Minorities in God’s Country
The Islamic Republic of Iran places the Shiite sect of Islam at the heart of the state apparatus. The Islamisation of all life, based on Khomeini’s own interpretation of Islam, is the central policy of the Islamic ruling elite.
Religious minorities, which include the Sunnite sect of Islam, Christian, Jews, Zoroastrians and Baha’is compromised about 10 % of the population after the Iranian revolution, most of them Sunnite Muslims who also suffer from discrimination as national minorities. In addition, increasing numbers of Shiites, especially after the inception of the IRI, are non-believers.
In an interview with United International on November 8, 1978, Ayatollah Khomeini said: “In an Islamic Republic, all religious minorities can freely celebrate all of their religious ceremonies and the Islamic government will protect them to the best of its ability.” Later he said again, “The religious minorities, such as the non-Shiite Muslim population, are Iranians and must be respected.”
Masses of religious minorities joined the revolution against the Shah’s regime, despite the religious character of its leadership, with the understanding that tolerance would prevail.
Short after the revolution, their schools have been closed and their teachers dismissed–Christian schools were initially closed, then reopened due to pressure, while the harassment of Christians continues. According to the IRI’s Constitution, religious minorities are not allowed to hold high-ranking government jobs. According to the interpretation of the Constitution, they are rejected from lower level jobs as well, even factory work. They are subjected to Shiite dress codes, holidays, and prohibitions on liquor and music. They are under the jurisdiction of the Islamic tribunals.
The IRI’s Constitution enjoins Muslims to respect the rights of non-Muslims, unless they “conspire against Islam or against the Islamic Republic of Iran.” It is up to the Shiite clergy to decide what
constitutes a conspiracy.
The regime has issued decree forbidding non-Muslims from renting the upper story of a house where Muslims live the lower floor. It has forbidden the use of Muslim cadavers for medical research while recommending the use of non-Muslims. It has enacted a new tax structure in which non-Muslims pay dues, called “jazyeh”, an echo of the old laws of tribute. Religious minorities are forbidden to enter barber shops, communal baths, grocery stores and other public places.
The Bill of Retribution, a criminal law which mandates stoning, the amputation of limbs and the gouging out of eyes as punishment, regards the lives of religious minorities as worth half those of Muslims.
The 75,000 members of the Jewish community have been suspected of being pro-Zionist. Many Jews have been forced to leave the country and some have been executed.
Zoroastrians, adherents of the ancient Persian faith and representatives of the pre-Islamic culture, are also systematically persecuted. In their capital city of Yazd, young girls have been kidnapped by Pasdaran, taken to the home of the Ayatollah Soddoughi, gang raped and forcibly converted to Islam. Their families’ complaints went ignored and they were not allowed to visit them. In one case, the announcement was made of a marriage between a girl and a Pasdar.
In November, 1979, the Assembly of Experts declared Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism the only officially recognised minority religions, leaving the Baha’is without constitutional protection. The Baha’I faith was founded in Iran in the 19th century and believes in the essential oneness of all great religions, honouring all of their prophets, including the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad. After the Sunnite sect of Islam, they are the largest of the religious minorities, numbering a half million. Because of its root in Islam, Baha’I faith is viewed as heretical and particularly threatening by the Shiite clergy.
Baha’I faith actively seeks converts and has attracted a predominantly prosperous and modernised membership. Organised opposition to the Baha’is has existed since before the IRI. The Hojatyyeh sect, to which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad belongs, has started their “holy” war against them under the Shah. At that time, a number of Bah’ais had important commercial holding, such as Pepsi-Cola; they also preached non-intervention in politics.
Since the inception of the IRI, the Baha’is’ religious centres and property have been confiscated and their shrines destroyed. Their members in the armed forces have been given choice of converting to Islam or being dismissed. In August, 1980, their entire governing board was kidnapped and disappeared; six moths later, their successors were arrested, charged with treason and executed. Other Baha’is have been fired from their jobs, driven into exile, and arrested for conspiring against Islam and killed.
The oppression of religious minorities, especially the Baha’i faith, is not incidental; it is part of the nature of the IRI and continues today.
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A scholar once noted that you could judge the worth of a civilization by how it treated the Jews. What he meant was that if a nation treated “even the Jews” well, who were considered an undesirable minority in most places, then that nation conformed to the rule of law, as opposed to the rule of passion and prejudice.
