland
Islands and other world trouble spots, and
the internal tragedy the Baha'is and other
victims of the Ayatollah's regime face is all
but forgotten. Again, Mr. Chairman, I com-
mend you for holding these hearings and
helping to present this story on behalf of a
truly innocent and suffering people, the
Baha'is.
I
9
Expressing the Sense of Congress
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE FORTNEY
H. STARK, JR., BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE
ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL
ORGANIZATIONS, MAY 25, 1982
MR. CHAIRMAN, Thank you for giving
me the opportunity to testify before
your subcommittee today, to express my
concern about the religious persecution of
the 300,000 Iranian Baha'is by the Khomeini
regime. I know that many of our colleagues
in Congress also believe that we must con-
demn and oppose the harsh repression and
possible genocide of the Baha'is in Iran. It
is quite sad and ironic that a people who for
over one hundred years have striven to bring
about the unity of mankind, world peace, and
world order, should be the target of flagrant
violations of human rights.
I first learned about the plight of the
Baha'is in Iran through constituents of mine,
who are either themselves members of the
Baha'i Community or who are friends of
members. The shocking and disturbing let-
ters and newsclippings which I received
from people in the 9th District of California,
prompted me to investigate this matter fur-
ther, and then to speak out against the geno-
cidal actions of the Khomeini regime. I found
that many of our colleagues were also very
concerned about the persecution of the
Baha'is in Iran, evidenced by the number of
speeches in the Congressional Record about
the Baha'is.
On March 9, 1982, 1 introduced a con-
current resolution, which expresses the sense
of Congress that the President and other of-
ficial representatives of the United States
should at every opportunity before interna-
tional forums reiterate and emphasize the
extent to which we deplore and condemn
the religious persecution of people of the
Baha'i faith by the Government of Iran.
There are presently 7 cosponsors to my reso-
lution, and at least half a dozen other mem-
bets have expressed an interest in signing it.
I hope that the Subcommittee will consider
my resolution in the very near future.
The same day on which I introduced the
concurrçr t resplution, I also introduced a bill
to prohibit imports from Iran until it ceases
the persecution of the Baha'is. I feel that
if the message in the Resolution is not heeded,
we must move forward with more con-
crete actions, such as an embargo. Although
United States imports from Iran have been
reduced drastically, totaling only $63.8 mil-
lion for all of 1981, $3.4 million for January
1982, $2.3 million for February 1982, and
$3.8 million for March 1982, imposing an
embargo on even a small quantity of im-
ports would certainly be a clear, tough signal
to the Iranian Government. My bill has been
referred to the Trade Subcommittee.
I WOULD LIKE to share with the Subcommit-
tee, some excerpts •from A Cry from the
Heart, by an eminent Western Baha'i, Wil-
liam Sears. This book is an impassioned ac-
count of the horrors perpetrated against the
Iranian Baha'is, a refutation of the false and
contradictory charges levelled against them,
and an exposé of the genocidal purpose of
the present outbreak. The following excerpt
describes the atrocities taking place against
the Baha'is in Iran:
The atrocities taking place against
Bahá'Is today throughout Iran are no long-
er matters of suspicion or opinion. They
are matters of fact. The proof can be found
in the records of libraries, newsrooms,
United Nations Agencies, human rights
organizations, telex and cable files in every
part of the world.
The spotlight of world publicity has
now been turned directly upon Iran. It is
no longer a secret that the killings, burn-
ings, lootings, and torture of Bahá'Is are
still continuing, even as these pages are
being written. It is no longer possible for
- ..
JO /VORLD ORDER: SPRING 1982
the persecutors to suppress or minimize
the enormity of their crimes, or to hide
anonymously behind the fiction of ‘un-
controllable mobs.”
Those days are over!
Confiscation of property, of bank ac-
counts, burning and looting of homes, of-
licially sanctioned executions of innocent
victims—all these things take place every-
where, in the streets, in the market-place,
and in the homes.
The Bahá'Is are harassed, beaten, abused,
killed. Sometimes husband and wife to-
gether. Or an entire family. Or a group of
close friends, or neighbours, or business
associates. Chosen at random. At the whim
of rhe killers.
Stabbed, stoned, hanged, burned alive,
hacked to pieces with knives, stood before
firing-squads.
Men, women, children. No one is spared.
Their crime?
They are Bahá'Is.
These atracks have been going on for
nearly one hundred and fifty years.
The first onslaught of the current per-
secutions began in 1978. It is now i
its fourth year. The severity and spread of
the outrages increase each day and be-
come ever more sinister. There is no end
in sight, and no sign of a let-up.
What is most alarming and threatening
about the present avalanche is not its vio-
lence; that has always occurred. It is the
devilish ingenuity of the assault designed
to eliminate an entire community of near-
ly half a million souls. The terror has now
spread into every level of Bahá'I life, to
city dweller, villager and farmer.
At first the Bahá'I business houses, the
repository of the savings of rich and poor
Bahá'is alike, were confiscated, with no
recompense. Then the great Bahá'f hospital
in Teheran, built, operated and fully sup-
ported by Bahá'is, where patients of all
religions and backgrounds were treated
with the same loving care, was taken over.
Next, Bahá'I holy places throughout the
country were occupied and put to whatever
use, often personal, the revolutionary au-
thorities, equally often the man with a
gun, might decide. The meeting-places of
the local communities were next to be
taken. Then, having deprived this helpless
community, which has no rights in law, of
its funds, hospital, holy places and religious
properties, attention was turned to the
leaders of the community. All nine mem-
bers of the National Spiritual Assembly
were kidnapped . . . and have not been
heard of, except by rumour, to this day.
Outstanding Bahá'is in the provincial com-
munities were next and many of those
have been executed. The obvious aim is
to get rid of the capable, trusted, elected
leaders before launching the attack on the
rank and file.
The Bahá'i community they are trying to
destroy is the largest religious minority in
Iran. Jr has more nicmbers than the Chris-
tian, Jewish and Zoroastrian communities
combined. In spire of this, the Bahá'I Faith
is not recognized and Bahá'Is are deprived
of their basic human rights. There is no
one and no place in the entire country
they can approach for protection. They
cannot appeal to the clergy, to the courts,
or to the authorities. The clergy and their
religious courts arc the authorities.
They are engaged in a process which
the entire civilized world has always been
against.
It is called: Genocide.'
The alleged reasons for the genocide are
listed below in the major accusations current-
ly made against the Baha'is in Iran. The ab-
surdity of these accusations is explained in a
later section of the book—J feel, however,
that the absurdity of these accusations will
be apparent to all who have been following
the persecution of the Bahais, without going
into the well-documented refutation.
A ccusations
1. The Bahá'I Faith, far from being a
religion, is a subversive and heretical
sect which plans to establish its own
regime in Iran.
2. The Bahá'I Faith is a political party
which supported the regime of Mu- . 9.
hammad Reza Shah, and received fa-
yours from him.
3. The Bahá'Is are agents of foreign 10.
powers, such as the United States and
Russia, and of British imperialism.
4. The Bahá'Is are “spies” for Israel, and
secretly collaborate with internation-
al Zionism. They contribute financially
to the support of Israel which aids that
country against its Arab and Muslim
neighbours.
I1 5. The Bahá'Is have their World Centre
in Israel, and therefore must be hostile
to Iran and to the current Islamic
Revolution.
6. The Bahá'Is travel frequently to and
from Israel, carrying and receiving in-
formation against Iran and other Arab
nations.
7. The Bahá'Is are against Islam and
Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam,
and insult His holy Book, the Koran.
8. There have been Bahá'Is in high places
in the political life of Iran, although
they claim they do not become in-
volved in politics. A Bahá'I was once
Prime Minister. Others served in lesser
ministerial capacities.
EXPRESSING THE SENSE OF CONGRESS 11
II. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
I would like to commend the Subcommit-
tee for holding this hearing to focus attention
on the plight of the Baha'is in Iran. I hope
that the Subcommittee will continue its work
in this area, and favorably consider my reso-
lution, H. Con. Res. 283.
97TH CONGRESS
2D SESSION
H. CON. RES. 283
Expressing the sense of Congress that the Presi-
dent and other official representatives of the
United States should at every opportunity be-
fore international forums reiterate and empha-
size the extent to which we deplore and con-
demn the religious persecution of peoples of
the Bahai faith by the Government of Iran.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
MARCH 9, 1982
Mr. STARK submitted the following concurrent
The Bahá'Is of Iran are quite different
from those in other lands. In Iran
they are politically oriented.
One of the heads of the dreaded secret
police, Savak, and others of its high-
ranking officers, have been members
of the Bahá'I Faith.
12 WORLD ORDER: SPRING 1982
resolution; which was referred to the
Committee on Foreign Affairs
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of Congress that the President
and other official representatives of the United
States should at every opportunity before inter-
national forums reiterate and emphasize the
extent to which we deplore and condemn the ..
religious persecution of peoples of the Baha'i
faith by the Government of Iran.
Whereas the Government of Iran has persecuted
peoples of the Baha'i faith, has killed more than
one hundred individuals of the Baha'i faith
since 1978, has jailed Baha'is unjustly, has con-
fiscated and shut down Baha'i holy places and
other community property, has banned Bahai
meetings, has dismissed Baha'is from public and
private employment, has destroyed Baha'i homes
and businesses, and has harassed or assaulted
Baha'is in outlying villages trying to force them
torecant their faith: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives
(the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of
Congress that (a) in accordance with our own
history and national traditions of opposition to
religious persecution, as well as in full respect
for international law and custom, the United
States condemns and opposes the religious per-
secution of peoples of the Baha'i faith by the
Government of Iran.
(b) The President and other official repre-
sentatives of the United States should at every
opportunity before international forums reiter-
ate and emphasize the extent to which we de-
plore and condemn the religious persecution of
peoples of the Baha'i faith by the Government
of Iran.
‘1
11 WORLD ORDER: SPRING 1982
Three Years of Horrors
PREPARED STATEMENT OF JAMES F. NELSON
I am a judge of the Municipal Court of Los
Angeles and the chairman of the National
Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the
United States—the governing board of trust-
ees elected by the 100,000 members of the
American Baha'i community. With me is
Firuz Kazemzadeh, professor of history and
chairman of the Committee on Middle-East-
ern Studies at Yale University, and vice-
chairman of our National Assembly. Also
with me is Glen ford E. Mitchell, secretary
and chief executive officer of our National
Assembly. My colleagues and .1 appreciate
the opportunity to testify today before the
Subcommittee on Human Rights and Inter-
national Organizations concerning the horri-
ble acts of discrimination against the rnem-
hers of tl e Baha'i Faith in Iran.
F the last three-and-one-half years the
Baha'i community of Iran has suffered
relentless persecution. The horrors that are
being inflicted upon it stagger the imagina-
tion. They constitute without any doubt a
gross violation of all fundamental human
rights.
—In Miandoab, a mob, after destroying the
local Baha'i center, fell upon a man and
his son, dragged their bodies through the
street, and chopped them up into small
Pieces that were finally consigned to
(lames.
—in Nuk. a farming village near Birjand,
fifteen masked men attacked a couple in
their home at night, poured kerosene on
the husband and set him on fire before
forcing him to run for a few yards; finally
they heaped wood upon him, burning
him to death. His wife, subjected to similar
treatment, died a few days later.
—In Shiraz. 300 Baha'i homes were burned.
—In Teliran, the dead bodies of executed
Baha'is were written upon in large script.
These ghoulish markings included the epi.
diet “enemy of Islam.”
—In Yazd, following the execution of seven
Baha'is, including an 85-year-old man, the
authorities presented their widows with
bills to cover the cost of the bullets used to
execute them.
—In Musa-Abad Village, two teenage girl
students were abducted from school by
their religion teachers. The parents have
been unable to determine their fate. The
teachers claimed that the girls had con-
verted to Islam and refused to meet their
Baha'i parents, a most unlikely story.
—In Kashan, a teenage girl was abducted
and forced to marry a Muslim despite her
being under age.
—Tn Shiraz, a high-ranking authority de-
creed that a Baha'i widow had no right to
the pension due from her husband's insur-
ance and could not retain custody of her
children.
—In Tehran, the High Court of Justice up-
held a verdict of the Shiraz Revolutionary
Court that cited membership in Baha'i
Assemblies as a crime punishable by death.
Since this verdict more than sixty Baha'i
leaders have been executed.
The Iranian Baha'is have no recourse for
redress of grievances. The constitution of the
Islamic Republic does not recognize the
Baha'i Faith, although similar religious mi-
norities are recognized. Thus the patient and
repeated appeals of the Baha'is to the au-
thorities fall on deaf ears.
The Baha'i Faith originated in 1844. Ever
since then its history has been marked with
bloody periods of persecution. However, the
new attacks began with the Islamic revolu-
tion in the autumn of 1978. Between Sep-
tember 25 and December 14 of that year
THREE YEARS OF HORRORS
15
the community recorded 112 instances of.
assault upon its members. There were loot-
ings, burnings, beatings, murders, the de-
secration of cemeteries, the disruption of
meetings—all intended to force Baha'is to
deny their faith. The attacks spread rapidly
to every province in Iran.
