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The Christian Century, Volume 97, Number 26, August 13-20,
1980
[page 786]
Religious Repression
in Khomeini's Iran
Whether one sees in Iran a nation on the brink of
disintegration, a fascist revolution, or a healthy struggle toward
fulfillment, the present situation holds out little hope for religious
minorities.
LINDA MARIE DELLOFF
From the [Iranian revolutionary] movement's point of view,
minorities ought to have no fears. The model is 'Ali [Muhammad's
successor, Shi'ite Islam]. 'Ali dealt justly with minorities. He rebuked
'Umar for adjudicating a case against a Jew just because the other party
was a Muslim, and he rebuked 'Umar for being discourteous to a Jew in
court. A few of the revolutionaries point out that the Jews experienced
a period of intellectual glory in Muslim Spain and were better off there
than under Christianity. The case might be stronger if they could also
claim that minorities were better off under Islam than under the secular
modern West. That is a challenge for the revolution to live up
to.
THUS WRITES Michael M. Fischer in a just-released book, Iran: From
Religious Dispute to Revolution (Harvard University Press, $17.50).
But events have moved quickly in the Iranian revolution, and books are
published some months after they are written. For the time being, at
least, it seems dramatically and disturbingly clear that the revolution
has failed to meet the challenge of religious toleration. Whether that
challenge has even been engaged, and by whom, is questionable. In Iran,
a country that is 98 per cent Muslim and dominated by the Shi'ite sect
of that faith, religious repression has proliferated recently, affecting
three general groups: (1) faiths that are supposed to be "protected"
according to tradition and the constitution, (2) some members of the
majority religion itself, and (3) some non-Muslims who are denied any
sort of "protected" status or acceptance.
Historically, Jews and Christians have been designated as "protected
subjects" in Iran; they are recognized as sharing a common lineage with
Islam, which venerates the Bible as one of its sources (followers of the
other two faiths are called "People of the Book") and which acknowledges
a line of prophets including Moses and Jesus, culminating in Muhammad.
The Koran advocates tolerance for these related religions, and the new
Islamic constitution provides for freedom to follow them, as well as the
country's ancient faith, Zoroastrianism - as long as worship is
conducted "within the law." This stricture opens the minority groups to
arbitrary regulation by the revolutionary authorities, and seems to be
functioning as a catch-all rationalization for recent outbreaks of
severe persecution of Jews and Christians, and of other religious bodies
as well.
Mounting Persecution of Jews
Under the revolution, Jews have experienced intensifying hostility; they
are seen to break the law by "supporting Zionism" - a charge stemming
primarily from Israel's cooperation with the former shah, much of which
was based on purchases of Iranian oil. Also operative is the early and
strong support for the Iranian revolution by Israel's arch-rival, the
Palestine Liberation Organisation.
On June 5 of this year, Albert Danielpour, a leader of the small Iranian
Jewish community (said now to number approximately 50,000, down from
80,000 at the beginning of the revolution), was executed in Hamadan,
accused of having "Zionist connections," of being a spy for the CIA and
for Israel, and of "cooperating in establishing the state of Israel."
Arrested in January, Danielpour had elicited assurances from Ayatollah
Khomeini that he would not be executed. Nevertheless, after a brief
night trial by another ayatollah - at which Danielpour denied all
charges - he was summarily killed and his businesses were seized. (In
some of his writings Khomeini has condemned Jews, Christians and
Baha'is.) The American Jewish Congress called the execution an
"appalling act" that "causes us deep concern for the fate of the several
dozen other Jews currently held by Iranian authorities on various
contrived and unfounded charges."
In another recent case, four members of a Jewish family were charged
with, among other crimes, possessing Israeli coins and having provided
accommodations for Israeli pilots. According to the New York
Times, the four were reportedly given sentences of up to 15 years.
Their trial prompted a group of young Jewish intellectuals - all of whom
identified themselves as committed supporters of the revolution - to
write an open letter to President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr charging that
discrimination against
Ms. Delloff is an associate editor of the
Century.
[page 787]
minorities, "especially against Jews, is being strongly felt."
