Current Events

Education is the birthright of all

On June 21, Senator Mobina Jaffer, the first Muslim woman to serve in Canada’s upper chamber, condemned Iran for these attacks, saying: “These are attacks not only on the students and the faculty of the Bahá’í education institute, but on the cherished idea that education is the birthright of all.”

The Iranian government blocks Bahá’ís from access to higher education despite the fact that they form the country’s largest non-Muslim religious minority. When young Bahá’ís do manage to enrol at a university, they are expelled when it is discovered they are Bahá’ís.

Thank you....

Ghormeh Sabzi, thank you for posting the BBC Persian clip. It is really inspiring for me to reflect on how human beings will struggle to educate themselves and to develop their minds.

It is hard to imagine that people, in modern times, are denied education because of their religious beliefs, gender, or color of their skin. When I think of apartheid South Africa or the current day Islamic Republic of Iran it makes me sad to see the hatred and blind prejudice of some government towards their own citizens.

For 30 years, instead of encouragement from the Iranian government, the young Baha'is have been challenged at every step, tormented in their schools, and denied access to higher education. Reflecting on this, makes me appreciate my freedom to be educated, to further my own mind, and to have the ability to contribute my knowledge to advancing society.

Thank you :-)

How come nothing about this on this site?

In March, over 200 Gonabadi Sufis were summoned to courts around the
country to answer allegations that they were insulting Iranian
authorities. In April, eight other Sufis were re-arrested on charges of
disrupting public order – charges for which they had been punished with
flogging and imprisonment.

//www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/rm/2011/169180.htm

My own experience.

I know 2 men (kind of friends) who studied dentistry at a University for Bahais in Iran, and they completed final years in a US university.  This is from 18 years ago, and it was not underground.  We also had several Bahais neighbors who were executed.  Though I don't know what the reason was (I never see a reason to killing someone), they always identified themselves as Bahais.  In such a danagerous government if someone identifies himself as Bahais (in person or in a University entrance form), I call him an activist, which is a dedicated step towards ecouraging rights of human being in Iran.  Still, dead is dead.  We are not going to create a "true Iran" by a non-function dead body.  I don't believe on "Shahid". The word of "shahid" always reminds me of "shahid Fahmideh".