CultNEWS101 Articles: 8/11/2021 (Cult Formation, Gaslighting, Baha'i, Iran, Religious Discrimination, Auroville, India)

Cult Formation, Gaslighting, Baha'i, Iran, Religious Discrimination, Auroville, India

The Harvard Mental Health Letter: Cult Formation (Robert J. Lifton)

" ... Cults represent one aspect of a worldwide epidemic of ideological totalism, or fundamentalism. They tend to be associated with a charismatic leader, thought reform, and exploitation of members. Among the methods of thought reform commonly used by cults are milieu control, mystical manipulation, the demand for purity, a cult of confession, sacred science, loading the language, doctrine over person, and dispensing of existence. The current historical context of dislocation from organizing symbolic structures, decaying belief systems concerning religion, authority, marriage, family, and death, and a "protean style" of continuous psychological experimentation with the self is conducive to the growth of cults. The use of coercion, as in certain forms of "deprogramming," to deal with the restrictions of individual liberty associated with cults is inconsistent with the civil rights tradition. Yet legal intervention may be indicated when specific laws are broken.

Two main concerns should inform our moral and psychological perspective on cults: the dangers of ideological totalism, or what I would also call fundamentalism; and the need to protect civil liberties."

Independent Ireland: Gaslighting: What is it, how to recognise it and how to protect yourself from it

"Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which the perpetrator makes the victim doubt their own memories, perceptions and behaviours. We talk to the experts about the warning signs and how to stand up to a gaslighter.

Calm down. You're so emotional. I never said that. That never happened. It's not a big deal. Stop imagining things. You're always twisting things. I would never have done that. Stop being so dramatic. You're over sensitive. I was just kidding. You're remembering it wrong. What's the matter with you? You're insane. You need help.

This is gaslighting. Mostly it happens in intimate relationships, but really it can happen anywhere — at work, in friendships, in politics. It's not a medical term, but a colloquialism referring to a form of psychological manipulation where over time the manipulated person begins to doubt their own memory, perception, even their reality.

It is a gradual process, which makes it difficult to detect if you're on the receiving end, and even more difficult to extricate yourself from, as it slowly but steadily erodes your sense of self, and of what's real. At its most malevolent, it's crazy making. Like narcissistic rage and coercive control, it is abuse without the black eyes; this is not to say, however, that the violence can progress from psychological to physical."

Iran News Wire: Iran: Bahai Woman Sentenced To 5 Years In Prison

" ... Unofficial sources say that there are more than 300,000 people following the Bahai Faith in Iran. However, the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran only recognizes Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism and does not recognize Bahaism.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, Iranian Bahais have been systematically persecuted as a matter of government policy. During the first decade of this persecution, more than 200 of Iran's Bahais were killed or executed. Hundreds more were tortured or imprisoned, and tens of thousands lost jobs, access to education, and other rights – all solely because of their religious belief.

The persecution of Iran's Bahais is still ongoing with dozens of Bahais languishing in prisons throughout Iran."

NY Times: The Promise and Tragedy of a Utopian Community, as Seen by One of Its Own

"Utopia's finest hour, Akash Kapur writes in "Better to Have Gone," is the very beginning, "when the dream remains unsullied." The phrase has the ring of preordainment: From the heights of a vision, there is nowhere to go but down.

As it does — viciously then tragically — in his memoir, which is also a group biography, the investigation of a mystery, a meditation on searching and faith, and an act of love. Kapur's main subject is Auroville, a 53-year-old intentional community in southern India where both he and his wife, Auralice, were raised, and where, in 1986, her mother and adoptive father died. The murky circumstances of their deaths shadow Kapur's marriage, all the more when he and Auralice move back to Auroville in 2004. There her parents' fates have been transmuted into a mix of legend, theory and gossip, even as their bodies lie in unmarked graves. Kapur decides (with his wife's help, though she is not credited as an author) to excavate the past. Knowledge, he hopes, might bring peace.

This is a haunting, heartbreaking story, deeply researched and lucidly told, with an almost painful emotional honesty — the use of present tense weaving a kind of trance. I kept wanting to read "Better to Have Gone" because I found it so gripping; I kept wanting not to read it because I found it so upsetting. The image that came to mind, again and again, was of human lives being dashed against the rocks of rigid belief.