Earlier in the revolution, Jews had made other explicit expressions if
solidarity with the movement's goals; their participation included
significant monetary contributions. Nonetheless, in what Harvard
anthropologist Fischer calls "an extraordinary warning to the Jewish
community," a prominent businessman and Jewish leader, Habib Elghanian,
was executed by a revolutionary court on May 9, 1979, for the crime of
"contact with Israel and Zionism." Two months later, reports Fischer, a
Jewish businessman was assassinated in Isfahan, allegedly in retaliation
for Israeli raids on Lebanon.
Since that time persecution of Jews has increased steadily. An Iranian
businessman who lives in New York and who keeps in close touch with his
country told a New York Times reporter that not long ago a paper
was placed under the doors of Jewish homes and businesses in Iran.
Addressed to "the Jews of Iran," it described them as "blood-sucking
people" and warned them to "leave this land as soon as possible;
otherwise, every Jew, young and old, will be massacred and your wealth
will be looted." Though many Iranian Jews are indeed well-to-do, George
E. Gruen of the American Jewish Committee has stated that some of the
Jews currently imprisoned are not wealthy, nor are they community
leaders.
In a conversation with me following the publication of his book,
anthropologist Fischer, who conducted research in Iran for a number of
years, noted that some Iranians, if pressed, will make a distinction
between Judaism and Zionism. If not pressed, they won't. Right now it
seems that no one other than the Iranian Jews and American Jewish
organizations is doing any pressing.
The Situation of the Christian Minority
And what of Christians - another of the supposedly protected religious
minorities? The largest Christian groups in Iran are the Armenians, who
number some 270,000, and the Assyrians (or Nestorians), of whom there
are approximately 32,000. Most of these Christians have demonstrated
their loyalty to the revolution. As Fischer notes in his book, during
'Ashura (a time of mourning for a Shi'ite saint), a Christian contingent
marched, chanting "Din-i ma mashihi'st" ("Our religion is Christianity")
and "Rahbar-i ma Khumeyni'st" ("Our leader is Khomeini").
During the height of the revolution, the Armenian archbishop announced
that public religious festivities would be suspended in solidarity with
the movement. But despite such steps there have been sporadic outbreaks
of violence, and the recent killings of other Christians, Fischer told
me, are causing the Assyrians and Armenians to "hold tight," awaiting
further developments.
The most intense persecution of Christians has been directed against the
very small group of Anglicans in the country. In February, Aristo Sayeh,
the Anglican vicar in Shiraz, was found with his throat slit. Earlier,
Muslim authorities had seized two Anglican hospitals, six schools and a
farm for blind children in Isfahan. They have continually intimidated
Anglican churchmen to relinquish what they describe as a missing hoard
of money.
Last October, gunmen attacked Anglican Bishop Hassan Barnaba
Dehquani-Tafti and his wife while they slept. Though bullets lodged in
the pillow near the bishop's head, he was not hit; however, his wife was
wounded in the arm. The two fled the country, but the bishop's English
secretary, Jean Waddell, remained in Iran and on May 1 was the victim of
a home invasion by a team of gunmen who were apparently looking for
another Anglican clergyman. They first attempted to strangle the woman,
then fired two shots into her chest (at last report she remained in
serious condition). A week later the bishop's 24-year-old son, Bahram,
was gunned down on a Tehran street. The bishop, now in seclusion in
Britain, has attributed all these attacks to "fanatics supported by some
religious leaders."
Anglicanism has existed in Iran for 150 years, but according to
Time, the 1,000 native believers are associated with British
influence, giving rise to suspicion that they are spies for the West.
Further, the Anglicans (including Bishop Dehquani-Tafti) are converts
from Islam, making them anathema in this period of Iranian
Islamicization.
Other Christians represented in Iran in tiny numbers include Greek
Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and a smattering of various Protestant
groups. Islamic revolutionary guards recently carried out several raids
on the Andisheh school in Tehran, operated by the Salesian sisters of
St. John Bosco and by Salesian priests, who were accused of spying and
of having contact with Israel. Of the some 40,000 Catholics in Iran,
many are of the Catholic Chaldean rite; their spiritual leader is
Archbishop Youhannan Semaan Issayi, from whom all correspondence ceased
"two weeks ago," according to a July 25 statement by a worried
spokesperson in the U.S.
