Par­tic­i­pants in the UNICEF Global Edu­ca­tion Work­shop Tehran, Jan­u­ary 2000.

Chi­nese edu­ca­tors stand­ing side by side in learn­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with their Baha’i colleagues

I received an arti­cle writ­ten on June 9, 2010 in Akhbar-i-Rooz in Farsi by Haman Seyeddi. Marhaba! Obvi­ously Mr. Seyyedi is not a Baha’i and that makes it even more impor­tant to applaud him for his integrity and human­ity. May God bless his fair mind and oth­ers read and take his lead and raise their voices about the belea­guered Baha’is of Iran. You can check it on www.akhbar-rooz.com

The head­line says: “The End of Mash­rootiat” and then he pro­ceeds explain­ing his bewil­der­ment about the strange case of the Bahai com­mu­nity in Iran and the ungodly man­ner the Islamic Repub­lic Regime wants to decap­i­tate or suf­fo­cate this peace­ful com­mu­nity who insists on edu­ca­tion of the youth and chil­dren as a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple for the progress of human civ­i­liza­tion, one­ness of all human­ity, global pros­per­ity and peace, despite the Islamic Repub­lic Regime’s  orches­trated plan to block every attempt of the Baha’i com­mu­nity to edu­cate its chil­dren and youth. The fol­low­ing is my rough trans­la­tion of his article.

“The Prob­lems of Baha’is of Iran is a strange sort of a prob­lem. On top of all the prob­lems that all other minori­ties have, it has been over 30 years that the Baha’is of Iran have been deprived of and offi­cially bared by the Islamic gov­ern­ment from attend­ing uni­ver­sity in Iran. I am not going to address the nature and con­se­quences of this “law”. One rea­son is because there is noth­ing to say but feel sor­row and sad­ness about such an inhu­man act. But what is worth con­tem­plat­ing is the man­ner Islamic Regime of Iran plans, and with all its force and power, con­tin­u­ously tries to block the social, cul­tural and intel­lec­tual progress of the Baha’i com­mu­nity and uses all its force to stop the Baha’i com­mu­nity from access­ing higher edu­ca­tion not just in Iran but also out­side of Iran through inter­net and online universities.

On Mon­day June 7, 2010 I read an arti­cle in TABNAK site that said: “Recently the lead­ers of the Iran’s Islamic Repub­lic Regime have made the ban of the edu­ca­tion of “the cor­rupt Baha’i sect, ferqe zalleh”  a mat­ter of pri­or­ity. Accord­ing to the lat­est news the fol­low­ers of the Baha’i sect seek higher edu­ca­tion through inter­net after high school and want to con­tinue their education.

Accord­ing to most recent reli­able sources, the chil­dren of this sect, because they are barred from attend­ing uni­ver­sity in Iran, try to con­tinue their edu­ca­tion on line.

Glob­al­iza­tion for the Com­mon Good con­fer­ence 2010

It is said that block­ing higher edu­ca­tion  and bar­ring this cor­rupt group from social and eco­nomic progress is (and has been) one of the pri­or­i­ties of the lead­ers of Islamic repub­lic Regime and every­one is ordered to do their best to pre­vent the Baha’is from hav­ing access to higher education.”

This news of the TABNAK Site could sig­nal yet another level of per­se­cu­tion for the Baha’i com­mu­nity of Iran and at the same time it is a wit­ness to the defeat of the Islamic Repub­lic Regime to destroy the Baha’i com­mu­nity once and for all. What I must cor­rect hear is that the Baha’i com­mu­nity from the very begin­ning when the Regime expelled the Baha’i fac­ulty from Iran­ian uni­ver­si­ties, the same fired fac­ulty, set up classes in the homes of the cit­i­zens with hum­ble means and pro­vided edu­ca­tion for the oppressed and peace­ful Baha’i chil­dren and youth. (Baha’i com­mu­nity his­tor­i­cally has been a pio­neer in pro­mo­tion and sup­port of edu­ca­tion for all in Iran from the very incep­tion of this Faith in 1844. The first schools estab­lished in Iran for the edu­ca­tion of girls was ini­ti­ated by the Baha’is in Iran and was open to every­one. All my female teach­ers in pri­mary and high school  had this priv­i­lege of attend­ing schools that was opened by the Baha’i com­mu­nity in Iran. This because edu­ca­tion of girls who will become moth­ers and the first edu­ca­tor of the future gen­er­a­tions, is of great impor­tance accord­ing to the teach­ings of Baha’u’llah.)

