Non-Muslim Religious Minorities in Contemporary Iran

Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299

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 increasing 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 community 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 percent, 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 percent.* Mandaeans comprise an even smaller community, grouped together 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 million.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 province in the southwest of Iran being an exception, with the influx to cities 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 presented 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 extension 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 international 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 theocracy. 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 designation implicitly builds upon the status held by those communities as dhemmis or protected groups in mediaeval and premodern times, although 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 hundred and ninety members of the unicameral majles or Islamic Consulta- tive Assembly (parliament) in the legislative branch of Iran’s government. Members of the three recognised religious minorities are barred, however, from seeking high public office in the executive or presidential and judicial or legal branches of government—offices reserved for Muslims. Nor can they serve in the theocratic branch, which comprises 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 follow Allah. Even though official minority status brings only limited rights, those are regarded by the minorities as better than having none. So, Man- daeans have endeavoured without much success to be recognised officially as a religious minority through claims that their community was founded by the biblical John the Baptist. On the other hand, Christian groups, such as Catholics and Protestants are not regarded as heritage communities and so are not covered by the Constitutional protections. Baha’is too have no official representation within Iran’s parliament and other government institutions. But unlike the other sectarian communities, Baha’is are considered by the Shi‘ite clergymen to be lapsed he- retical Muslims who should be reconverted to Islam or else persecuted. As will be discussed further below, Baha’is find themselves having to hide their faith, often by designating themselves as Zoroastrians to

9 For the specific passage see http://www.iranonline.com/iran/iran-info/government /constitution-1.html.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:43:50AM via free access J. K. Choksy / Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299 275 members of the general public and especially to census-takers, to avoid harassment. So, they are forced to find a degree of safety by referencing their nation’s ancient religion—a situation unique to them among Iran’s religious minorities.10 In essence, Iran’s Constitution enshrines religion as a primary marker of difference within the country’s population. It also creates dis- tinctions between heritage or older (specifically, pre-Islamic) religious minorities—Zoroastrians, Jews, Armenian Christians, and Chaldean-As- syrian Christians—and more recent ones—Baha’is, Catholic Christians, Protestant Christians—based on the traditional dhemmi categories of mediaeval and premodern Iran. Yet, it does not afford protection to heritage communities like the Mandaeans who fall outside the pre-established dhemmi framework. Moreover, despite the Constitution’s pro- tective stipulations, relations between the Shi‘ite majority and even the heritage religious minorities also are shaped by economic, social, and political factors. So, for reasons to be analysed next, Iran’s Constitution combines with Islamic laws, Shi‘ite beliefs, and prevalent customs to produce conditions, which ensure all religious minorities are at best discriminated constantly and at worst persecuted sporadically.11 How- ever, as will also be discussed, the minorities are no longer accepting the notion that Constitutional mandates of tolerance alone sufficient. Well aware that Iran is part of an increasingly interconnected and glob- alising world community, they are seeking equality in all respects. To- gether with religious rights, they wish to expand their political, civil, social, and economic rights as well.12

COMMUNITIES FACING CONSTRAINT Article 13 of the Islamic Republic’s Constitution stipulates that Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians can “act according to their own canon in matters of personal affairs and religious education”.13 However, the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Education and Training administers schools affiliated with minority communities and stipulates that religious education must follow guidelines in state-approved textbooks. Other compulsory coursework prescribed by the Ministry of Education

10 Analysed further in Warburg 2012: 205–206, 208. 11 Broad discussions on the situation of these minorities are provided by Sana- sarian 2000; Human Rights Watch; Choksy/Shea 2009; Marshall 2011; and Ghanea- Hercock 2003. 12 Similar observations have been made for the Middle East as a whole by Longva 2012: 3, 6, 8–10. 13 http://www.iranonline.com/iran/iran-info/government/constitution-1.html.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:43:50AM via free access 276 J. K. Choksy / Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299 and Training routinely refers to religious minorities as kāfers or infidels; Baha’is are tarred with the addition designation of “followers of a false sect” (Paivandi 2008: 2–3, 42–44). Gender segregation, not followed by these minorities due to their own longstanding customs, has also begun to be enforced by the state through the teaching of boys and girls in separate classrooms and through the prescribing of different textbooks for those classes not only in state-run educational institutions but even in minority-run schools.14 Teachers and students complain of harassment by government authorities from the Ministry of Education and by clerics from neighbourhood masjeds or mosques and madrasas or theological colleges who often are present in classrooms to ensure Islamic ideas supersede those of the minority communities. They speak as well of attempts to impose principals and other school administrators who are Muslim upon the pedagogical staff of minority-run schools and even to nationalise those pedagogical institutions. Indeed, since 1979 many secondary educational institutions once belonging to the three recognised religious minorities have gradually been vested into the state system—especially the Jewish community’s originally French-based Alliance Israélite Universelle schools—and by the late 2000s only a few still pre- served their administrative and academic independence.15 Further diminishing the pedagogical individuality of minorities’ primary and secondary education institutions is a requirement that applicants to the state-run university system must pass a general entrance examination or konkur, which includes an examination in Islamic theology, even if they are non-Muslims, to enroll in state-run universities. So, Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian educators feel compelled to teach courses on Islam to ensure their students gain entrance to the universities, and minority parents and their children see little option but to learn about Islam for that examination.16

14 More details are provided by Bezhan 2012. 15 Communicated orally to me by teachers and students alike on visits to Zoroas- trian and Christian high schools in Tehran, Hamadan, Esfahan, and Kerman. For a few details on the traditional Jewish schools consult Vivier-Muresan 2007: 599. On the importance of these communitarian schools, see also Le Thomas 2012: 283–284. Textbooks and other pedagogical tools of inculcating Shi‘ite ideals among school children are mentioned by Aryan 2010. More recently, the presence of Shi‘ite clergymen in classrooms is being extended to all educational institutions, including Muslim ones, on which see Dareini 2009. 16 So, the situation has changed since Sakurai 2004: 395–396, reported that “Reli- gious minorities that are guaranteed under the constitution are allowed to take a test on their own religion”. On the state’s goals, see p. 406 of Sakurai’s article.

