The US State Department last week charged that in the Islamic Republic all non-Shia religious groups now face some kind of discrimination, mainly in employment, education and housing.
The report said that Baha’is suffer the harshest discrimination, but that all religious minorities are now under some pressure. “Particularly since the June 2009 elections, the government intensified its campaign against non-Muslim religious minorities,” the report said.
An addendum updating the report, which stopped at the end of December, said, “The Iranian government also continued to repress, jail, and intimidate other religious minorities, including Sufi Muslims, evangelical Christians, Jews, Sunnis, and Ahmadis, and other Shia who did not share the government’s official religious views.”
The report is an annual document that a 1998 law requires the State department to prepare. It covers 195 countries. Under the law, the State Department is required to name egregious offenders. This report cites Iran and seven other countries: Burma, China; Eritrea; North Korea; Saudi Arabia; Sudan and Uzbekistan. Five of the eight countries cited are majority Muslim.
The Islamic republic is about 90 percent Shia and 9 percent Sunni, with the remaining 1 percent comprised of a variety of sects, whose numbers have been declining since the revolution as their members have fled Iran for other parts of the world.
The report said the largest of the other sects was the Baha’is with 300,000 to 350,000 adherents. They are followed by about 260,000 Armenian Christians, 30,000 to 60,000 Zoroastrians and 20,000 to 30,000 Jews. The smaller groups include 10,000 to 20,000 Assyrian Christians, 10,000 Protestants and 5,000 to 10,000 Sabean-Mandaeans, the report estimated. It did not mention Roman Catholics, which the Vatican numbers at about 10,000. The report said the number of Shia who practice Sufism in defiance of the state is unclear but growing and may number 2 million to 5 million.
The overall report does not just deal with discrimination by Muslim states, but also with discrimination against Muslims, particularly in Europe. The report’s introduction said, “Anti-Muslim sentiment and restrictions on religious expression continued in many parts of Europe. Bans on religious clothing and policies denying those wearing religious attire access to public spaces were expanded.
“In France the government approved legislation that prohibits covering the face in public, which in practice prohibits the niqab (face-covering veil) and the burqa (full-body covering). The French constitutional court ruled the law constitutional in October 2010; the first fines were levied under this legislation in April 2011, and authorities arrested two women for wearing niqabs in June.
“In eight states in Germany, teachers are not allowed to wear headscarves in schools while teaching non-religious curricula, and in one state, Hesse, civil servants are prohibited from wearing headscarves at work.
“In December 2010 the minister of education in Azerbaijan directed that students should not be allowed to wear the hejab while in school, although implementation has been inconsistent.”
The chapter on Iran is long and fairly detailed. It says; “The government’s level of respect for religious freedom in law and in practice declined during the reporting period. Government rhetoric and actions created a threatening atmosphere for nearly all non-Shia religious groups….
“During the reporting period government-controlled broadcast and print media intensified negative campaigns against religious minorities, particularly the Baha’is. All non-Shia religious minorities suffered varying degrees of officially sanctioned discrimination, particularly in the areas of employment, education, and housing.”
The report notes that apostasy is punishable by death only in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. It said at least two death sentences for apostasy or evangelism were issued last year.
With regard to legislated discrimination, the report says: “Members of religious minorities, excluding Sunni Muslims, were prevented from serving in the judiciary and security services and from becoming public school principals…. Members of religious minorities, with the exception of Baha’is, could serve in lower ranks of government employment…. The law forbids non-Muslims from holding officer positions over Muslims in the armed forces. Members of religious minorities with a college education can serve as officers during their mandatory military service but cannot be career military officers…. According to law, Baha’i blood is considered mobah, meaning it can be spilled with impunity…. University applicants were required to pass an examination in Islamic, Christian, or Jewish theology, but there was no test for the Baha’i theology.”
With regard to Christians, the report said the Islamic Republic has required evangelical Christian groups to submit the names of the members of their congregations. And it said Christians of all denominations reported security cameras installed outside their churches, presumably to confirm that no non-Christians were participating in services.
