The roughly 300,000 Baha’i who live in Iran are viewed as heretics and have been discriminated against since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In the aftermath of the revolution, hundreds of Baha’i were arrested or murdered. Members of the community had their property and belongings seized by various Iranian institutions in the following decades.

The discrimination continues—even today, Baha’is are the target of harassment and arrests on false pretenses. The campaign estimates that there are 74 Baha’is currently incarcerated in Iran.

Members of the Baha’i community, considered impure by country’s powerful clerics, also are banned from studying or teaching in universities in the country. “They wanted to stop the growth of the Baha’i community,” said Bahari, who describes the government’s policy as “educational apartheid.”

Mural by artist El Cekis on 160 E. 120th Street, New York.
Mural by artist El Cekis on 160 E. 120th Street, New York.
Image: Not A Crime
Mural by artist Elle at 250 W. 127th Street, New York.
Mural by artist Elle at 250 W. 127th Street, New York.
Image: Not A Crime

The Baha’i community has responded to this maltreatment in an innovative way. In 1986, after many Baha’i teachers were kicked out of university and Baha’i students were denied education, they started an underground university called the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE). “Through that underground university they have managed to not only survive in Iran, but they have thrived,” says Bahari.

The lack of accreditation for the university means that the degree is not accepted in most places in Iran. But many prominent universities in the US, such as MIT, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley, accept these unofficial degrees and admit BIHE graduates.

Mural by artist Rone at 70 E. 129th Street, New York
Mural by artist Rone at 70 E. 129th Street, New York
Image: Not A Crime

Bahari considers Iran’s treatment of the Baha’i community a barometer of the government’s tolerance of minorities in general. “If the Iranian government can develop a more logical, more reasonable approach to the situation of the Baha’i, that is a sign of a less dogmatic and less extremist government,” said Bahari. “And that is not what many conservative hardliners want. So Baha’is become victims of the infighting within the country.”

In May of this year, Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of a powerful ayatollah, had tea with Fariba Kamalabadi, a prominent leader of the Baha’i community, sparking a debate in Iran.

Mural by artist Alexandre Keto at 160 E. 120th Street, New York.
Mural by artist Alexandre Keto at 160 E. 120th Street, New York.
Image: Not A Crime

On Sept. 6, Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Baha’i International Community, wrote a letter (pdf) to Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, lamenting the “the unrelenting economic oppression imposed upon the Baha’i community” and urging the government to take action. “How can the deliberate policy of a government be to impoverish a section of its own society?” he wrote.

The Iranian government has asked similarly pointed questions about the United States, mainly in the context anti-American propaganda accusing white capitalists of exploiting their black countrymen.

“Since the beginning of the Iranian Revolution the Iranian government has pretended to be the champion of the oppressed throughout the world, including African Americans,” said Bahari. “It seems that the Iranian government does not see the similarities between its own actions against a large minority in its own country and what went on in the US against the African-American minority.”

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