The Baha'is in Iran: Twenty Years of Repression - non-Muslim religious minority

Social Research, Summer, 2000 by Firuz Kazemzadeh

THE Islamic Republic of Iran proclaims Shi'i Islam as its state religion, and recognizes only Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism as other true religions. The three minority faiths are legitimized by the Constitution and accorded certain legal and political rights. The Baha'is, however, Iran's largest non-Muslim religious minority, are not mentioned in the Constitution and have the status of unprotected infidels. Since the onset of the Islamic revolution in the fall of 1978, more than 200 Baha'is, mostly leaders of the community, have been put to death. Baha'i institutions have been disbanded, community properties confiscated, holy places demolished, and cemeteries desecrated. Baha'is have no civil rights. They cannot hold government jobs, enforce legal contracts, practice law, collect pensions, attend institutions of higher learning, and openly practice their faith.

The hostility of the Iranian clerical establishment that took over the government in early 1979 was not a new phenomenon. It had roots in the nineteenth century when the clerical class saw its spiritual monopoly threatened by the spread of the Babi religion, the precursor of the Baha'i Faith. The Bab (Gate), founder of the movement, claimed to be not only the return of the twelfth imam expected by the Shi'is but a prophet and the herald of "him whom God shall manifest," a messenger and bearer of a new revelation. The Bab's claim to prophethood could not be reconciled with the traditional literalist interpretation of the Muslim belief that Muhammad was "the seal of the prophets" and Islam the ultimate religion. After several years of imprisonment, the Bab, who refused to recant, was publicly executed by a firing squad in June 1850 in Tabriz. The Babis resisted attacks by government forces in several localities. Thousands perished in the unequal struggles in Zanjan, Neyriz, and Mazandaran. In 1852 an unsuccessful attempt on the life of Naser ed-Din Shah by three Babis, aggrieved and exasperated by the execution of their leader, precipitated a massacre of scores of innocent men and women, among them the renowned poetess Tahereh. Most of the Babi leaders were wiped out, the surviving adherents were dispirited and disorganized. It seemed that the movement had been defeated, the old order restored, and the spiritual monopoly of the Shi'i clergy reaffirmed.

One of the prominent Babis, Mirza Hoseyn Ali Nouri, later known as Baha'u'llah, had been arrested in connection with the attempted assassination of the Shah. Despite the fact that he was found not guilty of participation, he was nevertheless exiled to Baghdad, where he proclaimed himself to be "him whom God shall manifest," whose advent had been prophesied by the Bab. Although Baha'u'llah, at the urging of the Iranian ambassador, was removed by the Ottoman government from Baghdad first to Constantinople, then to Adrionople, and finally to the pestilential fortress-city of Acre (now Akko) on the shores of the Mediterranean, he gathered the Babi remnant and founded the Baha'i Faith. Baha'u'llah's emissaries traveled through Iran, rallying the surviving Babis and spreading the new dispensation. The revitalized and growing Babi-Baha'i community once again began to attract the attention of the clergy and the government. Baha'u'llah commanded his followers that his teachings be spread only through peaceful means, that his followers be loyal to the government and obey the authorities. He taught that the purpose of his religion was the promotion of amity and concord among all peoples, races, and religions, but that did not lessen the fear and hatred of the more conservative elements dominant within the clerical establishment.

By the end of the nineteenth century the Baha'is found themselves under constant pressure from ecclesiastical and governmental authorities, and they were attacked on theological and moral grounds. They were declared heretics because of their belief that revelation was progressive and without end, meaning that the line of prophets stretched from the legendary Adam into the most distant future. Under this assumption, Muhammad was not the last prophet (as Islam claims) but rather one in a chain of revealers of divine will, a chain that includes not only Jesus and the prophets of Israel, but the founders of Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and other religions that Islam does not recognize. The mullahs execrated Baha'i teachings on the equality of men and women, the abolition of the notions of ritual impurity and dietary restrictions, the rejection of the practice of taqlid (imitation of a chosen religious leader), and the assertion of the freedom of the individual to investigate truth and adhere to a religion of his choice. The absence of clergy in the Baha'i Faith and the governance of the community by its freely and democratically elected representatives were other sources of hostility the mullahs as a class harbored against the Baha'is.

Western influences flooded Iran in the twentieth century. While the masses remained largely under clerical influence, the bureaucracy, the officers' corps of the newly created national army, and the intellectual elite began to lose interest in the intricacies of the Sharia and in theological disputations. They welcomed Reza Shah's attempts at modernization, which included unveiling women, restricting turban wearing, secularizing the educational system, and introducing Europeanized legal codes. The clergy that had helped Reza Khan ascend the throne (out of fear of a republic such as the one Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had established in Turkey) found itself marginalized and with greatly diminished influence in public life. The mullahs perceived similarities between some of the modernizing reforms and Baha'i teachings and linked their dislike for these reforms, and for Reza Shah, with their old hatred of the Baha'is. They spread rumors that the Shah himself was a Baha'i, and that Baha'is dominated the government and were the principal force for subverting Islam.