Five Religious Thinkers: Meeting with a Imprisoned Bahai Fellow Countryman is an Ethical and Religious Act

Five religious thinkers have described the reactions to Faezah Hashemi's meeting with a Bahai community leader as "lamentable," emphasizing that "visiting a Bahai compatriot who has unjustly spent many years in prison is not a crime, but a religious, ethical, and human act." Mohsen Kadivar, Hassan Yousefi Eshkevari, Abdolali Bazargan, Sedigheh Voseqi, and Hassan Farshchian, in a statement published on Saturday, June 1, also urged "cultural, artistic, and political figures" to "more vigorously support the important principle of tolerance towards dissenters." According to the Zeytoon website, the authors of this statement warned that "misguided thinking and extremism" threaten Iran "like other countries". They emphasized that "religious belief cannot be the basis for legal crime or religious sin" and that "justifying oppression and rejoicing in the harassment of fellow humans is the greatest deviation and misguidance." They stated that "Islam supports freedom of religion and belief" and that "freedom of religion, belief, and thought is an inseparable part of human dignity and honor that no one should take away from another." The statement stressed that "violating the human rights of non-Muslims, even polytheists and infidels, has no religious justification." Fariba Kamalabadi, a imprisoned Bahai community leader in Iran, had recently been granted a few days of leave after years, and several of her former fellow inmates, including Faezah Hashemi, met with her. Following this event, Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi, a conservative cleric in Qom, along with several close associates of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, including Mohammad Reza Naqdi, head of the Basij Organization, Friday prayer leaders, and conservative media, strongly protested Faezah Hashemi's action. Meanwhile, these five religious thinkers added that the "harsh and unreasonable" reactions to this meeting are even more lamentable, as some clerics and authorities, including Mr. Makarem Shirazi, condemned this meeting and even considered it a prosecutable crime that strengthens Bahaism and weakens Islam. The statement reiterated that "visiting a Bahai compatriot who has unjustly spent many years in prison is not a crime, but a religious, ethical, and human act." Following the protests against Faezah Hashemi's meeting with Fariba Kamalabadi, fatwas from some Shia clerics regarding Bahais have also been republished in recent days. For instance, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, has described the Bahai faith as a "misguided sect" and Bahais as "impure" in several separate fatwas. However, these five religious thinkers stated in their statement that "there is no law in Iranian positive law that allows for the violation of the rights of non-Muslim and non-people of the Book Iranians; rather, based on the definitive principles of the modern nation-state, which is somewhat reflected in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic, the legal equality of Iranian citizens is guaranteed." They asserted that "the government and the ruling political system are not in a position to make religious or sectarian judgments. The role of the government in Islam, as clearly stated in Imam Ali's covenant with Malik al-Ashtar and other instances in Nahj al-Balagha, is only to perform public services that are beyond the capacity of individuals." Previously, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, head of the Expediency Discernment Council and Faezah Hashemi's father, stated in an interview with the Jomhouri Islami newspaper published on Tuesday, May 16, that his daughter "made a serious mistake and must correct and compensate for it." However, Faezah Hashemi told the Persian section of Euronews that she did not commit any wrongdoing and is not regretful. In this context, these five religious thinkers emphasized in their statement that "the acceptance of oppression, overlooking unethical and inhumane behaviors, failing to protest against misguided thinking and extremism, and superstition have so weakened our society, even the capabilities of political, cultural, and intellectual elites, that they cannot defend a simple ethical and human act in the meeting of a compatriot with a prisoner, to the extent that even Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani is forced to condemn his daughter's humane behavior in the face of the uproar and bullying of the misguided." The authors of this statement called on "cultural, artistic, and political figures" to "utilize this human spirit to draw a line against division and hostility and the acceptance of oppression and discrimination against compatriots due to their religion and beliefs." The statement concluded: "It is time to more vigorously support the necessity of peaceful human coexistence and the important principle of tolerance towards dissenters." According to the Bahai community in Europe, about 300,000 Bahais live in Iran, while the laws of the Islamic Republic do not recognize Bahaism as a religion, and Bahais in Iran are deprived of the right to education in universities and employment in government institutions. The Bahai community claims that since the 1979 revolution, more than 200 Bahais have been killed by the Iranian government, and thousands of Bahais have been arrested and subjected to harassment. Simin Fahandezh, spokesperson for the Bahai World Community, also stated last year that more than 80 Bahais are imprisoned in Iran.