Bahá’í school children in Iran are being subjected to cruel and harsh treatment as part of a government-sponsored campaign against the Bahá’í community. Reports indicate that Baha’i pupils are secretly monitored and reported upon by school officials, are subjected to vilification by their teachers and school administrators, and are forced to listen to vile and outrageous tales about the teachings of their Faith and the moral behavior of Baha’is.

I had flashbacks to my life before we escaped (over the border into Pakistan) when I was 9 and my baby brother was 4. We would have to hide the prayer books when strangers were in the house; we would have to walk to other  Bahá’í homes, arriving separately so that no one could get suspicious. I remember the night a member of my extended family was released from prison (where he had been for years, because he was a Bahá’í) and the conversation I had with my father, about why the “uncle” didn’t just lie and say he was no longer a Bahá’í so that he could have been freed. I remember how upset my childishly simple logic made my father, who explained to me the importance of faith and certitude and steadfastness, even in the face of adversity.

My father knew what he was talking about: my grandmother had been in labour with him while the towns people were attacking and burning down the door of my grandparents’ house. He had to walk to school, facing the taunts of ignorant children, who were taught that it is a blessing to revile and attack Bahá’ís. He was denied educational and job opportunities because of his faith. And until his last breath, my father was steadfast in his beliefs and filled with a love for humanity that transcended all the hardships he had endured.

My family’s story is unfortunately not unique. A very good summary is available on this site, along with supporting documentation and testimonials:

The persecution of Bahá’ís in Iran has been taking place since the religion began there in the mid-nineteenth century. More than 200 Bahá’ís were killed in Iran between 1978 and 1998, the majority by execution, and thousands more were imprisoned…Bahá’ís in Iran are systematically denied jobs, pensions and the right to inherit property. More than 10,000 Bahá’ís have been dismissed from government and university posts since Iran’s 1979 revolution.

It has been years since I had a nightmare about being taken away from my parents in the middle of the night, something I was convinced was possible even in the seemingly safe Zimbabwean suburb we finally settled in. But for so many of my Bahá’í brothers and sisters, my childhood nightmare is their heartbreaking reality.

The explosion ripped through the mosque packed with hundreds of worshippers late Saturday as a female  cleric delivered his weekly speech against extremist Wahabi beliefs and the outlawed Baha’i faith, the semiofficial Fars news agency said.

In a similar vein, Reuters recently reported on death threats made to Noble Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi. One of the things she is accused in one of the threats is “un-Islamic behaviour which coincides with Baha’i manners.”

On a less puzzling, and more optimistic note, the Manitou Messenger reports on a resolution passed by the student senate of St. Olaf College:

At last week’s student senate meeting, a resolution voicing support of Iranian Baha’i Students was passed. The resolution was a proclamation of support in protest against the Iranian government denying access to higher education for Baha’i students.

And finally, the lyrics to a song I heard for the first time last week, by Solomon Burke, called “None of Us Are Free”:

Well you better listen my sister’s and brothers,
’cause if you do you can hear
there are voices still calling across the years.
And they’re all crying across the ocean,
and they’re cryin across the land,
and they will till we all come to understand.

None of us are free.
None of us are free.
None of us are free, one of us are chained.
None of us are free.

June 18 marks the 25th anniversary of the day 10 Bahá’í women were hanged in Shiraz, Iran, for teaching religious classes to Bahá’í youth — the equivalent of being Sunday School teachers in the West…

All of the women had been interrogated and tortured in the months leading up to their execution. Some bore still-visible wounds. The youngest of the martyrs was Muna Mahmudnizhad, a 17-year-old schoolgirl who, because of her youth and conspicuous innocence, became a symbol of the group. In prison, she was lashed on the soles of her feet with a cable and forced to walk on bleeding feet… Read More

What precisely could these heroic women have been teaching children in their classes? Well, the topics on Baha’i Perspectives may give us a clue, so let’s take a closer look at what has been discussed thus far. Maybe they were teaching about love and unity. Or education. Or eliminating prejudice. Or the lives of the Prophets of God, including that of his Holiness the Prophet Muhammad. Or even the commandment in the Baha’i Faith to show obedience to the government of the land.

And for all of this, like their predecessors before them, they were branded as traitors and heretics, lashed, beaten and eventually executed. “Traitors” because they understood the text of the Holy Quran in a way that didn’t suit the self-serving interests of the ruling clergy. “Heretics” because they declared their belief in Baha’u'llah, the Glory of God, and chose to follow a world-embracing Cause that addresses present-day concerns and challenges, and not those of a thousand years ago.

Yet to present some sense of legitimacy to their actions, the Iranian Government tells the outside world that they are “spies” and “threats to state security”, allegations which the world has come to realize are utter nonsense.

25 years later and the pattern repeats itself, with the arrest and imprisonment of these 7 Baha’i leaders under the same false pretenses:

In a letter to the Baha’is of Iran, dated 3 June 2008, the governing council of the Baha’i Faith encourages the Baha’is not to take up arms and fight back, but to continue demonstrating through their steadfastness, patience and rectitude of conduct, the true Baha’i way of life:

Despite the current crisis, pay no heed to oppression and cruelty and, inspired by the Divine Teachings, act in the opposite manner. Focus your thoughts on being a source of good to those around you. Exert every endeavour to serve your fellow citizens–heirs to a culture rich and humane–who themselves suffer from many an injustice. Avoid all divisiveness and conflict, consort with everyone with kindliness and sincerity, and engage with your compatriots in the discussion of ideas and the exchange of thoughts on matters with which they are anxiously concerned. Ignite in their hearts the flame of hope, faith, and assurance in Iran’s glorious future and in the bright destiny of humankind which you well know is sure to come to pass.

