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Non-Muslim Religious Minorities in Contemporary Iran

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Non-Muslim Religious Minorities in Contemporary Iran Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299 Non-Muslim Religious Minorities in Contemporary Iran Jamsheed K. Choksy Indiana University Abstract A little over three decades ago, during the reign of the last Pahlavi monarch Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, non-Muslim religious minorities in Iran experienced life within a relatively tolerant society. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran’s native Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, Mandaeans, and Baha’is have experienced in- creasing discrimination, isolation, and intimidation. Those non-Muslim religious minorities provide Iranian society with confessional pluralism and cultural di- versity, thereby serving also as a moderating population sliver against Shi‘ite funda- mentalism. But now the non-Muslim communities collectively have diminished to less than 2 percent of Iran’s 75,2 million residents. Yet, these minorities have at- tracted very limited domestic and international attention or concern because their situation is poorly understood. This article, based on extensive fieldwork in Iran during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, examines the situations of those Zoroastrians, Christians, Jews, Mandaeans, and Baha’is. While Sunnis also are a religious minority in Iran and do experience prejudices too, intra-Muslim tension with its origins in seventh century religious disputes and its geopolitical reverberations to the present day go beyond the scope of this article. Keywords Minorities in Iran, Iranian Zoroastrians, Iranian Christians, Iranian Jews, Bahai’s THE ISSUES1 “Every aspect of a non-Muslim is unclean”, declared Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1987 while the Islamic Republic of Iran’s revolutionary or supreme leader, much to the dismay of that country’s small religious 1 I conducted fieldwork on these issues in Iran as an undergraduate at Columbia University, as a graduate student at Harvard University, and as a faculty member at Indiana University. I am most grateful to those institutions for having funded the research from 1984 to 2012. Some of the issues analysed here have previously been discussed more briefly in non-academic forums by Choksy/Shea 2009; and Choksy/ Shea 2009a. The Zoroastrian community’s situation has been analysed previously by me in Choksy 2012: 8-29; idem 2006: 129-184. Likewise, those of the Jewish com- munity have been discussed by me in Choksy 2013. I have touched on intra-Muslim sectarian tensions between the majority Shi‘ites and the minority Sunnis elsewhere, Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/1573384X-20120017 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:43:50AM via free access 272 J. K. Choksy / Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299 minorities (Algar 1981: 230). The most recent census of Iran in 2011 in- dicates that whereas Shi‘ite Muslims make up 90 percent of the total population of 75,149,669, and Sunni Muslims follow in size with 8 per- cent, now Christians number 117,704 or 0,156 percent, Zoroastrians number 25,271 or 0,033 percent, and Jews number 8,756 or 0,012 per- cent.* Mandaeans comprise an even smaller community, grouped to- gether with far more numerous Sufi Muslims and other heterodox Islamic sects under the category of “Others” who altogether numbered 49,101 or 0,07 percent in the 2011 census results.2 But a 2012 report from a high-level official of the Iranian Zoroastrian community estimates that community’s demographic number at 13,000 to 15,000 individuals within an overall population, which has risen to approximately 79 mil- lion.3 Only the number of Christians has gone up in recent years— through births and conversions. In 2006, Christians formed 0,13 percent, Zoroastrians made up 0,05 percent, Jews comprised 0,02 percent, and Mandaeans accounted for less than 0,01 percent of Iran’s population of 70,049262. The Baha’i community comprises approximately 1,79 percent of Iran’s population, although not recorded in censuses—and clearly constitutes the largest non-Muslim minority.4 Most non-Muslim communities are highly urbanised and well edu- cated in western secular learning, the Mandaeans of Khuzestan prov- ince in the southwest of Iran being an exception, with the influx to cit- ies from villages both ongoing and apparently irreversible for socioeco- nomic reasons.5 Yet, in discussions surrounding contemporary Iranian society, politics, and religion, the non-Muslim religious minorities are in Choksy 2011, when discussing Iran’s contemporary political tensions. Among other developments, Shi‘ite clerics are being installed by the Ministry of Education as teachers and principals of Sunni madrasas especially in Sistan and Baluchistan as discussed in Choksy/Choksy 2010. 2 For results of the 2011 census, see the website of the Iranian government’s De- partment of Planning and Strategic Supervision at www.amar.org.ir. English language summaries of the 2011 results are available at http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012 /07/29/229078.html and http://www.tehrantimes.com/politics/99936-irans-population-rea ches-75-million-national-census-reveals. 