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Iran: Bahai Woman Sentenced To 5 Years In Prison

Iran News Wire

August 3, 2021

An Iranian Bahai woman was sentenced to five years and eight months of prison by the Ahvaz Revolutionary Court in southwestern Iran.




According to the Human Rights News Agency, she was identified as Sanaz Notghi. Sanaz was charged with “membership in the illegal Bahai organization” and “spreading propaganda against the state”. Her trial took place on July 17.

Iranian Bahais persecuted systematically

Unofficial sources say that there are more than 300,000 people following the Bahai Faith in Iran. However, the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran only recognizes Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism and does not recognize Bahaism.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, Iranian Bahais have been systematically persecuted as a matter of government policy. During the first decade of this persecution, more than 200 of Iran’s Bahais were killed or executed. Hundreds more were tortured or imprisoned, and tens of thousands lost jobs, access to education, and other rights – all solely because of their religious belief.

The persecution of Iran’s Bahais is still ongoing with dozens of Bahais languishing in prisons throughout Iran.

https://www.eurasiareview.com/03082021-iran-bahai-woman-sentenced-to-5-years-in-prison/

Shunning of a Minority Faith

The Baha'i have been excluded from basic civic functions like pensions and education. They're publishing the proof.

Eli Lake
Bloomberg
January 30, 2018

A protest in Brazil on behalf of Baha'i prisoners in Iran.

Usually the Iranian regime’s assault on its people’s dignity is measured in its political prisoners, its laws mandating modest dress for women, its prosecutions of gays and its stage-managed elections. An under-reported aspect of this story, though, is the state’s treatment of the Baha’i, a small monotheistic faith that was founded in Iran in the 19th century and that honors Buddha, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. In Iran, this minority faces systemic discrimination reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg laws or China’s treatment of the Falun Gong.

Its followers are denied government services, pensions and representation in the government. In every sense they are second-class citizens. And yet their fate is rarely discussed in the context of Iran’s freedom movement.

This will hopefully change soon. Earlier this month, the Baha’i International Community established a new internet archive of official documents, news articles, audio recordings and other primary sources that document Iran’s decades-long campaign against followers of the religion. State-sponsored discrimination against the Baha’i was a feature of the Iranian government under Shah Reza Pahlavi. But the persecution intensified under the Islamic Republic that unseated him in 1979. One letter from the archive shows how a Baha’i citizen’s property was denied a connection to fresh water supply because of his faith. Others show lenient sentences meted out for Iranians convicted of heinous crimes against Baha’i citizens.

A particularly damning document in the new archive is a Feb. 25, 1991, secret directivefrom the current supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. He writes that as a general policy the Baha’i will not be arrested, exiled or imprisoned without reason. Nonetheless, “The government’s dealings with them must be in such a way that their progress and development are blocked.”

He then lays out what that means. For example, he says Baha’i citizens can be enrolled in schools, so long as they do not self-identify as Baha’i. Universities must not let in Baha’i citizens, or must expel such students once their religious beliefs become known. He ominously writes, “A plan must be devised to confront and destroy their cultural roots outside the country.”

Khamenei says they may be permitted to obtain work permits, rations cards and passports, “so long as it does not encourage them to be Baha’is.” But no high-status positions should be given to Baha’i citizens, even if they remain in the closet. “Deny them any position of influence, such as in the educational sector, etc.,” he writes.

That was more than 25 years ago, but the new archives show that they remain second-class citizens. A 2013 letter for example to Manouher Baghdadi says he is not eligible to receive his pension because “the individual is a follower of the perverse sect of Baha’ism.”

It’s almost impossible to know how many Baha’i live in Iran today. The regime disbanded the Baha’i official governing council in 1983. Iran’s census does not bother to count them. The Baha’i International Community estimates that there are 300,000 Baha’i in Iran.

James Samimi Farr, a media officer for Baha’is of the United States, said the new archives was established this month to respond to “rising international interest to understand the situation for Baha’is of Iran.”