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While acceding publically to the government’s system, Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian primary and secondary school children, like their university-level coreligionists, attempt to work around that system and thereby tacitly reject tenets of the state’s educational curricu- lum with its emphasis on fundamentalist Islam, revolutionary ideolo- gies, and anti-Western sentiments. They are doing so by turning to commercially-published books and to the internet for knowledge, in- formation, and ideas.17 But two communities have not been able to partially circumvent the tightening grip of Iran’s official educational framework. Mandaeans who live around the southwestern city of Ahvaz still staff two schools to teach their children basic religious tenets, but these are in decline as they are not accredited by the Education Ministry and so students there cannot go on to higher education. Moreover, because those rural Mandaeans have very limited access to the internet, their youth cannot draw upon secular and Western knowledge as readily as their Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian counterparts do. Baha’is dare not operate any schools publically as those would promptly be shut down by the state, and teachers and students (and their parents) arrested and charged with apostasy from Islam—a crime under the Shari‘a or Muslim law punishable by execution in Iran. Barred from state-controlled institutions of higher education, Baha’is covertly established their own one—the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education. But once its existence came to the attention of Shi‘ite authorities, the Baha’i Institute’s offices were raided as were the homes of its teachers and students. Many Baha’is linked to the Institute were incarcerated without legal charges. The attorney representing those held without habeas corpus was also detained.18 Article 13 of the Constitution claiming that minorities “within the limits of the law, are free to perform their religious rites and ceremonies”.19 However, Zoroastrian, Christian, and Jewish ecclesiastic associations and religious sites report they are required to be registered with and provide periodic written explanations of their activities to the Iranian government. So too must Mandaean ones. All formal contacts by

17 Use of alternate textbooks and the internet for education was witnessed by me in meetings with minority student groups in Tehran, Shiraz, and Yazd. In addition consult Malekzadeh 2010. 18 The Baha’i Institute for Higher Education and its teachers and students has gained considerable attention in the Western news media owing to Baha’i organisations publicizing its struggles with Iranian authorities (see, for example, Warburg 2012: 207; Hume 2011; Alaei 2012). 19 http://www.iranonline.com/iran/iran-info/government/constitution-1.html.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:43:50AM via free access 278 J. K. Choksy / Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299 any Christian, Zoroastrian, Jewish, or Mandaean association with foreign organisations and persons even for religious purposes are subject to approval—which is routinely denied—from a variety of national, provincial, and local bureaucracies.20 Moreover, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) monitors all activities of minority organisations. For instance, each community organisation had to record my presence, just as they have done for other visitors and scholars, at their community centres in official logbooks, which they said were in- spected regularly by the local mollāhs and copies of which had to be submitted quarterly to MOIS. However, it also became clear that access to and candid investigation among the minorities was possible because I belonged by descent to one of those groups—greater trust and openness exist between members of the minorities than between them and other Iranians, specifically Muslims (irrespective of whether those Muslims follow Shi‘ism, Sunnism, or Sufism). A mobed or Zoroastrian magus (priest) at Kerman articulated those feelings to me as: “Muslims may fight among each other to the death but will always band together against nonbelievers of Allah. So, we unite as well to protect ourselves”. Due to Shi‘ite regulations governing intermingling between genders in public and modest clothing for women, communal rites of passage including initiations, weddings, and funerals have become private occasions where Christians, Zoroastrians, and Jews interact according to their own customs and without following the gender divisions stipu- lated for Muslims. Nonetheless, officials of the Ministry of Islamic Cul- ture and Guidance sometimes raid those gatherings to arrest participants for not following “Islamic standards” as prescribed in Article 4 of the Constitution. I vividly recall the fear that spread through the gathering of attendees at an Assyrian baptism when it seemed like an official intrusion was about to occur. The harsh consequences of a paramilitary raid against another Christian gathering, in August 2004, when more than eighty individuals were detained, tried, and imprisoned by the state, remains a stark example of the trepidation imposed upon minorities for choosing to follow their own mores.21 Baha’i gatherings cannot occur in public as the Pāsdārān or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Komite or Committee on public morals would swiftly

20 Noted in U.S. Department of State, 2010 Human Rights Report: Iran (Washington, DC: DOS, 2011): 41, http://www.state.gov/documents/organisation/160461.pdf. 21 Reported at http://www.farsinet.com/persecuted/iranian_christians_arrested_sept 2004.html. Other examples of Christians in prison due to their beliefs, observed from personal experience while in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, are cited by Saberi 2011.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:43:50AM via free access J. K. Choksy / Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299 279 round up participants on charges of illicit behaviour (Warburg 2012: 210). The Tehran Zoroastrian Association, citing the Islamic regime’s stipulations, routinely issues public statements requesting members of other confessional groups, especially Muslims, not to attend religious and social events it hosts—including the celebration of Nav Roz or the first day of the New Year and of Mehregān or feast of Mithra. The Tehran Zoroastrian Association has become even more vigilant in en- forcing those restrictions after several Zoroastrians and Muslim coverts to Iran’s ancient faith were arrested in August 2011 and sentenced to public lashings plus many years in prison for ostensibly “propagating Zoroastrianism and organising ancient ceremonies”.22

