Why I went to prison for teaching physics
technologyreview.com
technologyreview.com
Though your article is appreciated. It's nice to be reminded that many issues, like freedom of expression, are important all across the American political spectrum.
Maybe I'm reading this incorrectly, but it sounds like Mr. Badavam's crimes were being Baha'i and teaching at a school for Baha'i students.
From the article:
"Iran’s Baha’i community created BIHE in the 1980s after our youth were banned from Iranian universities. I began volunteering there in 1989 after serving three years in prison for simply being an active Baha’i."
If I'm reading this correctly, the title is a bit misleading.
Relevant information is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah%C3%A1%27%C3%AD_Faith#Perse...
It's pretty ugly.
To answer the GP's question: if you are in Iran, you are likely to end up in prison for any form of openly displaying an unwillingness to follow Islamic rules. If you should find yourself in Iran, my best advice is to leave at the earliest opportunity.
I don't think that's correct. Apostasy though is banned by law(not just for muslims).
Also whether it's true or not that there is a strong relationship between Baha'i and Israel the world center is in Haifa. You don't need to be a genius to know that doesn't play ball with the Mullah's.
Any of the downvoters care to explain their downvote? Saying 1800 doesn't properly capture that it was founded in 1844 and that by 1853 he the main guy left, because after the previous guy was executed after he declared himself the messiah and wrote a new sharia law, and in '50 his followers tried to assassinate the shah.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah%C3%A1%27%C3%AD_World_Centr...
Persian authorities -> let's just say muslims, and stop trying to claim that these people are treated differently in any muslim country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy#/media/File:Apostasy_... (note that Indonesia is not correct, people are executed there for leaving islam all the time : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyq6WMatTEQ )
If anything, Iran is very flexible in it's interpretation of islam (events like in Indonesia are pretty much unthinkable in Iran). Even in this case. You see, the prescribed punishment for what this guy did, according to islam, is not imprisonment at all. It is execution:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam
The constant weaseling out of stating the fact, the sort of treatment muslims give people of non-islamic faiths, and atheists (read the blog "the big pharaoh" a bit) is very a very controversial fact : just read the wikipedia article, the constant sentences about "a minority thinks different". Reality is that polls place the number of muslims that want to execute people like this physics teacher is just over 70%, and more in countries like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan and a dozen others. You will experience the same constant weaseling out if you talk to muslims in America. When you're in an islamic ghetto, in Europe (some have quite nice food), they (in one case the same muslim) will readily point it out though. Seems to have something to do with how many muslims there are.
Of course this means that the basic article of the current politically correct order, that humans just want to live together in peace, is not true for around 70% of muslims. Whether they'll take immediate action on that opinion is a different matter, true, but that obviously doesn't apply once muslims are ~60% of the local population.
The problem is not only Iran, most countries with Muslim majorities have this problem. Yes, there are some exceptions though.
Also where should this people leave to? Just because they'd like to leave they are not entitled to be let in.
If you ask me: Stay in Iran or where ever you are right now and work on improving your own country and society.
Removing a government is relatively easy. Installing a new one is hard.
A "modernizing/liberalizing leader" doesn't work, as you just pointed out yourself with Russia. If the majority of the people aren't supportive of that, that leader will be replaced before long with a Putin-like leader. Obviously, someone in Russia in the late 80s would have been better off simply leaving the country for greener pastures, because the time they had with a more liberal leader was short and things quickly regressed.
Fighting for a better government is only worthwhile when the majority of people in your country are going to back you. If most of them like the crappy, oppressive government (or want something even worse), you're just wasting your time and effort trying to improve things, and you'd be better off finding someplace better to live.
It's not surprising to me at all to see Americans overthrow a secular democracy, install an ayatollah-back dictator who less than two years later starts a bloody campaign against the Bahai...
...and then to see those same Americans shaking their heads in moral outrage how the Iranian ayatollahs (who they empowered) are persecuting the Bahai in the modern day.
