Religious Persecution Persisits in Iran
October 20, 2008 • By Adib Amini, Contributing Writer
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With some 300,000 members residing therein, the Bahá’í Faith constitutes the largest religious minority in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Bahá’í Faith is the youngest of the world’s independent religions and proclaims the essential oneness of humanity and religion.
But since 1980, Bahá’í students in Iran have been barred from attaining higher education by law.
Four years ago, the government of Iran publicly stated that it would allow Bahá’í students to attend universities, but it is obvious that this is not so; the persecution has continued through numerous devious ploys. Bahá’í students successfully sat for the nationwide college entrance examination and entered university, but were then one-by-one expelled for either mysterious reasons or because they were directly found to be Bahá’í.
The Bahá’í World News Service reported that in one such case, that of Neda Keshavarz Rahbar, a student at Fazilat University. She was summoned, just before her graduation, and questioned as to why she had not informed the institution that she was a Bahá’í. She stated that she had indeed done so, as indicated by her application forms. Rahbar was then given the opportunity to recant and when she declined, was immediately expelled from the university. A subsequent method of denying Bahá’í students education is that when many Bahá’í students have gone online to check their entrance examination results — which are required to enter all public and most private universities — they found a notice stated “Error-incomplete file,” an error that has no remedy. Even when this issue was taken to courts, the judge dismissed the cases, stating that their files were incomplete and therefore the plaintiff’s case had “no merit.” Bahá’í students are being deprived of their right to education merely because of their religion.
What is striking is that the government of Iran continues to publicly declare that it allows full education to Bahá’ís while underhandedly robbing them of it. In March 2006, the existence of a confidential Iranian government document was announced by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief. In this document, government agencies are ordered to identify all Bahá’ís and monitor their activities: “…in a confidential manner, collect any and all information about the above-mentioned activities of these individuals and report it to this Command Headquarters.”
Other such documents have been uncovered, revealing the Iranian government’s unjust and government-backed persecution of Bahá’ís. This persecution stretches far beyond higher education as they are dismissed from jobs, prevented from operating business, publicly harassed and vilified in newspapers; but we, as professors and students, should stand up for other students.
“Our plea to the international community, and especially to professors, administrators and students everywhere, is that they raise their voices on behalf of Iranian Bahá’í students,” said Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Bahá’í International Community to the United Nations.
Faculty and student associations are asked to pass resolutions against the persecution of Bahá’í students in Iran and send copies to officials. Individual professors can write letters of protest to their counterparts in the same discipline at universities in Iran. Presidents of other universities, such as President Schutt of Lake Forest College, President Tilghman of Princeton University and President Faust of Harvard University, have also written in defense of Bahá’í students.
Adib Amini is a freshman engineering major and a member of the JMU Baha’i Association.
Contact Adib Amini at aminiax@jmu.edu
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