VULNERABILITY OF INSTITUTIONS AND LEADERS Physical proximity of ecclesiastic institutions grants a sense of security to members of the three recognised religious minority communities against the Muslim majority even though it adds to isolation from the larger society.23 A church, fire temple, and synagogue are located in close proximity to each other at Shiraz, for example. Yet, even there anti-Pahlavi graffiti was pointed out to me as refreshed regularly to remind Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians that their loyalty to the Islamic theocracy remains suspect in the eyes of Shi‘ite fundamentalists owing to their links to the liberalism and westernism of the deposed Pahlavi monarchy. Religious institutions belonging to the Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian minorities at Shiraz, Yazd, and Kerman have battled, often unsuccessfully, attempts by local municipalities to annex portions or all their property to lay roadways and water works and to build bureau- cratic offices. Whereas local Shi‘ite bureaucrats claim the exercising of eminent domain is necessary for urban development, leaders of all three minorities characterise such actions as intended to “put us out of business”. One glaring example is the Zoroastrian community’s graveyard at Qasr-e Firouze overlooking the Tehran suburb of Ray. Revolutionary Guards moved on to the site in 1979 and 1980, took over some of the buildings to serve as military barracks, and began conducting martial manoeuvres there. The Zoroastrian community of Tehran protested the annexation first to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and next to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the basis that the land was protected by Iranian laws relating to vaqfs or religious trusts.

22 Email communications to Zoroastrians in North America including me, subsequently cited by Marshall 2011a. 23 Also noted by Vivier-Muresan 2007: 595–596.

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Khamenei eventually decreed that the IRGC was required to obtain con- sent from the Tehran Zoroastrian Anjoman or Association and then ne- gotiation appropriate lease or purchase price for the land. The An- joman’s members voted unanimously to deny rental, sale, or even access to the graveyard, but their decision has been ignored by the Revolu- tionary Guard Corps.24 Another case comes from the desert city of Yazd in central Iran. There the Municipal Water Department began en- croaching upon the local Zoroastrian Anjoman’s funerary site, where the community’s old and now unused dakhma or funerary tower and its current and still used ārāmgāh or cemetery are located, in 2011. Without lease or other agreement, the Water Department began building towers and tanks for water storage and laying water pipelines through the fu- neral grounds despite it being registered as an Iranian national heritage site. The community appealed to city, provincial, and national authorities, requesting that its rights as owner of this vaqf property be respected and construction be halted, but with no success. Shi‘ites like Zoroastrians regard corpses as ritually unclean, so the appropriation makes little sense administratively because municipality employees (most of whom are Shi‘ites) are unlikely to want to work there. Yazd’s Zoroastrians deem the annexure yet another attempt to harass the minority and deprive it of resources.25 Because Daniel is regarded as a prophet in Islam too, his tomb at Susa or Shush had been confiscated by Muslims in mediaeval times and quickly became a site of Islamic pilgrimage. Most Iranian Jews slowly stopped visiting it as they felt unwelcomed there. That shrine’s court- yard walls now are festooned with anti-Israeli slogans and pro-fundamentalist Muslim images—as I observed on visits to that shrine. The images change periodically in response to the international and internal concerns of Iran’s clerical leaders, much to the sorrow of Iranian Jews who complained bitterly when questioned about the situation. Espe-

24 Records pertaining to the IRGC’s actions, kept by the Tehran Zoroastrian An- joman, have been examined by me in Tehran. Further details were provided to me by an email dated October 27, 2011, from Iranian Zoroastrians in Tehran and community members who have resettled in the USA and Canada. The vexed negotia- tions between the Tehran Zoroastrian Association and the IRGC have been documented by Stewart 2012: 75–78; Choksy 2011a. 25 Reported by Berasad News (December 3, 2011), http://www.berasad.com/fa/ content/view/9202/, and Amordad News (December 11, 2011), http://amordadnews.com/ neveshtehNamyesh.aspx?NId=6004and (December 19, 2011), http://amordadnews.com/ neveshtehNamyesh.aspx?NId=6043, with photographs of the funerary site, the municipal construction, and prayer vigils and protest demonstrations by Yazdi Zoroas- trians.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:43:50AM via free access J. K. Choksy / Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299 281 cially popular among radical Shi‘ites and particularly irksome to Jews are imaginary scenes showing Iranian military and militiamen joining Palestinian fighters in seizing the Temple Mount at Jerusalem. Nearby slogans by the ayatollahs denounce Zionism specifically, Israel as a nation, and Jews generally. Images of Iran’s two Shi‘ite Supreme Leaders, the Islamic Republic’s founder late Ayatollah Khomeini and its present chief cleric Ayatollah Khamenei, also make Jews feel “completely un- welcome” in their ancestral shrine.26 In a parallel thrust, at the time of the Islamic Revolution, Muslim militants entered a fire temple at Tehran and removed a depiction of the Prophet Zarathushtra, the Zoroastrian congregation there still com- plains. Those Muslim revolutionaries then erected a picture of Ayatol- lah Khomeini in its place. Zoroastrians proudly point out to visitors the image of their religious founder, which they eventually re-erected in the temple hall (Choksy 2006: 161; Fischer 1980: 229). But they had to keep the portrait of Khomeini up too. Likewise, since the Islamic Re- public, Zoroastrian schools have been required to prominently display portraits of modern Iran’s supreme leaders—at first only that of Aya- tollah Khomeini; subsequently images of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were added in 1989 when the latter supreme leader took office. The Islamic Republic’s flag, quotations from the Qur’an and slogans of the Revolu- tion are painted on entrance walls, corridors, and classroom walls to remind the school children of their minority status. Those slogans are repainted periodically at the schools in Yazd and Kerman, where Zoro- astrian schoolchildren grumble about having to participate while mollāhs, Pāsdārān or revolutionary guards, and Basijis or paramilitary men chant praises of Shi‘ism’s twelve imams or spiritual guides. Similar events occur on the sidewalks and outside walls of churches, especially Protestant, Catholic, and Evangelical ones that do not have the protection of being located within Armenian and Assyrian neighbourhoods nor of enjoying the support of such community members living, working, and trading together in close quarters.27 Each Christian congregation gathers funds from among its members to build walls with secure gates around their communal centres to keep out as much of the intrusive propaganda as possible. In an attempt to render churches in-