IN THE SPRING of 1979, when the Islamic
Revolutionary Government of Ayatollah
Khomeini was already firmly established,, the
campaign against the Baha'is assumed an of-
ficial form and increased in magnitude:
—2,000 men, women and children were
driven from their homes and sought refuge
in the deserts and mountains.
—The House of the Bab, the holiest shrine
in Iran for Baha'is and a place of pilgrim-
age for the Baha'is of the world, was
seized on the pretext that it was being held
by the authorities as a protection against
mob atack. It was ultimately razed, the
site obliterated by a hastily constructed
road.
—Nawnahalan company, which served as a
savings and loan association primarily for
the benefit of Baha'i children, was con-
fiscated.
—Omana company, which held in trust
Baha'i community properties, including
holy places and historic sites that had been
in the possession of Baha'is for more than
a century, was similarly confiscated. As na-
tional and local properties were seized, so
too were the sacred literature and records
of the community.
—The Ministry of Education issued a circular
that those Baha'is who did not deny their
faith should immediately be discharged
from their jobs as teachers.
—Baha'is were arrested without charge in
various localities.
Soon it ,became apparent that the cam-
paign directed against the Baha'i community
was systematic and centrally directed. The
Human Rights Commission of the Federa-
tion of Protestant Churches in Switzerland
issued a report in Zurich on September 12,
1979 in which it described the methods and
ends of the persecution as “administrative
strangulation,” ‘ flnancial strangulation,” “so-
cial and personal strangulation.” Other re-
ports, including the published dispatches of
the correspondents for Reuters, The Associ-
ated Press, Le Monde, The New York Times.
The Washington Post, The Los Angeles
Times, signified the deepening crisis for the
Baha'is of Iran. These reports combined to
portend the imminence of genocide.
The final blow was to be the elimination
of the leadership of the community. The
primitive logic was clear: a body without
a head could not survive. Beginning in 1980,
shortly after the taking of American hostages,
a rash of disappearances, arrests, and execu-
tions of members of Baha'i local and national
governing bodies shocked the community.
The abduction of all nine members of the
National Assembly on August 21 confirmed
the rumor of a plot to wipe out the Baha'i
leadership. The National Assembly members
were meeting in a private home, when revo-
lutionary guards forcibly took them away,
along with two other officers of the Faith
with whom they were conferring. No trace
of them has been found, and they must be
presumed dead. Eight members of the sub-
sequent National Assembly were similarly
abducted and then secretly executed in Teh-
ran last December. Six of the nine members
of the Tehran Assembly met the same fate
in January 1982. Scores of other local As-
sembly members have been executed in dif-
ferent parts of the country, some after tor-
I
16 WORLD ORDER: SPRING 1982
ture. Scores more languish in jail, their fate
unknown.
How do Iranian authorities justify the per-
secution of the Baba'is? The Baha'i Faith is
not recognized in the constitution of the
Islamic Republic. Therefore, Baha'is are not
entitled to protection under the law and
have no opportunity to defend themselves
against false accusations. Baha'i marriages
are not sanctioned by law. Therefore, their
issue are not recognized as legitimate. Since
Baha'i marriages are not recognized, Baha'i
women are proclaimed prostitutes.
The Shiite clergy and the Government per-
sistently accuse the Baha'i Faith of being a
political conspiracy that serves the interests of
foreign powers, including the United States.
This, in spite of the fact that Baha'is strictly
avoid disloyal and subversive activities.
The clergy and the Government claim that
the Baha'is were favored by the regime of
the Shah and ran his secret police, the
SAVAK, when in fact the Baha'is were per-
secuted under Pahiavi rule and were Ire-
quenrly the SAVAK 's victims.
The clergy and the Government accuse
the Baha'is of serving the interests of Zion-
ism and Israel. As proof they point to the
fact that the Baha'i world center is located
in Haifa, Israel, and that Baha'is send money
to that country. Indeed, the Baha'i world
center is in Israel. This occurred because 114
years ago the government of the Ottoman
Empire forcibly brought the founder of the
Baha'i Faith and His disciples to Akka,
which was then in the province of Syria.
Baha'u'llah, the founder of the Baha'i Faith,
died in Akka and ever since then the twin
cities of Akka and Haifa have been the
spiritual center of the Baha'i Faith long pre-
dating the State of Israel.
The allegations that the Baha'is transfer
funds to Israel are made out of sheer mis-
chief. Baha'i pilgrims from all parts of the
world regularly travel to Israel to visit the
Shrine of Baha'u'llah, and other sites closely
associated with their religion. Thousands of
Iranian Bahais made this pilgrimage during
the time when they were permitted by law
to visit Israel. In accordance with the clear
requirements of the Baha'i Faith, its world
spiritual and administrative centers must
always be united in one locality. Accordingly,
the world administrative center of the Baha'i
Faith has always been and must continue to
be in the Holy Land. It cannot be relocated
for the sake of temporary political expedi-
ency. Contributions sent by Baha'is to their
world center in Israel are solely and ex-
clusively for the upkeep of their holy shrines
and historic sites, and for the administration
of their Faith. Almost all Baha'is in Iran
have made such contributions, and this inno-
cent action is used to support charges of their
collusion with Israel.
These allegations are a sham. They are a
smokescreen for religious fanaticism. Time
and again the persecutors have confirmed by
their own acts that their charges are ground-
less. The fake trials of the Baha'is never deal
with the substance of any of these accusa-
tions; rather, the prosecutors attempt to learn
about the operations of the Baha'i community
and to force the defendants to recant their
faith. In November 1981, a couple in whose
home the members of the Tehran Baha'i As-
sembly met when they were arrested, were
put on trial. The wife refused to recant, was
sentenced to death for espionage and exe-
cuted. Her husband recanted and was set
free, fully absolved of the charge of spying.
In former and simpler times, the Shiite
clergy did nor need to invent justifications
for their hatred of the Baha'i Faith. Back
then they persecuted “heretics” and did not
have to bother with notions of religious
tOlerance. Today, the clergy are as determined
as ever to eradicate the Baha'i Faith, but feel
they need elaborate justifications for their
murderous acts.
The Shiice clergy's hatred of the Baha'is is
at its root purely religious. The Muslim
clergy hold that Muhammad was the last of
a series of prophets going all the way back
to Adam. The Baha'is, however, believe that
the dialogue between God and man can
never stop, that Baha'u'llah was a prophet of
God. equal to Muhammad, and that in the
future there will be others who will continue
to bring divine revelation to humanity. More-
over, Baha'u'llah abrogated particular Is-
lamic laws such as holy war, polygamy, cer-
tain dietary laws, and regulations concerning
ritual purity.
Equally offensive to the Shiites is the
Baha'i principle of the equality of men and
women. Perhaps even more upsetting is the
fact that the Baha'i Faith does not have a
clergy but is, instead, governed by demo-
cratically elected bodies. Moreover, by pro-
moting the unity of mankind as its pivotal
principle and by envisioning a federation of
nations under a world government, the
Baha'i Faith shatters Shiite notions of ex-
clusiveness and monopolistic possession of
power.
Thus the Baha'is are frequently accused of
being “enemies of Islam,” which in an Is-
lamic Republic also means enemies of the
state. Yet it must be recognized that wherever
the Baha'is have spread their religion, they
have succeeded in spreading reverence for
Islam and its prophet. Moreover, they have
taught their' fellow-believers in more than
100,000 lo alities around the globe to love
Iran as the birthplace of their religion.
The situation in Iran also affects Baha'i
communities in other countries. The anti-
Baha'i propaganda spouted by the Iranian
Islamic Republic spreads misunderstanding
and suspicion of the Baha'i community far
and wide. Even in the United States, Amer-
ican Baha'is had to battle against the power
of mass communications as Iran's spokesmen
have taken to the airwaves with half-truths
and outright lies. There have been instances
in which fanatical Islamic Iranians have
made attempts to disrupt Baha'i activities in
our own country. For example, on March 27
this year, the Baha'is of Morgantown, West
Virginia, were prevented from holding a
prayer meeting when a group believed to be
Iranian students threatened the management
THREE YEARS OF HORRORS
17
of the hotel in which the event was to have
taken place. Similar incidents have occurred
in Reno, Nevada, and Minneapolis, Minne-
sota. It seems that some Iranian Muslims
residing in the United States are attempting
to intimidate the American Baha'i commun-
ity and to create for it the same oppressive
conditipns ecisting in their own country.
WE have cited in this brief statement the
most telling evidences of the persecution• of
the Iranian Baha'i community, namely: the
wholesale seizure of Baha'i sacred literature,
the confiscation of national and local records,
the expropriation of the community's prop-
erties and other assets, and the execution of
its leaders. No extensive analysis is needed
to determine the precise intention behind
these acts. A community deprived of its in-
spiration, of its memory, of its material
means, and of its leadership becomes extinct.
That these deadly afflictions have not suc-
ceeded in breaking the spirit of the Baha'i
community is a clear indication of its deep
rootedness, its resilience, and its determina-
tion to survive. But there are limits to human
endurance, and it is our hope that before it
is too late the governments and peoples of
the nations will join in the effort to ensure
the security of this innocent minority.
It is the task of the Baha'is of other lands
to help their Iranian co-religionists by calling
the attention of the world to the horrors that
are being perpetrated in the name of religion.
On many occasions in this century, the world
averted its eyes when fanatics, demagogues,
and dictators of various stripes massacred
national, racial, and religious minorities, or
filled concentration camps with “class ene-
mies,” deprived of their most fundamental
rights all those who dared to differ from their
brutal orthodoxies even in thought. Decency,
respect for human rights, and love of one's
neighbor, be he ever so distant geographical-
ly, are as indivisible as peace. Humanity can-
not afford to remain silent and by its silence
to condone evil.
We, the Baha'is of the United States, feel
no animosity toward the government of Iran.
18 WORLD ORDER: SPRING 1982
We feel genuine sympathy for the long-
suffering Iranian people and wish for them
a peaceful and happy future. However, we.
cannot remain indifferent to the sufferings of
our Iranian brothers and sisters at the hands
of bigots, who have no compunctions about
shedding innocent blood. We call upon our
fellow citizens and our elected representatives
to proclaim that America will not acquiesces.
in oppression and that its perpetrators will
have to answer for their deeds in the court
of world opinion.
Mr. Chairman: Again I thank you for
giving time to the Baha'i community to pre-
sent to your Subcommittee information about
one of the most compelling cases of religious
persecution in modern history.
•— -. —.‘‘ - —.. .. .,
The Roots of the Hatred
PREPARED STATEMENT OF FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH
19
I am professor of history and chairman of the
Committee on Middle-Eastern Studies at Yale
University in New Haven, Connecticut. I am
also vice-chairman of the National Spiritual
Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States.
J UDGE James Nelson has outlined the story
of the large-scale persecution that has be-
fallen the Baha'is of Iran. I do not intend
further to dwell on the horrors that are daily
being perpetrated against men, women, and
children who belong to an innocent and de-
fenseless religious community. Rather I shall
attempt to provide some historical informa-
ticin that would help place the recent events
in perspective and explain the intense hatred
the fundamentalists among Iran's Shiite
clergy feel for the Baha'is.
The Shiite sect of Islam became Iran's
state religion in relatively modern times. It
was only in the sixteenth century, under the
patronage of the Saf avid dynasty, that Shiism
assumed a dominant position. Some two
hundred years later the state underwent
catastrophic decline. An Afghan invasion,
followed by anarchy, extensi 'e military ad-
ventures, protracted dynastic and tribal rival-
ries, and the resultant economic decline led
to the diminution of secular authority and to
an inordinate increase in the influence of the
clergy.
In the early nineteenth century, the clergy
was truly the first estate of the realm. The
new rulers, members of the semi-nomadic
Qajar Turkoman tribe, had no legitimate
claim to the throne and felt the need for the
goodwill of the mullahs who wielded enor-
mous economic and political power. So great
had their influence become that they con-
trolled the streets of the principal cities, were
able to precipitate the massacre of the entire
staff of a foreign legation and to provoke a
disastrous war. In a culture that did not sepa-
rate religion from politics, the clergy partici-
pated in the governance of society, exercis-
ing virtual monopoly over the judiciary, and
involving itself heavily, and at times decisive-
ly, in every significant national issue.
The clergy's spiritual and secular authority
rested largely on its claim to represent the
Hidden Imam, a descendant and successor of
the prophet Muhammad, who, according to
ancient tradition, had disappeared in the year
260 A.H. and whose return the Shiites anx-
iously awaited.
In May 1844, in the southern city of
Shiraz, a young merchant, Seyyed Ali Mu-
hammad, proclaimed himself the Bab, or
Gate, through which believers could gain
access to the Hidden Imam. As his mission
evolved, the Bab revealed to a rapidly grow-
ing circle of dedicated disciples that he was
the Hidden Imam himself, a new prophet
and a herald of a still greater divine mes-
senger who would soon come to fulfill mil-
lenial prophecies and bring about righteous-
ness on earth.
