#Iranian Baha'is

[swiftsnowmane]

Iran deploys a sinister tactic against the Baha'i religious minority—fabricating legal cases and relentless summonses, creating a web of oppression.

Recent revelations expose the extent of government hostility, leaving Baha'is in constant uncertainty. 

IranWire's interviews with members of the community highlight the fear of arrests and hindrance in burying their dead, showcasing an ongoing assault on their rights. 

Baha'is interviewed by IranWire express that they cannot plan for their lives and careers due to the uncertainty surrounding who will be summoned or arrested tomorrow, whose homes will be searched, or whose businesses will be shut down.

A significant and increasing number of Baha'is are awaiting the implementation of sentences, even as many have been released on bail and are awaiting trial.

Roha Emani and Firozeh Sultan Mohammadi, two Baha'is women living in Kerman, were recently summoned to the Kerman Prosecutor's Office and faced charges and interrogation over allegations of "Baha'i propaganda" and "educational activities against Sharia."

Emani and Mohammadi were previously detained for 17 days in November last year and subsequently released on bail.

Korosh Rezvani, a Baha'is citizen of Bandar Abbas, was summoned to the Intelligence Department of the city and was later released following interrogation.

Rezvani is the son of Ataullah Rezvani, who was kidnapped and fatally shot in Bandar Abbas in August 2013.

Ataullah was a prominent Baha'i figure in Bandar Abbas who had received numerous threats from the intelligence department and the city's Friday prayer leader office before his assassination.

Ten years have passed since Ataullah's death, yet the case remains unsolved, with no identified perpetrator.

Furthermore, several Baha'i citizens in Hamadan were summoned and interrogated over the past few weeks.

The Baha'i International Community (BIC) has also reported the summoning and interrogation of 16 Baha'is from Isfahan.

The systematic persecution of the community reveals a chilling reality wherein the fundamental rights and freedoms of Baha'is are undermined.

"Baha'is are not only deprived of citizenship rights in Iran during their lifetime, but they are also deprived of human rights after death, and the deceased Baha'is and their families are harassed," a Baha'i citizen told IranWire.

The particular incident refers to the misconduct of Behesht-e Zahra cemetery authorities in burying the deceased in the Baha'i cemetery in Tehran.

Over the past year, Behesht-e Zahra has refused to release the bodies of Baha'is and has only allowed Baha'is to bury their dead in their own cemetery of Khavaran for a hefty fee.

As this fee collection lacked legal grounds and was enforced under pressure from the Ministry of Intelligence, many families of the deceased have refused to comply.

The most recent reported incident was the authorities refusing to release the body of Esfandiar Ghazanfari to his family for burial in the Baha'i cemetery in Tehran, with the deceased's body remaining in the morgue for over 20 days.

Finally, Artin Ghazanfari, the son of the deceased, revealed on his Instagram page that his father's body was taken and buried in Khavaran cemetery on March 1.

Authorities have allegedly buried the bodies of Baha'is in mass grave sites of political prisoners executed in the 1980s. This was reportedly done without informing families or performing religious ceremonies over the past year.

[jaycethepancake]

My best friend in the world recently started dating a new girl, and she's sooooo pretty!

She's Iranian and a recent immigrant to Canada, so I've already heard stuff that makes her sound like the coolest. Like how she never got to learn to cook at home, because her mother *always* cooked, so after coming to Canada all on her own she's had to not only learn to cook from scratch, but has learned to cook her cultural dishes all on her own and away from the ingredients she's used to.

She sounds like the coolest girl in the world and I'm wondering about if it's socially alright to want to be friends with your friend's GF lmao. Not because of ulterior motives, I have my partner I love, I'm just terrible at making friends and have no idea how to breach that lol

[fromchaostocosmos]

In the war between Israel and Hamas, there have been far too many casualties­—thousands of innocent civilians have died, primarily in Gaza. But this war has another less visible casualty: the hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants to Israel from the Middle East and North Africa known as Mizrahi, whose history is being erased from the popular narrative about Israel. My community is among them.

When angry protesters hurl charges of apartheid and colonialism at Israel, they are, knowingly or not, repudiating the truth about Israel's origin and the vast racial and ethnic diversity of its nation.