By that standard, Iran’s leadership has a long way to go. It says a lot about you that you have to enforce your religion by force. The Prophet Muhammad said that there should be no compulsion in religion. But when you treat your minorities as, for example, the Baha’i are being treated, it means that you don’t really have the faith that you profess to have.
If the only way you can convince people to believe as you believe is through initimidation and force, it means that you lack the confidence to convince them by means of persuasion. If your religious beliefs are so superior to everyone else’s, then why wouldn’t they come to believe as you believe voluntarily, and without coersion? Don’t people want to believe what makes sense to them?
Religion, by its very essence, has no business teaching hate and violence. Relgion aspires to give us a glimpse of God. There is no way that God would go to all this trouble of creating us, just to see us kill one another so indiscriminately. If, as many of us believe, we were created in God’s image, then unless God is suicidal, we were put on this good earth to live, not to kill, and not to die before our time.
Iran’s leadership has to come to terms with the need to reassess some of their beliefs, in favor of beliefs which make more sense, and in accordance with a version of Islam that does justice to its finer points and to the greatness of its legacy.
I’d rather be a Sunni in Iran than to be a Shi’aa under Taliban rule in Afghanistan.
Some of the details you mentioned in this post are probably incorrect or exaggerated (namely gang-raping Zoroastrian girls and ban on music, respectively). In addition some improvements have been made in recent years, for example in the case of ‘Bill of Retribution’ which finally made the blood money of a non-Muslim equal to that of a Muslim. Moreover officials usually shut their eyes to some of the laws passed by authorities, for example about liquor or pork; you may easily find them in Christian-dominated districts (last week prices of Isfahan: a pork-burger, just 4 dollars).
By the way, I generally agree that minorities (either religious or ethnic ones) are being systematically mistreated in Iran. However it should be noted that socio-political phenomena often follow a continuous pattern throughout both history and region. Therefore if one focuses on one certain episode while ignoring the broader historical and regional contexts, his conclusion is susceptible to flaw.
Firstly, with regards to broader historical context, I have to mention that such discriminations are usually a legacy of the past. (This, however, does not mean that IRI did not contribute to them.) For example about Shiite-Sunni conflict, a balanced view has to consider the events of even 7 centuries ago, even including Safavid-Ottoman wars. Long standing conflicts and lack of dialogue have made such harsh sentiments among Shiite people toward Sunnis that even if IRI decides to remove legal bans, social discrimination continues to exist. And though such ‘harsh sentiments’ does not usually turn into violent acts, they often translate into political, systematic discrimination thanks to lack of a democratic temperament in Iran (neither socially nor politically). To an extent, same analysis applies to Bahai faith.
Secondly, with regards to broader regional context, it should be noted that regional or even global interactions somehow affect the issue of interest. For example, people rarely distinguish a Jewish businessman from soldiers who allegedly shot Muhammad al-Dura. Or when they hear of rumors/stories of Shiite being persecuted in Saudi Arabia, they can hardly endorse a Sunni mosque in downtown. I know that this is not fair. The solution, however, does not flow from the upward.
You guys might want to check out this comic.
Hilarious !
I have lived and worked in Iran for number of years and to my experience, in today Islamic Iran not only the religious or ethnic minorities are mistreated but also the majority! We shouldn’t forget that 99% of political prisoners as well as those who have been executed for their political oppositions to the clerical regime since 1979 are or were Muslims and Persians.
PV
Esra’a
The cartoon was very expressive of the situation. My husband had a good laugh. I just don’t know for how long they want to keep their head tucked in their feathers. What is a large group of people going to a place and all introduce themselves as Bahais? All the youth who feel intimidated by the way authorities discriminate the Bahais try to introduce themselves as Bahais, then what will happen? Would they all be sent to jail? Well, a couple of games as such might be useful really. I played this game when it came to racial discrimination. If I came across a person who talked ill about another ethnic group or race I would introduce myself as the insulted ethnic group. That makes the offender embarrassed. I wish things were as easy as I assume, but I know they are not, because we are not dealing with some cool individuals who understand some thing is wrong and change their ways, we are face to face with a bunch of robot?
That picture of Ahmadinejad is a complement.
Omid
What can I say… believe me if he had a good heart and a bit of wisdom I wouldn’t mind him looking like a rare living being. He is a big failor, big time…
great cartoon!!! love it, so right on the issue. any chance you guys can feature it?
lol eli
Esra’a thank you.
Your work and initiatives are amazing! Please keep it up! It is so needed in this world of ours. We all can only try to make our own little contributions.