Jeune Street

Dr Abbas Milani, Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford, expresses his solidarity with the Baha'is in Iran. What I found especially welcome (and unusual) about his remarks is the attention he draws to the contribution of Baha'is to the advancement of Iranian society. He notes that times of relative freedom "unleashed an impressive burst of creative, industrial, commercial, and intellectual energies and innovations by members of the Bahai community." Iran is reckoning with its past treatment of its Baha'is, he says:

In spite of the concentrated efforts of the regime to poison the minds of the Iranian people about the Bahai faith, in spite of its monopoly hold on the media, there is a new surging consciousness amongst millions of Iranians, dozens of intellectuals, and even a handful of Shiite clerics that the treatment of Bahais has been a shameful part of our past. More and more people are convinced that Bahais have, like any other Iranian citizen, the inalienable right to practice their faith, and that as citizens of Iran, they should be entitled to all the rights allotted to any other citizen, from any faith. An impressively large number of Iranian writers, poets, scholars, and filmmakers have come to recognize that as a nation, we owe the Bahais a word of apology, and a debt of gratitude. Apology for all they have suffered, and apology for all our silences; and gratitude that in spite of these inequities, they have invariably abided by the civility and peacefulness their faith professes, but they have never wavered in their love of a free, democratic Iran.

Bravo.