That timing also coincides with the latest uprisings against a regime that has enriched elites and further strangled the political freedoms of its average citizens. Let’s hope this movement ends the rule of the current clerics and terror masters. But that alone will not be enough. Iran’s next leaders must also end the state-sponsored discrimination against the Baha’i and make amends for the century of persecution authored by both the shahs and the mullahs.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-30/iran-s-secret-shunning-of-a-minority-faith

Bahais mark 200th birthday of their messenger, whose focus on equality resonates today

Julie Zauzmer 
Washington Post
October 20, 2017

Rachell Martinez, 15, pointing in center, plays a game with her Bahai youth group at the Rita Bright Community Center. (Julie Zauzmer/The Washington Post)

The Bahai faith is one of the youngest world religions — on Sunday, it will celebrate the birthday of its messenger, Baha’u’llah, who was born just 200 years ago. But to the kids bouncing off the purple-painted walls on 14th Street, that’s ancient history.

“My name is Baha’u’llah Junior!” Menkem Sium calls out jokingly. “My dad is 200 years old!”

Baha’u’llah, who was born in Tehran in 1817, might not recognize the religion based on his teachings today, in its vibrant form in the District. Fourteen youth groups teach crafts and games and vocabulary to about 120 teenagers, including the enthusiastic Sium. About 190 younger children participate in 20 Bahai children’s classes. All over the city, Bahai devotees and other curious adults gather in private homes and a stately 16th Street NW worship center, each night of the week, for 35 different regular study circles and 45 devotional meetings.

On Sunday, local followers of the faith will congregate for an extravaganza of artistic performances in English and Spanish, and plenty of food, to celebrate the 200th birthday of the visionary leader behind it all. Their celebration will focus on racial unity: one of Baha’u’llah’s foremost goals, which remains elusive and just as relevant today.

Baha’u’llah was born two years before a man who eventually came to call himself the Bab. The Bab announced in 1844, at age 25, that he had come to proclaim the arrival of the next great messenger, a man who would follow in the tradition of earlier religious messengers — Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Krishna, and so on. Hundreds of people became followers of the Bab, before he was executed for his beliefs in 1850.

Thirteen years later, Baha’u’llah revealed himself: He was the messenger whom the Bab had promised. He too was imprisoned and harassed for much of the next 40 years, while he wrote the works that became the basis of the Bahai faith. The religion places a heavy emphasis on equality, and Baha’u’llah’s writings taught about harmony among men and women, people of all races, science and religion, and all forms of faith.

Today, gorgeous Bahai temples stand on each continent but Antarctica, as architectural icons in places from Cambodia to Uganda to the suburbs of Chicago. Bahai communities — some still persecuted in the Middle East, many thriving in tolerant nations — gather for worship in almost every country. And here in Columbia Heights, a raucous group of teenagers is learning to pray.

“Oh Lord,” Anais Basora, 11, reads aloud. “Confer thy bounty. …”

Navid Shahidinejad, the leader of this Bahai youth group meeting at the Rita Bright Community Center, prods Basora, “Do you know what ‘bounty’ means?”

Basora isn’t Bahai. Most of the teenagers in the “junior youth empowerment” groups run by Bahai believers in the District are not members of the faith, based on the Bahai tenet of treating equally people of all religions.

“When I look at the revelation of Baha’u’llah and its purpose to unify mankind, I find that this revelation is for everybody, and all are welcome to participate,” said Maryam Esmaeili, a leader in the District’s Bahai community. She runs her own youth group using the same Bahai curriculum at a second location in Columbia Heights; this week, she helped out in Shahidinejad’s group as well. “Universal participation is absolutely necessary to build a better world. It’s not in the hands of only Bahais.”

Esmaeili and Shahidinejad said the intent of opening these youth groups to nonbelievers isn’t to convert the teenagers; after all, their faith preaches that all religions are equal. That being said, they encourage children and parents who are interested in Bahai practices to learn more outside the youth group. The Bahai focus on racial equality is often what interests parents, who sometimes start learning the prayers with their kids and check out events at the 16th Street center.

The religion is too small for the Pew Research Center or other polling groups to have gathered much data on it, but the Bahai International Community says there are more than 5 million adherents worldwide and about 340 in the District, with additional Bahai communities in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs. On Sunday, the community will host its major celebration of Baha’u’llah’s 200th birthday at Woodrow Wilson High School.