The Bab's teachings were a direct chal-
lenge to the Islamic fundamentalists. The
Shiite clergy held that Muhammad was “the
seal of the prophets,” that with him revela-
tion had come to an end. Those who believed
otherwise were declared renegades deserving
death. Moreover, the Bab gave allegorical
interpretations to such traditional beliefs as
bodily resurrection and abrogated a number
of Islamic laws and ceremonies dealing with
prayer, fasting, marriage, divorce, inheritance,
and the status of women. Last but not least,
the Bab and his disciples eloquently de-
nounced the corruption of the clergy and the
laity, the iniquities heaped upon the people
I
20 WORLD ORDER: SPRING 198?
by greedy and arbitrary rulers, the selfishness
of the rich and the misery of the poor.
Angered and frightened by the spread of
the Babj movement, the clergy and the gov-
ernment determined to crush it by force.
Vigorous attacks were launched against the
Babis. Faced with the threat of mass murder,
they resisted and were defeated in an un-
equal struggle against the military forces of
the state. Thousands perished in the resis-
tance; other thousands including unarmed
women, children, the sick, and the aged were
systematically put to death by an enraged
enemy. The Bab himself was executed in
July I 85() by a firing squad. Two years later
a few of his disciples made an attempt on the
life of the Shah but succeeded only in un-
leashing another massacre in which died most
of the prominent leaders of the movement.
The government and the clergy now felt
that the danger had passed. A majotity of
the Bahis were dead; the rest were dispirited
and inactive. Few of their outstanding lead-
ers survived and most of these were in exile.
The masses had been inoculated with a pas-
sionate hatred of the accursed renegades. The
very word Babi assumed pejorative conno-
tations and was used as a mortal insult.
A decade later the situation changed
radically. One of the few prominent Babi
Survivors, Mirza Husayn Au, known as Baha'-
u'llah, assumed the leadership of the com-
munity, unified it, and gave it a new vitality.
In 1863 lie proclaimed himself to be the
great messenger whose advent the Bab had
so insistently foretold. Most of the Babis
accepted his claim and became Baha'is, fol-
lowers of Baha'u'llah.
THE RE/!IVAL of the Babi Faith surprised and
alarmed the Iranian authorities. They re-
gretted that they had exiled Baha'u'llah to
Baghdad where lie was in constant contact
with Iranian pilgrims who visited the Shiite
holy places in Iraq and who spread his fame
all over Iran. In 1863, at the request of the
Iranian Government, the Turkish Sultan
transferred Baha'u'llal-i and a number of his
adherents first to Constantinople and then to
Adrianople. In 1868 Baha'u'llah was taken
to Akka, a fortified town then in the province
of Syria, now in Israel. In Akka and its vicin-
ity Baha'u'llah spent the rest of his life as a
prisoner of the Ottoman state.
Over the span of sonic forty years Baha-
u'llah produced a vast body of work which
toda'y constitutes the sacred scriptures of the
Baha'i Faith an(l is the source of its princi-
ples and teachings. Baha'u'llah taught that
God, unknowable in His essence, periodically
revealed His will to humanity through a suc-
cession of messengers among whom were
Moses, Jesus, Zoroaster, Muhammad, and the
Bab. Each was a link in a never-ending chain
of progressive revelation that provided the
spiritual impetus for the development of hu-
manity. It was the task of humanity innerly
to seek divine qualities, while actively par-
ticipating in the advancement of civilization.
Like the Bab before him, Baha'u'llah af-
firmed the validity of Jslam and the divine
character of Muhammad's mission. However,
he gave his followers laws and prescribed for
them practices that differed radically from the
laws and practices of Islam. This, indeed, was
no Islamic sect but an entirely independent
religion with its Own scripture and its own
law. Baha'u'Ilah's teachings on the unity of
mankind, the equality of races, the equality
of sexes, universal education, the harmony of
religion and science, the establishment of a
world federation, and the maintenance of
world peace through collective security, his
advocacy of a universal auxiliary language,
and of other measures designed to bring
about a peaceful and inter-dependent world
society were far too advanced to be under-
stood by his contemporaries. These teachings
ignited in the Shiite clergy the same pas-
sionate hatred it had earlier felt for the Bab,
his teachings, and his followers.
As the Baha'i community grew by attract-
ing a significant proportion of enlightened
and forward looking Iranians, so grew the
hostility of the reactionary elements within
the clergy. It is these fanatical opponents of
w
THE ROOTS OF THE HATRED
21
all progress and reform who succeeded in
conveying their own fears and dislikes to the
rest of the population. The Baha'is were
placed in a difficult position.
Their enemies accused them of subverting
Islam, of preaching that Baha'u'llah was
God, of betraying their country, of commit-
ting ll sorts of abominations. The Baha'is
were denied the right to reply. At no time
in their history were they permitted to debate
their accusers, refute the allegations in the
press, publish books or magazines, or use
radio and television. For more than 100 years
the people of Iran have listened to a mono-
logue, a single voice spouting hate.
Modernization brought certain changes in
the situation of the Shiite clergy. Its position
was somewhat weakened by the spread of
education, a general decline .of religion
among the elite, and the growth of national-
ism that idealized Zoroastrian Iran and took
a dim view of the Islamic conquest and the
consequent adoption by the Iranians of a
foreign religion. In the atmosphere of na-
tionalism, skepticism, and religious indiffer-
ence, there began to grow the notion of toler-
ance that extended even to die Baha'is. The
clergy mobilized all its resources to resist
this trend.
By the late 1930s the mullahs had created
a whole new arsenal of anti-Baha'i weapons.
It was suddenly discovered that the Baha'is
were unpatriotic. Proof of this was found in
Baha'u'llah's proclamation of the unity of
mankind, in his advocacy of an international
auxiliary language, and in the emphasis lie
placed on universal peace. Since the then
reigning shah, Reza Pahiavi, was strongly
anti-Soviet, clerical propagandists tried to
link the Baha'is with Russia.
ABOUT 1939, a clerical society in the holy
city of Mashhad, produced what purported
to be a translation of the non-existent mem-
oirs of Prince Dalqurki (their rendition of
the name Dolgorukii, or, more exactly Dol-
gorukov). In his invented memoirs, “Dal-
qurki” tells of being sent in 1.844 by Tsar
Alexander II to Iran to weaken that country
by creating a schism within Islam. In pursuit
of his mission, “Dalqurki” supposedly created
the Babi movement which was, therefore,
not a religion but only an instrument of for-
eign penetration. Unfortunately for the au-
thors of this fraudulent document, they did
not know .Russian history. Thus they missed
the fact that in 1 844 Russia was ruled by
Nicholas I and that Alexander II did riot
ascend the throne until 1855. They did not
know that Dolgorukov had served in Iran
briefly in 1831., when the Bab was only 1.2
years old and did not become minister until
1846, when the Babi movement had already
been well launched.
Regardless of their illiteracy and absurdi-
ty, the fake memoirs of Prince “Daiqurki”
have entered the mainstream of Iranian
thought. They are known and believed by
a vast majority of educated and otherwise
intelligent Iranians. Only a few Iranian
scholars, among them the anti-clerical and
anti-Baha'i historian Abmad Kasravi and the
literary scholar Mojtaba Minovi, were not de-
ceived by this clerical fabrication.
When anti-British sentiments swept Iran
after World War II, the Baha'is were accused
of serving the British. During World War I,
‘Abdu'l-Baha, Baha'u'llah's eldest son and
successor as leader of the Baha'i community,
had organized famine relief in the towns of
Haifa and Akka, where lie had lived as an
exile since 1.868. In recognition of his philan-
thropic acts, the British authorities that gov-
erned Palestine after the collapse of the Ot-
toman Empire, knighted ‘Abdu'l-Baha. This
minor event became the basis of the legend
that the Baha'is have been the agents of the
British—a legend that has found a bizarre
expression in an outlandish book recently
published in America by a certain Robert
Dreyfuss, who had made the Baha'is into the
allies of Ayatollah Khomeini in the service
of the British.
With the spread of anti-Americanism in
the last ten to fifteen years, it became fash-
ionable to link the Iranian Baha'is to the
United States where there exists a relatively
j.
1•
I ;
22 wORLD ORDER: SPRING 1982
large and active Baha'i community. The very
fact that the first Baha'i House of Worship
in the western world stands on the shores of
Lake Michigan, just north of Chicago, has
been cited as evidence of the connection.
Since 1979 a new accusation has been
added: cooperation with Zionism. The
basis of this latest invention is the location
of Baha'i holy places and of the Baha'i inter-
national administrative center in Israel. It is
conveniently forgotten that Baha'u'lIah did
not choose the place of his exile and that he
was brought to Akka as a prisoner 80 years
before the creation of the state of Israel.
I HAVE MENTIONED the various allegations
made about the Baha'is to show the unprin-
cipled nature of such allegations. They are
all only a cover for religious bigotry. Yet they
demonstrate the depth of clerical hostility
toward the Baha'is and the success the mul-
lahs have had in poisoning the minds of
many decent and well-meaning Iranians. Re-
ligious prejudice, like racism, sprouts deep
rOOtS.
In 1925, frightened by the spread of re-
publican ideas from neighboring Turkey, a
nation that was undergoing complete secu-
larization, the Shiite clergy helped the mili-
tar)' dictator Reza Khan become shah. How-
ever, Reza Shah pushed the mullahs to the
periphery of national life. He secularized the
courts and the schools, and crushed all cler-
ical protests by brute force. Not until his
removal in 194 1 did the clergy get a new
lease on political life and begin to organize
clubs and auxiliary societies dedicated to the
reestablishment of their former inifuence.
In the early 1950s, one of the leading
mujtahids, Ayatollah Kashani, first lent sup-
port to Dr. Mosaddeq, then abandoned him
at the last moment facilitating the restoration
of Mohammad Reza Shah after his three days'
exile abroad. Of course, the Shah was ex-
pected to pay for the help he had received.
The extremists among the clergy led by
Mullah Taqi Falsafi, were granted the right
to conduct an anti-Baha'i campaign using
government radio and the press. The clergy
was also permitted to organize societies such
as Tabliqhat-e Eslami whose aim was the
eradication of the Baha'i Faith from Iran.
A number of individuals later prominent in
the government of the Islamic Republic of
Iran, for instance its second president Mo-
hammad Au Rajai, had participated in the
anti-Baha'i activities of the 1950s. These
consisted of the disruption of Baha'i study
classes, prayer meetings, weddings, and fu-
nerals; physical attacks on individual
Baha'is; the intimidation of employers who
hired Baha'i workers; the harassment of
Baha'i children in schools; the publication
and dissemination of scurrilous anti-Baha'i
literature, and the promotion of outright
anti-Baha'i pogroms.
In 1955 the Iranian government fully co-
operated with the Islamic extremist societies.
The army occupied the national Baha'i head-
quarters in Tehran, the chief of the imperial
staff himself dealing the first blow, with a
pickaxe, to the dome over the large meeting
hail. World public opinion loudly condemned
the pertecution of the Baha'i community,
forcing the Iranian government to relent and
to abandon the campaign.
In the next decade, the Shiite clergy again
lost much of the influence it had regained in
the 1950s. A substantial segment of the
clerical establishment assumed a firmly neg-
ative attitude toward land reform, the ex-
tension of the franchise to women, and to-
ward the ever-accelerating process of mod-
ernization. This negativism turned to the
mullahs' advantage in the 1970s.
Rapid urbanization with the concomitant
dislocation of the agricultural sector, the rise
of modern industry, the arrival of traffic
problems and air pollution, the visible in-
crease in foreign influence, drastic changes in
the lifestyle of urbanized Iranians, wide-
spread corruption in government and busi-
ness, the conflict between the traditional ba-
zaar bourgeoisie and the modern entrepre-
neurial class. the oppressive policies of a
THE ROOTS OF THE HATRED
23
government that seemed insensitive to the
nonmaterial needs of the population, the rise
of a large class of educated technocrats—
these were only some of the factors that sud-
denly made the negativism and fundamental-
ism of the mullahs seem attractive to much
of the population.
Elements among the reactionary clergy,
particularly those that clustered around the
specifically anti-Baha'i organizations, such as
the Tabliqhat-e Eslami and the Anjoman-e-
Hojjatiyyeh, played a double game. Founded
with the blessings of the government and
working in close cooperation with the
SAVAK—the political secret police—these
organizations used their resources and mem-
bership against both the government and the
Baha'is, creating the impression that the
Baha'is dominated the Pahlavi regime.
Clerical propaganda constantly repeated
that Mohammad Reza Shah was surrounded
by Baha'is and was, perhaps, one himself;
that his long-term prime minister Amir Ab-
bas Hoveida, and a number of other cabinet
ministers, as well as several high officials of
the SAVAK, were Baha'is. These carefully
planted and widely circulated rumors grad-
ually became part of the received ideas shared
by much of the urban population. The
facts, of course, were rather different. The
Shah was a professed Shiite with mystic ten-
dencies that he openly discussed in person
and in his autobiography. He did not hide
his aversion for the Baha'i Faith but did not
see it as a threat. For him the Baha'i com-
munity was a source of reliable, technical
personnel and a convenient scapegoat. He did
use the services of a Baha'i doctor and oc-
casionally appointed Baha'is to government
offices that dçmanded a high degree of spe-
cialized competence. However, no Baha'i
served in the cabinet, because acceptance of
a cabinet post by a Baha'i would have led to
the expulsion of such an individual from the
Baha'i community.
Prime Minister Hoveida was never a
Baha'i. His father had been one years ago
but was expelled from the Baha'i community.
