Thoughts on the Persecution of Baha'is in Iran

Jan 11, 2010

Growing up as a grateful member of the American Baha'i community, I have always had a profound sense of my connectedness to the practitioners in Iran, who in my lifetime, have undergone and continue to endure unrelenting persecution from their government. The Guardian of the Baha'i Faith, Shoghi Effendi has called the American believers 'the spiritual descendants of the dawnbreakers,' a hagiographic title of affection with which Baha'si refer to those brave souls who would be the first to embrace a nascent and minority Faith at a time of perilous religious extremism when the cost to many a convert to the new religion was their life.

On this night (EST) commences in Iran the trial of seven distinguished members of the Iranian Baha'i community, wrongly accused of various crimes against the state and against its brand of Islam for which the highest penalty is death. There has been amassed a sizable archive of reportage on these circumstances that has amassed on the internet in the last several months of the Baha'is wrongful incarceration, drawing attention to the recidivist violence of the current Iranian regime towards Iran's largest non-Islamic religious minority.

My aim here, however, is not to rehearse the details of the case, available to everyone, but simply to put out a prayer for the protection, safety and justice/vindication of the wrongfully-accused, and for a reconciliation of the ruling orthodoxy to the presence of the peaceful, law-abiding and altruistic community of Iranian Baha'is so dear to my heart.

If I have abstained from mentioning this particularly distressing dilemma in recent months, I hope my comments below will shed some light on the reasons for my silence and will temper my current outcry on behalf of those innocent prisoners, with whom I feel a profound and enduring solidarity.

The remarks below were written more than a year and a half ago on the subject of the religious persecution of Baha'is in Iran and airs my concerns about the manner by which awareness is raised regarding this pressing issue which threatens the lives and unquestionably violates the basic human rights of thousands of Baha'i practitioners in their Faith's homeland.

Damien-Adia Marassa

Some links:

http://iran.bahai.us/2010/01/11/cnn-amid-turmoil-iran-set-to-try-7-bahai-leaders/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/world/middleeast/08iran.html?scp=3&sq=bahai&st=cse


__________
August 8, 2008


The phenomenon of the persecution of "Baha'i faithful" in their native Iran, the birthplace of this global creed, is by no means a recent one. Yet media attention of the magnitude that has lately been thrown on the issue is quite unprecedented. (See recent Wall Street Journal article http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121755160850702963.html?mod=googlenews_wsj. Obviously, this marks a new phase in the familiarity of the international community with not only the challenges of, but also the beliefs, practices and community formation of Baha'is in Iran and in every part of the world where they reside - which is, incidentally, in every part of the world. I pass this along with the following caveat: let not the grievance of this injustice fuel a witchunt of another kind.

To make my point more clear, I might add that I have always been deeply, deeply moved, inspired and enriched by the sacrifices of Persian Baha'is who have faced persecution, and even martyrdom rather than to relinquish the integrity of their relationship to the truth of Baha'u'llah's message as they understand and express it in their daily lives. Because of this fact, and because of the spiritual station of the individual who acts with such integrity in the Baha'i teachings, I cannot easily raise a cry in the international community that could perhaps too easily, and very understandably be construed as a call for the condemnation of a political, governing institution. I believe that people in glass houses should not throw stones, and yet this does not mean that governments or individuals are ever beyond reproach. I simply think that there are two central issues at stake here - and one cannot be sacrificed for the other. There is a vitriolic campaign against Middle Eastern cultures and Islamic countries in the United States. Also, Baha'is in Iran are suffering persecution. I would prefer if in our enthusiasm to express solidarity and concern for, gratitude and love to the Baha'i faithful in Iran, we did not inadvertently sponsor an agenda of Western imperialist hypocrisy.