I was born and raised in Iran in a family of Jewish educators. I came of age during the tumultuous years of the Iranian revolution, just as Ayatollah Khomeini rose to power in 1979, and soon thereafter, annihilated his opposition­—feminists, leftists, even the Islamic Marxists who had long revered him as their spiritual leader. Until 1979, if anyone had told my observant Jewish family that we would someday leave Iran, we would have laughed. In fact, at our Passover seders, the words "next year in Jerusalem," were always followed by chuckles and quips, "oh, yeah, sure, Watch me pack!" all underlining our collective belief that we were exactly where we intended to remain. We loved Israel, but Israel was a Nirvana­—a place we revered but never expected to reach.

The 30 years preceding the Islamic revolution had led the Jewish community to believe that the dark days of bigotry were behind them. And for good reason! When my father was a schoolboy in the late 1930s, he was not allowed to attend school on rainy days. In the highly conservative town where he grew up, in Khonsar, his Shiite neighbors considered Jews "unclean," or Najes. They barred them, among other things, from leaving their homes on rainy days, lest the rainwater splashed off the bodies of the Jews and onto the Muslim passersby, thus making them "unclean," too. Yet, that same boy grew up, left the insular town, attended college in Tehran, earned a master's degree, and served in the royal army as a second lieutenant. (To his last day, my father's photo in military uniform was among his most prized possessions.) After service, he became the principal of a school, purchased a home in what was then a relatively upscale neighborhood of Tehran. The distance between my father's childhood and adulthood far surpassed two decades. It was the distance between two eras­—between incivility and civility, bigotry and tolerance.

Yet, as if on cue, the demon of antisemitism was unleashed again. The 1979 Islamic revolution summoned all the prejudices my father thought had been irretrievably buried. One day, on the wall across our home, graffiti appeared, "Jews gets lost!" Soon thereafter, the residence and fabric store my aunt and her extended family owned in my father's childhood town were set on fire after a mob of protesters looted it. Within days, she and her family, whose entire life's savings had burned in that fire, left for Israel. As young as I was, I could see that the regime was indiscriminately brutal to all those it deemed a threat to its reign, especially secular Muslims. But the new laws were specifically designed so that non-Muslims, and women, all but became second-class citizens. Members of religious minorities, especially the Baha'i, could no longer eye top jobs in academia, government, the military, etc. Restaurateurs had to display signs in their windows making clear that "the establishment was operated by a non-Muslim." In a court of law, members of religious minorities could offer testimony in criminal trials, but theirs would only count as half that of a Muslim witness. Jews were once again reduced to Dhimmis­—tax-paying citizens who were allowed to live, but not thrive. Then came a handful of executions of prominent Jewish leaders in the early months after the revolution, which sent shockwaves through the community. Jewish schools were allowed to operate, but under the headmastership of Muslims who were officially appointed.

Within a few years after the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini to power, the Jewish population of Iran, which once stood at 100,000, shrank to a fraction of its size. Today, of the ancient community whose presence in Iran predates that of Muslims, only 8,000 remain. For centuries, Iran has been home to the most sacred Jewish sites in the Middle East outside of Israel. But those monuments have either fallen into disrepair or are targets of regular attacks by antisemitic mobs. Only last week, the tomb of Esther and Mordecai­—the memorial to the heroine and hero from the Book of Esther who saved the Jews from being massacred in ancient Persia, was set on fire.

How is it that the 90,000-plus who left Iran, many for Israel, are now deemed as occupiers? How do Iranian refugees fleeing persecution become "colonizers" upon arrival in Israel? These families, my aunt among them, were not emissaries of any standing empire, nor were they returning to a place where they had no history. For them, Israel was not a home away from their real homeland. It was their only homeland. The vitriolic slogan that appeared across my home in 1979 demanded that we "get lost!" In 2024, once again, the same Jews are being called upon to leave, this time Israel. Where, then, are Jews allowed to live?

Iranian Jews were not alone. Jews from Iraq, especially in the aftermath of the 1941 pogrom called Farhood, similarly fled their homeland. So did the Jews of Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Morocco, Algeria, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, etc. All, destitute and dejected, they took refuge in Israel. Today, they make up nearly 50 percent of Israel's population. To call such a nation colonial GRAVELY misrepresents the facts about Jews and Israel.