26 The quote comes from a conversation I had with a local rabbi about when and why contemporary Jews by and large stopped visiting Daniel’s tomb. A few do still brave the overwhelmingly fundamentalist Shi‘ite overtones there to pray in front of Daniel’s sarcophagus. 27 See further the examples from the Armenian quarter of Esfahan described by Vivier-Muresan 2007: 599.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:43:50AM via free access 282 J. K. Choksy / Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299 active and then annex them under eminent domain, parishioners are taunted, even threatened on occasion, by gatherings of Pāsdārān and of Basij. A favourite denunciation by the Shi‘ites on those occasions is to claim that Christianity is not monotheism because of the Trinity formed by God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.28 Then those Islamists often proceed to slur Christians with the term kāfer, just as they claim Zoroastrians are gabr or persons empty of faith. Even scholars like me have similar experiences when among fundamentalist mollāhs—although such interac- tions were framed in the contexts of theological debates rather than personal denouncements on the basis that I am an ostād or professor. Not surprisingly, members of all three supposedly protected communities commiserate privately with each other on what they characterise as “unpleasant behaviour” by Muslim state officials.29 The new synagogue at Hamadan has remained inviolable for now, despite a large Star of David having been built flat on to its roof as a structural component in 1971. Perhaps the sanctity associated with Es- ther’s Tomb within the same compound extends to both the old synagogue which is attached horizontally to the Tomb and to the adjacent new one. But it is more likely untouched because the Jewish symbol is not visible from street-level and is shielded by trees from onlookers in buildings outside the ecclesiastic compound—i.e., few local Muslims know about the symbol’s presence. Yet, even the respect hitherto extended by Muslim authorities to the historical memory of Esther seems to be waning. In December 2010, Basij recruits threatened to demolish the tomb because they heard rumours that Israeli authorities would storm the Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Chanting “We the student Basijis warn Zionist regime leaders, we will destroy the tomb of these lowly murderers”, a mob gathered in Hamadan’s Jewish quarter. The reference to Esther and Mordecai as “lowly murderers” arises from a local mollāh-led re-rendering of the biblical tale of the Book of Esther according to which Esther is supposed to have convinced her Achaemenid Persian king to “massacre 70,000 Iranians” who allegedly opposed the ancient Israelites.30

28 As also experienced, albeit in a more intellectual style and a far less threatening setting, by Fischer 1980: 1–3. 29 Often repeated to me, variations of this phrase are shared among all the non- Muslim minorities to characterise the hostility toward them. 30 See http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gIN7OwL5i1NmV9oPFtK WZVUfsV-A?docId=CNG.9eab6633 bebd069b5f0a3ec51e79b6e5.bal. Recasting of the Esther narrative is analysed as well by Javedanfar 2010.

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Churches have not been so fortunate, however. Several have been subjected to vandalism by members of the Pāsdārān and the Komite while inspecting Christian places of worship to ensure no Muslim converts are present. Even the oversight committee of the well-known Vank Arme- nian Cathedral, originally built between 1655 and 1664, in Esfahan whis- pers of having to discretely clean off the bell tower, which dates from 1702 after zealous Pāsdārān scrawled graffiti. Now church officials there are always present in the cathedral’s main hall during visitation times to ensure frescos of Jesus and saints are not defaced. Other churches, including historic ones at Kerman, have fared worse—having to be abandoned by local congregations and eventually demolished by municipalities.31 Parishioners speak of feeling trepidation instead of the traditional joy on Christmas because that day has in past years been one chosen by militant mollāhs and their acolytes to assault church-goers and to torch churches. Similarly Assyrian churches in northwestern Iran around Orumiyeh (Urmia) have lost land and parish items—including antique Bibles, which have been burned supposedly in retali- ation for similar actions against the Qur’an by Christian preachers in the U.S. Under pressure for UNESCO and Assyrian-Chaldaean diaspora communities in the West, however, some churches have recently been slated for conservation and renovation, including the Armenian Church St. Thaddeus, also known as Qara Kelissa or the Black Church, at Maku.32 Indeed, numerous Armenian monuments have been renovated as part of the state programme (apart from St. Thaddeus, also St. Stephen the Protomartyr near Jolfa, and Cor-cor monastery almost 20 years ago—the latter in a canyon where a water dam was to be built, so in order to save the monastery it was relocated by numerating each stone before dis- mantling and then installing the whole complex again). So, reconstruc- tion of at least Armenian churches is not conditioned by international pressure.33 The Baha’i community’s institutions have been especially targeted since the Islamic Republic came into existence. Pāsdārān demolished the house of the Bab at Shiraz in 1979; subsequently it was paved over for a