It seems to me that the friends in Iran who are unlawfully imprisoned, wrongfully executed, iniquitously marginalized are free to choose whether or not they are willing to undergo such oppression. They choose to because they have decided their relationship to Baha'u'llah is such that they can, and are willing to withstand these persecutions. Friends, there are people in this world who are being treated with much greater severity and brutality, being categorically and systematically murdered, raped, tortured, bought and sold, and only because of the color of their skin, their ethnic background. There are millions of children around the world who are born into lives of unlivable poverty through no choice of their own. Yet to be a Baha'i, is to make a choice - what I would look at as a sacred choice. That the rights of those who choose to so self-identify and the rights and lives of their families should be respected is a given, just as it is a given that the Baha'is in Iran should not be a platform for the oppression of any other people, community or group (or, let's say, for example, foreign invasion/occupation). The U.S. Congress has passed numerous resolutions "condemning" these persecutions; actions about which I feel a good deal of ambivalence.

This has been on my mind for a while now. Your thoughts, views, responses are most welcome.

Specters of Haiti: Reflections on Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press

Our freedoms are meaningless if we do not exercise them. Perhaps more importantly, without action, our "freedoms" and "rights" become emblematic only of our unfreedom, and our bondage.


Do citizens of the United States truly live in a free country? A free state of being? of doing? of acting in the world?


Today I am inspired by the example of journalists such as Jean Dominique whose indefatigable spirit triumphed for years during his lifetime over the oppressive regimes of power-politics in Haiti, and promises to bear witness, with us, to the true calling of all people to be free from censorship, state and corporate aggression and surveillance in articulating their desires, their complaints, fears, and destinies. I could not recommend more highly the documentary The Agronomist which portrays the vivacious and steadfast character of Dominique and his struggle with the Haitian people for justice and equity.


As Brazilian poet, musician, activist and historian extraordinaire Caetano Veloso urges:

Pensa no Haiti, reza pelo Haiti. O Haiti é aqui, O Haiti não é aqui.
Think of Haiti, pray for Haiti. Haiti is here, Haiti is not here.


What does Caetano mean by singing "Haiti is here"? It seems we get a clue even in “Haiti is not here,” as we are reminded that “we” are all sorts of various collectives. We can refer to the us that is "our" country, "our" foreign policy. "We" also, is each of those, including ourselves, who stand in relation to Haiti. Certainly, Caetano's maxim is equally true for Haitians. Haiti is there, and not there, is here and not here for Aristide, or Dominique - this is the entire point of their lives and struggle. The Haiti that is vs the Haiti they want to be. The Haiti we pray for, and the Haiti we pray to (see). Yet, in the less mystical variation of the "we" as outsiders, witnessing the strife of Haiti's beleagered nation, the over“there”-ness of Haiti is penetrated by the influence of our lives, our thoughts, our foreign policy, our apathy, our care IS there in Haiti, just as Haiti’s strength, life, hope, pain, destitution is here; in our hearts, our greed, our flagging confidence in the possibility of our own freedoms.

It has been fun to follow the news stories about China's preparation for the Olympic games as it ambles up to welcome the world so to speak. I'm interested in the auxiliary effects on the status of Chinese people's access to information and freedoms of expression.

In the last few days websites that were previously blocked in China - some websites - are now currently available in Beijing, Shanghai and perhaps other parts of the country.


Or, check out this headline:
Reporters Without Borders website accessible in China for first time since 2003


Port au Prince to Beijing, Portland to wherever you are reading this, there is a liberty at stake, one worth dying for, itself dying to be exercised. I write, today, to remember that right, and to grow closer, if this can be done, to understanding what, recently, Edwidge Danticat concluded in her Toni Morrison Lecture at Princeton University, that we have a responsibility to history to "write dangerously." I have been thinking about this, and more to come (perhaps on the speech, but certainly on the proposition of writing dangerously). For me, the premise is somewhat tricky. It may very well be dangerous to write, but this does not require that one write dangerously. It seems all the more likely that to truly write, under dangerous conditions, would be to write well. To write dangerously well - this is my motto, my aim for today. That I am writing at all, is, in fact, a marked improvement over the alternative which it seems, for some reason, I've practiced so long, and so well. And so fitfully, yet safely. I write in peace, today, knowing the storm is coming tonight to the homes of those whose freedoms have come at the price paid by Dominique, and X, and King, and so many other special friends.


Free Mumia! Yes. And, further, "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery..." and, further,

free our tongues to speak this freedom - or, better yet, to sing!....