In his timeless essay, Looking Back on the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell said that in the Spain of 1937, he "saw history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various 'party lines.'" With the alarming rise of antisemitism around the world, and in light of the bloody attacks on Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7, the greatest massacre of Jews since World War II, 2024 bears an uncanny resemblance to Orwell's 1937. But perhaps in no way more ominously than the way truth has been upended to serve an ideological narrative­—one in which Jews, who have lived uninterruptedly in that land for more than two millennia, are cast as white non-indigenous interlopers, with no roots in what has always been their ancient homeland.

A public scholar at the Moynihan Center (CCNY), Roya Hakakian is the author of several books including, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran (Crown, 2005).

[luminalunii97]

Racism of the Islamic Republic regime

Something that has been neglected in topics of protests in Iran is racism. It is often left out of discussions by those of us in or outside of Iran who weren't the direct victims of these antihuman crimes. There's a huge difference between human rights violations in central Persian cities and border non-Persian ones. Persians and other ethnic groups who live in central areas are the targets of enough antihuman acts by this regime that shows the terrorist face of them, just imagine how everything is ×100 worse in non-central areas. Here are some examples:

Arabs in the south: it is estimated that more than 2 million Arabs live in iran. This ethnic minority is severely oppressed and violated. The regime has been capturing and executing Arabs and Arab activists with no clear reason other than being criminal dictators themselves, like how they've been violating and killing Kurds and Balochs in the past 4 decades. Many Arab families have been forcefully moved and pushed to corners, literally in a geographic sense. Racism exist in the Iranian populations like any other country and nation in the world. But it is promoted and supported by the regime. Jina revolution has brought this issue to attention and social activists are doing anti racist activism now, something that wasn't addressed enough before.

Kurds in the west: people of Kurd never accepted the authority of this regime and fought their forces with all their might. Many Kurds citizens and Kurd activists have been the victims of government murder or long imprisonments simply for being freedom fighters. Also, kurds are denied many legal and social rights in Iran, for example not getting hired by governmental organizations, unless they sell their souls to the regime. Because of this many highly educated Kurds can't find a job and they're forced into doing unrelated or illegal labor that often gets them killed. To understand the severity of this issue I recommend you read this article "koolbars new slaves" thoroughly.

Balochs in the east: people of Baloch are victims of the IR regime's racism towards our neighbors, Afghans and Pakistanis. The regime refuses to provide ID papers for Balochs with the excuse that they might be Afghan and not Iranian. The Balochistan province is kept extremely underdeveloped by the regime to the point that many people don't have drinking water there. Kurd and Arab cities are also kept underdeveloped even though most of those areas are rich with natural resources that could easily be used for development. Since many Baloch people are denied id papers they have no legal rights and the regime often gets away with whatever human rights violations, like executions, r*pe, and torture, they do there. Other than the issue of legal rights, the islamic republic had been very successful in isolating Balochistan and keeping the rest of the world including the rest of Iran of knowing who Balochs are and what is really going on in that region. Jina revolution has also brought the issues in Balochistan to attention.

Aside from these intentional neglects, the language and culture of these ethnicities are under attack by the regime.

Other ethnic groups in Iran face discrimination to different degrees by IR. One thing that plays a great role in the level of racism by the regime is religion. Sunni Muslims are very hated and suppressed by the Islamic Republic here. Therefore kurd cities with a majority of Sunni Muslim population face a worse fate than the majority of shia cities. The regime also spreads a lot of hate towards sunni Muslims by accusing them of fanaticism and animosity which used to work on the old shia religious population. Kurds, Balochs, Arab and Turkmens in Iran have the majority sunni Muslim population. They are also the most repressed. Apart from sunni Muslims, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Baha'i and christian believers face discrimination in different ways by the regime.

The only way a war against big criminal bullies like the Islamic Republic can be won is by coming together and unite as people regardless of race, religion, sexuality and gender. Something that seemed not possible 2 years ago but Jîna revolution showed us that it is very much a possibility. We still have a lot of work to do but people took the first step in unity and solidarity. I recommend you read the article below twice to see the dept of what's going on in Iran and why the Islamic Republic overthrow and this revolution is vital to many marginalized people:

[no-passaran]

Many members of the Baha'i religious minority have been arrested across Iran in recent weeks amid unabated nationwide protests. Some were detained at their homes while others were rounded up with other protesters in the streets. Like many of the arrested demonstrators, these Baha’is have been locked up behind bars without specific charges and haven’t been allowed to meet with their families. (...)