I also want to share a mem­ory from 10 years ago when I was writ­ing my the­sis for engi­neer­ing. I went to check the Free­dom Museum for my the­sis. The direc­tor of the museum was dis­traught. The roof of the museum was leak­ing and part of the elec­tri­cal and mechan­i­cal sys­tem of the build­ing was fac­ing prob­lems and out of func­tion. The direc­tor said because we do not have the plans for the build­ing, we have not been able to access the loca­tion of the pipes and elec­tri­cal plans. There is only one hope and that is for Mr. Hosain Amam­nat to send us a copy of the plans for the build­ing. It is impor­tant to know that Hos­sain Amanat is the bril­liant archi­tect who won the com­pe­ti­tion for the best design of the Shahyad Mon­u­ment which after Islamic evo­lu­tion was called Free­dom Square. Mr. Amanat also resided on its com­ple­tion. The Islamic Repub­lic Gov­ern­ment burned his office and if they had found him, they would have burned him alive too. This because Mr. Amanat was a Baha’i!!

The Free­dom square designed and con­structed By Baha’i archi­tect Hos­sain Amanat

The Museum cura­tor said they are try­ing to get hold of Mr. Amanat in Amer­ica. I am not sure if they have been able to reach him. But the dif­fi­culty was not only the leak in museum, I was sens­ing that the sense of shame was the real source of mois­ture drip­ping from all its walls!

(By the way, I was trav­el­ing back to Amer­ica last year from attend­ing a wed­ding in Dubai, and next to me was a young woman who was a pro­fes­sor of archi­tect in Tehran and when I asked her about The Free­dom Mon­u­ment and its uni­ver­sal appeal due to the Baha’i edu­ca­tion of its archi­tect, she did not know who its archi­tect was and that a Baha’i by the name of Hos­sain Amanat is the bril­liant mind that designed the Free­dom Mon­u­ment!!! I was sur­prised of the veil of igno­rance being so thick that even cov­ers the eyes of the edu­cated and enti­tled in the edu­ca­tional sys­tem of Iran. This is while Hos­sain Amanat is cel­e­brated all over the world for his genius and Ira­ni­ans should be proud of his unpar­al­leled con­tri­bu­tion to lift­ing the name, the fame and honor of Iran.)

As to the responses to the arti­cle in the TABNAK site.  Peo­ple have writ­ten the fol­low­ing comments:

• Well what can the Baha’is do. The Iran­ian Islamic Republic’s  con­sti­tu­tion has given them no human rights.
• Unfor­tu­nately the human rights of all whether they are mis­guided or not is the respon­si­bil­ity of every gov­ern­ment and no sound and sane mind would accept that because of being a Baha’i or hav­ing any other belief any gov­ern­ment could deprive its cit­i­zens from their basic human rights such as hav­ing a job or the right to have access to elec­tric­ity, tele­phone, prop­erty, sell­ing or buy­ing goods, etc. or any other right such as right to edu­ca­tion. Espe­cially we can­not pun­ish the chil­dren of these peo­ple because they are fol­low­ing their parent’s path and believe.!! We hope the gov­ern­ment author­i­ties and the reli­gious lead­ers do not react in an improper way so we do not wit­ness all this false and fab­ri­cated propaganda.
• So what! What do you expect? Either let them study inside of the coun­try or if not do not harass them. On one side you deprive them of their basic human rights and then you com­plain why they take their case and com­plain to the inter­na­tional community!
• Well, don’t you think every human being has the right to edu­ca­tion? Don’t you see that bar­ring peo­ple from edu­ca­tion is a vio­la­tion of the human rights of every citizen.
• Every­one regard­less of their belief, race and eth­nic­ity have the right to education.
• O.K. They are con­sid­ered a sect, but what do you want for them? Do you want these peo­ple to drop dead, or do you pre­fer their chil­dren to stand on the cor­ner of the streets and com­mit lewd acts or deal drugs, or com­mit bur­glary? Well when these peo­ple do not have the right to attend uni­ver­sity, what is wrong with occu­py­ing their time with learn­ing and edu­ca­tion through internet?
• Well, in your opin­ion they should not study? How do you like it if the West­ern coun­tries do not allow the Mus­lim stu­dent to attend their universities?
• Tell me, what sort of “cor­rupt sect” is this Baha’i Faith, that encour­ages its young to study and seek education?!!”

I like to thank Mr. Seyeddi once again. This is a new chap­ter in the human rights his­tory of Iran that Iran­ian cit­i­zens are awak­en­ing to the tenets of the char­ter of human rights and not set­tling for any­thing less than being human despite the short­sight­ed­ness of those who are rul­ing the coun­try based on the mind­set of a 1000 years ago when there was no human rights, no uni­ver­sal edu­ca­tion, no rights to free­dom of thought and free­dom to choose ones belief.

These archaic and already abhorred responses by the civ­i­lized world and out­looks that are destruc­tive to the progress of human civ­i­liza­tion, demon­strates that the foun­da­tion of the Islamic Repub­lic Regime is out­dated and is erod­ing from within.

Key­van

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