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.

PV

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.

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.