The report said, “The government generally allowed recognized religious minority groups to conduct religious education for their adherents in separate schools, although it restricted this right considerably in some cases. The Ministry of Education, which imposed certain curriculum requirements, supervised these schools. With few exceptions, the directors of such private schools must be Muslim. Attendance at the schools was not mandatory for recognized religious minorities.
“The Ministry of Education must approve all textbooks used in coursework, including religious texts. Recognized religious minorities could provide religious instruction in non-Persian languages, but such texts required approval by the authorities. This approval requirement sometimes imposed significant translation expenses on minority communities. Assyrian Christians reported that their community was permitted to write its own textbooks which, following government authorization, were printed at the government’s expense and distributed to the Assyrian community.”
The government said a few years ago that it was no longer banning Baha’is from higher education. But the report contradicts that, saying, “Public and private universities continued to deny admittance to or expel Baha’i students. Although the government maintained publicly that Baha’is were free to attend university, reports indicated that the implicit policy of preventing Baha’is from obtaining higher education remained in effect.”
Little attention is given in the West to the plight of Sunnis in the Islamic Republic. The State Department report said, “Many Sunnis claimed the government discriminated against them; however, it is difficult to distinguish whether the cause of discrimination was religious or ethnic, since most Sunnis are also members of ethnic minorities. Sunnis cited the absence of a Sunni mosque in Tehran, despite the presence of more than one million adherents in the city, as a prominent example.
“Sunni leaders reported bans on Sunni religious literature and teachings in public schools, even in predominantly Sunni areas. Sunnis also noted the under-representation of Sunnis in government-appointed positions in the provinces where they form a majority, such as Kurdistan and Khuzestan provinces, as well as their inability to obtain senior government positions.”
Turning to Judaism, the report said, “While the government recognizes Judaism as an official religious minority, the Jewish community experienced official discrimination. The government continued to sanction anti-Semitic propaganda involving official statements, media outlets, publications, and books.
“The government’s anti-Semitic rhetoric, along with a perception among radical Muslims that all Jewish citizens of the country support Zionism and the state of Israel, continued to create a hostile atmosphere for Jews. The rhetorical attacks also further blurred the line between Zionism, Judaism, and Israel and contributed to increased concerns about the future security of the Jewish community in the country.
“President Mahmud Ah-madi-nejad continued a virulent anti-Semitic campaign. During the reporting period, the president publicly called for the destruction of Israel.” Some might question that conclusion. Ahmadi-nejad has always been strongly anti-Zionist. But he, like other senior officials, has been very careful to distinguish between Judaism and Zionism. In fact, Ahmadi-nejad has made a point of receiving and being photographed with anti-Zionist Jewish rabbis. The regime makes a point of highlighting anti-Zionist Jews to underscore its rhetoric that it is not anti-Semitic.
On the practice of Judaism, the report said, “With some exceptions, there was little government restriction of, or interference with, Jewish religious practice. The government reportedly allowed Hebrew instruction but limited the distribution of Hebrew texts, particularly nonreligious texts, making it difficult to teach the language. Moreover, the government required that in conformity with the schedule of other schools, Jewish schools must remain open on Saturdays, which violated Jewish law.
“Jewish citizens were free to travel out of the country, and the government did not enforce the general restriction against travel by the country’s citizens to Israel on Jews.” This is a change from past years when the regime sometimes dragged Jews into court for visiting Israel.
The report even reported discrimination against the microscopic Sabean-Mandaean religious community, which has lived in Iran for millennia. “The government often denied members of the Sabean-Mandaean community access to higher education,” the report said.
It said, “The government repressed Sufi communities and religious practices, including increased harassment and intimidation of prominent Sufi leaders by the intelligence and security services. Government restrictions on Sufi groups and husseiniyeh (houses of worship) became more pronounced in recent reporting periods. There were numerous reports of Shia clerics and prayer leaders denouncing Sufism and the activities of Sufis in the country in both sermons and public statements.”
In its detailed assessments, the report devoted three pages to Baha’is, one page to Sufis and one page to Evangelical Christians, seeming to rank them as the groups suffering the most from state discrimination.