Abdul Hill, the athletics manager at the Rita Bright Community Center, said he likes having the Bahai youth group there since it introduces the children to another culture and since the education on how to pray helps them deepen their own faith, whatever their religion might be. “A lot of them don’t go to church,” Hill said. “Something like this is very big for them, just having that structure as a human being on Earth.”

On Thursday night, after the teenagers practiced memorizing a prayer drawn from Baha’u’llah’s writings and played an energetic name game, they sat down in a circle to think up ideas for their next service project, a core part of the Bahai curriculum.

The kids have decided that they want to visit children with cancer. Shahidinejad mostly lets them think through their ideas on their own.

“I know that they like the jello and the pudding,” Sium, 13, says. One teen suggests that they bring video games to the patients, and Basora suggests bringing teddy bears. “I’ve got a bunch,” she says, then she thinks better of it. “No, I’m not giving them.”

One of the adults suggests writing cards, and Basora says, “No, that’s for the vegetarians.”

There’s a rare moment of silence. All the kids stare at her for a moment, then figure out what she meant: veterans. Good-natured giggles ripple around the circle.

This process is central to the curriculum, which focuses on social justice. “The revelation of Baha’u’llah, which talks about the oneness of mankind, is so grand in itself,” Esmaeili said. “That is where this idea of unity becomes more possible: just being able to support youth and middle-schoolers in developing an understanding of their twofold moral purpose, that they have qualities that can be used to serve others.”

Esmaeili, who grew up in a Bahai home in El Salvador, said she often meets people who are surprised to learn about the Bahai community running so many programs for people of all ages in the District and many other American cities. One of the first assignments in the adult-study circles is to visit a friend and share a prayer with him or her, she said.

“Sometimes that sounds very odd, in a city like D.C., that people are actually doing this,” she said. But the kids in the youth group don’t seem to find it odd at all.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/10/20/bahais-mark-200th-birthday-of-their-messenger-whose-focus-on-equality-resonates-today/

Studying at the Bahai secret university

BBC NEWSBy Lipika Pelham New York
January 18, 2017


The largest non-Muslim minority in Iran, the Bahais, are persecuted in many ways - one being that they are forbidden from attending university. Some study in secret, but for those who want to do a postgraduate degree the only solution is to leave their country and study abroad.

"I remember my father showing me the scars he had on his head from when he used to be beaten up by the children of his town on his way to school," says Shirin. "So, of course, I didn't tell my father that I was experiencing the same when I was growing up in Iran in the 1980s. I knew he prayed and hoped that the world would get better."

In fact, persecution of the Bahais only increased following the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

And when Shirin's son, Khosru, started going to school, she had to hide more bad news from her father.

"I did not tell him that the children of the children of the children who left him scarred, are now calling my son untouchable," she says.

When, in the eighth grade, Khosru told the other children he was Bahai they dropped him like a stone.

"The kids wouldn't touch me," he says, "and if I were to touch them, they'd go and take a shower."

Since the creation of the Bahai faith in the mid-19th Century, the Iranian Shia establishment has called them "a deviant sect", principally because they reject the Muslim belief that Mohammed was the last prophet.

On official websites they are described as apostates, and as "unclean".

But it is when a student has finished school that the problems really begin.

As a Bahai, Shirin was told she could not enter university. Her only option was to secretly attend the Bahais' own clandestine university - the Bahai Institute for Higher Education (BIHE), set up in the mid-1980s by Bahai teachers and students who had been thrown out of Iranian universities after the revolution.

Shirin enrolled in 1994. At that time, only two BA courses were available -in Science or Religious Studies - so she decided to study comparative religion.

Lectures took place in improvised classrooms in private homes all around Tehran. It took six years to complete her course, and it was then that she hit an impenetrable wall. There was no scope to do an MA or a PhD, and there was no scope for employment where her skills could be used.

Soon afterwards, a wave of crackdowns on the Bahai intelligentsia began, with raids on clandestine classrooms and the arrest of many BIHE teachers. Shirin saw her world was closing in on her. So when she heard about a domestic worker's visa scheme in the UK, she jumped at it.

"I applied straight away without wasting time, it didn't matter what the visa was called. I had to leave," she says.

Shirin arrived in the UK in 2003 and combined her domestic work with an evening job at an Italian restaurant in Scarborough. But she never forgot what she came to do, what she must achieve.

