Why Does Iran Kill Bahais?

THE NEW YORK TIMES Commentary June 22, 1983 PRINCETON, N.J. — News of the barbarous execution on Thursday and Friday of l6Bahais_g i ie southern Iranian city of Shiraz has shattered the small remaining hope of many well-wishers of the Iranian revolution who kept saying, as I did: “Wait, give it time.

Six men and 10 women, including three teenage girls, without publicly announced charges or public trial, were hanged, apparently for the mere crime of adherence to a religion. For, as the Islamic judge explained to the newspapers: “It is absolutely certain that in the Islamic Republic of Iran there is no place whatsoever for Ba- hais and Bahaism.”

It is becoming increasingly unclear. for whom there is a place in Iran. It was possible to understand why the Iranian Government felt that there was no place for the radical left, which advocated armed struggle against the existing Government. It was harder — but just possible, given the deep differences between peoples about ideas of propriety — to understand why there was no place for women who went out in public without their hair covered.

It was even harder to understand why there was no place for the Iranian Communist Party, which had repeat- edly and slavishly, declared itself to be in total support of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

But no room for the Iranian Bahais? No room for 300,000 Iranians who specifically repudiate . rebellion against any duly constituted govern- ment such as the present Government of Iran?

No room for the only people who, be- sides the Zoroastrians, consider Iran a sacred land and revere the Persian Wny Does IrañKill ,Bahais?

By Roy P. Mottahedeh. language as a laziguage of revelation? For the only religion in Iran besides Islam that, however much it may look to a prophet subsequent to Mo- hammed, accepts the belief of Mos- lems that the Koran is an infallible revelation from God, presented in a text that, unlike the Old and New Tes- taments, has never been corrupted by the tampering of men? Well-wishers of the revolution waited and gave it time — and for what?

To see the promise of parliamen- tary democracy blasted by an intoler- ance of any political party that meekly disagrees with the Govern- ment?

To find the universities still largely shut four years after the revolution, while Iranians suffer from a severe shortage of qualified teachers and technical experts?

To see proud, courageous Iranian soldiers lay down their lives in human wave attacin in the stalemated war against Iraq, a country that is a third the size of Iran in population and wealth?

Perhaps today’s Iranian authorities find the Bahais a good focus for their genocidal fantasies precisely because this Government wishes to make clear that it wants nothing to do with early hopes for a Government religious in morality and democratic in method. Hang a few teenage girls, and every- one will get the point: The rulers of Iran do not need to consult the Iranian people because they know what’s best for Iran,, whether Iranians like it or not — and, by the same token, they do not want a freely given moral acasen- sus because they trust only coercion.

Shiite Islam, the religion of the great majority of the Iranian people, puts a greater emphasis on reason than does any other form of Islam or do most other religions in the world. Then why the irony — why do the present rulers of Iran so desperately distrust reason?

Do they trust coercion more be- cause they have secretly admitted to themselves that .they are unable to change anyone’s opinion through rea- soned discussion?

Or, do they really believe that rea- son — or, for that matter, any form of persuasion that can win meaningful assent to religious truth — operates only on people who live in the shadow of the hangman’s noose?

The Islamic Republic of Iran — how neatly and thoroughly it has come to ‘belie every part of its name. It is hardly Iranian in that it finds it necessary to hang 16 Bahais — in addi- tion to the scores it has killed in recent years — Inerely for the “crime” of professing a religion that believes Iran to be a sacred land.

It is hardly a republic: A state that so terrifies and coerces its people is a republic in only some contorted sense of the word.

It is hardly Islamic in the spirit of the Korarnc verse (10:99): “If it had been your Lord’s will, they would all have believed, all who are on earth! Will you then compel mankind, against their will, to believe?”

It is, in fact, hardly religious — it is difficult to imagine any tradition, motivated by the spirit of true reli- gion, that would not cry: “Shame on these cowardly killers of defenseless people!”

BP000608 Roy P. Mottahedeh, professor of Is- lamic history and Persian and Arabic literature, at Princeton University, is writing a book on Shiite education in modern Iran.