31 See, for example, photographs at http://shafaf.ir/fa/pages/?cid=70678. 32 Confiscation and destruction of Bibles, Torahs, and Avestas occurs elsewhere in Iran too, despite Iran’s Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians pointing out to mollāhs that these are “revealed scriptures” just like the Qur’an. For additional details consult Marshall 2011. On the Church at Maku see additionally a news report in the Tehran Times (April 23, 2012), http://tehrantimes.com/arts-and-culture/97197-irans-st- thaddeus-church-to-undergo-restoration. 33 I am grateful to Prof. Garnik Asatrian for these details.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:43:50AM via free access 284 J. K. Choksy / Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299 road, public square, and Islamic centre in 1981. The burial shrine of Quddus, a prominent follower of the Bab, was destroyed in April 2004 at Babol. A house in Tehran that once belonged to Bahaullah’s father met a similar fate in June of that same year. Clandestine Baha’i community centres persist in Iran, despite the danger involved, in private homes and surreptitiously-leased halls. The Shiraz community’s leadership was arrested in May 2006 after Pāsdārān agents monitored attendees at an “illegal Baha’i place of vice” (as the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance labels those centres). More arrests took place under similar circumstances in April 2009, not only at Shiraz but as Semnan and Karaj as well. Another wave of detentions occurred in 2011, with entire communities and their religious institutions designated by the Muslim authorities as “international corruption networks”. Baha’is at the capital city of Tehran—who constitute the community’s single largest group in Iran—remain especially vulnerable to persecutions.34 So, many Ba- ha’is claim to be Zoroastrians when questioned by Muslims. Yet, such attempts rarely succeed in the presence of Pāsdārān and Komite enfor- cers who demand to see the religious identity cards issued to non-Mus- lims by their local congregations (in some neighbourhoods, even non- descript mollāhs demand such identification from strangers they suspect are Baha’is) and documentation of official permission issued to maintain places of worship. Attempts by Baha’is to find safety by passing themselves off as Zoro- astrians are especially prevalent when national censuses occur. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s national census in 1986 initially produced an estimate of 90,500 Zoroastrians, a number subsequently revised down- ward first to 45,000 and then to 32,589. The national census of 1996 initially produced an estimate of 157,000 Zoroastrians, a number subsequently officially revised to 27,920. National authorities, upon double- checking the census figures with membership rosters of Zoroastrian communities and discovering substantial demographic discrepancies, determined (and their conclusion was confirmed to me by Zoroastrian leaders), that the initial census estimates for 1986 and 1996 incorpo- rated a large Baha’i constituency—including Zoroastrians who had ad- opted that faith.35

34 As consistently documented by the Baha’i community, on which see, for example, http://news.Baha’i.org/story/450, http://www.iranpresswatch.org/post/2452; and http://www.rferl.org/content/Baha’i_arrests_several_iran_cities/24284790.html. 35 FEZANA Journal 13, 4 (2000): 10; Hamazor 3 (2003): 68–69; and FEZANA Journal 17, 4 (2004): 26. On conversion from Zoroastrianism, see Cole 1993: 236–238; Maneck 1991: 35–48; Sanasarian 2010: 51.

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MINORITIES’ ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES Iran has experienced between 10 and 25 percent unemployment at various times over the past decade, so many Iranians from all religious backgrounds have endured economic hardship. Yet, rates of unemployment and underemployment tend to be higher among the Zoroas- trians, Christians, Jews, Mandaeans and Baha’is there, despite the ad- vanced level of education and ingrained work ethic customarily associated with minorities, irrespective of gender and age. One major cause of joblessness, mentioned repeatedly to me, is discrimination by the Shi‘ite government in access to state jobs, which serve as a major component of the economy—including the civil service and the oil industry—on the basis of failing to be Muslim. Again, political and legal guarantees seem to be enforced only to very limited extents despite a proclamation in the 1979 Constitution’s Article 28.1–2, that: “Everyone has the right to choose any occupation one wishes, if it is not contrary to Islam and the public interests, and does not infringe on the rights of others. The government has the duty, with due consideration of the needs of society for different kinds of work, to provide every citizen with the opportunity to work and to create equal conditions for obtaining it”. Indeed, negating Article 28, other forms of discrimination within the civil and military administrations, including exclusion from high office and rank are codified in Article 144 of the Islamic Republic’s Constitution.36 Lack of work during the last two decades has generated poverty and spurred emigration to Western nations.37 Political asylum petitions, immigration applications, and other documents collected by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) of the United States of America record hostile workplaces are common where harassment and occasionally even assault and rape of Christians, Zoroastrians, Jews, and Mandaeans occurs owing to their religious affiliations.38 Not only is employment more difficult to obtain for those of non-Muslim backgrounds, state regulations derived from Shi‘ite religious norms place additional hard- ships upon those who become entrepreneurs and small business own- ers. For example, minority storeowners are required to display prominent signs so that Muslim shoppers can choose to avoid becoming pol-