As we go about our daily lives, our thoughts and prayers are constantly with them.

It’s almost as if our behaviour is governed by the worry of what “other people will think”, and by compliance to social norms.  So, we do things differently when we think no one is watching.  How is it that a queue in a post-office is normally well-behaved and no one would dare to push in, but when we are in our cars we become so bad mannered and aggressive? My theory is that we feel protected by anonymity in our cars, but would have to look people in the eye in the post-office queue.

It was the recent scandal in British politics that has had me thinking a lot about personal accountability and responsibility.  Most of those implicated in the expenses-claim uproar did not contravene the rules per se, and seem to mostly justify their actions by saying that they where only doing what all the rest were too.  Here in South Africa, we have had a similar debate, about gifts given to those in government.  The public discussion was not about whether it was illegal for the minister to accept an expensive car as a gift, but whether it was ethical to do so.

Kitáb-i-Aqdas

In a thesis discussing a variety of subjects relating to society and governance, called “The Secrets of Divine Civilisation”, `Abdu’l-Bahá gives a description of “justice and impartiality”:

This means to have no regard for one’s own personal benefits and selfish advantages, and to carry out the laws of God without the slightest concern for anything else.

So our daily actions, our personal choices, must be made with reference, not to social norms or selfish inclinations, but to the laws of God. This becomes easier when we change our perception and mindset about God’s injunctions: they are not there to restrict or hamper us, but to provide us with loving guidance and ultimate freedom. In the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Most Holy Book of the Bahá’í Faith, Bahá’u’lláh describes the laws and codifications of God as “sweet-smelling” and a “choice Wine”.

Say: From My laws the sweet-smelling savour of My garment can be smelled, and by their aid the standards of Victory will be planted upon the highest peaks. The Tongue of My power hath, from the heaven of My omnipotent glory, addressed to My creation these words: “Observe My commandments, for the love of My beauty.”…Think not that We have revealed unto you a mere code of laws. Nay, rather, We have unsealed the choice Wine with the fingers of might and power.

Having been given the guidance, and the personal autonomy to choose for ourselve, we become accountable for our actions and our choices, not to those that can see but to God, and not for material gains, but towards our own personal spiritual path to perfection.

What would it look like if we lived our lives at every moment aware of the fact that this world and everything in it was merely a prelude to a world much greater than this.  Rather than allowing that knowledge to dull us into nonchalance or trick us into thinking the prelude was inconsequential, we would live knowing that the prelude was absolutely crucial in dictating what was to come.

The prelude would define the rest of the play- the body and the characters, the scene titles, and even the very last period on the very last page of the final act.

How might we live if we understood that the prelude was not more important than the rest of the play, but was absolutely essential to its unfolding.

And what if we knew that this play would tell the greatest love story of all time.  Greater than Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Bella and Edward, Leili and Majnun…greater than the love felt by the most adoring, devoted, sacrificial father for his favorite daughter…and that the prelude’s purpose was to set forces in motion which would allow for the lover and the beloved to meet in the chamber of eternity.

The meeting of the two was inevitable.  But the prelude would determine how quickly it would happen.  The prelude would determine how long the lover would sigh in longing for her beloved.  How long she would feel consumed by the flame of separation from the one for whom every cell in her body existed, every beat of her heart resounded, nay, the reason why every atom in the universe was. For these two to meet, to love, to be near.

What if you knew that you were the lover in the prelude.  And that every decision you made, every thought, every action or inaction, bore direct influence on how near you would be to the greatest, most radiant, most resplendent, kind, loving, wonderful, unimaginably glorious being.

That every kind act, every selfless thought, every step taken to help ease someone else’s burden, to help improve the quality of another’s life, to help those other lovers living the prelude with you would draw you nearer to this object of adoration — and what if you knew that your time in the prelude was very, very fleeting, especially as compared with the dominant note of eternity, which the rest of the play would unfold — would you waste a single moment on anger? On jealousy?  On lethargy or inactivity?

How much time would you devote to leisure?  To pleasure pursuits that distracted you, perhaps even moved your further away from, the path that led to this all-glorious one?

If we lived every moment of our lives consciously aware that we were created to know and to love God, to worship and adore Him in our actions towards His other creatures, that in serving our fellow man, we drew nearer unto Him, that whether or not we felt it now, when we exited the ante room and entered the chamber of eternity, we would be totally aware of and consumed by our love for Him and that if we were remote from Him we would feel sorrow and regret more intense than any hellish brimstone or scalding fire could impose on us …and that our nearness or remoteness from Him would be in direct proportion to how we had spent our time in the ante room, or how we had penned our story in the prelude — I wonder how differently we would behave.  How different our entire atmosphere would be.  One directly affects the other, after all, and both help shape the kind of eternity that awaits us.  An eternity which we are already a part of, which is always as near to us as the air we inhale and exhale at every moment.

It is the duty of every seeker to bestir himself and strive to attain the shores of this ocean, so that he may, in proportion to the eagerness of his search and the efforts he hath exerted, partake of such benefits as have been pre-ordained in God’s irrevocable and hidden Tablets. If no one be willing to direct his steps towards its shores, if every one should fail to arise and find Him, can such a failure be said to have robbed this ocean of its power or to have lessened, to any degree, its treasures? …This most great, this fathomless and surging Ocean is near, astonishingly near, unto you. Behold it is closer to you than your life-vein! Swift as the twinkling of an eye ye can, if ye but wish it, reach and partake of this imperishable favor, this God-given grace, this incorruptible gift, this most potent and unspeakably glorious bounty.

~ Baha’u'llah