43 Years of Harassment and Persecution

Members of the Baha’i community are among the most persecuted groups in Iran. From the very first days following the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, they have been violently harassed by the Islamic Republic and its lackeys. The properties and the homes of many Baha’is were confiscated, their cemeteries in all Iranian cities were seized and destroyed, and Baha’i villagers were driven out of their ancestral lands.

The homes and the livestock of many of these villagers were set on fire, and some of the elderly villagers were killed by setting them ablaze. Baha’is were expelled from all government positions, academics were kicked out of educational institutions, and students were banned from higher education.

During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Baha’is served in the military, just like their fellow Iranians. A large number of them were killed, sustained serious injuries or became prisoners of war, but the Islamic Republic has not recognized any of them as “martyr,” POW or war wounded soldier, and their names were removed from the lists of the Martyrs Foundation.

For more than a decade, Baha’is have been banned from leaving Iran and none of them have been given a passport. Over the past 43 years, more than 200 followers of the Baha’i faith have been murdered and executed by the Islamic Republic. Thousands of them have served prison time because of their faith.

During the ongoing protests, security agents of the Islamic Republic have killed a number of children, but for the Baha’is that’s not something new. Forty years ago, on June 18, 1983, Mona Mahmoudnejad, a 16-year-old Baha’i girl, was executed by hanging in the southern city of Shiraz just for refusing to convert to Islam. Babak Talebi and Payman Sobhani are among other Baha’i children who have been murdered in Iran.

Persecuting the Baha’is as a Mean to Silence Protests

Misleading public opinion is one of the methods that the Islamic Republic has consistently used whenever it has been challenged by protests. In the early days of the current wave of demonstrations, the Iranian government once again resorted to this tactic to mislead public opinion and sow divisions among protesters.

In a statement on September 30, the Intelligence Ministry claimed that Baha’is “have had an extensive presence on the scenes of unrest and riots,” using this fallacious excuse to arrest three Baha’i leaders and two members of their communication team.

To back its claim, the Intelligence Ministry created fake Twitter accounts and sent messages bearing the logo of the London-based, Persian-language Iran International TV channel. In these posts, Baha’is were supposedly calling on people to take to the streets on October 14 and 15. (...)

[radfembri]

Iran. Many Iranian women opposed the Shah's autocratic rule and his use of a cruel secret police, SAVAK, which tortured many women who joined underground anti-government guerrilla groups. In 1978, militant Muslim supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini incited massive demonstrations against the Shah. To placate the religious leaders of the revolutionary movement, he banned abortion.

But in 1979, the militants drove him out. Khomeini, who had been propagandizing from exile in Paris, returned to Iran in triumph. In March 1979, 100,00 women gathered at the University of Tehran to celebrate the overthrow of the Shah and the Ayatollah’s victory. But almost at once, Khomeini suspended reformed family laws, barred women from becoming judges, issued his first order on the veil, passed a series of laws to segregate schools, buses, beaches, and other public areas, and established theocratic rule.

Disregarding women's support, the Ayatollah abolished all laws granting women rights and showed no reluctance to kill women who upheld them. He established a ‘morals police’—made up, in a rare exception, of women, called the Zeinab Sisters—to exercise surveillance on women's dress and behavior and harass or arrest them. One of his first acts was to prosecute the first woman member of the Iranian cabinet, Farrokhrou Parsa. Tried by judges in hoods, allowed no defense attorney and no appeal, she was in fact declared guilty before the trial began. Parsa was charged, writes Mahnaz Afhjami, with ‘expansion of prostitution, corruption on earth, and warring against God.’ Her actual offenses were to direct schoolgirls not to veil and to establish a commission to revise textbooks to present a nonsexist image of women. In December 1979, Khomeini had Parsa executed; she was wrapped in a sack and machine-gunned.