Zoroastrians and others
In his book, Michael Fischer notes that in the winter of 1978, handbills
and wall graffiti called for the death not only of Jews, Assyrians and
Armenians but also of adherents of the country's other protected faith,
Zoroastrianism, the religion of ancient Persia until the Muslim invasion
of 636 A.D., which precipitated centuries of persecution of the group.
(There are now fewer than 50,000 Zoroastrians in Iran.) Fischer records
that after the fall of the former shah, some guerrillas entered the main
Zoroastrian house of worship, removed the portrait of the Prophet
Zoroaster, and replaced it with one of Khomeini.
[page 788]
George Braswell, Jr. (see his article on Iran in the July 16-23
Century), who worked in Iran for a lengthy period, remarked in an
interview that just before the revolution he had had good contacts with
the Zoroastrians, who were then excited about building a new temple. But
now, says Braswell, "all that has changed." Fischer reports that
according to information received since the completion of his book, the
Zoroastrians are "scared and sitting tight."
Even some Iranian Muslims have expressed fears. According to Fischer's
book, a leader of the Shaykhi sect (part of Shi'ism but having roots in
common with Baha'ism and Bábism, minority faiths) was
assassinated in Kirman in December 1979. Members of another Shi'ite
branch, the Ismailis, have also been anxious. According to Fischer,
their leaders were involved in the revolution, but many
villager-followers (like numerous other Muslim villagers) remained
faithful to the shah, who had protected them against the excesses of the
mullahs. Or in many cases the villagers simply were bewildered by the
events of the revolution and did not voice support.
But at least these groups are Shi'ite, members of the dominant state
religion. Sunni Muslims, who are the majority in all other Muslim states
except Iraq, are a minority in Iran. The Iranian Sunnis most well known
to the West are the Kurds, who warred against Ayatollah Khomeini's
regime in its early days (supporting the revolution yet desiring
autonomy for themselves) but who seem to have been at least temporarily
subdued. Fischer makes the observation that the Kurds
worried that Khomeyni always spoke of Iran as a
Shi'ite state, never acknowledging that there were Sunnis as well; and
they spoke bitterly of past humiliations when they had gone to Tehran or
to other Shi'ite parts of Iran and were caught, for instance, performing
the namaz [prayer] differently.
Suppression of the Baha'i Sect
Of all the religious minorities in Iran, one stands out as being the
most subject to continual harassment: Baha'ism, which, unlike other
minorities, has no "protected" status. In contrast with every other
persecuted faith, Baha'ism is regarded by Muslims as a heresy - a
particularly galling one that has prompted more than a century of
repression against the group.
In 1844 a young merchant of Shiraz, who came to be known as the
Báb, founded a new faith which rejected the literal
interpretation of the Koran and which forecast the coming of the
Promised One, in whom all Shi'ite Muslims believe. The Báb was
accused of heresy, imprisoned and finally executed, as were 20,000 of
his followers. Then 13 years after the death of the Báb, one of
his disciples claimed to be the Promised One, and was so hailed by the
Báb's worshipers. This disciple was called Baha'u'llah and his
followers Baha'is. Baha'u'llah was kept in confinement and exile for 40
years, and in 1868 he was banished by the Ottoman emperor to the Holy
Land; he died near Akka in 1892. Because of these and other events
important to the faith, Baha'is holiest shrines are located in Israel
(its world headquarters is in Haifa). The Muslims do not believe that
Baha'u'llah was the Promised One, whom they still await, and for them
the Baha'is' claim is a constant irritant.
Because Baha'is have been oppressed in Iran from the outset, the present
situation, according to one knowledgeable source, simple provides a new
pretext for what he calls the worst outbreak of persecution since the
beginning of the faith. The conditions are seen to be even worse than
the bloody riots of 1955, which occurred during the Muslim holy month of
Ramadan when passions, especially of the clergy, run very high.
In May of that year, the Iranian minister of the interior issued orders
for the suppression of the Baha'i sect, which then had 700,000 followers
in the country (it now claims fewer than 500,000). This official decree
followed riots in which Muslims looted the homes and temples of Baha'is
and drove them from their communities. The violence also included arson,
rape, desecration of graves and mutilation of exhumed bodies. Religious
leaders came on the radio to whip up hysteria, and many newspapers
around the globe carried a picture of the Muslim mullah Falsafi wielding
a pickax in order to begin the destruction of the dome of the Baha'is'
spiritual center. But when the international Baha'i organization
appealed to the United Nations, Iranian officials maintained that there
were no Baha'is in Iran.
