Slow Death for Iran's Baha'is

By Richard N. Ostling

A pacific faith appears to be targeted for annihilation

In most countries, believers in the Baha'i faith are looked upon as model citizens. Their religion places great stress on industriousness, peacefulness and obedience to the law. In Iran, however, Baha'is are not only unwanted but actively persecuted. Since the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power in 1979, Iran's 300,000 Baha'is have suffered a reign of terror in the land where their faith was born. In the latest of many protests, the State Department's annual human rights report stated last week that believers "suffer from imprisonment, torture and execution" at the hands of the government.

Since 1979, at least 150 believers have been put to death. Though the official charges usually involve "spying" or "treason," Baha'is say that the real reason is official intolerance of a faith which the Shi'ite Muslim mullahs of Iran regard as blasphemous. An estimated 550 Baha'is are in prison. Thousands more have lost their homes and possessions, and mobs have desecrated Baha'i assembly halls, cemeteries and the faith's holiest shrine in Iran, the House of the Bab in Shiraz.

Though Iran's constitution allows Christians and Jews to practice their faiths, Baha'is have no such freedom. The U.S. human rights report says that the government has established a legal basis to "move against all Baha'is if it chooses to do so." In Wilmette, Ill., headquarters for the faith's 100,000-member U.S. branch (worldwide membership: 3 million), a spokesman fears that "unless things change, Baha'is in Iran are going to be annihilated."

Last August, Iran's prosecutor-general, Hojatoleslam Hossein Musavi Tabrizi, ordered the abolition of all Baha'i organizations. The community obediently shut down its 400 local meetinghouses and dissolved the national and local governing councils. In the months since Tabrizi's declaration, a farmer was lynched, a young woman was slain by a mob just after she gave birth, and 190 more Baha'is were arrested. Says Mehri Mavaddat, an Iranian refugee lawyer now living in Toronto whose husband was executed in 1981: "The killings are very casual. That's what makes them so horrible. Some are arrested and killed. Some are known to the government but not arrested."

Baha'is, who are often convenient scapegoats, have been persecuted since their faith was founded in mid-19th century Persia. After a tyrannical Shah was assassinated by a Muslim terrorist in 1896, crowds attacked the Baha'i community in Yazd, killing several people. Believers were repeatedly tortured and mutilated by local vigilantes in subsequent years. The worst outburst prior to Khomeini's takeover occurred in 1955-56 under the late Shah. Former agents of SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, say that government agents provoked anti-Baha'i hysteria to divert reactionary Muslims from turning their fury against the Shah. Recalls a former SAVAK officer: "A lot of Muslim clergy, including many with high positions in the Khomeini regime, grew rich on SAVAK money, which they took to fight Bahaism and Communism." In the 1978 turmoil that preceded the Shah's departure, 40 people, both Baha'is and Muslims, were killed during rioting in Shiraz.

There is a fundamental doctrinal reason for such enmity. Islam proclaims that Muhammad was the "Seal of the Prophets," God's final messenger to mankind. But the Baha'i faith--an offshoot of Shi'ism, which is itself a minority branch of Islam--asserts that two prophets came after Muhammad. To Muslims this constitutes a new, perverted faith. The first prophet was Mirza 'Ali Muhammad, who declared in 1844 that he was the Bab (gate), the pathway to God. He was executed in 1850 as a heretic. When Persian authorities tried to wipe out his disciples, the Babis fought back; as many as 20,000 were slain.

One of the Babis adopted the name Baha'u'llah (Glory of God) and proclaimed himself the Promised One, or Messiah, in 1863; his followers became known as Baha'is. He replaced the Babis' militant zeal with strict nonviolence. Baha'u'llah spent many of his final years in a Turkish prison or under house arrest near present-day Haifa, Israel. There the Baha'is built his tomb and established their world headquarters. This tenuous connection with Israel further inflames Muslim suspicions.

Baha'is advocate world peace and the unification of all peoples and religions. They respect the Koran and holy books of other faiths. The Baha'is have no clergy class and elect their leaders to limited terms of office. The Baha'is also champion world government and the use of an unspecified universal language. But unity, say members, will come only by worshiping God through Baha'u'llah, the prophet who is his "Manifestation" and who revealed God's message in 100-odd books, which were translated from Arabic and Farsi as the creed spread. The Old Testament messianic predictions and New Testament passages on Christ's second coming are seen as references to Baha'u'llah. In contrast to Islam, the Baha'i faith believes in equal treatment for men and women and teaches that modern science is compatible with true religion.

The policy of peace applies even to current enemies. Vahid Alavian, an engineering teacher at the University of Illinois whose father was tortured and executed in Iran in 1981, seeks to be forgiving toward the anti-Baha'i mobs, although he doubts that the Almighty will be as tolerant. "They are mostly pawns who believe they are working for the elimination of the ungodly from the earth," he says. "But those who plan all this know better, and they will pay a high price before God." --ByRichard N. Ostling. Reported by Raji Samghabadi/New York and Don Winbush/Chicago

With reporting by Raji Samghabadi, Don Winbush