Baha'i News: Academic conference explores "othering" of Iranian Baha'is

[Baha’i World News Service - Subscribe <bwns-subscribe@bwc.org>]

Baha'i World News Service
http://news.bahai.org
For more information, contact news@bahai.org


Academic conference explores "othering" of Iranian Baha'is 


TORONTO, 4 July 2011 (BWNS) – Iranian scholars, many from globally prominent 
universities, gathered here for a groundbreaking academic conference on the 
persecution of Iran's Baha'is. 

Titled "Intellectual Othering and the Baha'i Question in Iran," the conference 
examined how Iranian authorities have sought to exclude Baha'is from social, 
political, cultural, and intellectual life by portraying them as outsiders in 
their own land – a process known as "othering." 

The event, held from 1-3 July, was the first major academic conference at a 
top-ranked university to focus on the persecution of Iran's Baha'is in any 
context. 

"This conference is not a Baha'i studies conference," said its main organizer 
Mohamad Tavakoli. "It is an effort to understand the use of repression in the 
history of modern Iran and how the 'othering' of Baha'is has become a mechanism 
of mass mobilization for the legitimization of the state and for the creation 
of political-religious ideology."

Dr. Tavakoli – a well-known scholar on Iran and the Middle East from the 
University of Toronto – said the idea for the conference came from his own 
research into the degree to which various Iranian groups had used anti-Baha'i 
rhetoric and made a scapegoat of Baha'is to gain political power, both in the 
past and the present.

Within this framework, the talks and papers – presented by scholars from such 
diverse backgrounds as atheism, Baha'i, Christianity, humanism, Islam and 
Judaism – ranged across a wide territory: from early efforts to vilify Baha'is 
by painting them as colonialist agents of the British and Russians, to the use 
of modern propaganda techniques that, for example, falsely characterize Iranian 
Baha'is as part of a cult that uses "brainwashing" techniques to steal away 
Muslim children.

One presentation described how memoirs and oral histories by clerics have been 
used to demonize Baha'is since the 1979 Revolution. These memoirs, said Shahram 
Kholdi – a PhD candidate from the University of Manchester in the United 
Kingdom – represent a large pool of literature, largely unexamined in the West, 
which has been used to create a revisionist narrative of the founding of the 
Islamic Republic, aimed at the faithful. 

Attacking Baha'is – often using indirect language – is a frequent theme of 
these memoirs, said Mr. Kholdi. "Baha'is are often portrayed as foreign 
agents," he said, explaining that Baha'is are described as part of an external 
force behind the oppressive measures of the Pahlavi regime. "So they use 
Baha'is to legitimize their own revolutionary history."

Politicians also frequently used pogroms against Baha'is for political reasons, 
explained Homa Katouzian, a professor of Oriental Studies at Oxford University, 
who examined a 1924 incident where an anti-Baha'i demonstration led to the 
assassination of the American vice consul in Iran. Baha'is were "a particularly 
soft target," he said. 


Historical parallels 

Several speakers made comparisons between the oppression of Iranian Baha'is 
under the Islamic Republic and other historical efforts to portray a particular 
religious or ethnic group as outsiders – something that has often led to wider 
pogroms or worse.

The father of Rhoda Howard-Hassmann – a professor of international human rights 
at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada – was a Jewish refugee who fled Nazi 
Germany. Professor Howard-Hassmann said the descriptions she heard at the 
conference about abuses directed against Baha'is were all too familiar.

"The talk of the desecration of graves, the conspiracy theories, ...the 
accusation that they are a cult that is stealing children – these are all 
characteristics of extreme retribution, if not pre-genocide," she said.

"This is a political phenomenon, caused by a regime and its manipulation of 
political beliefs. It is not something that simply exists among the people."

In his talk, Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, a professor of Persian studies at the 
University of Maryland, examined the destruction of Iran's Baha'i holy places 
and properties. He recounted a long list of Baha'i sites that have been 
destroyed – from village Baha'i centres in the late 19th century to the House 
of the Bab, one of the most sacred Baha'i sites in the world, which was razed 
by mobs incited by Muslim clerics, shortly after the Islamic Revolution.  

Professor Karimi-Hakkak compared such demolitions to attacks on other major 
religious sites, for example the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan, saying that 
their purpose was often to assert the power of the majority over the minority, 
and to place the minority in the category of the "other."

When a Shiite believer destroys buildings or graves, he said "they demonstrate 
that religious minorities must obey them and they have no power to protect 
their holy sites or their revered graves."

Other scholars made references to pogroms against the Ottoman Armenians and 
against Orthodox Christians in Soviet Russia.


Contemporary relevance

The relevance of the "Baha'i question" to larger issues of religious 
intolerance and political repression worldwide was also explored, as 
participants considered what lessons can be learned from the Baha'i experience.

Several contributors said they believed that the Baha'i case now exemplifies 
the increasing oppression that is being felt by all Iranians, especially since 
the crackdown that followed the 2009 presidential election. This has led many 
ordinary Iranians to sympathize and identify with Baha'is, they said.

"I think the atrocities committed against the Baha'is are being intuitively 
registered and included among the most significant cases of human rights 
violations in Iran," said Reza Afshari, a professor of history at Pace 
University in New York. "At last, this has led to a growing recognition that 
human rights do matter and that their violations are by-products of the 
country's authoritarian rule and intolerance culture, mediated by the Shiite 
mullahs' direct intrusions into the realms of national politics."


Ramin Jahanbegloo – a professor of Political Science at the University of 
Toronto, who himself spent four months in prison in the Islamic Republic of 
Iran – spoke about the importance of including the Baha'i question in any 
future effort at national reconciliation. He compared such a process to what 
happened in South Africa, saying the first step in rebuilding and healing a 
future Iran would be to forgive - rather than forget.

In this regard, he said, it was important to "bring to light the dark episodes" 
of Iran's collective life, such as the persecution of Baha'is. "Forgiveness 
does not mean forgetting," he said.

The conference ended with a talk by noted Iranian human rights lawyer 
Abdol-Karim Lahidji, who examined several international legal instruments that 
can be used to protect against the type of discrimination that was the 
meeting's theme. 

Dr. Lahidji spoke boldly about the need for greater respect for human rights in 
Iran – and the need to grant Baha'is full rights of citizenship.

"Freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, freedom of religion – and not to 
believe in any religion – has to be recognized," he said, stressing the 
importance of passionately defending human rights and the victims of 
discrimination, whether they are members of your own particular group or not. 

"If other people's rights are violated, you have to defend them too. This is 
the struggle of every single one of us," he said.




To read the article online and view photographs, go to:
http://news.bahai.org/story/837

________________________________________________

Copyright 2011 by the Baha'i World News Service. Stories and photographs 
produced by the Baha'i World News Service may be freely reprinted, re-emailed, 
re-posted to the World Wide Web and otherwise reproduced by any individual or 
organization as long as they are attributed to the Baha'i World News Service. 
For more information, go to http://news.bahai.org/terms-of-use/