Women protested the new rules in massive marches in Teheran and other Iranian cities; men beat, stoned, and even stabbed them as they marched. Men purged women from the public realm, then passed laws severely restricting them from taking jobs and making it almost impossible for them to talk to or deal with men at work. In 1981, Khomeini had fifty schoolgirls shot and thousands of girls and women arrested for ‘counterrevolutionary’ or ‘anti-Islamic’ activity. None were given trials, and reports indicate that 20,000 women, including pregnant women, old women, and young girls, were executed. In 1982, Khomeini set the legal minimum age for execution at ten years (or puberty) for girls and sixteen for boys, banned women from most sports eventsand launched a new campaign of arrest, executing 15,000 people. That same year, he intensified government persecution of religious minorities, especially Jews and Baha'is. In 1983, he made veiling compulsory for women, and had ten women hanged for refusing to convert from Baha'i to Islam: three were teenagers; others included the first Iranian woman physicist, a concert pianist, the former personnel director for Iran Television, and nurse. He recruited children to clear minefields during Iran's war against Iraq; hundreds of thousands were killed.

In 1989, a woman interviewed on a television program said she would rather model herself on a contemporary woman than on Muhammad's daughter, the self-sacrificing Fatima who has been held up as a model for women for thirteen hundred years. Ayatollah Khomeini ordered those responsible for the program arrested and executed. When his advisers assured him the producers had made an innocent mistake, he granted pardons—but by then Iranian women had surely gotten the message.

“The War Against Women,” Marilyn French

[dear-indies]

Hey I was wondering if you could help I’m looking for a male fc with the same sort of vibe as tarjei sandvik moe or Noah centino? Someone with a real puppy dog vibe. Thanks in advance

Don Lee (1971) Korean.

Conrad Ricamora (1979) Filipino / German, English, Irish, Scottish, French-Canadian - is gay.

Vinny Chhibber (1980) Indian.

Manish Dayal (1983) Gujarati Indian.

Utkarsh Ambudkar (1983) Marathi Indian / Tamil Indian.

Brian Tyree Henry (1982) African-American.

Brian Michael Smith (1984) African-American - is trans.

Uli Latukefu (1984) Tongan.

Michael Trevino (1985) Mexican.

Jarod Joseph (1985) Black Canadian.

Remy Hii (1986) Chinese Malaysian / English.

Tanner Novlan (1986) Plains Cree and White.

Aneurin Barnard (1987)

Shannon Kook (1987) Hakka Chinese / Mixed South African.

Manny Jacinto (1987) Bisaya Filipino, Tagalog Filipino, Chinese.

Alfred Enoch (1988) Afro Barbadian / English.

Laith Ashley (1989) Afro Dominican - is trans and asexual.

Carlos Valdes (1989) Colombian.

Caio Castro (1989) Brazilian.

Daniel Kaluuya (1989) Ugandan.

Karan Soni (1989) Indian - is gay.

Dev Patel (1990) Gujarati Indian.

Nathaniel Curtis (1990) Indian / English - is queer.

Adam DiMarco (1990)

Harvey Guillén (1990) Mexican - is queer.

Justin H. Min (1990) Korean, some Japanese.

Alex Tarrant (1990) Māori, Samoan, and Niuean.

Michael Vlamis (1990) 37.5% Lebanese 25% Greek 25% Serbian 12.5% English.

Jade Hassouné (1991) Lebanese - is queer.

Jake Borelli (1991) - is gay.

Oliver Stark (1991)

Avi Nash (1991) Indo Guyanese / Indian.

Taylor Zakhar Perez (1991) Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and Mexican.

Casey Cott (1992)

RJ Mitte (1992) - has cerebral palsy.

Dylan Llewellyn (1992)

Joe Keery (1992)

John Boyega (1992) Yoruba Nigerian.

Sean Teale (1992) Venezuelan, Spanish, Welsh.

Tyler James Williams (1992) African-American.

Ncuti Gatwa (1992) Rwandan.

Drew Ray Tanner (1992) Chinese, Afro-Jamaican, French-Canadian, possibly other.

Deniz Can Aktaş (1993) Turkish.

Song Kang (1994) Korean.

Shayan Sobhian (1994) Baha'i Iranian / Russian Jewish.

Rafael L. Silva (1994) Brazilian - is gay.

Emmett Preciado (1994) Mexican and White - is trans.

Jordan Fisher (1994) English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Cambodian, Tahitian, African-American, Cherokee, Sioux.

Kofi Siriboe (1994) Ghanaian.

Noah Galvin (1994) Ashkenazi Jewish / Irish, Italian - is gay.

Chance Perdomo (1995) Afro- Dominican and Guatemalan.

Rish Shah (1995) Indian.

Jack Wolfe (1995)

Jan Luis Castellanos (1995) Dominican.

Diggy Simmons (1995) African-American.

