The destruction of yet another Bahá’í holy place in Iran has prompted an outcry by community members in the United Kingdom and around the world, who believe that the Iranian Government is persisting in a campaign of such extreme fanaticism that it even jeopardizes invaluable assets of the country’s cultural heritage.

The demolition last June of an historic house in Tehran, which followed the levelling of a Bahá’í holy place in Babol earlier in the year, has spurred national Bahá’í communities in several nations to publish a statement decrying the destruction. The statement, which took the form of a paid advertisement in The Times, was also printed in leading newspapers in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the United States. The Bahá’í community of Iran, with about 300,000 members, is the country’s largest religious minority. Since 1979, despite their peaceful character, more than 200 Iranian Bahá’ís have been killed, and hundreds more have been tortured and imprisoned. Tens of thousands have lost jobs, pensions, and access to education, all solely because the clerics who rule Iran declare them heretics. “The hatred of the extremist mullahs for the Bahá’ís is such that they, like the Taliban of Afghanistan who destroyed the towering Buddhist sculptures at Bamiyan, intend not only to eradicate the religion, but even to erase all traces of its existence in the country of its birth,” says the statement. The house that was destroyed in June had been owned by Mirzá Abbás Nurí, the father of Bahá’u’lláh, founder of the Bahá’í faith. Mirzá Abbás Nurí was an eminent provincial governor and was widely regarded as one of Iran’s greatest calligraphers. The statement in The Times noted that Mirzá Abbás Nurí’s house was an “historical monument, a precious example of Islamic-Iranian architecture, ‘a matchless model of art, spirituality, and architecture.’” Placing the statement in newspapers around the world is part of a coordinated effort by Bahá’ís outside of Iran to call the world’s attention to the destruction of cultural landmarks that are part of the heritage of the entire world. The destruction of Mirzá Abbás Nurí’s house represents just the latest in a series of demolitions that appears to be aimed at systematically destroying Bahá’í holy sites. In April, despite international protest, the gravesite of an early apostle of the Faith was destroyed in Babol. In 1993, more than 15,000 graves were bulldozed at the well-kept Bahá’í cemetery of Tehran on the pretext of constructing a municipal centre. In 1979, shortly after the Islamic revolution, the sacred house of the Báb in Shiraz was demolished. The house of Bahá’u’lláh in Takur, where he spent his childhood, was also demolished soon after the revolution and the site offered for sale to the public. Bahá’ís see the Iranian’s government intention is to gradually extinguish the Bahá’í faith as a cultural force and cohesive entity in Iran, along with its history and heritage.

BWNS

Under destruction - the houselike structure marking the resting place of Quddus, Babol, Iran, April 2004.