36 http://www.iranonline.com/iran/iran-info/government/constitution-3.html and http: //www.iranonline.com/iran/iran-info/Government/constitution-9-3.html, respectively. 37 U.S. Department of State, 2010 Human Rights Report: Iran: 43. Emigration for these reasons is discussed in a broader context by Longva 2012: 14. 38 See further Choksy 2006: 166; and UNHCR Reports at http://www.unhcr.org/ refworld/topic,464db4f52,464db52c2,,40,,, IRN.html.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:43:50AM via free access 286 J. K. Choksy / Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299 luted or nejāsat by purchasing items from persons who are najes or “ritually unclean” by Shi‘ite standards.39 This continues a practice that dates back five hundred years to the Safavid dynasty but was discour- aged under the two Pahlavi shahs. Most non-Muslim shopkeepers circumvent this requirement by placing the sign next to the cash register only when they see the religious police approaching (Ebrami 2002: 101- 102). A handful of kosher butchers still operate in Tehran, serving only the Jewish community, yet are subject to periodic inspections by Mus- lim authorities from the local municipality not only for health and workplace safety reasons but also to convince those butchers to aban- don “kāfer practice and become halāl” (I witnessed one such incident in 2003). Food items, however, are one area of interaction where many Iranian Muslims sidestep religious norms by patronising minority- owned stores and restaurants, as their ancestors did, much to the dismay of hardline mollāhs.40 Religious minorities feel they are selected for especially hazardous assignments when performing the military service required of all young men in Iran. They claim to have been routinely transferred to suicide brigades during the border war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s. More verifiable is their point that although city walls and village court- yards throughout Iran are adorned with monumental paintings of war heroes from that period being raised to heaven by the imams Ali and Husayn, none of the public images depict a slain Mandaean, Jew, Zoroas- trian, Christian, or Baha’i member of Iran military ascending to his faith’s heaven. Local minority groups maintain small “martyrs walls” as memorials to their war-dead, out of view of Muslims and often alongside or mixed in with memorials to other deceased persons to avoid criticism from Shi‘ite authorities. Those private displays reflect not only the community’s sense of loss due to the final sacrifice made by each one of the deceased for their nation but also regret that they have not been publically accorded honour by the nation.41 Indeed, attempts by members of the religious minority communities to erect public monu-

39 See also Warburg 2012: 212. On historical precedents for circumventing this requirement, see Choksy 2007: 129–131. Contemporary sidestepping is also mentioned in Choksy 2006: 165. 40 On these nuances of interpretation surrounding issues of impurity, see also Vivier-Muresan 2007: 594–595. 41 Contra Stausberg 2012: 189–190, who conflates Zoroastrian and government acceptance of the minority community’s 15 war dead as martyrs with public and general acknowledgement. The Islamic Republic’s public art of martyrs has been analysed by Chelkowski 2002: 127–141; Gruber 2008: 15–46; Kaur 2010: 441–460.

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QUESTS FOR ESSENTIAL RIGHTS Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Mandaeans, and Baha’is comment that championing their rights is fraught with danger because the Shi‘ite clerics who govern Iran associate such activity with courting Western interference in Iran’s domestic affairs. Ayatollah Khomeini had chas- tised Iranian Jewry as “wretched… the agents of America, Britain, and other foreign powers”, “enemies of Islam”, and “unbelievers”, adding that the Prophet Muhammad had “eliminated” those Jews who were “troublesome”. In 1970, he warned the Christians of Iran against “dis- torting the truth of Islam and leading Muslims astray”. Khomeini had noted, as well, that Zoroastrians were to be associated with the deposed Pahlavi monarchy, which he characterised in 1978 as an “anti-Islamic regime that wishes to revive Zoroastrianism” (Algar 1981: 47, 89, 127, 230; Stausberg 2012: 183–184). Not surprisingly Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians dread being la- beled instruments of Israel, the United States, and/or Iran’s deposed monarchy, cautioning each other against actions that may result in accusations by state authorities. The consequences of such allegations can be traumatic, as happened to prominent members of Iran’s Jewry in July 2000 when eleven of them were convicted by an Iranian court on charges of spying for Israel. Moreover, to prove their national loyalties, rabbis in Iran are expected to condemn the state of Israel and Zionism on a regular basis. Armenian and Assyrian bishops and Zoroastrian magi too feel it necessary to publically expunge any countenance of their siding with Iran’s foreign foes.42 Yet, even such actions do not necessa- rily ensure safety. Several Christian clerics, especially those who minis- tered to Protestant and evangelical groups or had converted from Islam, have been kidnapped, tortured, and even murdered since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. More than two hundred Baha’is, in particular prominent members of that community, have been kidnapped and exe-

42 See, for example, a report in Islamic Republic News Agency (February 7, 2012), http://www.irna.ir/News/Politic/Zorastrian-society-backs-Islamic-Revolution,-leadership,- government/30805164, involving Mobed Shah Bahram Beluvani in response to which an anjoman member at Yazd wrote via email “What else can he say”. Other instances noted by the Persian press include http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=890312 1685, involving Rabbi Mashallah Golestaninejad, and http://english.farsnews.com/news text.php?nn=8903121687, about the Armenian Archbishop of Tehran Sebo Sarkisian.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:43:50AM via free access 288 J. K. Choksy / Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299 cuted over the past thirty years. Their corpses often are dumped along roadsides, with slogans, such as “An enemy of Islam” written upon them. Those murders are justified publically as mandated by Islamic law and Iranian state policy toward apostates.43 Nonetheless, leaders of the three constitutionally-recognised religious minorities take pride in working together within the Islamic Re- public of Iran to renegotiate and surmount restrictive parameters. For example, Article 881 of the Civil Code follows mediaeval and premodern Muslim practice in stipulating that a Zoroastrian, Christian, or Jew who accepts Islam becomes the sole inheritor of family assets. The Criminal Code directs that a Jew, Christian, or Zoroastrian responsible for the death, even inadvertently, of a Muslim faces capital punishment along the lines of mediaeval Islamic jurisprudence. Likewise, monetary com- pensation for murder of non-Muslims is set by Article 297 of the Islamic Punishment Act of 1991 at half that payable for Muslims. As a result of united lobbying by those minorities, the sixth Consultative Assembly partially modified the civil codes and criminal codes via decrees in 2002 to rank Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians equally alongside Muslims. Those changes were approved in January 2005, after much debate, by the Expediency Discernment Council and the Council of Guardians of the Constitution. However, lacking sanction from Ayatollah Khamenei in his capacity as Iran’s supreme religiopolitical leader, the changes ultimately failed to become law. So Article 14 of Islamic Iran’s Constitu- tion still remains fully enforceable as the basis of differential treatment based on religious identity with the words: “The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and all Muslims are duty-bound to treat non- Muslims in conformity with ethical norms and the principles of Islamic justice and equality, and to respect their human rights”. In other words, the traditional principles of mediaeval Muslim law and customary practice toward the dhemmi or protected communities have been reintro- duced, albeit in modern constitutional and judicial terminology (Choksy 2007: 110–137; Sanasarian 2000: 133, 135; Mehr 2002: 28, 30).