Justice Smith (1995) African-American / Italian, French-Canadian - is queer.

Angel Bismark Curiel (1995) Taino, Afro Dominican, Spanish - has asthma and a heart murmur.

Josh Heuston (1996) Sri Lankan.

Alex Aiono (1996) Ngāti Porou and Samoan / English, German, Irish, Danish, smaller amounts of Welsh, Swiss-German, and Scottish.

Román Zaragoza (1996) Akimel O’odham, Mexican, Japanese, and Taiwanese.

Kim Min Jae (1996) Korean.

Tony Revolori (1996) Guatemalan [Spanish, Unspecified Indigenous, possibly other].

Paul Mescal (1996)

Mason Gooding (1996) Afro-Barbadian, African-American / European.

Jameson Blake (1997) Kapampangan Filipino / White.

Tyler Alvarez (1997) Cuban / Puerto Rican - is gay.

Jharrel Jerome (1997) Afro-Dominican.

Charlie Gillespie (1998)

Jay Lycurgo (1998) Jamaican, Sierra Leonean, and British.

Michael Cimino (1999) Puerto Rican [Taíno] / Italian, German, Swiss-German.

Jonathan Daviss (2000) African-American.

Thomas Weatherall (2000) Kamilaroi.

Here you go!

[sethshead]

Members of the Baha'i Faith have long been persecuted in Iran, due to the Islamic prohibition on the emergence of new prophets. Accordingly Baha'is in the religion's homeland were murdered for apostasy. When they moved to Ottoman Syria, they were imprisoned in Ako, where the Baháʼu'lláh died.

The Baha'i experienced a reprieve during the secular nationalistic Pahlavi Era, but have again been subject to repression and execution under the Islamic Republic. In the 1980s, among his very many political victims, the "Butcher of Tehran", the late, lamented (by the UN, at any rate) President Ebrahim Raisi, also turned against innocent Baha'is. They were killed for crimes against Islam. Does this Iranian government sound like a place to turn for those who espouse the cause of human rights?

Yet our activists, academics, and NGO administrators have made a hero of Raisi and his hangman's noose.

[automatismoateo]

I wore a "Women Life Freedom" shirt to campus yesterday and a Muslim girl spat on me. via /r/atheism

I wore a "Women, Life, Freedom" shirt to campus yesterday, and a Muslim girl spat on me. Yes, I filed the attack with my school's office. I live in America. My parents and I escaped the Islamic Republic occupying Iran in 1999. Not only were we Kurds, but my mom was Baha'i. We escaped as religious refugees and ironically, we are all now atheists and have been for years. Yesterday, I wore my shirt for Toomaj Salehi, the Iranian rapper who was just sentenced to be executed by the Islamic Republic. The "Women, Life, Freedom" movement came about in September of 2022 when the IRGC killed Mahsa Jina Amini because of improper hijab wear. Walking on campus yesterday to see the face of Khomeini on signs while many raised the IR flag was terrifying. Never in my life did I imagine walking onto my law school to find my peers supporting the Islamic Republic. I didn't talk to anyone, I didn't engage in anything, and while I walked past the group, one of the hijabi women spat on me. To which her friends pulled her back and it was just an awkward silence as I tried not to cry. Apparently, others saw the situation and also reported her to our dean. A few others fought her and asked her to leave. Not sure what will happen, but just wanted to shed a light on an encounter I never thought I would encounter. I posted this on r/NewIran, but I was hesitant to post it here. I know this topic is sensitive. My only goal is to spread awareness that the Islamic Republic occupying Iran is not a government that should be praised. I beg the atheist community to reject this theocratic, barbaric government. The people of Iran, especially the youth, are entirely against religion specifically Islam. Submitted April 28, 2024 at 02:00AM by Sresidingm (From Reddit https://ift.tt/bAlIKyL)

[swiftsnowmane]