Hoveida always insisted he was a Muslim
and frequently stressed his negative view of
the Baha'i Faith. The same was true of the
SAVAK official Parviz Sabeti, whose parents
had been Baha'is but drifted out of the Baha'i
community. Parviz Sabeti has never been a
member.
It should be pointed out, however, that the
misdeeds of an individual cannot be held
against an entire religion. Were one to ac-
cept the contrary principle, a criminal born
in a protestant family would make all protes-
tants parties to the crime. Is it necessary to
point out that Ivan the Terrible was a prac-
ticing member of the Orthodox Church,
Tamerlarie a Muslim, and Hitler a Catholic?
When the Iranian revolution broke out
in 1978, the most radically conservative fun-
damentalist elements within the Shiite clergy
were determined to purge Iran of everything
they disliked: modernism, emancipation of
women, the rights of minorities, academic
freedom, nonconformist thought, opera and
the theatre, most forms of music; but their
strongest yearning was for the destruction of
the Baha'is. Having achieved power, the old
enemies of the Baha'i Faith could not but use
that power to crush a religion and a com-
munity for whose eradication they have
striven for 138 years.
I
I
26 WORLD ORDER: SPRING 1982
An Eyewitness Account
PREPARED STATEMENT OF RAMNA MAHMOUDI NOURANI
I am an Iranian Baha'i who came to the
United States eleven years ago to study. I
have a B.A. degree in mathematics from
Wellesley College, an M.A. degree in mathe-
rriatics from Boston University, and three
years of graduate work towards a Ph.D. in
mathematics from the University of Califor-
nia at Los Angeles. My studies were dis-
rupted due to family circumstances, particu-
larly because of the persecution of my family.
I am married and have a two-year-old son.
I WOULD LIKE to make the plight of the
Baha'js of Iran known on behalf of the
hundreds of thousands of Baha'i men, wom-
en, and children whose legal rights are being
denied and who are living under the threat
of extinction: those who have lost their
jobs, their properties, their means of liveli-
hood; those who may even lose the custody
of their children; and those who have been
imprisoned, tortured, burned to death, or
executed for being Baha'is.
The story of the persecution of the Baha'is
of Iran is an intensely personal one for me.
With the blessings of the Islamic govern-
ment I have lost my father and my mother
to the fanaticism and hatred of the Moslem
clergy. This story is even more tragic be-
cause all the atrocities committed against the
Baha'is are done with pride, in the name of
religion.
Gone are the days when I was only hu-
miliated at school by my teachers in front of
other students for being a Baha'i. Gone are
the days when my parents feared only a few
years of imprisonment for “living in sin”
since their Baha'i marriage was not recog-
nized by the government. And gone are the
days when the only thing you could fear
during Baha'i meetings was the disruption by
a few bearded young men from the “Society
for the Propagation of Islam”—a society
whose only goal and purpose is the destruc-
tion of the Baha'i Faith in Iran. These days
one pays even more dearly, sometimes with
one's life, for being a Baha'i.
My father, Houshang Mahmoudi, fifty-
three, was a member of the National Spiritual
Assembly of the Baha'is of Iran. He, along
with the eight other National Assembly
members and two prominent Baha'is, was
handcuffed and blindfolded and taken away
at gunpoint by revolutionary guards from a
private residence in Tehran on August 21,
1980. They simply “disappeared.” We never
heard from my father, and all the appeals
made by the Baha'i community of Iran to
the Islamic government produced no result.
We can only fear the worst. My only hope is
that he was not tortured.
My mother, Ginous Mahmoudi, fifty-two,
was elected to the next National Spiritual
Assembly of iran and served as its chairman.
She and her colleagues on the Assembly
were arrested on December 13, 1981 and
executed on December 27, 1981. Their death
was discovered accidentally. The authorities
at 6 rst denied any knowledge of their execu-
tion. Their desecrated bodies were found half
buried in the “infidel” section of the Moslem
cemetery in Tehran. Some of them were
thrown into mass graves. No family members
were notified, no trials took place, and no
charges were made against them. Their bod-
ies could not be claimed until the authorities
were paid one thousand tumans for each
bullet used to kill them. The Prosecuter Gen-
eral of Iran, Ayatollah Musavi-Ardibili, later
claimed that these eight Baha'is were exe-
cuted because they were “foreign spies.”
On January 4, 1982, Mrs. Shiva Mah-
e
AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT
27
moudi, thirty-five, my cousin and a mother
of two young children, was executed in Teh-
ran along with five other Baha'is after four
months of imprisonment. They were all
members of the Baha'i Assembly of Tebran.
They were all kept in solitary confinement—
each ignorant of the fate of the others. As
the date of their execution drew near, each
one was given two pieces of paper to sign.
One paper promised their release and re-
turn of all their worldly possessions, if only
they would recant their faith. All they had
to do to buy their lives was to sign this pa-
per. And if they signed the other paper, they
would be sent to the firing squad. The
treacherous authorities went even so far as
to tell each one that all the others had re-
canted and bad been released. All stood
steadfast in their faith and were subsequently
executed.
In August 1981, a cousin of my husband,
Mr. Habib Tabqiqi, a senior petroleum engi-
neer, was executed in Tabriz along with eight
other members of the Baha'i Assembly there.
The first line of his will, which he wrote in
prison and of which I have a copy, reads:
‘In an hour I, along with eight other Baha'i
friends will be executed. My only guilt is that
I am a Baha'i. I believe in all the Prophets
of God including Muhammad And
then most recently, on May 8, 1982, Mr. and
Mrs. Foroohar, neighbors and close friends
of my parents, were tortured and executed in
Karaj (a suburb of Tehran) after ten months
of imprisonment.
All of the above-mentioned Baha'is were
among the ‘cream of the crop” of their so-
ciety. They were among the most educated;
they were professionals who served their
country and its people with honesty and
sincerity.
MY I ATHE1t was the most respected and
loved television personality in Iran for over
fifteen years. He pioneered the children and
youth programs on television. He was also
an educator and an author. He had a tre-
mendous love and affection for children and
founded a well-known secondary school in
Tehran from which thousands •of Iranian
children graduated. Many of them were ad-
mitted free of charge while my father paid
for their education. Generations of Iranian
children came to love and respect him. He
was a father figure for them.
My mother was a well-known scientist,
foremost among the women of Iran. She was
the assistant director of the Department of
Meteorology of Iran, supervising the research
and training for the atmospheric studies, and
later became its director. The Department of
Meteorology was built by her honest, cease-
less, and dedicated effort of twenty-five years.
She was also the president of the Iranian
School of Meteorology.
After the revolution, my mother was fired
and taken off the payroll. She was even asked
to give back all salary she had received for
the past twenty-five years of her service be-
cause, they said, it was illegal for a Baha'i
to be hired by the government.
My father's office was looted by the
revolutionary guards and everything in it
either destroyed or confiscated. Even his birth
certificate was taken away from him (per-
haps this was to enable them to deny later
that he had even existed). My parents' bank
accounts were also closed. Our home at this
point had become a shelter for many Baha'i
families who were driven out of their homes
and had lost all their possessions. In many
cases the dispossessed were not allowed even
to take their coats with them or put on their
I
F;
1
F
2S WORLD ORDER: SPRING 1982
shoes. These families came mainly from other
provinces of Iran. Subsequently, only one
Baha'i family comprising an eighty-year-old
man, his old wife, and their daughter re-
mained in our house—all the others were
placed elsewhere. This old couple were
farmers from the province of Khuzistan.
Their farm, house, and livestock were all set
on lire by their fanatical Moslem neighbors
and by revolutionary guards at the instigation
of the clergy; and they themselves were badly
beaten up. My brother who visited Tehran
three years ago related that this old man
could never hold back his tears when recount-
ing this brutality. In October 1981, a similar
fate befell our own house. Our Moslem
neighbors watched as the revolutionary
guards, under the supervision of Moslem
clergy, looted our house, destroyed our prop-
erty, and took the old couple to prison. Some
of our neighbors rook part in the looting and
some helped themselves with our belong-
ings. These were the same neighbors who for
over ten years were the recipients of my
parents' love, kindness, and generosity.
After my father's disappearance, I tele-
phoned my mother weekly. We could not
talk openly or the phone but did communi-
cate our emotions. Every week there was
news of fresh outbursts of atrocities heaped
upon the Baha'is. The last conversation I had
with her was on the day before her arrest.
She expressed her profound sadness at the
confiscation of the Baha'i cemetery in Teh-
ran. She remarked: “They have even taken
away the right of burial from the Baha'is.”
We also received letters from her in which
she talked about her horror and dismay at
the official manner the Islamic government
was taking away all the legal rights and the
God-given rights from the Baha'is. In one
of her letters written shortly after the revolu-
tion, she says: “. . . Everyday you can see
mountains of books on the streets of Teh-
ran—all kinds of books representing all
kinds of ideologies. In the midst of this free-
dom, the Baha'is have no rights. They come
and take away Baha'i books from our homes.
They come and confiscate the Baha'i Pub-
lishing Center and spend months in destroy-
ing our books with shredders. One looks des-
perately for a Baha'i book but cannot find
any
But this was only the beginning. In her
later letters she writes of the destruction of
the Baha'is themselves.
M MOTHER travelled extensively through-
out Iran, visiting Baha'i prisoners and their
families and those who had lost their all. I
would like to quote a part of one of her let-
ters written while visiting Hamadan. She told
us about seven Baha'is who had been tor-
tured and executed on June 14, 1981. My
mother knew them all very well and visited
them several times during their year-long
incarceration in Hamadan. She wrote: “. -
News came at 9 o'clock in the morning that
there are seven bodies in the morgue. Every-
one went to the morgue to see if the news
was true. It was. There were seven bloody
bodies thrown on the floor. It was obvious
how much disrespect and contempt had been
shown even to their lifeless bodies. But more
heinous was that their bodies were torn
apart and tortured. One had his chest-cage
smashed and a piece of it cut with a sharp
object. Another had his lingers smashed and
a piece of his stomach cut and thrown away.
Another had his arm smashed and yet an-
other had his leg completely torn. We asked
the authorities for an ambulance to deliver
the bodies to the Baha'i cemetery—it was re-
fused. But when the Baha'is told the officials
that they would take the bodies with their
own hands to be buried, they finally agreed
to provide an ambulance afraid of inhabitants
of the town finding out about the crimes
their rulers had committed. But the am-
bulance that was given to us was an old
one with all its windows broken and no
doors. Thus, one more time, they wanted
to humiliate the Baha'is. But the result was
the thousands of inhabitants of Hamadan
who came to the funeral procession, became
witness to the cruelties heaped upon these
AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT
29
seven Baha'is whom they knew and respected.
During their stay in prison, their knowledge,
behavior, and innocence overwhelmed all
the prisoners and all who came in contact
with them. There were three medical doctors
among them who took care of the sick in
the prison and even the revolutionary guards
would take their families to be examined by
them. Another one of the Baha'is would
help the prisoners prepare defense material.
They were the friends and refuge of the
prisoners
The incredible thing my mother always
talked about was the contrast between the
actions of the perpetrators of such shameless
and savage acts and their victims. The families
of these martyred Baha'is showed such dig-
nity and magnanimity. They even took can-
dies and flowers to the prison distributing
them among the prisoners and the guards,
thanking them for having kept their loved
ones company for so many long months.
In a telephone conversation I had with
my mother about a year ago, she told me
that not even Baha'i children are immune
from persecution. Later, she wrote in a letter:
It is unbelievable that human beings
could even think of pressuring innocent
children of such tender age in the way the
people in the schools of Iran are doing at
this time. Thousands of Baha'i children are
facing such inhuman afflictions. Most of them
are very studious, are more knowledgeable
than other children of their age. Many peo-
ple, including their teachers look at them
with awe. The enemies of the Baha'i Faith
do not deny that the Baha'i children are
generally much more advanced than their
fellow classmates, but they are not pleased
with this fact. Sometimes it happens that
when government authorities complain about
the Baha'is, they cite as examples the ac-
tions of our little ones and how they stand
up to the insults from their Muslim teachers
and fellow pupils.
“What do these children do that make
them deserve these pressures? Most Baha'i
children know their Islamic religious lessons
better than all their fellow students. They
can read the Quran and interpret it better
than their Muslim counterparts, sometimes
even better than their teachers. The highest
marks in Islamic religious study are given to
the Baha'i children. Their teachers are fre-
quently surprised, but at the same time they
are extremely resentful.
‘Bah 'i children with such intelligence, un-
derstanding, and knowledge are not favored
by the ideologues in the Ministry of Educa-
tion. According to them, such children
should be ‘g äided to the right path.' It is
certain that this ministry has adopted a de-
tailed and menacing plan to brainwash the
Baha'i children. We have so much evidence
of such a plan. It is surprising to note that
the authorities of the present regime are
spending so much time, energy, and money
to prepare themselves on ways to confront
our young children. It is not uncommon for
two or three instructors of religious classes
or trained ideologists of the Ministry of Edu-
cation as well as a number of students, to
join forces and suddenly attack a Baha'i child
of ten or eleven years. With all their power
they try to shatter the very foundations of
his beliefs. They will argue with him for
hours and even use unfair methods to ‘guide'
him.