PROTEST, BACKLASH, AND MORE PROTEST Moving away from the traditional responses of acceptance and conformity has at times gained greater freedoms for Iran’s non-Muslim religious minorities. Yet, it has come at a heavy price as Iran’s leaders re- spond negatively (Sanasarian 2012: 318–323). Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati,

43 Further details may be found in Sanasarian 2000: 110–127; United States De- partment of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, International Reli- gious Freedom Report for 2011; and Choksy 2013.

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Chairman of the Council of Guardians of the Constitution, a close aide to Supreme Leader Khamenei, and a former mentor of Iran’s current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, publically denouncing them in late November 2005. During a speech to members of the Basij volunteer paramilitia, Jannati compared non-Muslims to “animals who roam the Earth and engage in corruption”. Those words provoked a pointed re- tort from Kourosh Niknam, the Zoroastrian member of the majles at that time, who after consulting with his Jewish and Christian parliamentary counterparts—and a consensus being reached that it would be safest for the representative from the oldest heritage community to censure that powerful mollāh—admonished Jannati with the words: “This is an un- precedented slur against the religious minorities… Non-Muslims not only are not beasts, but if Iran has a glorious past and a civilisation of which to be proud then all Iranians owe those to the people whose ancestors lived here before the advent of Islam… Ones who sully the Earth are humans who do not show respect for all of God’s creatures”. The Muslim clerics who lead contemporary Iran ordered that Zoroastrian parliamentarian to stand trial before a tribunal of the Revolutionary Courts on charges of failing to show respect toward Iran’s leaders but ultimately chose to reprimand rather than to punish him.44 Niknam was especially fortunate for the Iranian government, which often charges members of religious minorities with the crime of “confronting the regime” and then follows the same trial procedures as in cases of threats to national security, merely admonished him and warned that another such transgression “would not meet with leniency”.45 Unfortunately, Jannati’s words are not isolated sentiments as Chris- tian, Zoroastrian, and Jewish community organisers are quick to note. His speech echoed long-standing Shi‘ite attitudes toward non-Muslims. Ayatollah Khomeini himself had enjoined in a resale or declaration (no. 846) in 1987 that: “The following eleven are unclean—first is urine, sec- ond faeces, third semen, fourth corpses, fifth blood, sixth dogs, seventh pigs, eighth non-Muslims, ninth wine, tenth beer, and eleventh is the sweat of a camel that has consumed impure food”, adding the words with which this article began: “every aspect of a non-Muslim is un-

44 Ayatollah Jannati’s comments are recorded at Circle of Ancient Iranian Stud- ies, “The Recent Slur by the Head of Islamic Republic’s Guardian Council about Non- Muslim Iranians”, CAIS (20 November 2005), http://www.cais-soas.com/official_condem nation.htm. The authority of Revolutionary Tribunals within the Iranian judicial court system is officially outlined at http://www.dadiran.ir/. 45 On the category of “crimes against the Iranian nation”, see U.S. Department of State, 2010 Human Rights Report: Iran: 20.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:43:50AM via free access 290 J. K. Choksy / Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299 clean” (Xaviere 1980: 48). Other leading Shi‘ite clerics, including Ahmad Khatami, have made similar pronouncements after Friday prayer service at Tehran University. Even the late Ayatollah Hossein Ali Mon- tazeri, despite becoming a critic of the theocratic regime’s record on civil rights, listed non-Muslims alongside swine, alcohol, and bodily waste as impure—although he has added that any minority person can make himself or herself pure through chaste, Muslim-like, behaviour (Choksy 2009; Menashri 2010: 598). A leading Christian priest in Teh- ran’s Protestant congregation confided to me that listening to Monta- zeri felt like the ayatollah was “rubbing salt into our wounds”. Hard-line political developments in Iran after the election in 2005 of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency have cast an even greater pall over freedom of speech, dress, and worship among Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians there. Their social organisations and cooperative ventures, especially those involved with civil liberties, women’s rights, and print and on-line publications have experienced intrusive investigations and threats of criminal charges. Vague accusations of rejecting “cultural conformity”, of aiding “conspiratorial sects”, and of weakening “the centrality of the Islamic regime” led to the creation of a committee based at the madrasa or Muslim seminary-filled city of Qom empowered to “investigate and combat activities of members of religious minorities and schools”. The results of such inquiries can be deadly. An entrepre- neur was hanged in November 2008 after allegedly confessing to spying for Israel. In April 2009, the Iranian government claimed it had arrested local “Zionists” who were plotting violence during that June’s presidential elections. Influential ayatollahs who have served as mentors to Ah- madinejad and other politicians proceeded to blame growing discontent among Iranians on “Jewish machinations” spread across Iran with help from Baha’is and Zoroastrians.46 During the much-contested Iranian presidential elections of June 2009 and its aftermath, Supreme Leader Khamenei and other clerics at- tempted to deflect public anger away from the theocracy by character- ising protesters as “attempting to return Iran to pre-Islamic rule”. The incendiary nature of such comments was not lost on urban minority voters, many of whom supported Mir Hossein Mousavi who called for less involvement of religion in state-affairs, an end to discrimination of minorities, and privatisation of the economy. Likewise, the rural Zoro- astrian minority in Yazd province of central Iran and in Kerman prov-

