Slovakian academics tell Iran to free Baha’i educators

18 September 2012

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — More than 80 leading academics are calling upon the Iranian government to end its persecution of Baha’i educators and students.

Slovakia’s former Prime Minister, Professor Iveta Radičová, and a former Education Minister, Professor Ján Pišút, are among the 84 prominent figures to sign an open letter, launched at a press conference here on Monday.

The letter expresses their “displeasure regarding the treatment of Baha’i students and teachers in Iran.”

“These individuals are being punished by the state administration because of their efforts to become educated,” it states.

The letter was drafted in response to the Iranian government’s longtime policy of barring Baha’is from higher education as well as systematic efforts to shut down an informal Baha’i community initiative to educate its young people.

The signatories are calling upon the Iranian authorities to release a number of Baha’i educators who are currently serving four- or five-year jail terms. They also want Baha’i students to be given the same rights to education that Slovakia’s academic institutions grant every student and teacher “regardless of tradition, religion or country of origin.”

The open letter was prepared in cooperation with the president of the Institute for Public Affairs, Dr. Gregorij Mesežnikov. He told yesterday’s press conference that he found it unconscionable for any government to deny rights to an entire group merely because of their belonging to a certain religion.

Welcoming the initiative, Jitka Spillerová of the Slovak Baha’i community said the academics “have sent a message to the Iranian government that they cannot hide the injustices they are committing against their country’s Baha’is and other intellectuals – not even from a public that is so geographically distant.”

In January this year, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Slovakian parliament issued a proclamation describing the Iranian government’s incitement to hatred based on religion and belief as “abhorrent.” It also demanded an end to Iran’s “spiralling efforts to destroy the Iranian Baha’i community.

A dark picture of religious freedom in Iran

WASHINGTON, D.C., United States — In a report released Monday, the United States painted a dark picture of religious freedom in Iran, documenting how the government there oppresses the followers of virtually every religious minority in the country, restricting their religious activities, limiting their economic prospects, and imprisoning them when they tell others about their beliefs.

“Government rhetoric and actions created a threatening atmosphere for nearly all non-Shia religious groups, most notably for Baha’is, as well as for Sufi Muslims, evangelical Christians, Jews, and Shia groups that did not share the government’s official religious views,” said the 2011 annual US Department of State’s report on International Religious Freedom in its section on Iran.

“Baha’i and Christian groups reported arbitrary arrests, prolonged detentions, and confiscation of property. During the year, government-controlled broadcast and print media intensified negative campaigns against religious minorities, particularly Baha’is.

“All religious minorities suffered varying degrees of officially sanctioned discrimination, particularly in the areas of employment, education, and housing. Baha’is continued to experience expulsions from, or denial of admission to, universities,” the report said.

Issued annually since 2001, the report analyzes the status of religious freedom around the world, examining progress or regression in every nation outside the US.

The report gave special attention this year to the impact of political and demographic transitions on religious minorities, the effects of conflict on religious freedom, and “the rising tide of anti-Semitism.”

“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion,” said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, introducing the report at a press conference at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“This right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance,” said Secretary Clinton.

Suzan Johnson Cook, the US Ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom, said that freedom of religion is not just an American right but the right of all people.

“It goes hand in hand with freedom of expression, freedom of speech and assembly, and when religious freedom is restricted, all these rights are at risk,” said Ambassador Cook. “And for this reason, religious freedom is often the bellwether for other human rights. It’s the canary in the coalmine.”

The section on Iran was especially critical, stating that the “government’s respect for and protection of the right to religious freedom continued to deteriorate.”

“The legal system fosters religious abuse and discrimination,” said the report, noting that the “constitution and other laws and policies severely restrict freedom of religion.”

The report sought to document such abuse, and it found that virtually all religious groups outside the Shia Muslim majority faced discrimination.

“Harassment and arrests of Sufis also continued during the year,” said the report, noting that some 60 Sufis had been arrested in September after confrontations with security forces.