“The other day, I went to visit a Baha'i
child, eleven years old, whom I had heard
had developed severe headaches. I asked him
to relate his experience. He told me that his
teacher had begun a barrage of insults and
calumnies against the Faith—he did not pas-
sively accept these insults—he gave impres-
sive responses—the teacher became speech-
less—this delighted the other children, who
applauded and cried ‘hurrah!' for him. The
teacher became angrier and left the classroom
and consulted with two other teachers, who
came to rescue. They argued and threatened
and abused him and took him to a room,
gave him a booklet which was written against
the Faith, and compelled him to write re-
peatedly from this booklet certain sentences
which attacked the Faith in offensive Ian-
I.'
30 WORLD ORDER: SPRING 1982
guage. This punishment became so great
that he developed severe headaches which the
doctor said were caused by nervous pressure.
What an ugly confrontation! On one
side three mature and ‘educated' teachers
with the support and blessing of the people
and the government and on the other side
an eleven-year-old-Bahai youth!”
In another letter my mother wrote that in
Yazd, over one hundred Baha'i children
have been expelled from their schools be-
cause they are Baha'is and since they attain
highest marks and are known for their ex-
emplary conduct, the people of Yazd are
asking: “Why should the best be expelled?”
These were only a few instances of the
persecution of the Baha'is in Iran that have
affected my life personally. Our 138-year
history is filled with unspeakable cruelties
and atrocities against the Baha'i community.
But, there is a difference. This time, we
have a well-planned case of genocide, where-
as previously the Moslem clergy and the
government authorities ordered the slaughter
of the Baha'is and the pillage of their prop-
erty with pride. They did not hide the fact
that ve were being persecuted because of
our beliefs. Those who carried out these
orders did so to “buy” themselves a “favor”
in the sight of God and, for the most part,
left the families and the properties of their
victims alone. Today, they kill and persecute
us for the same reason, but officially charge
us with outrageously false misdeeds that
even the non-Baha'is do not believe.
31
(‘ A • I .‘ /
Reactions or american Bana is
PREPARED STATEMENT OF GLENFORD E. MITCHELL
I am secretary and chief executive officer of
the National Spiritual Assembly of the
Baha'is of the United States, the supreme
administrative body of the Baha'is in this
country.
T HE United States Baha'i Community has
been in existence for more than 80
years. Its beginnings date back to the Co-
lumbian Exposition of 1893 at which event
in Chicago the name and essential teachings
of Baha'u'llah, the prophet-founder of the
Baha'i Faith, were first brought to public
notice in the United States. Although the
Baha'i Faith originated in Iran, this Com-
munity was established through the initiative
of Americans and not through Iranian mis-
sionary activity.
The vast majority of the Community's
100,000 members are native Americans
drawn from every state of the Union, from
every walk of life, and from a wide spectrum
of ethnic backgrounds. For example, blacks
constitute some 30 to 35 per cent of the
American Baha'i population, and more than
50 Indian tribes are represented in the Com-
munity. Iranians make up no more than
eight per cent of the membership, and the
majority of them arrived here in the last
three years as the persecution of the Baha'is
intensified in their homeland.
The Baha'i national community spreads
through 7,400 localities. The 1,600 locally
organized communities are administered by
elected bodies called Assemblies. The activi-
ties of the assemblies are unified and co-
ordinated by the National Assembly.
The spiritual heart of the community is
the world-famous, architecturally unique
Baha'i House of Worship situated on the
shores of Lake Michigan north of Chicago.
This outstanding Illinois landmark was en-
tered in the National Register of Historic
Places in 1978.
Our Community has always been dedi-
cated to the principle of the unity of man-
kind, to international peace, to respect for
all religions and for all peoples, to the co-
relative value of science and religion, and to
the solution of human problems through con-
sultation rather than through the use of
force. Commitment to these ends has actuated
our cooperation with the United Nations
through the programs of ECOSOC and
UNICEF, as well as our work to spread the
Baha'i teachings of unity throughout the
world. Moreover, this commitment prompted
our National Assembly to designate special
days on the calendar—Race Unity Day,
World Religion Day, World Peace Day—
to emphasize the need for spiritual solutions
to critical human problems.
Those of us imbued with Baha'i principles
of world unity are ever conscious of the Iran-
ian origins of our religion. Baha'i scripture
assigns to Americans a distinctive role to-
ward the establishment of world peace. Be-
cause the United States Baha'i Community
is connected historically and spiritually with
Iran, we have a grave concern for the fate of
our long-suffering Iranian brothers and sis-
ters, who for 138 years have made incalcula-
ble sacrifices of comfort and of life itself for
beliefs we hold dear.
Over the last three years, our National
Assembly has been under constant pressure
from the members of the Community, who
have urged the Assembly to protest the
horrible treatment meted out to their Iran-
ian brethren. It should be noted that the
2 WORLD ORDER: SPRING 1982
Iranian Baha'i Community has not requested
us to do anything on its behalf. It is in
response to the letters, telegrams, telephone
cal Is, and personal appeals of the American
Baha'is, and in response to its own sense of
grief, that the National Assembly has at-
tempted to bring the heartbreaking story of
the persecutions to the press and to our Gov-
ernment. At times our Assembly has been
Sc) pressured by the acute distress of the
American Baha'is that it has advised them
to write to Congress. Moreover, our Com-
munity addressed a number of appeals
through letters and cablegrams to Iranian
Government officials here and in Iran, in-
cluding the head of the Islamic Republic,
hut to no avail.
It is not our practice to demonstrate in
public. Rather, we make appeals to the con-
science of our fellow citizens and to those
in authority. But the gruesome and unending
lengths of the attacks upon the Iranian
Bahais push us toward making a public issue
of their suffering.
The takeover of the United States Em-
hassv in Tehran in 1979 reduced at that time
our possibilities to act on behalf of the
Iranian Bahais. Not wishing to exacerbate
the problems for the United States Govern-
ment, we refrained from making public
statements. Yet it was precisely during the
period of the hostage crisis that the persecu-
tion of the Iranian Baha'is entered a new and
ominous stage. A move to eliminate the
Baha'i leadership was launched and has con-
tinued unabated. Since the return of the
American hostages, we have redoubled our
efforts to inform the public and our Gov-
ernment concerning the worsening situation.
Wt openly state that many helpful responses
came from the members of both Houses of
Congress. /Ve thank Congressmen and Sena-
tc)rs for their efforts to relieve the grief of
the hardpressed Iranian Baha'is through their
outspoken and recorded statements, their let-
ters to the Iranian Government, their con-
ferences with Iranian officials, and through
their proposed resolutions. And we are also
grateful for the assistance of various agencies
of the Departnient of State and the Depart-
ment of Justice. We recognize the importance
of the actions of the United States represen-
tatives to international agencies like the
United Nations Human Rights Commission
a t d the United Nations Suhcommission on
the Prevention of Discrimination and Pro-
tection of Minorities.
While we feel they cáuld do more, the
mass media have given signi6cant publicity
to the crisis facing the Baha'is in Iran.
Nonetheless, a sense of helplessness frus-
trates our Community. Nothing lifts the op-
pression of the Iranian Bahia'is. The resolu-
tions of national governments and interna-
tional organizations go unheeded. Yet the
Iranian leaders do pay attention to outside
opinion. A recent New York Times editorial
about the execution of I I I Baha'i leaders
evoked an angry published reaction from a
government spokesman in Tchran. Our frus-
trations notwithstanding, A mericans cannot
relent in exposing the horrors in Iran.
The heartrending situation in that country
has produced other direct concerns for the
American Baha'i Community:
1) The spread of anti-Baha'i propaganda
in the United States by representatives
of the Iranian Government and fanati-
cal Islamic Iranians residing or studying
here.
(2) The attempts by these fanatics to dis-
rupt the activities of American Baha'is
on American soil, as has occurred in
Morgantown, West Virginia; Reno,
Nevada; Minneapolis, Minnesota, and
elsewhere.
(3) The sudden influx into the United
States of thousands of Iranian Baha'is
seeking refuge from persecution.
(4) The cut-off of funds to Iranian Baha'is
studying in United States colleges and
universities.
(5) The decision of the Iranian Govern-
merit to instruct its consular offices
REACTIONS OF AMERICAN BAHA IS
worldwide not to renew the passports
of Iranian Baha'is living abroad.
(6) The uncertain fate of Iranian Baha'is
stranded in countries to which they have
fled and having difficulty getting into
the United States.
We cite these concerns in the hope that
the actions of our Government and of our
fellow citizens will have the following out-
conic:
(1) Keep the Iranian Government and peo-
pie constantly reminded through fre-
quent public statements that the world
is watching what they do to the Baha'is
and will not tolerate it.
(2) Prevent Islamic Iranian fanatics in this
country from curtailing the freedom
which American Baha'is share with their
fellow citizens to meet in peace in the
United. States.
(3) Assist those Iranian Baha'is who seek
refuge in the United States.
33
.4
44
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- - - - r • ,i •--:-r
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— 111 • 1 - -
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PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL
OF THE BAHA'IS OF THE UNITED STATES
I. The Official Assault
S INCE the revolution in 1978—79, a sys-
tematic, government-backed campaign
to eradicate the Baha'i Faith as an inde-
pendent religion in Iran has gathered mo-
mentum. The genocidal campaign has been
characterized by the execution, arrest, abduc-
tion, and torture of the community's leaders;
attacks upon its hoiy places, centers, and
cemeteries; the confiscation and destruction
of its properties; the expropriation of the
assets of the community and individuals; the
seizure of its sacred literature and records;
and by a general denial of fundamental hu-
man rights to its members.
The assault on Baha'i leadership began
with the abduction, disappearance, and execu-
non of Baha'i assembly members throughout
Iran. The Baha'i community has no clergy.
Its affairs are directed by national and local
boards of trustees (called “assemblies') elect-
ed annually by the membership. Since the
revolution, more than 100 national and local
assembly members have been arbitrarily ar-
rested and executed; and another 200 are
missing. One hundred and fifty ( 150) more
are known to be languishing in prison, some
for more than a year. The fate of the nine-
member National Assembly of Iran elected
for 1980—81 can only be surmised: all nine
members were abducted and disappeared on
August 21, 1.980, and must be presumed
dead.
Their elected replacements immediately
demanded that the government present
charges or explain their disappearance. No
explanation was ever offered. Instead, action
was taken against rhe new anional Assem-
bly: while meeting in a private home last
December (1 9S 1), eight Assembly members
were arrested and secretly executed without
charges, trial, public statement, or notice to
their families, There was no appropriate buri-
al. After their bodies were accidentally dis-
covered by Baha'is, the government at first
denied the executions, to the utter disbelief
of the international press and of the U.S.
Department of State, but finally conceded
the executions. Similar fates—summary ar-
rests, torture, and execution—have befallen
Baha'is serving on local assemblies in vari-
ous cities: two in Tabriz; seven in Yazd;
two in Abadeh; three in Shiraz; seven in
Hamadan; seven in Tehran; seven again in
Tabriz; this January, six more in Tehran. The
list goes on.
Item: / T azd, Iran—September 1980.
Seven members of the Spiritual As-
sembly were summarily arrested and
executed. Their bodies were branded
“Enemies of Islam.”
Item: Hamadan, Iran—June 1.5, 1981.
After four hours of continuous torture
—broken bones, cuts, burning of parts
of the body—seven of the nine mem-
bers of the Hamadan Baha'i Assembly
were executed.
As leaders and rank-and-file Baha'is faced
executions, tortures, and arrests, the govern-
ment activated a systematic plan to con-
fiscate, dismantle, destroy, or desecrate every
significant Baha'i holy place and center in
Iran. In July of 1979, the national adminis-
trative center in Tehran was confiscated and
converted into an Islamic university. Else-
where, local administrative centers were de-
stroyed.
Item: Gurgan, Iran—25 October 1978.
The local Baha'i center was set afire,
the trees uprooted, and the furnishings
burned. The 63-year-old caretaker and
his family were stripped of all posses-
The Assault Upon Iran's Bah 'fs
35
SPIRITUAL ASSEMBLY
36 WORLD ORDER: SPRING 1982
sions and left homeless.
In March of 1979 the House of the Bab—
one of the two nineteenth-century prophet-
founders of the Baha'i Faith—was occupied
by armed men on instruction from the Cen-
tral Revolutionary Committee. Iran's U.S.
representative Shahriar Rouhani and subse-
quently, the charge d'affaires, Ali Asghar
Agah responded to our expressions of grave
concern with repeated, written assurances
that occupation was for protection of the
property, that the Provisional Revolutionary
Islamic Government had no intention to
damage or destroy it, and that reports to the
contrary were purely inflammatory hostile
propaganda. Six months later the shrine was
destroyed by a government-led mob, the re-
mains thoroughly demolished, and the site
paved ovei-. The importance of this holy place
for Baha'is is equivalent to the importance of
the Church of rhe Nativity in Bethlehem for
Christians or of the Kaaba in Mecca for Mus-
lims. In Takur, the House of Baha'u'llah—
rlic other prophet-founder of the Baha'i Faith
—was occupied in February 1979 by armed
men claiming to be from the Revolutionary
Council, then totally demolished last Decem-
ber. The lands and gardens have been offered
for public auction. Similarly, the grave of
Quddus, a revered saint and hero of the Faith,
was confiscated by the Islamic Committee.