On a dark and smoggy English morning, she boldly walked through the doors of Birmingham University, and announced that she had a degree in religion from an underground university in Tehran.

To her great surprise, a week later, she was summoned back and was offered a place.

Listen to Lipika Pelham's report on the Bahai, The World's Faith, for Heart and Soul on the BBC World Service

"It was more than a miracle - it was beyond expectation, beyond my wildest dream," she says. "Till today, I feel it was the best reward I received for never compromising my faith."

Shirin finished her degree in 2006 and left the UK to join her brother in the US, where many of her family, friends and co-religionists have, over the years, found sanctuary from persecution.

But soon another crackdown against the Bahais began, at home in Iran.

In 2008, seven members of the Bahai administrative body, Yaran, were arrested and charged with among other things, spying for Israel. After a trial in a Revolutionary Court in 2010, they were sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.

At this time another young Bahai woman, Mona, was applying to university in Tehran.

"I took an entrance exam at the University of Tehran - they were supposed to send a card saying how and where you should register if you were accepted, and you must write your religion on the card," she says.

"I wrote that I was not Muslim. There was an option that said 'other', and I ticked that box. There was no option for Bahai.

"When they sent back the card, they said, 'OK, you may register,' and in the place of religion, they wrote, Islam."

"In my belief, you're not supposed to lie about your faith even when facing death. So I wrote back, I was not Muslim. They said, 'Good luck, you can't enter university.'"

Like Shirin, Mona had only one option - the clandestine university, and it was an unforgettable experience.

"I remember the faces of all my friends who were coming from other cities in Iran, from far away," she says. "It took them maybe 16 - 20 hours to get to Tehran. Their faces looked so tired.

"It was really hard. We had one class from 08:00 to 12:00 in the east of Tehran, and the second class from 14:00 to 18:00 on the west side - it was exhausting! Sometimes we didn't have physical teachers, we had them over Skype, who were teaching us from the US, Canada."

After she graduated, she faced the same difficulties Shirin had experienced a decade earlier - and opted for a similar solution.

In 2009, she escaped to New York, via Austria, under an international religious refugee repatriation programme.

When I met her recently in Joe's Coffee, a lively meeting place for students and teachers at Columbia University, she had just completed her MA in Psychology. She was over the moon.

"It feels amazing, I can't believe it's all done and I'll even have a graduation! When I graduated from the BIHE, they arrested all my teachers, Bahai teachers. And we never had a graduation day."

The US is home to one of the largest Bahai populations in the world, their presence dating back at least to 1912, when Abdul Baha, the son of the faith's founder, Baha'u'llah, spent 11 months in the country, promoting the religion.

The BIHE degrees are accepted by most US universities - as Mona's was at Columbia University - and many BIHE volunteers are based in the US.

"Students and instructors in Iran can end up in jail just for being students and instructors. So they are not only doing something that is hard for them to do, but dangerous to do," says Prof Thane Terril, a convert to the Bahai faith who now runs online teacher training courses for post-graduate students.

"The motivation for the students is like a person in the desert without water."

Sipping coffee in the café of the former hotel, Ansonia, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where Abdul Baha once stayed, Shirin says that she could never understand what the regime has against the Bahais.

"Abdul Baha emphasised that the East and West must meet," she says. "I think the collective approach to life is what we think of as being the oriental or Eastern culture, and the individualist approach to life is considered to be Western. And when the two merge, you have a very beautiful culture."



http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38656871?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_campaign=b407aad4b8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_01_18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3e953b9b70-b407aad4b8-400018169

Iran is tormenting the Baha'i people - is Canada going to do anything about it?

Terry Glavin
National Post
April 20, 2016

 

You’d have to go for a very long walk to find a religious tradition as benign as the Baha’i faith. The Baha’i mark the holiest days of the year during the 12-day Festival of Ridvan, which began at sunset on Tuesday. The religion’s precepts respect scientific discovery and emphasize the uplifting of the poor, the equality of men and women, and the unity of the world’s peoples. There is no clergy. Deriving from a 19th century schism within Shia Islam, Baha’is are admonished to respect all other religious traditions, not just the Abrahamic varieties. Their religious duties involve quiet prayer, meditation, education and service to humanity.