Christians also faced continuing discrimination. The government last year confiscated some 6,500 Christian Bibles, the report said, and it continued to imprison Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who has been sentenced to death for apostasy.

“Zoroastrians also reported detentions and harassment,” the report said, describing the October arrest of Yashin Jamshidi, a Zoroastrian in Karaj.

Situation of Baha’is highlighted

The situation of Iran’s 300,000-member Baha’i community was highlighted prominently throughout the report. Among other things, the report noted that Baha’is are precluded from enrollment in state-run universities, banned from the social pension system, and prohibited from “officially assembling or maintaining administrative institutions.”

The report also stated clearly that Baha’is are persecuted because of the religious beliefs.

“The government arbitrarily arrested Baha’is and charged them with violating Islamic penal code articles 500 and 698, relating to activities against the state and spreading falsehoods, respectively,” said the report, noting that 95 Baha’is were imprisoned and 416 had active cases in the judicial system at the end of 2011.

“Often the charges were not dropped upon release, and those with charges pending against them reportedly feared arrest at any time. Most were released only after paying a large fine or posting high bail. For some, bail was in the form of deeds of property; others gained their release in exchange for personal guarantees from a “guardian” that the offender would appear in court, or the granting of a work license.

“Government officials reportedly offered Baha’is relief from mistreatment in exchange for recanting their religious affiliation, and if incarcerated, made recanting their religious affiliation a precondition for release,” said the report.

The report noted that “Baha’i graveyards in a number of cities were desecrated by unspecified actors, and the government did not seek to identify or punish the perpetrators.”

It also said Baha’is and their properties had been the subject of arson attacks. “In all cases, police said nothing could be done to find the perpetrators,” said the report.

Baha’is also “experienced an escalation of personal harassment,” the report said, “including receiving threatening notes, compact discs, text messages, and tracts.”

The report also discussed actions by the State Department last year in support of Iranian Baha’is, noting that its spokespersons had called “unprecedented” the re-imposition of a long, 20-year prison sentence for seven imprisoned national Baha’i leaders, and that they had also last year criticized “the lack of due process” in that sentencing, saying it was a violation of Iran’s commitments under international law.

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Stephen R. Friberg

Experimental physicist

It wasn’t long ago that a lot of people, especially people on college campuses, viewed religion as a musty artifact from the Bronze Age. Naturally, they thought of it as inherently unscientific. Times have changed, and a new generation has discovered how strongly science and religion are intertwined. But old views persist — they often do — and many people still hold science and religion to be in conflict, so it can come as a shock to learn that the youngest of the world religions, the Bahá’í Faith, founded in 1844, holds the agreement of science and religion as a core principle. And Bahá’ís don’t see the agreement of science and religion as a theological debate but a plan of action.

Two Wings of One Bird

The view that science and religion agree has a distinguished heritage. It prevailed in Athens during the axial age, in Islam at its peak, and in Europe during the scientific revolution. Modern society is likely to soon embrace it again, in no small part because it is increasingly clear that secularism and science by themselves cannot answer the challenges of a global society.

The Bahá’í view is that true science and true religion are completely compatible:

Any religious belief which is not conformable with scientific proof and investigation is superstition, for true science is reason and reality, and religion is essentially reality and pure reason; therefore, the two must correspond… If we say religion is opposed to science, we lack knowledge of either true science or true religion, for both are founded upon the premises and conclusions of reason, and both must bear its test. (Excerpt from a 1912 talk given by `Abdu’l-Bahá, son of the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, while visiting America)

Science and religion are the two wings of one bird. Both must be equally strong for the bird to fly: “Religion and science are the two wings upon which man’s intelligence can soar into the heights, with which the human soul can progress. It is not possible to fly with one wing alone!” (`Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, pg. 143).

Weakening, sidelining, ridiculing, or disparaging science or religion in favor of the other has very real consequences: “Should a man try to fly with the wing of religion alone he would quickly fall into the quagmire of superstition, whilst on the other hand, with the wing of science alone he would also make no progress, but fall into the despairing slough of materialism” (`Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, pg. 143).