Hundreds of other histoi-ic sites are now be-
ing demolished in a fresh campaign.
So it has been with the assets of the Baha'i
Faith in Iran. Although the Iranian Baha'i
community has never been allowed to hold
community property in its own name, it has
vested commuity properties accumulated
over the last 138 years of its existence in
special holding companies. Privately owned
Baha'i institutions (such as the renowned
Misagiyeh hospital in Tehran) have been
able to offer valued public services to Bahais
and non-Baha'is alike. In May of 1979, the
Omana company was confiscated by the gov-
ernmenr, along with the one thousand Baha'i
properties, including the holy places, religious
sites, cemeteries, local centers, and welfare
institutions it held. A government official
took over the company and purged it of all
Baha'i employees. The same happened to
Nawnahalan, a savings and loan association
primarily for the benefit of Baha'i children,
when it was occupied by armed men in Feb-
ruary 1979 and its Baha'i employees dis-
missed. Only a few months later, the Misa-
giyeh hospital was confiscated and closed to
Baha'is.
Item: Tehran, Iran—May 1 979.
The Misagiyeh hospital, the only
Baha'i hospital in the country, was
confiscated and its elderly charges
evicted. Many of them lost their assets
with the seizure of the Baha 'i invest-
ment company. Some months later
Revolutionary Guards questioned
Prof. Manuchihr Hakim, a medical
scientist renowned for his discoveries
in anatomy, and co-founder of Misa-
giyeh whose humanitarian services
won him the French Legion of Honor
in 1976. Refusing to provide them in-
formation on other Baha'i physicians
and the adininistration of Misa,giyeh,
he was murdered in his private clinic
in January 1981 and his home was
confiscated immediately thereaftei-.
The government began concurrently to cut
off the jobs and incomes of Baha'is. When
the education ministry was under Moliam-
med Ali Rajai in 1979, Etela'at announced
that Baha'is would be dismissed from the
education department unless they denied their
faith and became Muslims. The dismissal
notices also threatened rescission of salaries
paid in the past. Pensions were denied to
those discharged. After Mr. Rajai became the
Prime Minister, a circular letter was issued
to all government branches instructing the
dismissal of all Baha'is. Pensions of retired
Baha'is were cut off by the Ministry of De-
fense. This past February, an insurance com-
pany was instructed to deny a Baha'i widow
her husband's pension. Banks were ordered,
last August, to submit lists of all Baha'i ac-
counts, while provincial governments began
the following month to deny licenses to
Baha'i shopkeepers and businessmen.
THE ASSAULT UPON IRAN'S BAHA IS
37
Item: Yazd, Iran—8 August 1981.
The government froze all assets of
117 Baha'is, while local radio an-
nounced the summons that the heads
of 150 prominent Baha'i families
should report to revolutionary authori-
ties or risk trial in absentia.
The assault on the adult community was
coupled with attacks on the education of
young Baha'is. Although the Baha'is had es-
tablished the best primary and secondary
schools in Iran, open to children of all re-
ligions, the government in 1934 closed all
Baha'i schools. After the revolution, the gov-
ernment began systematically to refuse to
register Baha'i students for public primary
and secondary schools, to expel Baha'i stu-
dents from advanced programs, to force them
to repay scholarships, to deny diplomas to
Baha'is graduating from professional schools,
and to discharge Baha'i professors from uni-
versity faculties. Iran even exported this dis-
crimination to the United States: in August
of 1981, the education ministry denied per-
mission to send foreign exchange to Iranian
Baha'i students overseas (including a number
in the United States), effectively cutting off
funds to study abroad.
Item: Isfahan, Iran—July 26, 1981.
A Baha'i student in her sixth and final
year in medical school, was expelled
for being a Baha'i.
Item: Washington, D.C.—November 1981.
Iranian Baha'i students at George
Washington University, in their final
year of engineering studies, were cut
off from money by new iranian rules
denying foreign exchange to Baha'i
students abroad.
For a religion which considers education a
religious duty and which is dedicated to estab-
lishing universal compulsory education, the
loss of access to academic training is par-
ticularly painful.
Along with attacks on formal education
came assaults on Baha'i publications. In Jan-
uary 1979, private papers, libraries, and copy-
ing machines of individual Baha'is were
seized throughout Iran. The next month
the books and papers of the National Center
were seized, and the Publishing Trust was
closed and sealed. The grave harm of this
action can be assessed only by appreciating
the obligation imposed by the founders of
the religion upon individual Baha'is to read
their sacred ,literature daily and to recite pre-
scribed prayers. The damage is aggravated by
the fact that Iranian history books have been
purged of Baha'i references.
Even the, dead Baha'is have not escaped
the attention of the government. Baha'i cem-
eteries throughout the nation have been con-
fiscated and ruined. Decrees in Chahbahar,
for example, forbade the use of Baha'i ceme-
teries. The cemetery in Avak was demolished
and the remains of the interred removed.
Baha'i tombstones were levelled and
smeared with human excrement in Shiraz. In
a nation with only denominational burial
grounds, the confiscation and destruction of
cemeteries left Bahais with nowhere to bury
their growing numbers of dead.
Item: Tehran, Iran—S December 1981.
By Revolutionary Court order, the
Baha'i cemetery in Tehran was seized
and closed. Eight workers were arrest-
ed and the graves desecrated. Tens of
thousands of Tehran Baha'is were left
without burial grounds. Consequently,
Baha'is were buried in a corner of the
Muslim cemetery reserved for infidels.
Through all of this the government has ut-
terly refused redress to the Baha'is, has ren-
dered them virtual aliens in their own land
and stateless abroad. When, last September,
Baha'is in Yazd were warned to report or suf-
fer in absentia trials, and 10 Baha'i prisoners
(one a 75-year-old woman) were transferred
to revolutionary court prisons, high-ranking
Tehran authorities refused audience to Ba-
ha'is. When, last July in Kashan, a Baha'i
child was kidnapped from her parents by her
Islamic teachers, local authorities refused to
assist in her parents' search. The Constitution
adopted in September 1979 accords rights to
I,.
y
WORLD ORDER: SPRING !9 2
other religious minorities (Christians, Zoro-
astrians, and Jews) except the largest minori-
ty—the Baha'is, who number 300.000—400,-
000. In March of last year the High Court of
Justice in Tehran upheld a lower court's de-
cision to sentence Baha'i Assembly members
to death. The confused verdict cited partici-
pation in Baha'i assemblies as crim-
inal in and of itself, and punishable by
death—a precedent for exterminating vir-
tually every Baha'i leader in Iran. Indeed, the
members of the National Assembly executed
late last year were denied even a formal
procedure: no charges were flied, trial held,
or official publicity given. This erosion of
civil rights has been extended abroad: last
fall the government instructed its consular
representatives everywhere to compile lists
of Baha'is and either to confiscate their pass-
ports or to let them lapse.
II. The Mobs Unleashed
THE MAGNITUDE of the governmental as-
sault on the Baha'i community cannot be
overstated. At stake is the survival of an
independent religion. But the conditions im-
posed on the community as a whole have
also produced individual private horrors
which might be forgotten in the scope and
figures of overviews. Individual Baha'is have
watched their homes, businesses, and families
cruelly destroyed while suffering relentless
intimidation and humiliation. The tolerant
and peaceful nature of the Baha'is has spared
their assailants the fear of violent retaliation.
To make matters worse, the Baha'is have
no recourse for redress of grievances.
The rise of anti-Baha'i organizations and
self-proclaimed enemies of the Faith to cir-
cles of influence in the government embold-
ened mobs of fanatics and malicious individ-
uals to attack Baha'is with impunity.
Shaykh Mohammad Taghi Falsafi, an anti-
Baha'i preacher who spawned a surge of
persecution in the 195 Os, is currently one of
Ayatollah Khomeini's favored mullahs. The
government is heavily influenced by Anjo-
man-e-Hojjatiyeh, which originated as an
anti-Baha'i organization in that era, and by
members of Tablighat-e Esiami, an anti-
Baha'i sqLlad formed by the clergy with the
cooperation of the SAVAK. In perfect re-
flection of official policy, mobs have seized
and killed individual Baha'is: one was tor-
tured and hanged in Tehran; a 70-year-old
person beaten to death in Shiraz; one was
stoned to death in Andrun; two were burnt
alive in Shahmirzad; two others were burnt
to death by a masked gang in Nuk. Mobs
have looted and burned private homes
throughout the country. At Ayatollah Sad-
duc i's urging, Baha'i homes were attacked in
Yazd. Preachers instigated a mob attack on
Baha'is in Milan using loud speakers from
the mosque. Tn Mashhad Baha'is were driven
from their homes, their doors burned, their
orchards and sheds set afire, the grave of a
child plowed under, the survivors forbidden
drinking water. In Sliishvan, a Baha'i re-
turned from out of town to find his home
looted and barred, his orchard destroyed.
Outside Isfahan, Baha'is fled to tent-cities in
the desert after their homes were confiscated.
The list is long: 31 homes burned and looted
in Marvdasht; the Baha'i center razed; the
Baha'i center and cemetery destroyed in
Arabkhayl; shop windows broken in Babul-
sar; farm products burned with homes in
Baghestan.
Item: Manshad, Iran— i I August 1981.
Government official from Yazd or-
dered revolutionary guards to seize
furniture, crops, and livestock of local
Baha'is.
Item: Imamzadih Quasin Sangsar, Iran—
12 December 1978.
People entered Mr. Laqu'is house,
drenched him and the furnishings in
gasoline and blocked his exit. He lost
all belongings and suffered serious
burns.
Businesses were burned, a clinic dynamited.
Pressure was put on private employers to
discharge Baha'i employees, and most con-
curred.
At the same time, the families ‘erc im-
THE ASSAULT UPON IRAN'S BAHA IS
39
periled. There developed a practice of con-
fiscating the property of executed Baha'is,
without judgment of confiscation and with-
out consideration for widows and children
left homeless and harassed. In Khurmaw a
home was plunder d, and a family severely
injured while protecting their daughter from
rape. In Kashan an underage Baha'i girl was
abducted and forced into marriage with a
Muslim. In Khunih seven-year-old and four-
year-old children were assaulted and beaten
senseless with nail-tipped sticks; the beatings
were resumed when they showed remaining
signs of life.
The dead were also attacked. Wanton dis-
interment of bodies occurred in various
places, such as Hamadan and Yazd.
Through it all, the Baha'is have been sub-
jected to ceaseless harassment, intimidation,
and humiliation.
Item: Ten villages around Hamadan, Iran
—2 December 1978.
Mobs arracked and looted the houses
of all Baha'is, set them ablaze, and
tortured Baha'is in an effort to force
them to recant their faith. Some es-
caped and fled.
In Ahwaz, the radio broadcast a blanket
threat to all Baha'is, who were met at their
homes, searched, and told to recant. School
children were subjected to constant harass-
ment to try to get them to recant. In Naysha-
bur a mob destroyed a Baha'i cemetery and
local authorities billed the Baha'is two mil-
lion vials for the damage. In Yazd, local au-
thorities submitted bills to Baha'i widows for
the bullets used to execute their husbands.
The mob action against the Baha'is in
• Iran has been extended somewhat to other
countries including the United States. For
example, on March 27 this year, the Baha'is
of Morgantown, West Virginia, were pre-
vented from holding a prayer meeting when
a group believed to be Iranian students
threatened the management of the hotel in
which the event was to have taken place.
Similar incidents have occuired in Reno,
Nevada. and Minneapolis, Minnesota.
III. The Spur ons Charges
THE GOVERNMENT and clergy of Iran have
attempted to justify the atrocities perpetrated
upon the Baha'is by reciting spurious charges.
In their attempts totally to discredit the
Baha'i Faith and give some historical pretext
to their allegations, they have promoted fab-
ricated accounts of the origin and purpose
of the. Baha'i religion, to which they fre-
quently impure political motives. For ex-
ample, a letter from the Iranian Embassy in
Buenos Aires, Argentina, dated 26 Septem-
ber 1979, and replying to inquiries about
the persecu ion of the Baha'is, stated that
the Baha'i Faith ‘was originally established
by Russian Tsars and British imperialism, and
that it is being backed by Israeli and Amer-
ican imperialism.” Anti-Baha'i propaganda
published by Iranians inside and outside
Iran has echoed this fabrication. A recent
example was the circulation in the United
States of the article “Question of Baha'is,”
published in the April 1, 1982, issue of
Islamic Unity, a newspaper published by
Iranians in Ottawa, Canada.
The misrepresentation of Baha'i origins is
based on a fake document created in 1938 by
a group of mullahs in Mashhad, a holy city
in eastern Iran. The document purported to
be the Persian translation of the memoirs of
a “Prince Dalqurki,” presumably Prince
Dolgorukov, who had spent time in Iran in
the service of his country. According to this
invention, “Dalqu.rki” was sent to Iran in
1 844 by the Tsar Alexander II to weaken
the country by undermining Islam. “Dal-
qurki” pursued this task by creating a re-
ligion, the Babi movement. In their ignor-
ance the authors of this fiction were unaware
that Nicholas I, not Alexander II, was Tsar
in 1 844. Moreover, they did not know that
Prince Dolgorukov had served in Iran in
1831, which predated their story by 13
years.