3 Email dated July 26, 2012, citing data provided to the Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America (FEZANA) by Iranian Zoroastrian parliamentarian Dr. Esfandiar Ekhtiari. 4 This data is taken from official reports by the Statistical Center of Iran, http:// www.amar.org.ir/Default.aspx?tabid=133. Additional analysis of the data has been pre- sented by Hassan 2008, also available online at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/ RL34021.pdf. On Baha’i demographics, see also Warburg 2012: 195. 5 The movement out of historical villages and neighbourhoods is mentioned briefly by Vivier-Muresan 2007: 600–602, as well. Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:43:50AM via free access J. K. Choksy / Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299 273 largely overlooked—especially in terms of the theocratic regime’s ex- tension of Shi‘ite fundamentalist rules upon those Iranians who are not Muslims. Focus on them usually has been as quaint specimens, with ar- chaic customs and traditions, rather than as modern people caught up in the sectarian politics of the Islamic Republic.6 The Islamic Republic has been categorised among “countries of particular concern”, which are “chronic violators of religious freedom” by the United States Department of State in its International Religious Freedom Report for 2011, which records: “The government (of Iran) created a threatening atmosphere for nearly all non-Shia religious groups, most notably for Baha’is, … evangelical Christians, Jews, … and Zoroastrians”.7 The minority communities understand fully that Iran is administered by an increasingly totalitarian system, legitimised by an activist form of Shi‘ism, which denies many of its citizens basic rights in a variety of ways. Yet, as will be discussed and analysed, Christians, Zoroastrians, Mandaeans, Jews, and Baha’is seek parities with the Shi‘ite majority and the Sunni minority especially within the frameworks of the Islamic Republic’s Constitution and its self-professed commitment to all Iranians, and in the contexts of Iran’s commitments to interna- tional treaties, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Each small confessional group has its own individual narrative, yet all are bound together by common experiences under the Islamic Republic’s the- ocracy. This article, based on extensive fieldwork in Iran during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, assesses their conditions and the Iranian state’s actions and responses.8 BASIC ISLAMIC CONSTITUTIONAL STIPULATIONS Article 13 of the 1979 (amended 1989) Constitution of the Islamic Re- public of Iran notes: “Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian Iranians are the 6 On this issue of a particular yet limited scholarly interest note the observations by Longva 2012: 1–4. 7 Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, International Religious Freedom Report for 2011 (Washington, DC: United States Department of State, 2012) http://www. state.gov/documents/organisation/192653.pdf. 8 Research inside Iran on religious and ethnic minority groups has never been welcomed by the authorities of the Islamic Republic—on which see also Longva 2012: 1–4. Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:43:50AM via free access 274 J. K. Choksy / Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299 only recognised religious minorities”.9 This form of minority designa- tion implicitly builds upon the status held by those communities as dhemmis or protected groups in mediaeval and premodern times, al- though now the term itself is not utilised officially other than by Shi‘ite clergymen. Within that constitutional framework, Zoroastrians and Jews are permitted one elected national legislator each, and Christians are granted three parliamentarians (one for Assyrians-Chaldaeans and two for Armenians) for four-year terms of office, among the two hun- dred and ninety members of the unicameral majles or Islamic Consulta- tive Assembly (parliament) in the legislative branch of Iran’s gov- ernment. Members of the three recognised religious minorities are bar- red, however, from seeking high public office in the executive or presi- dential and judicial or legal branches of government—offices reserved for Muslims. Nor can they serve in the theocratic branch, which com- prises of an Assembly of Experts, Expediency Discernment Council, Council of Guardians of the Constitution, and Supreme Leader. So, they note that, despite particular clauses of the Constitution, the notion of Iran being Islamic trumps all else—i.e., an ideological, religious, and social monopoly over power, and widespread authority over many as- pects of daily life through that power, lies in the hands of Shi‘ites. The minorities’ concern is not shared by Muslim Iranians (even those op- posing the velāyat-e faqih or governance of the Islamic jurist) who, by and large, cannot understand why the non-Muslims cannot accept that an Islamic state by definition is not equal toward those who do not fol- low Allah.
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