Science is essential if we are to understand and work with reality. But by itself it is not enough, nor does it tell the whole story. The needed fuller understanding requires not only rational methods, facts, and scientific concepts but benevolence, intuition, moral values, spiritual perception, and goals. It is in this light that Bahá’ís believe that “faith in God and confidence in social progress are in every sense reconcilable; that science and religion are the two inseparable, reciprocal systems of knowledge impelling the advancement of civilization” (from a November 2003 letter written by the Universal House of Justice, the international governing body of the Bahá’í Faith).

Four Ways for Science and Religion to Work Together

What are some of the ways that science and religion can work together? Below, we describe four possible ways inspired by the Bahá’í teachings of the unity of science and religion:

1. Reduce or eliminate conflicts over evolution

1. Develop moral and ethical principles for global progress

1. Provide universal education in scientific literacy

1. Renew and transform religion

1. Reduce or Eliminate Conflicts Over Evolution

The United States is torn apart by rancor and a distrust of science and secularism caused by conflicts over evolution. The distrust is growing and now spreading to the rest of the world. Not only does it block progress toward addressing serious environmental problems (global warming and the need for a sustainable energy policy, for example), but it drives much of the deep-seated polarization underlying the current paralysis in public discourse.

Clearly, the view that religion overrides science is part of the problem. As the Bahá’í writings put it:

Between scientists and the followers of religion there has always been controversy and strife for the reason that the latter have proclaimed religion superior in authority to science and considered scientific announcement opposed to the teachings of religion… 

…If religious belief and doctrine is at variance with reason, it proceeds from the limited mind of man and not from God… (From a talk given by `Abdu’l-Bahá July 14, 1912 in New York)

But also consider the other side of the story. Modern secularism (enlightenment thought, individualism, and materialism) has frequently deployed interpretations of evolution as a creation narrative, using it both to bash religion and to buttress all sorts of social movements, some distinctly unsavory (e.g., eugenics, “scientific” European racism, and communism). The resulting conflicts with religion are deep-seated, continuing, politically exploitable, and the major source of the growing distrust.

Much can be done to eliminate these conflicts over evolution and the havoc and destruction they create. From the secular side, a first step would be to start to recognize that there is indeed a problem, that it is not just ignorance or bad behavior on the part of the religious. A second step would be to own up to the unsavory legacies of 19th-century secularism. This, and reciprocal steps from the religious side, would go a long way toward healing the wounds of this distrust. (Common Ground explores this in posts like “Your Faith Is a Joke” by Maya Bohnhoff.)

2. Develop Moral and Ethical Principles for Global Progress

Solutions to the world’s mounting problems require the willingness of large numbers of people to act together. Clear moral and ethical principles are needed, principles that can be embraced by large numbers of people. And it requires the sustained willingness of those large numbers of people to act together for long times. In short, it requires religion, humanity’s age-old way of acting on moral and ethical values in a sustainable way.

Further, it is likely that only religion can generate the willingness to act together for the time needed to create a global society. Historically, it is religion that has created the moral commitment — and the loyalties that transcend tribal, regional, ethnic and linguistic affiliations — that have made large-scale social progress possible.

The Bahá’í International Community puts it this way: “It is — or by now should be — a truism that, in every sphere of human activity and at every level, the insights and skills that represent scientific accomplishment must look to the force of spiritual commitment and moral principle to ensure their appropriate application” (The Prosperity of Humankind, section IV).

Science and religion, working together, offer extraordinary potential as a mechanism for enabling us to address and solve our problems. Those preaching — and inciting — continued conflict between science and religion should reconsider their stance. They are blocking progress.

