Religious Faith on Trial - Where is the News Media?

This week, the Iranian government will place seven religious leaders of the Baha'i Faith on trial in a revolutionary court on charges of “espionage for Israel, insulting religious sanctities and propaganda against the Islamic Republic.” The Baha’i leaders have been held for nearly a year in Evin prison, denied access to their attorney, the Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi.

Some 300,000 Baha’is live throughout Iran, making the Baha’i Faith the country’s largest minority religion. Baha’is have been targets of discrimination and violence in Iran since the religion began there in the mid-nineteenth century. More than 200 Baha'is were killed in Iran between 1978 and 1998, the majority by execution, and thousands more were imprisoned. Today the Iranian government regards Baha’is as apostates and “unprotected infidels.” Baha’is in Iran have no legal rights, and they are not permitted to elect leaders of their community. The Baha’i Faith has no clergy, and community affairs are coordinated by democratically elected governing councils called Spiritual Assemblies.

Baha’is in Iran are systematically denied jobs, pensions and the right to inherit property. More than 10,000 Baha’is have been dismissed from government and university posts since Iran’s 1979 revolution.

For more information see http://iran.bahai.us/

Why, you ask, am I posting this information on a blog normally devoted to writing? Why should you care about a religious group you might never have heard of in a country often portrayed by the U.S. news media as a bad joke?

Because this is no joke. This is a quiet holocaust as real and as deadly as any extermination in Germany or death march in Bataan or massacre in Darfur. This is a religious trial worthy of the Inquisition. And it's happening in Iran. Now.

These seven, members of a faith which specifically instructs its members to obey the laws of the country they live in and to avoid involvement in politics, are being placed on trial for their belief in God.

Whatever your faith - Christian, Moslem, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu - please pray for these people.

And, if you live in a free country, please contact your government and ask them to express their outrage. In the U.S., you can reach the House at http://www.house.gov/ and the Senate at http://www.senate.gov/ - just follow the instructions.

A few emails from you might save seven lives. Please take the time and try - before it's too late.