Baha’is are the largest unrecognized religious minority in Iran. They have been the target of harsh, state-backed repression since their religion was established in the 19th century. After the 1979 revolution, Iranian authorities executed or forcibly disappeared hundreds of Baha’is, including their community leaders. Thousands more have lost their jobs and pensions or were forced to leave their homes or country. For the past four decades, the authorities’ serial violations of Baha’is’ rights have continued, directed by the state’s most senior officials and the Islamic Republic’s ideology, which holds extreme animus against adherents of the Baha’i faith. While the intensity of violations against Baha’is has varied over time, the authorities’ persecution of people who are members of this faith community has remained constant, impacting virtually every aspect of Baha’is’ private and public lives.  In recent years, as Iranian authorities have brutally repressed widespread protests demanding fundamental political, economic, and social change in the country, the authorities have also targeted Baha’is. Authorities have raided Baha’i homes, arrested dozens of Baha’i citizens and community leaders, and confiscated property owned by Baha’is. Iranian authorities have intentionally and severely deprived Baha’is of their fundamental rights. Authorities have denied Baha’is’ their rights to freedom of religion and political representation. They have arbitrarily arrested and prosecuted members of the Baha’i community due to their faith. Authorities routinely trample on Baha’is’ rights to education, employment, property, and dignified burial. The Islamic Republic’s repression of Baha’is, particularly after 1979, is enshrined in Iranian law and is official government policy.

Read the full report here.

[keyvanstories]

محاکمه «حاجی‌فیروز» سال «زن زندگی آزادی» در دادگاه قاضی شرع هادی خرسندی This very creative parody about the old concept of Haji Firroz or black face in Iranian culture in celebration of Naw-Ruz,  and new and alternate version of it which closer to the changes and progress made in Iranian culture. The Trian of Haji Firroz is very thought provoking to watch and have a meaningful conversation with friends and family. As a Baha'i I have lived in Iran and abroad. I see how the world at large has been converging towards many of the Baha'i values that absent from the Western world only 50 years ago. I also see the Iranian culture has been gradually but consistently integrating the Baha'i principles into its daily life and values. Baha'i principles of oneness of humanity, equality of the sexes, harmony of science and religion, independent investigation of truth, separation of state and religion, oneness of God, oneness of all religions, education for all as a human right, universal language, and the process of consultation in reaching consensus is now considered as a sign of progress and freedom from the archaic values of the past.

[spokanefavs]

Pete Haug discusses the religious persecution of two Iranian women who practice the Baha'i faith.

"Mahvash Sabet, 69, and Fariba Kamalabadi, 60, were first incarcerated in 2008 and released in 2018. At the time they were part of an informal group of five men and two women who tended to the basic pastoral needs of the Iranian Baha’i community."

[aheavenlylake]

the fuck is wrong with this world

#jewish/israeli complacency in violence against palestinians boils my blood#american/uk/etc complacency in anti indigenous laws/violence/etc boils my blood#i cannot understand why we as humans always fall back on violence against others#WE ARE SO MUCH BETTER THAN THIS BUT WE FIGHT AND KILL ANYWAYS#what are we gonna do - keep killing each other until there's no one left? then what?#fucking iranian/muslim violence against baha'is boils my blood#w h y do we continue to pursue hatred and selfishness (i was gonna leave this in my tags but no, i'm going to stop being a pussy and say what i want and need to say)

we don't have to be perfect, we just have to have the guts to stand up and say "enough is enough"

[whimsicalcotton]

hot take ik but... when will we stop overhyping skinny white boys

[mishpacha]

Just as it was natural to buy sweets and ice cream from Armenian shopkeepers, or fabrics and perfume from Jewish stores, it was also natural for some families to shun the minorities because they were 'unclean.'  The children knocked on their doors, singing 'Armenian, Armenian dog, the sweeper of hell.'  The Jews were not just dirty, they drank innocent children's blood.  Zoroastrians were fire worshipers and infidels, while the Baha'is, a breakaway Islamic sect, were not just heretics but British agents and spies who could and should be killed.  [My] Mother was hardly touched by these matters; despite a vast array of other prejudices, she obeyed the rules of her own universe, where people were judged mainly by the degree to which they acknowledged her mores and fantasies.  Most people seemed to accept their place in the stratified scheme of things, though every once in a while tensions erupted to the surface, until the bloody nature of this hidden discord was fully revealed several decades later, after the Islamic Revolution, in 1979, when the Islamists attacked, jailed, and murdered many Armenians, Jews, and Baha'is and forced restaurants to carry signs on their windows announcing 'religious minority' if their owners were not Muslims.  But we cannot blame everything on the Islamic Republic, because in some ways it simply brought into the open and magnified a preexisting bigotry.

Things I’ve Been Silent About by Azar Nafisi, pgs. 29-30