3. Provide Universal Education in Scientific Literacy

Science is not only for rich, industrialized societies with advanced militaries, high-tech industries, and state-of-the-art medical infrastructures. It is also for farmers, fishermen, villagers, craftsmen, town dwellers, and indigenous people. The Bahá’íProsperity of Humankind statement puts it this way: “Instruments of social and economic change so powerful must cease to be the patrimony of advantaged segments of society, and must be so organized as to permit people everywhere to participate in such activity on the basis of capacity.”

Science for the few tilts the playing field away from most of the peoples of the earth. At best, they receive trickle-down benefits from the rich and the powerful. At worst, they are forced from their homes and lands when science, technological change, or market forces make their land exploitable.

Universal scientific literacy, similar to universal reading and writing literacy, is the direction we must head if we are to be true to the promise of science. Religion is needed to make scientific literacy universal.

4. Renew and Transform Religion

For religion to play the roles suggested in the paragraphs above, it must advance and develop. For this to happen, according to the Bahá’í teachings, religion must be brought into harmony with science. The results will be spectacular:

When religion, shorn of its superstitions, traditions, and unintelligent dogmas, shows its conformity with science, then will there be a great unifying, cleansing force in the world which will sweep before it all wars, disagreements, discords and struggles — and then will mankind be united in the power of the Love of God.(Bahá’u'lláh and the New Era, pg. 10)

One way to see this starting to happen is to look at the Bahá’í experience with a culture of learning that includes a continuous process of consultation, action, and reflection, being carried out in Bahá’í communities around the world. This process, which mirrors the process of generating and testing hypotheses in science, allows individuals, families, communities, and other organizations to continually learn and grow. There is no clergy or priesthood in the Bahá’í Faith, so the responsibilities – andthe benefits — of this accrue to everybody.

When this process is applied to the Creative Word — the revealed teachings of the divine religions — it makes possible powerful ways to develop and test new understandings of those teachings, not by sectarian conflict but by application and evaluation. When such means of testing and improving understanding is taken as a fundamental part of religion, then progress, and the fruits of that progress, can continue indefinitely.

Rio+20: “Hope and optimism” for unified action

21 June 2012

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — World leaders seeking to promote sustainable development should embrace the principle “that each one of us enters the world as a trust of the whole and, in turn, bears a measure of responsibility for the welfare of all.”

This concept is among several being explored by the Baha’i International Community (BIC) in its participation at Rio+20 – the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development – which ends here tomorrow.

In its statement to the Conference, the BIC says the idea of a “world-encompassing trusteeship” challenges the “ethical basis of loyalties that do not extend beyond the nation state.”

“As long as one group of nations perceives its interests in opposition to another, progress will be limited and short-lived,” says the statement.

Among the other areas being highlighted by the BIC are the need for a principle-based approach to collective decision-making and the importance of addressing both extremes of the poverty-wealth spectrum.

Some 130 heads of state and government, along with more than 50,000 representatives of international agencies, civil society, and other groups, have attended the Conference, which has aimed to assess progress on sustainable development since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.

Two major themes – building a green economy and creating a better institutional framework – have been discussed in numerous forums here over the last few weeks and were addressed in the BIC statement.

Thirteen BIC delegates have attended Rio+20, representing a diversity of national backgrounds. “The common thread in our contributions has been the betterment of humanity,” said BIC delegate Daniel Perell. “We have sought to share ideas on such themes as trusteeship and human oneness – all with the overall goal of helping to create a just, global civilization that is sustainable in the long term.”

In addition to attending the main Conference, Baha’is also organized, co-sponsored, or participated in a wide range of side events and parallel conferences. These included:

– A panel discussion on the “Elimination of Extremes of Wealth and Poverty in a Green Economy Context” which explored the social, economic and moral dimensions of growing income inequality.

– Participation in the “Youth Blast” – a parallel UN conference for young people, held 7-12 June. The BIC sponsored an interactive workshop on “trusteeship in the context of sustainable development.”

– The re-dedication of a peace monument, built in 1992 by the BIC and the Baha’i community of Brazil as a contribution to the Earth Summit. The hour-glass shaped sculpture contains soil from nearly 150 countries. The re-dedication was attended by Sha Zukang – UN Secretary-General for Rio+20 – and Eduardo Paes, mayor of Rio.