Even though Iranian scholars, including
the anti-Baha'i historian Ahmad Kasravi and
the literary scholar Mojtaba Minovi, saw
through the deception, the “Dalqurki” mem-
40 WORLD ORDER: SPRING 1982
oirs continued to influence Iranian thought.
As recently as a month ago this influence was
reflected in a statement attributed to a promi-
nent clergyman in the northern city of Ta-
briz. The 2 1 April 1982 issue of Kayha.'i, a
nationally circulated newspaper, quoted
Ayatollah Malakooti as saying: “In recent
times the inlperialist superpowers, in order
to prevent the progress of Islam and to
create discord between Shi'ihs and other
sects, began spreading different sects. For in-
stance, in Hijaz and in India the British,
and in Iran the superpower of the East, went
into action and created this sect of Bab
and Baha. Then when they saw that people
will soon discover this sect to be without
foundation they eliminated the founder of
this sect, the British themselves placed him
in front of a cannon and in this very city of
Tab na.”
In 1844, in the southern city of Shiraz, a
young merchant, Seyyed Au Muhammad,
proclaimed himself the Bab, or Gate. He
said he was a new prophet and the herald
of a still greater divine messenger who would
soon come to establish righteousness and
peace on earth. The Bab's claim stirred much
opposition by the clergy, and he was executed
in 1850. Thirteen years later, Mirza Husayn
Au, who had been exiled from Tehran to
Baghdad because of his prominence in tile
Babi community, proclaimed himself to be
the one promised by tile Bab. He became
known as Baha'u'llah and his followers, who
at first were drawn from the majority of the
Babis, were called Baha'is.
Because the clergy forbade Muslims to
read Baha'i literature and there was no way
open to Baha'is through mass communica-
tions to explain their origins or beliefs, even
the most educated and well-meaning mem-
bers of Iranian society remained ignorant of
tile true nature of tile Baha'i Faith.
Tile Shiite clergy and tile Government ac-
cuse the Baha'i Faith of being a political con-
spiracy serving the interests of foreign pow-
ers, including the United States; yet it is a
fact that Baha'is everywhere strictly avoid dis-
loyal and subversive activities. Tile Baha'is
are taught in their sacred scripture to make
themselves useful members of society, to
serve humanity, to be loyal to established au-
tilority, and to avoid partisanship.
Tile clergy and Government accuse tile
Baha'is of having been supporters of the
Sllah and of having run the SAVAK,
tJie political secret police, when in fact the
Baha'is were persecuted under Pahlavi rule
and became victims of the SAVAK. While
tile Baha'i community was not as severely
oppressed under the previous regime as un-
der the present one, its members nevertheless
were deprived of fundamental human rights.
The Baila'i Faith was not recognized as a
religion having the same rights as those ac-
corded to other minority religions in Iran.
Tile Baha'i community could not own prop-
erty in its own name. Marriage according to
Baha'i rites was denied official sanction.
Baha'i schools everywilere in the country
were closed.
In 1955 the Government and clergy col-
laborated in a large-scale attack on the Bahai
community. At one of Tehran's mosques,
Shaykh Muhammad Taqi Falsaui, a fanatical
mullah, daily urged his flock to rise up
against the “false religion.” He was permitted
to preach incendiary sermons over the govern
ment radio. Tile effect of the broadcasts was
immediate. On May 2 the police locked the
gates of the Baila'i National Center in Teh-
ran; five days later the building was taken
over by the army. On May 17 the Minister
of the Interior proclaimed in tile parliament
that tile “Baha'i sect” had been banned. A
contemporary report described what ensued:
This was followed by an orgy of senseless
murder, rape, pillage, and destruction tile
like of which has not been recorded in
modern times. Tile dome of the Haziratu'i-
Quds (National Center) in Tihran was
demolished; tile House of tile Bab was
twice desecrated and severely damaged;
Baha'u'llah's ancestral home in Takur was
occupied; the house of tile Bab's uncle
was razed to the ground; shops and farms
- - - . - - !; - —
were plundered; crops burned; livestock
destroyed; bodies of Baha'is disinterred in
the cemeteries and mutilated; private
homes broken into, damaged and looted;
adults execrated and beaten; young women
abducted and forced to marry Muslims;
children mocked, reviled, beaten and ex-
pelled from schools; boycott by butchers
and bakers was imposed on hapless vil-
lagers; young girls were raped; families
murdered; government employees dis-
missed and all manner of pressure brought
upon the believers to recant their faith.
Only the outcry of world opinion abated the
fury of the assaults upon the Baha'i commu-
nity.
The same Mullab Falsafi who aided and
abetted the participation of the chiefs of the
imperial army in the destruction of Baha'i
property in 1955 moves in the inner circles
of the present regime.
It is true that Baha'is occupied important
administrative posts in the Pahlavi govern-
ment requiring specialized competence; how-
ever, they did not hold political office, be-
cause they would have been expelled from
Baha'i membership. The Baha'is were not
favored by the Pahlavi regime. On the con-
trary, they were exploited because, aside from
having needed competencies, they could be
trusted not to engage in anti-government ac-
tivities. When the Shah insisted in 1975
that all Iranians join his Rastakhiz party,
the Baha'is refused, preferring to risk the
consequences than to become involved in
partisanship. This fact clearly demonstrates
their innocence of the charge that Baha'is
were supporters of the Shah.
The Baha'i community was never associ-
ated with the operations of the SAVAK. The
Government's repeated assertion that the
SAVAK officials General Nasiri and Parviz
Sabeti were Baha'is is entirely false. Equally
untrue is their claim that former Prime Min-
ister Amir Hoveida was a Baha'i. Nasiri had
no connection with the Baha'i Faith. Sabeti's
father had been a Baha'i for some time but
drifted out of the Faith; his son never be-
THE ASSAULT UPON IRAN'S BAHAIS
4!
came a Baha'i. Prime Minister Hoveida was
never a Baha'i; his father had been one but
was expelled from Baha'i membership. Hov-
eida always insisted that he was a Muslim
and showed open hostility toward the Baha:is.
It is relevant to state here the basic Baha'i
principle that belief in a religion springs
from the free choice of individuals and cannot
automati cally' be inherited from an earlier
generation. Unless an individual—even the
member of a Baha'i family—independently
attests to belief in the Baha'i Faith, he or she
cannot be regarded as a Baha'i. This principle
is well established in Baha'i communities
around the world.
The accusation that the Baha'is collabo-
rate with Zionism and Israel stems from the
fact that the international administrative
center of the Baha'i Faith exists in Haifa,
Israel. The Baha'i world center was estab-
lished in Israel because 11.4 years ago the
government of the Ottoman Empire forcibly
brought the founder of the Baha'i Faith,
Baha'u'llah, and His disciples to Akka, which
was then in the province of Syria. Baha'u'llah
died in Akka, and ever since then the twin
cities of Akka and Haifa have been the spiri-
tual center of the Baha'i Faith long predating
the State of Israel. Baha'i pilgrims from all
parts of the world regularly travel to Israel to
visit the Shrine of Baha'u'llah, and other sites
closely associated with their religion. Thou-
sands of Iranian Baha'is made this pilgrim-
age during the time when they were permit-
ted by law to visit Israel. In accordance with
the clear requirements of the Baha'i Faith,
its world spiritual and administrative centers
must always be united in one locality. Ac-
cordingly, the world administrative center of
the Baha'i Faith has always been and must
continue to be in the Holy Land. It cannot
be relocated for the sake of temporary po-
litical expediency. Contributions sent by
Baha'is to their world center in Israel are
solely and exclusively for the upkeep of their
holy shrines and historic sites, and for the
administration of their Faith. Almost all
Baha'is in Iran have made such contributions,
and this innocent action is used to support
r
12 WORLD ORDRR: SPRING 1982
charges of their collusion with Jsrael.
The clergy regularly accuse the Baha'is of
promoting immorality and prostitution (a
capital offense). Their reasons are spurious.
A basic Baha'i principle is the equality of
men and women. Unlike Muslims, Baha'i
men and women are treated as equals, are
not segregated at Bahai gatherings, and serve
together on Baha'i administrative bodies.
These facts offend the clergy. Moreover, be-
cause the Baha'i Faith is not recognized in
the constitution, Baha'i marriage is
not sanctioned by law. The issue from such
marriages are, therefore, not recognized as
legitimate. Since l3aha'i marriages are not
recognized, Baha'i women are called prosti-
tutes. Jndeed, last February, it was decreed in
Shiraz that a Baha'i widow had no right ei-
ther to receive pension from her husband's
insurance or to retain custody of her children.
Contrary to Iranian practice, the United
Stares Embassy in the 1970s properly rec-
ognized Baha'i marriages for visa purposes.
The root of the discrimination against the
Bahia'is is purely religious. The Muslim clergy
hold that Muhammad was the “seal of the
prophets,” the last of a series of prophets
going all the way back to Adam. The Baha'is,
however, believe that the dialogue between
God and man can never stop, that Baha'u'llah
was a prophet of God equal to Muhammad,
and that in the future there will be others
who will continue to bring divine revelation
to humanity. The belief in progressive reve-
lation is basic for Baha'is, who, therefore, ac-
cept as fundamental truth the unity of pur-
pose of the found of the world's major
religions, including Zoroastrianism, Bud-
dhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Moreover, Baha'u'llah abrogated particular
Islamic laws, such as holy war, polygamy,
certain dietary laws, and regulations concern-
ing ritual purity. The Shiite clergy are of-
fended by the Baha'i principle of equality
of men and women. Perhaps even more up-
setting to them is the fact that the Baha'i
Faith does not have a clergy but is, instead,
governed by democratically elected bodies.
Furthermore, by promoting the oneness of
mankind as its pivotal principle and by
envisioning a federation of nations under a
world government, the Baha'i Faith shatters
Shiite notions of exclusiveness and monopo-
listic possession of power. Consequently, the
Baha'is are frequently accused of being the
enemies of Islam, which in an Islamic re-
‘public also means enemies of the State.
Nonetheless, it is a fact that wherever the
Baha'is have spread their religion, they have
succeeded in spreading reverence for Islam
and its prophet. They have also taught their
fellow-believers in more than 100,000 locali-
ties around the globe to love Iran as the
birthplace of their religion.
In former and simpler times, the Shiite
clergy did not need to invent justifications for
their hatred of the Baha'i Faith. Back then
they persecuted “heretics” and did not have
to bother with notions of religious tolerance.
The Bab's announcement of a new religion
in 1844 precipitated violent reactions from
the clergy-controlled state. He was impris-
oned and then executed. During the time of
his ministry and shortly after his death in
1850, some 20,000 of his followers were
slaughtered. Baha'u'llah, the prophet whose
advent the Bab heralded, was exiled in 1853
from his native Tehran to Baghdad; subse-
quently, he was exiled to various parts of the
Ottoman Empire; finally, he was taken to
the fortified town of Akka, then in a prov-
ince of Syria but now Israel, where, after 24
years as a prisoner, lie died in 1892.
Since then die Baha'i Faith has spread to
more than 300 countries and dependencies in
which have been established 130 Baha'i na-
tional assemblies and more than 26,000 local
assemblies. These facts seem to have made
little impression on iran. Today, the Muslim
clergy are as determined as ever to eradicate
the Baha'i Faith, but feel that they need
elaborate justifications for their murderous
acts.
Iran's denials of religious persecution ring
hollow against the overwhelming evidence
cited so far. The accusations of the govern-
ment and the clergy are an obvious smoke-
screen for religious fanaticism. Time and
again the persecutors have confirmed by
their own acts that their charges are ground-
less. The fake trials of the Baha'is never deal
with the substance of any of these accusa-
tions; rather, the prosecutors attempt to
learn about the operations of the Baha'i com-
munity and to force the defendants to recant
their faith.
The elaborate accusations and widespread
attacks are aimed at two alternative objec-
tives: recantation or death. The evidence is
overwhelming.
—a couple in whose home the members of
the Tehran Baha'i Assembly met when
they were arrested in November 1981
were put on trial. The wife refused to re-
cant, was sentenced to death for espionage
and executed. Her husband recanted and
was set free, fully absolved of the charge of
spying.
—Azizullah Gulshani, of the northwestern
city of Mashhad, was hanged on April 29,
1982, by order of the revolutionary court.
Kayhan, the Tehran daily newspaper, re-
ported that he was convicted of heresy, a
crime punishable by death.
—An order demanding the purge of Baha'is
from the education department made the
promise that ‘if Baha'is convert to Islam,
they will be reemployed.”
—Dismissal notices by revolutionary courts
said that jobs would continue “if the
Baha'i workers and employees repent and
adhere to the Islamic Ithna ‘Ashari creed
and publish the same in the widely
circulated newspapers with their photo-
graphs.”
—Baha'is in the village of Vadiquan were
herded into a stable into which smoke was
funneled. On the point of suffocation,
they were taken to a mosque and forced
to recant.
—Baha'is in the village of Saysan, near Ta-
briz, were given a month to decide wheth-
er to convert to Islam or suffer the con-
sequences. The April 26, 1982, issue of
Kayhan, the Tehran daily newspaper, re-
ported that a number of Baha'is had re-
canted and the village was given a new
name.
