Question:
Is religious persecution declining or growing?
Answer: No one could
answer today’s question accurately without some in-depth research and
comparison to another historical time-frame — i.e., now as compared to
then. So I don’t really know. But any religious persecution is too much
persecution.
The Middle-East is not a safe place for religious minorities, be they
Jewish, Christian, Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Bahá’í, Zoroastrian, Ahmaddiyih
and so forth. Copts are assaulted and murdered with impunity in Egypt.
Brave Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s former Minister for Minorities, was
assassinated on March 2, 2011 for advocating the repeal of Islam’s
blasphemy laws, a capital offence. They were allegedly being used to
persecute his Christian co-religionists. ‘Abdu’l-Rahman escaped death
in Afghanistan (2006) for converting to Christianity, but only through
direct intervention of western government officials — including Prime
Minister Harper, Pope Benedict XVI and then U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice — to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The list of
current religious persecution is too long to continue here.
Bahá’ís are well acquainted with systematic persecution. As Iran’s
largest religious minority, Bahá’ís in the Islamic Republic have been
subject to unwarranted arrests, false imprisonment, harassment,
beatings, torture, rapes, murder, kidnapping, forced marriages,
persecution of school children, unjustified executions, confiscation
and destruction of property, denial of employment, government benefits,
civil rights and access to higher education. At least 100 Bahá’ís are
currently prisoners of conscience in Iran. Some are in dire need of
medical attention.
The Bahá’í Faith practises interfaith fellowship and condemns
persecution. It advocates the protection, not the persecution, of
minorities: “If any discrimination is at all to be tolerated, it should
be a discrimination not against, but rather in favour of the minority,
be it racial or otherwise. Unlike the nations and peoples of the Earth,
be they of the East or of the West, democratic or authoritarian,
communist or capitalist, whether belonging to the Old World or the New,
who either ignore, trample upon, or extirpate, the racial, religious,
or political minorities within their sphere of jurisdiction, every
organized community enlisted under the banner of Bahá’u’lláh should
feel it to be its first and inescapable obligation to nurture,
encourage, and safeguard every minority belonging to any faith, race,
class, or nation within it.” (Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine
Justice, p. 35) -
Jack
McLean