– Assistance with the Rio People’s Summit, the parallel civil society conference. Brazilian Baha’is were involved in organizing workshops on “spiritual principles for development” and the “social role of religions.”

“We are challenged here at Rio+20 to look beyond national self-interest and loyalties, and to be concerned with the welfare of the whole,” said Daniella Hiche, the Brazilian Baha’i community’s human rights officer, at a press conference held at the Rio+20 headquarters.

BIC delegate May Akale, summing up the whole event, noted: “The challenges are complex, humanity’s expectations are high, and the disappointments at the pace of progress can be deep.”

“But what is most obvious is that we are evolving towards unified action. Much remains to be done, but the possibilities for relationships to develop and advance implementation on what has been agreed upon in Rio are endless. And that is the source of great hope and optimism.”

Factory closures highlight economic strangulation of Iran’s Baha’is

14 June 2012

GENEVA — A recent intensification of attacks on Baha’i-owned businesses in Iran further demonstrates the Iranian authorities’ determination to suffocate the economic prospects of the Baha’is of that country, solely on account of their religious beliefs.

The Baha’i International Community has learned that on 28 May, Intelligence Ministry agents raided and sealed two factories, with full or partial Baha’i ownership, in the central northern city of Semnan. One of the factories – which manufactured vertical blinds – employed 51 staff, 36 of whom were not Baha’is. The other, a lens grinding factory, had two Baha’i and six other employees.

“These factory closures not only illustrate the bitter animosity that the Iranian authorities hold towards Baha’is,” said Diane Ala’i, representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations in Geneva. “They also show that, in this ongoing effort to strangle the Baha’is economically, the authorities are perfectly happy to cause other workers – including Shia Muslims – to face economic hardship as well.”

In late 2008, Semnan’s Chamber of Commerce – along with 39 member trade unions – decided to stop issuing business licenses and managerial permits to Baha’is, and to cease renewing current licenses. Existing business licenses and permits for Baha’is were revoked and confiscated. Since that time, at least 15 Baha’i-owned shops and manufacturing businesses in the city have been sealed up depriving dozens of families of an income. Banks have refused to extend loans to Baha’is; Baha’i farmers have been harassed; and citizens have been urged not to patronize Baha’i-owned businesses.

The information has come to light as the annual conference of the International Labor Organization (ILO) concludes in Geneva. The ILO is the principal intergovernmental body promoting and protecting rights to employment and vocational education.

On several occasions in recent years, the ILO has called on the Iranian government to end its persecution of Baha’is. In 2010, for example, its Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations strongly urged the Iranian government “to take decisive action to combat discrimination and stereotypical attitudes, through actively promoting respect and tolerance” for Baha’is and “to ensure that authorities and the public were informed that discrimination against religious minorities, in particular the Baha’i would not be tolerated.”

“Regrettably the Iranian authorities show no signs of paying attention to such serious and urgent appeals from the ILO and other international organizations,” said Ms. Ala’i.

The “Baha’i Question”

The recent attacks in Semnan are a graphic example of the implementation of various measures outlined in a 1991 Iranian government memorandum to deal with the so-called “Baha’i Question.” The memorandum – approved by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei – called for the progress and development of Baha’is to be blocked.

Furthermore, the arbitrary arrest, interrogation and imprisonment of Baha’is has intensified in Semnan. Homes and properties – including the Baha’i cemetery – have been fire-bombed, vandalized and covered with hate graffiti. Similar attacks have occurred against Baha’is and their properties throughout Iran.

“The situation in this one city offers a case study of how authorities are seeking to suppress and block the development of Baha’is to the maximum degree possible,” said Ms. Ala’i.

“Official and semi-official elements – including the police, the courts, local officials, and the clergy – are all being coordinated to starve out a peaceful minority community,” she said.