Now as the Islamicization of the nation has intensified under the
revolution, persecution of Baha'is is pervasive. In September of 1979,
mobs destroyed the holiest Baha'i shrine in Iran, the House of the
[page 789]
Báb. Thousands of Baha'is have been turned out of their homes,
have lost their jobs and had their properties confiscated. Their schools
and other centers have been taken over, along with their Tehran
headquarters. Their executive officer (they have no clergy) has been
kidnapped, and his whereabouts is unknown. On July 15 the New York
Times reported that two Baha'is were put to death in the
north-western city of Tabriz. Charges against them included "running the
Baha'is' center" in that city.
The men were also accused of two other charges which have plagued the
Baha'is for many years. One was "aiding Israel," a claim which could
conveniently be brought against any Baha'i because the world center of
the faith is in Haifa. The other charge was "immorality," specifically
in this case "spreading prostitution." According to one source, this
type of accusation has a long history which he thinks goes back to a
very early incident in the development of the faith. One of the Baha'is'
principles is complete equality of the sexes (along with such other
tenets as universal compulsory education, advocacy of a universal
language and a universal religion). During a former period, one
outstanding Baha'i was a woman who had been educated in secret because
of prevailing Muslim strictures against emancipation of women. At a time
of many conversions to the faith, she was so joyful that she pulled the
veil from her face - such a traumatic event for some of the men present
that they slit their throats. Since that time, the Shi'ites have added
immorality to other charges against the Baha'is.
Some developments reminiscent of 1955 have occurred recently. The June
24 edition of Le Monde related that a prominent Muslim clergyman,
Ayatollah Sadoughi, had instructed a crowd in Yazd to "hunt down" the
Baha'is and "deliver them to the revolutionary courts." His
pronouncement was reproduced in the official news organ Inguilab
Islami, giving it, according to Le Monde, "dangerous
publicity." The Iranian newspaper Etelaat on June 22 published an
official communiqué calling for the dismissal of all employees
confessing to be Baha'is (there are reportedly efforts under way to
terrorize Baha'is into converting into Islam). In its July 8 issue,
Le Monde carried another story titled "The Repression
Intensifies," which reported trials of four Baha'is on charges of being
Israeli spies, plotting against the state religion, participating in
Baha'i conferences, and engaging in immorality.
Frequently the Muslims refuse even to recognize Baha'ism as a religious
faith (thus denying legality to Baha'i marriages), labeling it instead a
political group - though in descriptions of their beliefs, the Baha'is
consider themselves completely nonpolitical; theoretically no Baha'i is
allowed to participate in partisan politics or to accept any political
post. But their policy of compulsory education has made them an upwardly
mobile group in Iran; many of their number gained high government jobs
under the shah, who may have particularly trusted them, knowing that
they were not influenced by his enemies, the Muslim mullahs. These
conditions have further stigmatized the Baha'is in the eyes of the
revolution. Ironically, Iran, as its country of origin, holds a special
place in the writings of Baha'ism and is dear to the Baha'i faithful
worldwide.
'Let All Religious People Pray'
No one anywhere knows quite what to expect next in Iran nor what, if
any, steps can be taken by outsiders to ease the situation. Many around
the world feel that it is best to remain quiet, keep hands off and hope
that the difficulties will eventually resolve themselves. Not sharing
the "hands off" attitude was Ramsey Clark's American delegation which
visited Iran in June, though the members went with no expressed
intentions concerning the country's religious circumstances. In fact it
seems that the delegation was scarcely aware of the religious repression
there. In an interview with Religious News Service, delegation member
Paul M. Washington, rector of the Episcopal Church of the Advocate in
Philadelphia, was asked whether he discussed with the Iranians the
"extensively reported persecution of the tiny Episcopal Church in Iran."
Replied Washington: "I must confess I haven't heard about it. It went
completely out of my mind when I was there." When reminded of the events
by the interviewer, Washington said: "I have some faint recollection of
that now. I think we all realized that there are many groups with many
different political postures."