You might think this would cut them at least a little bit of slack in Iran, where the Baha’i faith emerged during a time of religious tumult in the early 1800s. But it’s all unforgivable blasphemy to the Khomeinist regime, which considers Baha’i people “unclean” and excludes them from 25 separate employment categories. Because they are not legally “persons” in Iran, Baha’i people are denied pensions and government services, their marriages are illegal, their children are “illegitimate,” they have no recourse to the courts and they are banned from attending post-secondary institutions.

In 2008, all seven members of the Iranian Baha’i leadership council were imprisoned on charges of heresy and conspiracy. In January, 24 more Baha’i people were sentenced to a total of 193 years in prison for the crime of practising their faith. Over the past three years, more than 200 Baha’i-owned businesses have been boarded up and the regime is increasingly refusing to renew Baha’i business licences. It’s all part of an explicit policy of closing off the last remaining survival opportunities for Iran’s 350,000 Baha’i people, and since the election to the presidency of “reformer” Hassan Rouhani in 2013, the persecution of Iran’s minorities, and most especially the Baha’is, has only grown worse.

With the lifting of United Nations’ sanctions following last year’s U.S.-led nuclear weapons agreement with the Khomeinists, the mania for business deals with the regime and its state-owned enterprises (which run most of Iran’s economy) has gone into hyperdrive. One of the Iranian economy’s largest corporate landlords is the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and Canada formally lists the IRGC’s Qods Force, a key ally with Syrian President Bashar Assad in the ongoing massacre of his own people, as a terrorist entity.

It’s hard to say where all the post-sanctions excitement will leave the Baha’i people. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new government has expressed enthusiasm for renewed trade and diplomatic relations with the regime, and the Liberals’ closing of the previous Conservative government’s Office of Religious Freedom wasn’t exactly an encouraging sign of continued human-rights diligence.

Canada has long shown leadership in shaming the regime about its contempt for human rights. Iran Accountability Week, during which MPs from all parties each “adopt” an Iranian political prisoner, is an annual event on Parliament Hill. Carleton University, the University of Ottawa and McGill University each extend an informal accreditation to the “underground” Baha’i Institute for Higher Education in Iran. Canada continues to lead in the United Nations’ annual scrutiny of Iran’s human rights record. But with so many lucrative trade deals being dangled in front of us, will Canadians persist in questioning the regime and holding it accountable for its thuggish treatment of religious and ethnic minorities, women, trade unionists, journalists and secularists?

“Canada should raise these questions and keep raising these questions in all its dealings with Iran,” Gerald Filson, public affairs director of the Baha’i Community of Canada, told me the other day. Canadian businesses doing deals in Iran should insist on raising the same sorts of questions and should take every measure to guard against complicity with the regime’s brutal practices, Filson said.

There are at least five million followers of the Baha’i faith worldwide, with perhaps two million in India and a roughly equal distribution of the rest in Africa, South America, Europe and North America. About 175,000 Americans are adherents of the Baha’i faith, along with about 35,000 Canadians, about 7,000 of whom are Iranian immigrants who fled their homeland following the Khomeinist takeover in 1979.

While drawing adherents from a wide diversity of Canadians, the Baha’i faith has put down particularly deep roots in this country’s aboriginal communities. Among Canada’s most prominent Baha’i is renowned Northern Tutchone storyteller Louise Profeit-LeBlanc. And former Yukon Carcross-Tagish chief Mark Wedge and Deloria Bighorn, a Sioux-Chickasaw college counsellor, are both long-serving members of the governing council of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Canada.

Despite the Khomeinist proposition that Baha’is are blasphemers for rejecting the idea that Mohammed was God’s final, ultimate prophet, Canada’s Baha’is enjoy generally cordial relationships with this country’s Muslim communities. This is perhaps particularly the case with Ismaili Muslims, alongside whom Baha’i people suffered the same persecution and dispossession in Uganda and Tanzania during the 1970s.

Canada’s Baha’is also find welcome among Canada’s Iranian diaspora, which generally harbours a very dim view of the Khomeinist regime. It’s a bit of an irony, but for all the Iranian regime’s bellyaching about degenerate Western influences, the regime itself is Shia Islam’s worst enemy in western countries. “The regime has done more to kill religion in the hearts of people in the Iranian diaspora than anything else,” Filson pointed out.

