Iran’s Battle Against the Baha’is

The Islamic Republic takes advantage of public unrest to crack down on the religious minority—including two grandmothers.

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An adherent of the Baha'i faith reads from the holy book Al-Kitab al-Aqdas. (STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images)

Mitra Aliabouzar has plenty of bad memories from her time in Iran’s Evin prison: hours-long interrogations; no contact with family, who for weeks didn’t know whether she was alive; and 39 days of solitary confinement in a cell scarcely large enough to stretch her legs. 

But the painful memory that stands out “clearly and visibly” more than a decade later is saying goodbye to her cellmates, Baha’i activists Fariba Kamalabadi and Mahvash Sabet. Both at the time were four years into 10-year sentences.

“I had 30 minutes to pack and I just spent the whole 30 minutes in Fariba’s arms. I didn’t want to leave,” Aliabouzar said in an interview with The Dispatch. “I left my other family back in prison.”

Kamalabadi and Sabet—a psychologist and a poet, both grandmothers—now face another decade behind bars for their political and spiritual leadership in the Baha’i community. The two women have become the public faces of the regime’s persecution of the religious minority group, serving as a source of inspiration to all Iranians fighting for freedom from the Islamic Republic’s repressive rule. 

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Comments (9)
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  1. Kmsinatra

    I am sorry for responding so late. It has been open in my tabs for a week!
    When we were in Haifa we saw the Bahai HQ. It was beautiful!

    (I tried to post a picture but it wouldn't let me)
    Thanks for the reporting Charlotte!

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  2. Kimberlybrisky

    Thank you for shining light on this issue. The continental House of Worship for the Baha’is in North America is just one town over from me. As a Hill staffer for two Members of Congress that represented the area, condemning Iran’s persecution of this religious minority was a bipartisan effort, and still continues today.

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  3. Matt C

    Excellent article. It is good to give attention to important and interesting topics which often get overshadowed.

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  4. Rleblanc1

    As a Bahá'i I am grateful to 'The Dispatch' for covering this story. However I must point out what I believe are two inaccurate terms in the article. I wouldn't refer to Bahá’is as being 'activists' or being in any way 'political'. The statement that Fariba Kamalabadi and Mahvash Sabet offered political leadership is not quite accurate as Bahai's are forbidden to involve themselves politically. This letter to the Baha'is of Iran, from the Universal House of Justice (the Head of the Baha'i Faith) will clarify the relationship between the Baha'is and the government;
    https://www.bahai.org/documents/the-universal-house-of-justice/bahais-iran-20130302_001
    Bob LeBlanc, Wakefield, Quebec

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    1. Cwzgale

      I agree. I'm not a Baha'i but I had friends who were. Thank you, Charlotte, for covering this vastly unreported story.

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  5. Dennis.Trask.Z

    Disturbing. Atrocities committed in the name of God. A fine example of the value of separation between the state and religion.

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    1. Mathias

      The value is in separating church (that is, a hierarchical administration tasked with the oversight of religion) and state. Separating religion itself from state results in only profane and impious people with no fear of Divine judgment being allowed to run the country. That results in atrocities being committed, as sure as night follows day.

      But the separation of church from state is necessary, because otherwise the state coopts the church and turns it into an arm of the state, instead of a watchdog providing a check on the state. In other words, the separation of church and state is necessary for the protection of the church.

      Iran has turned their religious institutions into de facto political institutions, and the result is that they cannot abide dissenting religious views because it threatens them politically. Hence their (purposeful) misidentification of religious dissenters as political activists. To the mullahs, religion is only politics by another name.

      So religion needs to permeate the individuals who run the state. But that religion needs to serve as a backstop against their political power, as a rein on their ambition, to hold them accountable in a forum outside the workings of the state. Not, as in Iran, to serve as an excuse for them to aggrandize power without accountability to anyone in heaven or on earth.

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    2. Avatar photo
      Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

      Not necessarily. China cracks down on religious minorities with no pretense of doing it in the name of God. Given some people power, and they abuse it.

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      1. Mathias

        Even China may not be an exception to the rule of a state religion being threatened by non-state religious practice. All you have to do is see Communism as a religion, with Man as its object of worship. (Not individual men, of course, who must be sacrificed to Man as an abstract idea.) Or else, if the idol of Man is merely a facade or veneer, then behind the curtain lies the true object of worship: Power.

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