—Baha'is sentenced to death were inevitably
offered life and freedom if only they
would recant their faith.
For 138 years the Baha'is were turned
into the scapegoats of Iranian society. As
their numbers increased, they became an
even more attractive target for demagogic at-
tacks by those who wanted to distract the
public or create turmoil. Since the Baha'is
emphasized education and placed high value
on work, they achieved a relatively high
standard of living, which made them promis-
ing targets of pogroms. Last but not least,
the tolerant and peaceful nature of the
Baha'i community made it possible to attack
Baha'is without fear of violent retaliation.
IV. International Law
THIS systematic pattern of gross violations of
the rights of a defenseless religious minority
violates every internationally recognized
principle of human rights. The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, of which
Iran is a signatory, guarantees individual
rights to life (§3); marriage and family pro-
tection (§ 16); freedom from arbitrary inter-
ference with privacy, family, or home
(§ 12); right to security in widowhood and
old age (§25); equal protection of the law,
remedies for infringements, and access to
public services ( 7, 8, 21); free expression
( 19); free association ( 20); freedom
from arbitrary arrest and detention (§9);
fair and public criminal hearings ( 10);
freedom from torture (§5); freedom to
manifest one's religion in teaching, practice,
worship, and observance ( 18); freedom
from compulsion to join another religion
(§20.); the right to work (§23); to own
property individually and in association with
others (§ 17); and to .have that property pro-
tected from arbitrary deprivation (§ 17); not
to be arbitrarily deprived of nationality
(§ 1.5); and to be provided education which
TI-lB ASSAULT UPON IRAN'S BAHA IS 43
r.
rTT.'TT. T T —,
L.
S
WORLD ORDER: SPRING 982
promotes understanding, tolerance, and
friendship among all nations, racial and
religious groups ( 26).
The Baha'is are being ruthlessly deprived
of all of these fundamental hutnan rights.
And they have no recourse for redress of
grievances. They are arbitrarily harassed, ar-
rested, detained, tortured, forced to recant,
executed, deprived of citizenship at home,
and rendered stateless abroad. Their widows
and elderly are left homeless and penniless;
their leaders are exterminated, often secretly;
their homes, crops, jobs, incomes, pensions,
property, assets, centers, cemeteries, and
shrines are conhscated, looted, desecrated,
and destroyed; their worship is made a
criminal act. and their literature is sup-
pressed. Their children are deprived of edu-
cation and kidnapped; their families dero-
gated and destroyed—all constituting the
pattern of a systematic, willful and officially
sanctioned pogrom. The community is being
subjected to murders and to conditions of
life calculated to bring about its physical de-
struction. It is by very definition genocide
punishable under the United Nations Gen-
ocide Convenrion.* The civilized world
* Articlc II of the Cnnvcuition on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide pro-
vidcs that
In the present Convention, genocide means
any of the following acts committed with in-
tent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethn ic:il, racial or ref IL'ious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group:
b ) Causing serious bodily or mental harm
to members of the group:
(C) Deliberately inflicting on the group
conditions of life calculated to bring
about its physical destruction in whole
or in part;
(d ) Imposing measures intended to prevent
births within the group:
(e ) Forcibly transferring children of the
group to another group.
Article IV provides that persons committing geno-
cide shall be punished. whether they are con-
stitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or
private md ividuals.”
cannot permit it to continue unpunished by
word or deed.
V. Conclusion
IRAN'S action has been labeled international
crimes by the United States Department of
State, has been recognized as “well planned
genocide by Amnesty International, and
has been roundly condemned by the inter-
national press, by the Swiss Federation of
Protestant Churches, by the parliaments of
Australia, Canada, and West Germany, by
the European Parliament, by members of the
House of Lords in the United Kingdom, by
many mern ers of this Congress, and by the
United Nations Human Rights Commission
and by its Subcommission on Prevention of
Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.
Indeed, three Muslim countries joined in the
unopposed resolution of the United Nations
Subcorn mission on Prevention of I)iscrim ma-
don and Protection of Minorities calling on
Iran “to gran ( t) full protection of funda-
mental rights a 1 id freedoms to the Baha'i
religious community in Iran, and by protect-
ing the life and liberty of (its) members.”
Thus far, Iran has not relented. Yet we
continue to believe that the Government of
Iran, as a member of the community of na-
tions, must in time respond to the collective
voice of institutions committed to justice. The
Baha'is in Iran cannot defend themselves, nor
can they speak on their own behalf. It is our
collective task in the West to call the atten-
tion of the world to the horrors being per-
petrated in Tran. Many times in this century
the world averted its eyes when fanatics,
demagogues, and dictators of various stripes
massacred national, racial, and religious mi-
norities or filled concentration camps with
“class enemies,” depriving of their most fun-
damental rights all those who dared to differ
from their brutal orthodoxies even in
thought. Decency, respect for human rights,
and love of one's neighbor, he he ever so
distant geographically, are as indivisible as
peace. Humanity cannot afford to remain si-
lent and by its silence condone these horrors.
The Baha'is of the United States feel
genuine sympathy for the long suffering
Iranian people. We pray for their peaceful
and happy future. Yet we cannot remain in-
different to the sufferings of our Iranian
brethren at the hands of bigots who have
no compunctions about shedding innocent
blood. We call upon our fellow citizens and
our elected representarives to proclaim that
America will not accluiesce in oppression and
that its perpetrators will have to answer for
their deeds in the court of world opinion.
THE ASSAULT UPON IRANS BAHA 45•
• Resolutions: Alaska; Illinois
• Statements in United States Congressional
Records
• Resolutions by International Bodies
• Records of Parliamentary Debates and
Resolutions: Canada; Australia; West
Germany; United Kingdom—House of
Lords
• Human Rights Commission of the Fed-
eration of Protestant Churches in Switzer-
land
• Report of Amnesty International
• Official Documentation Testifying to Dis-
crimination Against the Baha'i Community
Since the Creation of the Islamic Republic
of Iran
• The Iranian Constitution
• Photographs of Executed Baha'is
EXHIBITS
• Map of Iran, showing location of events
cited
• List of Bahais executed in Iran
• “The Baha'i Faith and Its World Corn-
mututy”
I . .
.16 //‘OR Ii) ()RDuR : SPRING 1982
Appealing to the World's Conscience
A REVIEW OF WILLIAM SEARS' A Cry From the Heart.' The BahiuI.c in Iran
(oxr oni: GEOR(;E RONALD, 1982) 211 PAGES + APPENDIX
BY r IRuz KAZEMZADEH
BOOKS have many purposes. Some are writ-
ten to delight, others to frighten; some are
produced to make money; others are their
author's gift to the readers; some laboriously
explore elusive truths, others tell glib lies,
A Cry Franz the 1-Icart is a record of pain
and anger born of love,
Mr. William Sears, a prominent American
Bahit'i, is a man of strong feelings that he
does not want to conceal. In his long career
as a sports broadcaster, actor, writel', and
producer of television plays, William Sears
developed a quick eye, a sensitive ear, and
a fast pen. Over the entire span of his full
and adventurous life he has perfected the
art of loving people and communicating with
them not only in woi'ds but in emotions as
well.
However, the price of love is often pain.
When blows fall on those we love, when
suffering afflicts them, we cannot escape, we
cannot remain indifferent. Confronted with
the enormity of the clerical assault on the
Iranian Bahi i'Is, among whom Mr. Sears had
many friends, he reacted with anger and
wrote a book where everything is black and
white, when it is not red with freshly spilled
blood,
Bill Sears, as lie is affectionately called by
tens, if not hundreds of thousands, does not
pretend to be a spokesman for the Bahá'I
community or its various institutionS. This
is a deeply personal, even idiosyncratic book;
and in that lies its principal value. No sta-
tistical compilations, no charts, no recitation
of articles of treaties for the protection of
human rights, could ever convey the horror
of the brutal murder of the simple village
couple, Mul ammad and Shikkar-Nisá', as
it is conveyed in these charged pages. No
Who's Who listing of academic honors and
accomplishments of Professor Man iihr
lJakIm could bring him so close to the reader
as lie is brought by Bill Sears, his friend and
one-time patient. No official report on the
execution of the members of the Spiritual
Assemblies of the Bahá'is of Yazd and Ham-
aditn could tell the story of their voluntary
sacrifice, their heroism, their determination,
and their lack of hatred for their torturers
and executioners as graphically and simply
as it is told here by their admirer and
mourner Bill Sears.
Distance, the passage of time, and sober
reflection are indispensable for the production
of detached, balanced, and complete history.
But how can a friend let time pass before
crying out in pain and rage at the execution
of those lie loved? How can one balance
right and wrong, adjudicate between the
torturer and his victim, or strive for com-
pleteness, when houses are on fire, women
are raped, children are beaten and taken
from their parents?
The book begins dramatically with the
N6k murder of the Ma'st tmI couple, the only
Bahâ'is in the village. Their home was at-
tacked by masked men in the night, and the
Ma's imis were burned to death. No one
came to their rescue, no one offered help.
The neighbors who witnessed the murder
did not interfere with the killing of infidels.
Of course, the killers were not punished.
Mr. Sears then lists specific acts of persecu-
‘ • 4 .___
tion of the Bahá'Is in Iran, among them
illegal arrests, illegal trials, looting and con-
fiscation of homes, arson, evictions, kidnap-
pings, illegal confiscation of private property,
attacks on Bahá'I children, burning of trees
and crops, and slaughter of cattle. He es-
tablishes the sad fact that these crimes were
and are being committed with the knowledge,
approval, and outright participation of gov-
ernment authorities and high-ranking mul-
lahs, the two frequently being one and the
same. He then lists the standard accusations:
the Bahá'I Faith is a subversive sect and a
political party that supported Mul ammad
Riçlá j 2 áh; the Bahá'Is are agents of foreign
powers such as Russia, Britain, and the
United States, as well as Zionist and Israeli
spies; the Bahá'Is are opposed to Islam and
its Prophet, and insult the Holy Qur'an; the
Bahá'Is occupied the highest posts in the
shah's government including that of Prime
Minister and ran the dreaded secret police—
SAVAK.
The author devotes an entire chapter to a
systematic refutation of every one of the old
charges. He demonstrates easily and con-
clusively that the Bahá'I Faith is an inde-
pendent religion and cites in support of this
rather obvious truth the opinions of Arnold
Toynbee, Raymond Piper, Edward Benes, and
Hugh van Rensselaer. He could have also
cited the opinion of an Egyptian religious
tribunal and of the scholars at the famous
Islamic school, the Al-Azhar, who long ago
decided that the Bahá'I Faith was not a sect
of Islam. Mr. Sears easily disproves the allega-
tion of favored status accorded to the Bahá'Is
by the shahs, drawing attention to the out-
breaks of government sanctioned persecutions
in 1925, 1930—32, 1934, 1939—40, 1943—
50, and 1955. Opposite page 36 he repro-
duces a photograph that shows a high-rank-
ing officer of the Imperial army wielding a
pick-axe on the dome of the Bahá'I center
in Tihr(in, while other officers look on and
grin. And so down the list of trumped-up
charges, every one of which is refuted with
strong and verifiable evidence.
While refuting the charges, William Sears
acquaints the reader with the basic tenets of
the Bahá'I Faith and with the spirit that ani-
mates it followers. Again, he does not dis-
guise his commitment. Sears is a believer,
open about his convictions and proud of be-
ing a member of the Bahá'I community. His
sincerity is obvious and winning. It will earn
him tije confidence of his readers.
The book ends with a number of docu-
ments that support the author's argument
and provide first-hand evidence of the truth
of his contentions. There is also a list com-
piled in December 1981, an honor roll of
eighty-four Bahá'is who have been killed in
Iran since the summer of 1978. The list
keeps growing. Some fifty names have been
added to it between December 1981. and
June 1982. More will be added in the future.
This is a story without a conclusion, a cry
from the heart, one man's appeal to the con-
science of the world.
APPEALING TO THE WORLD'S CONSCIENCE
47
F
4S WORLD ORDER: SPRING 1982
ART CREDITS: Cover, design by John Solarz, photograph
by Glenford E. Mitchell; p. 2, photograph by Glenford E.
Mitchell; pp. 4—5, photograph of the scene of the Congres-
sional hearing on the persecution of the Iranian Bahá'Is, cour-
tesy of the Bah 'i Office of Public Affairs; p. 7, photograph of
Congressman Don Bonker by David Ogron/The /lmerzcan
Bahá'I; p. 8, photograph of Congressman Edward J. Derwin-
ski of Illinois by David Ogron/The /lmericcm Bahd'i; p. 11,
photograph of Congressman Fortney H. Stark, Jr., by David
Ogron/The Americau BabJ'I; p. 15, photograph of the Bahá'is
of Yazd preparing the graves for the seven executed there on
September 8, 1980, courtesy of the Bahá'i Office of Public
Affairs; pp. 24—25, photograph of Bahá'I witnesses (Mitchell,
Kazemzadeh, Nelson, Nourani) at the Congressional hearing,
by David Ogron/The BahJ'I; p. 34, photograph of
Mulla Falsafi attacking the Bah 'I National Center in -Tehran
in 1955, courtesy of the Bah 'i Office of Public Affairs.
-
—
I