Same Americans? It was sixty years ago; those responsible are either dead or so old that "shaking their heads in moral outrage" is physically difficult.
So western readers knowing this can know the history - the secular parliament of Iran was overthrown when the US and UK backed the ayatollahs and others in ousting it. Then in the 1970s, the ayatollahs wanted an end to US influence in Iran, which is when Iran began becoming a pariah. US nuclear companies were printing ads in newspapers boasting about how they were helping make Iran a nuclear power ( http://img.myconfinedspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/sh... ). This is in the years before the GOP invited Netanyahu to Congress to scold Obama that he wasn't bombing Iran for wanting to use nuclear power (also, it's implicit that Israel is allowed to be a nuclear power, Iran isn't).
It has little difference from other countries - if you notice, the US has been working to overthrow the last of the old Nasserite pan-Arab nationalist pseudo-socialist governments like in Iraq, Libya and more recently Syria. In fact, the US has been arming jihadists fighting Assad's secular government - something Putin himself has noted. Meanwhile the US backs to the hilt Islamic dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, Brunei etc. which are lapdogs to the US.
This notion that the US government is against Islamic radicalism is absured. It's true enemies are always the Qadaffis, the Saddam Hussein's, the Assads, the Mossadeghs. The US supports Islamic fundamentalist jihadists - Osama bin Laden is a creation of the US, banking his and the mujahideen fight against a secular socialist Afghani government. Sylvester Stallone made a Rambo movie where he went to Afghanistan and fought alongside the Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, attacking the secular socialist Afghani government and Russians, the end of the movie credits are "dedicated to the brave Mujaheddin fighters". That movie came out in 1988, 13 years before 9/11.
I'm not sure how U.S. foreign policy would excuse Iran of its human rights abuses.
Also - the Shah in direction with Falsafi started the anti-Bahai campaigns in 1955, which had not been going on under Iran's parliament. The US puts in a puppet, in less than two years he stirs up a massive anti-Bahai campaign which involves riots, lynchings. You seem to be in complete shock, you want to be a westerner being pious and holier-than-thou against something the west itself did, against the will of Mossadegh and the elected parliament of Iran.
I.e. standard western fiddling about going catastrophically wrong for everyone.
The US and shah and Savak did too well stamping out secularism, left-wing ideas, even liberal ideas about parliament, democracy etc. Eventually the ayatollahs and Bazaari etc. amassed great power, and turned on the Shah.
Mossadegh was never in the pocket of the ayatollahs, but he did try to qualm moderates like Kashani. But Kashani eventually turned on him (the hard-line preachers had far before).
Re. Bahais, this is a controversial religion with roots in 19th century mysticism. The prophet of this religion claims to be the Messiah and pretty much every other Messiah rolled into one. He is in fact the claimant to the 2nd return of Christ. Now, should a nation allow anyone to go around claiming whoppers like this and allowed to operate a religion (which affords quite a lot of privs. in society). So the anti-bahai issue in Iran is really mostly about power and politics and has little to do with the Spirit. Iranians feel this is a fake religion that is used by West to manipulate Iranian society. Think of it as Scientology and Germany for a perspective.
[p.s. obviously the above does not condone the actions of the Mullah regime. ]
> ... something Putin himself has noted.
is not much more than an appeal to authority. And a bad one at that. Putin has not exactly been making a name for himself as the most trustworthy source of news and fact since, well, forever.
Your post would look better without that sentence.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/1...
Well, it says that an Islamic militia backed by the US gave up its arms to Al-Qaeda. Although two things to note with the sub-title "Moderate rebels in Syria that the US have armed and trained to fight jihadists have surrendered to al-Qaeda".
#1 - the adjective "moderate" is applied to the group. This is an Islamic militia whose origins were backed by the Muslim Brotherhood to create a government mimicking that of Mohammed's during the time of the caliphate. Would that be called moderate if they weren't in a strange alliance with the US?
#2 - not mentioned any where in the article is that some Harakat Hazm went over to Jabhat al-Nusra.