Aug 28th, 2007
The Educational Path Blocked
The Prophets and Messengers of God have been sent down for the sole purpose of guiding mankind to the straight Path of Truth. The purpose underlying their revelation hath been to educate all men . . . Bahá’u'lláh, Bahá’í writings
This long bank holiday weekend we’ve been to a couple of social events bringing together family and friends across four generations. The conversations frequently turned to future plans and aspirations. Those born in the 1990s talked about their GSCE grades and what they would be studying at A-level. One person had got excellent A-level results and would be moving on to university. Two or three born in the 1970s and 1980s mentioned that they were thinking about changing their careers or moving to another country to pursue their current one. That they would need to retrain in some way to do this was seen as normal and, though time-consuming, no one thought it would be impossible.
Depressing, then, when I got home last night and opened my emails, to learn that the Baha’i International Community had received a copy of a confidential 2006 letter from Iran’s Ministry of Science, Research and Technology instructing Iranian universities to expel any student who is discovered to be a Baha’i. I don’t expect you read Persian but here it is.
This is the 2006 letter, stamped `confidential’, from the Central Security Office of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology (MSRT), issued by its director general, Asghar Zarei, to 81 universities in Iran instructing them to expel Baha’i students.
So despite statements by Iranian officials claiming that Baha’i students in Iran face no discrimination, here is evidence that they do. Further evidence comes from the fact that more than half of the Baha’i university students enrolled last autumn were gradually expelled over the course of the 2006-2007 academic year.
Bani Dugal, principal representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations, noted that `This latest document, which flatly states that Baha’i students should be expelled from universities once they are discovered, proves unequivocally that Iranian authorities remain intent on utterly blocking the development of Iranian Baha’is, despite what they say to the outside world.’ This letter exposes, she says, that the Iranian government `is actually continuing to implement its secret, long-term plan to prevent Baha’i students from obtaining a university education.’ You can read the whole story here: http://www.news.bahai.org/story/575
This has been going on since 1979, since the Islamic revolution in Iran. My own children, half-Iranian, were born just a few years before that. Both took advantage of the excellent higher education provided in the United Kingdom. It depresses me to think that people their own age living in the country of their father’s birth are denied the very thing that has enabled my children to thrive and become contributors to their communities - and denied it not because the country cannot provide it but because these young people belong to a religion that teaches the importance of independent searching for truth for oneself - surely the whole point of education.