Upon the delegation's return from Iran, Ramsey Clark discussed the trip
in the Nation, advocating that we "give thanks that throughout
all the turbulence in Iran during the seventeen months since the Shah's
last Prime Minister left and in a period when Americans have been
assassinated, murdered and
[page 790]
abused in many countries, not a single American has been killed or
injured in Iran by Iranians." But Clark did not mention the dead
Iranians, nor did he suggest that we give thanks that more of them have
not been killed. He ends his article with this call:
Let all religious people pray humbly to their God
throughout our nation that no harm will befall our hostages, that they
will be reunited with their loved ones soon, that the Iranian people
will find a new fulfillment of their own choice, freely and
independently.... If fifty million Americans gave such a prayer during
the coming Sabbath days, the Iranians, a deeply religious people, would
respond generously.
Toward whom? one is tempted to ask.
A religious leader who asked not to be identified because of harm that
might come to his fellows in Iran was deeply disturbed over the Clark
group's trip, commenting that if the American religionists had had any
understanding of the religious situation in Iran, they would never have
gone. He felt that the motives of the delegation were not malign, but
that its members lacked awareness and were generally uninformed. By
their visit, he remarked, they lent legitimacy to a regime that is
allowing members of his faith and of other minorities to be severely
persecuted.
Clark and others may be attempting so intensely - and sincerely - to
understand the Iranian revolution and to cross-culturize their stance
toward the world that they have lost sight of certain values that ought
to transcend cultural variations. It does not seem that Iran's
revolution is one in which a certain number necessarily get stepped on
because they just happen to be in the way; rather the repression seems
to have much deeper roots and perhaps is actually part of the
revolutionary ideology itself.
Clark's statements in the Nation suggest that he thinks that if
we just pray hard enough, the Iranians will let our hostages go and,
apparently, do other good things as well. He seems to think that the
problems arise simply out of mutual misunderstanding, the fault for
which lies mostly with the West. He is right that we misunderstand the
Iranians, but it is not the simple resolution of a misunderstanding that
would seem to be in question with regard to religious repression; it is
more the way the present leaders in Iran see their world now and as they
want it ideally to be.
Eradication of the 'Evolutionary'
Fergus M. Bordewich, an American journalist who used to live in Iran and
who edited an English-language newspaper there, thinks the Western
misunderstanding of the revolution (deriving from the sometimes willful
misunderstanding by the Western press) exists at the most basic level.
In the July issue of Harper's he argues that
the revolutionary leaders have methodically been
working to restructure Iranian society, but even the most careful
readers of the American press would be hard put to say just what it is
the ayatollahs have in mind. That is unfortunate, because the ayatollahs
appear to be leading one of the most comprehensively fascist movements
the world has seen in thirty-five years.
Drawing his definition of fascism from John Weiss's The Fascist
Tradition, Bordewich writes that it is "the effort of entrenched
conservative groups to save their way of life, privileges, and class
values from destruction by industrialization, urbanization, and
socialist or liberal social policies." In other words, one may
extrapolate, anything "evolutionary" - whether of an economic, a social
or a religious nature - is to be eradicated.
Bordewich does not discuss religious persecution per se except to
suggest that what is seen by some to be anti-Semitism is actually
political in nature: "The ayatollahs have given their cachet to a
different kind of racism by translating the notion of 'spiritual purity'
onto the political plane."
Whether the persecution of religious groups in Iran rests in what is
ultimately a political goal, or in a religious tendency toward
self-purification by weeding out those who may be seen as polluters, or
in some other set of factors, the results are the same: Albert
Danielpour, Bahram Dehquani-Tafti and others lie dead, while their
fellow believers fear the same fate.
I asked anthropologist Fischer what he thinks about the future, now that
some time has passed since he wrote of the religious-toleration
challenge to the revolution. He replied that it depends on which
elements of the movement win out - the progressive or the conservative.
But whether one sees in Iran a nation on the brink of complete internal
disruption and disintegration, as many do, or whether one thinks that
view is mistaken and sees instead a fascist revolution in steady though
halting development, or whether one sees a healthy struggle toward "new
fulfillment of their own," as Ramsey Clark does, the present situation
holds out little hope for Iran's religious minorities.
Copyright ©1980, The Christian Century
Page last evised 091999
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