Wendi Takes it to Another Level

Photo from the early generation of Baha'is in Iran, put in chains for believing in the oneness of humanity

Complements to Barney for letting us all know about a remarkable post that takes reflections on the recent detention of Baha'i leadership in Iran to another level. Here's a taste:

"We who have warm, comfortable homes, electricity, water and TVs feel completely helpless as we watch earth, wind and fire completely overwhelming whole towns and villages, killing hundreds of thousands of people and leaving hundreds of thousands more with nothing. We don’t know how to respond appropriately. We send money to help the relief effort. Then we discover that the leaders of the people devastated by hurricanes and earthquakes don’t want our help - better to let people die than to feed them with foreign food or shelter them in tents provided by strangers! And they certainly don’t want us or our expertise.

These dramatic events are all over our TVs and news services. Thank goodness! It will be a really terrible day when such disasters are so commonplace, so acceptable that they cease to be news.

But there are disasters most of us never hear about. Such a one is beginning in Iran - again.

Yesterday, in Iran, six Baha’is in leadership roles were arrested in dawn raids. A seventh has been detained since March. Their crime? Being Baha’is. Compared to the massive loss of life in Burma and China, compared to the collapse of an entire economy in Zimbabwe, the arrest of a few Bahá’ís in Iran seems unremarkable, certainly not newsworthy.

But consider. An indicator that a famine is approaching is when settled agrarian people become nomadic. At that point there is no famine, nothing to see. Yet the famine is coming. If action is not taken, it will be devastating. An indicator that the persecution of the Bahá’ís is escalating towards devastation is when children are denied education, when senior Baha’is are detained. There may not be much to remark upon now but there will be - and soon - unless such persecution is stopped." (THIS IS A MUST READ)

Bad Religion?

A delegate from Gabon at the Baha'i International Convention

This recent story from the Baha'i World News Service about the International Convention held by the Baha'is in Haifa last week offers a striking contrast to the actions of the Iranian authorities towards this religion.

Bahá'í World News:

HAIFA, Israel — Experiencing the diversity of the human family can be humbling, as Bahá’ís attending their recent international convention learned.

One can meet an industrialist from Italy, a civil engineer from Barbados, and a presidential advisor from South Africa – but realize that a 25-year-old student from South America is equally impressive with her knowledge of how to organize classes for children and youth.

Or discover that the Ph.D. who works with the international research agency speaks two languages, but the woman who owns a small business in Cameroon speaks five.

A thousand delegates from more than 150 countries came to Haifa for the 10th International Bahá’í Convention, and at least some participants say the diversity was unprecedented.

Gregory C. Dahl, who formerly worked at the International Monetary Fund and has attended many U.N.-related meetings, had never seen anything like it.

“This is easily the most diverse gathering of people on the planet,” he said of the convention. He compared it to a U.N. meeting but said the diversity at the Baha’i gathering came not just from the different nationalities but from the backgrounds of the participants.

“At the United Nations, there are representatives from many countries, but not from so many different social, economic, and professional classes,” said Mr. Dahl, who attended the Baha’i convention as a delegate from Bulgaria. He noted that the others from Bulgaria included someone who works for a coal-mining company, another employed by an insurance company, a musician, and a secretary." Read the whole thing here.

I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how a religion that brings people from all backgrounds together to work for a better world could be a bad thing. What possible threat can it pose to anyone? Why do its followers deserve harassment, destruction of their holy places, expulsion from schools and jobs, imprisonment and even death? What is so scary about the Baha'i Faith?

Two of my favorite bloggers, Barnabus and Bilo also have info on the round-up of Baha'i leadership in Iran.

I'll keep you posted on developments.

Where Being Baha'i is A Crime

Iranian authorities are at it again, trampling the rights of citizens simply because of their religious beliefs. The Baha'i World News Service has the latest:

"NEW YORK — Six Bahá’í leaders in Iran were arrested and taken to the notorious Evin prison yesterday in a sweep that is ominously similar to episodes in the 1980s when scores of Iranian Bahá’í leaders were summarily rounded up and killed.

The six men and women, all members of the national-level group that helped see to the minimum needs of Bahá’ís in Iran, were in their homes Wednesday morning when government intelligence agents entered and spent up to five hours searching each home, before taking them away.

The seventh member of the national coordinating group was arrested in early March in Mashhad after being summoned by the Ministry of Intelligence office there on an ostensibly trivial matter.

“We protest in the strongest terms the arrests of our fellow Bahá'ís in Iran,” said Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Bahá’í International Community to the United Nations. “Their only crime is their practice of the Bahá’í Faith.”

“Especially disturbing is how this latest sweep recalls the wholesale arrest or abduction of the members of two national Iranian Bahá’í governing councils in the early 1980s -- which led to the disappearance or execution of 17 individuals,” she said." Read the whole thing here.

International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran also has news about this latest assault on the Iranian Baha'i Community:

"Health and Safety May Be At Risk

(16 May 2008) The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran is calling on Iranian judicial authorities to account, in terms of Iranian and international law, for the detention on 14 May 2008 of six leading members of the Baha’i faith, who have been taken to Evin prison. All are members of the Baha’i national coordination group, the “Friends;” the seventh member has been imprisoned in Mashhad since 5 March 2008. No charges have been announced in the cases.

While the detainees have all been regularly summoned, detained, and interrogated as individuals, this is the first time they have been seized as a group. The entire leadership body of the Baha’is in Iran is thus in detention.

“We are deeply concerned that the detention without charge of the entire Baha’i leadership is consistent with a pattern of violent and illegal persecution of Baha’is in Iran,” the Campaign stated. “The persecution of religious minorities will bring neither internal stability nor international security to Iran.”

Intelligence agents detained Fariba Kamalabadi, Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naeimi, Saeid Rezaie, Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Vahid Tizfahm at their respective homes in the early morning of 14 May and conducted searches." Read more here.

The systematic (and completely unsuccessful) effort by governmental and religious authorities in Iran to destroy the Baha'i Faith in that country has been going on since its inception in the mid-19th century. That the Baha'is of Iran have persevered so long in the face of such a relentless campaign demonstrates the strength of their convictions. That they are persecuted solely for their religious beliefs demonstrates the wrong-headedness of their oppressors. If you care even just a little about religious freedom, I encourage you to let people know about this. Nefarious deeds shrink before the harsh light of international outrage. Get. The. Word. Out.