Baha’is also enjoy close associations with Canada’s Jewish communities. The Baha’i have always accepted Israel as a Jewish state. The Baha’i World Centre is a pilgrimage site located in Israel — in Acre and adjacent Haifa — where the religion’s founder, Baha’u’llah, was imprisoned by the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th century. And the Baha’i Universal House of Justice, the seat of the religion’s governing body, is situated on Mount Carmel.

“Both the Liberals and the Conservative governments in Canada have been consistently strong about human rights in Iran, and we hope that continues,” Filson said.

The Baha’i case is not hopeless. The Khomeinist police state may be irredeemably corrupt, but its persecution of the Baha’i’s people is not necessarily popular even among the ruling elites. Two years ago, the senior ayatollah Abdol-Hamid Masoumi Tehrani declared that Iran’s Baha’i people were suffering from “blind religious prejudice.” His pronouncement was not universally condemned.

“There is a sense of shame and honour in Iranian culture, so that’s helpful,” Filson said. “The government doesn’t like attracting attention to their treatment of the Baha’i, and the Iranian government’s mission to the UN does a lot of lobbying against any human rights focus. They put up a big fight at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, too.”

So there’s hope. Not much, but some. And in a post-sanctions context, Canadians should expect their government not just to remain vigilant, but to step up the pressure and show some real spine.

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/terry-glavin-iran-is-tormenting-the-bahai-people-is-canada-going-to-do-anything-about-it

Man in Yemen accused of attempting to convert others to Baha'i faith

World Religion News
Alison Lesley
January 22, 2015

A man that has been living in Yemen has been tortured and interrogated for being accused of attempting to convert locals to his Baha'i faith.

According to representatives of the predominantly Islamic nation of Yemen, the man was trying to convert individuals to the faith through charitable works, various literacy lessons, and through online media. While the potential outcome for the man as far as punishment is unknown, it is surmised that he will be tried by a special penal council that is made specifically to deal with cases of a heretical nature. Still, his family claims that the charges are false and represent another case of the nation cracking down on the Baha'i faith.

THE BAHA'I IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The Baha'i are a religious group that has an estimated several thousand adherents. They consider their prophet as the last in a line that has extended through Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. For this reason, follower of contradicting faiths often consider it to be a heretical religion. In nations such as Yemen, which embraces Islam, the Baha'i individuals are often targets of attacks and repression. While the Baha'i are allowed to openly practice their religion, Hamed Merza Kamali Serostani is being charged for allegedly seeking to convert Muslims to the faith, which is frowned upon. However, in his case, there are additional charges being applied that have labeled him as an agent of Israel who is working to destabilize the region.

UNCERTAINTIES IN YEMEN

There are some discrepancies in the case for Hamed Serostani. For example, he is being named as an individual who has spent the time between 1991 and 2014 working in Yemen as an immigrant. During that time he has played a significant role in building homes and contacts, which the government says he used as an attempt to lure individuals away from Islam and towards the Baha'i faith.

The Serostani family disputes these charges and says that the family settled in Socotra, a small Yemeni Island, since 1945. They have also spoken out against the idea that he has committed espionage against Yemen, claiming that the government is only using this as a means to strike against the Baha'i. Moreover, they state the idea that he had contacts with Israel is only being used to distract the public from the fact that he was tortured and interrogated under duress to get the results that they wanted from him. With his case pending and the severe charges against him, the international community is looking for substantiation in the case of Hamed Serostani to determine whether he is the anti-Islam espionage agent or a helpful pillar of the community in his town that his family claims. It is unknown when the special penal court will be convened against him.


http://www.worldreligionnews.com/issues/man-in-yemen-accused-of-attempting-to-convert-others-to-bahai-faith

Baha'i Faith

The Baha'i Faith is an independent monotheistic religion with its own sacred scriptures, laws, calendar, and holy days. It was founded by Baha'u'llah in 19th-century Persia. The first public mention of the Baha'i Faith in North America was at the 1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago, IL. The National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States and Canada was incorporated in 1927.

Baha'i Faith US Membership Data

Year	Clergy	Churches	Members
1935	-	55	1,967
1936	-	88	2,584
1942	-	-	4,489
1947	-	137	5,232
1952	-	180	-
1967	-	394	-
1992	-	1,700	110,000