Bahai persecution in Iran contains lessons for us (July 20, 2006) — Taraneh Doustdau loves this country. The United States is the laboratory for tolerance and diversity that her Bahai faith teaches. Oneness, she believes, is the key to peace. Doustdau, of Pittsford, left her native Iran as a young married woman in 1978, one year before the Islamic revolution. She and her husband first went to Philadelphia and later to Israel for 11 years, to work at the International Bahai Center in Haifa, where she worked restoring documents and artifacts. The couple came to Rochester four years ago and she is a student of graphic design at Rochester Institute of Technology. Vicky Anvari, 68, and her husband escaped Tehran in late 1979 and, after a few years in Chicago, moved to Brighton. When they fled, they lost their home and possessions. Anvari’s father, Dr. Sulayman Berjis, was killed — stabbed more than 80 times — in 1950 because he refused to recant his Bahai faith. She had family members who were tortured, some forced to walk through fire. They were subject to daily indignities. When they’d go to the market, they were not allowed to touch Muslims. “They’d say, ‘Put your money on the counter,’ and then they’d slip a piece of paper under it,” she says. “Then they’d say, ‘Don’t touch the counter, don’t let your dress touch the counter.’” In Iran, where the Bahai faith was founded 150 years ago, its followers are denied basic rights and are often persecuted. Doustdau’s uncle was jailed for seven years for being a Bahai. Bahais are not allowed to attend universities or hold jobs — except jobs in companies they own. Education is so valued among Bahais that they’ve started their own schools and connected to online universities — only to have the authorities raid their homes and destroy their computers. In recent weeks the Bahai International Community has been calling attention to a pattern of arrest and release in Iran. Bahais are arrested, their property confiscated, and they are released on bond, without formal charges or a trial date. The founder, Baha’u'llah, was a Persian nobleman who received a vision from God while he was incarcerated in Tehran’s “Black Pit,” a notorious prison. Central to Baha’u'llah’s social teaching is that humankind is a single community and that it is time for unification. It is a simple and appealing doctrine (Baha’u'llah’s teachings have been translated into 800 languages), but not in Iran, where Bahai persecution has worsened since the 1979 revolution. When she became a U.S. citizen in 1985, Doustdau tried to bring her mother here, but she was not allowed to leave. In 1998, after her mother had died, she was able to bring her father and sister here. Anvari and Doustdau are living examples of why this country is still a light to the world. “This country is my savior,” Doustdau says. “In a way, this country is the Bahai community; it is made up of all the peoples of the world.” “This is a great country,” says Anvari, who became a citizen in 1980. “You can say whatever you want here; in Iran, you can’t say anything.” Indeed, despite our periodic hysteria over immigrants, it is the newcomers who renew and reinforce the ideals of America, constantly reshaping who we are. Acceptance is essential to our future, and the persecution of the peace-loving Bahais should remind us all of the dangers of allowing our ideological differences to blind us to the genius of an ever-changing America.
source:Democrat and Chronicle article