46 Quotations from email correspondence received from minority leaders in Iran between April and September 2009.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:43:50AM via free access J. K. Choksy / Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299 291 ince to the east had been championing the candidacy of Mehdi Kar- roubi, a former speaker of the majles who is a pragmatic mollāh. Daryush Kamusi, an organiser of the pro-Karroubi campaign, explained his and other rural Zoroastrians’ support for Karroubi on the basis that the cleric had championed legislative reform, which sought to place minorities on par with Shi‘ites under criminal law. Karroubi’s supporters also drew upon the Zoroastrian credo of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. Cities there, such as Taft, still have large Zoroastrian resi- dential populations and smaller Jewish ones, and at those locales Kar- roubi and Mousavi were more popular than Ahmadinejad on Election Day the minorities claim.47 Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, an influential member of the Assembly of Experts that elects the supreme leaders, began to allege that the post-election protests of 2009 sprung not from widespread public discontent with the status quo but from “corrupt centres belonging to Jews and Zionists in the world and their Baha’i, Christian, and Zoroastrian acolytes”. Ahmad Khatami, also a member of the Assembly of Experts and a Friday prayer leader in Tehran, proclaimed “Jews should be crushed”. Many other ayatollahs went on to make similarly hate-filled speeches in order to arouse hostility toward Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians among their disciples.48 So as protesters took to the streets of Iran’s major cities and conservative factions buttressed by paramilitary and military units fought those Iranian’s seeking free and fair elections, members of religious minorities not only became focuses of blame they also began experiencing the regime’s crackdown more vigorously. Purported members of the Basij paramilitary with their Pāsdārān supervisors searched Zoroastrian and Jewish civic centres and neighbourhoods looking for “anti-Islamic” and “subversive” materials from the “Great Satan” and the “Zionists”, community members communicated to me. Symbols linked to ancient Iran and Zoroastrianism, such as the winged disk with ring-wielding figure of Achaemenian times, which have become increasingly popular among Iran’s more secularist and nationalist Muslims as a visual protest against the theocracy, have been especially targeted since July 2009 as signs of non- belief in Islam. Likewise presidential candidate Mousavi is now denounced as a politician who made deals with Israel while Prime Minister of Iran from 1981 to 1989, and his name caricatured by Shi‘ite funda-

47 Details provided to me by Jewish and Zoroastrian community organisers based in Yazd, Taft, Kerman, and Tehran. 48 They recycled previous statements made during the 2005 elections on which see Litvak 2006: 272. For the more recent events of 2009 consult Choksy 2013.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:43:50AM via free access 292 J. K. Choksy / Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299 mentalists as a “supporter or follower of Moses” and by extension of modern Israel. Baha’is are condemned publically too by the regime’s electoral supporters who periodically display banners linking the faith to the BBC as a source of foreign influence.49 Ayatollah Jannati’s role as chairman of the Council of Guardians of the Constitution, which inquiries into election irregularities provides no reassurance of a fair universal franchise outcome to minorities because of his derogatory statements on non-Muslims, his fundamentalist views, and his hardline Shi‘ite candidates. The basic problem for religious minority groups within Iran’s Islamic polity is that the clerics and their supporter’s regard their governance as sanctioned and legitimised by God. Consequently, any nonconformity with their whims amounts to violating the will of Allah—as they are quick to emphasise to Christians, Zoroastrians, and Jews in Iran. News media like Javan associated with the IRGC and Tabnak run by former IRGC commander Mohsen Rezai claim “Zoroastrians like Christians, Baha’is, and Jews before them” have begun missionary work “to influence Muslim children’s thoughts and ideas” through “signs, symbols, and toys” with the aim of “attacking the Islamic faith”, “threatening national security”, and “subverting the Islamic Revolution”. Fanned by anti-minority news stories, there are rising demands by mollāhs that government ministries should “repress them (i.e., the religious minorities)”. Moreover, as the Islamic Republic’s concept of velāyat-e faqih has come under increasing challenge by the masses, the Zoroastrians whose political history includes the religiously-tolerant 6th and 5th century B.C. Achaemenid monarchs Cyrus II and Darius I are being singled out more than other communities and blamed for the rising tides of nationalism.50 Essentially, as Iran’s theocratic establishment attempts to quash broad political and social dissent, the religious minorities find themselves rendered as faithless archetypes whose presence is construed as a threat to Islam and whose heritage is denounced as threat to the

49 Regarding anti-Semitic attacks against Mousavi, see http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/ 92485.html; for the denigration of Baha’is in the post-2009 election context, see http://www.iranpresswatch.org/post/4019. 50 See http://www.tabnak.ir/fa/news/188174 for the quotations. The rise of nationalism in response to popular disenchantment with the theocracy is analysed by Choksy/Szrom 2010. A theoretical analysis of the intersection between nationalism, pride, loyalty, and suspicion between majorities and minorities is presented by Longva 2012: 12, 14–15. Stausberg 2012: 184 also discusses the growing trend among Muslim Iranians to appropriate Zoroastrian beliefs and symbols as a means of cri- tiquing the theocratic regime.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:43:50AM via free access J. K. Choksy / Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299 293 fundamentalist Shi‘ite polity. Not surprisingly, they have tended increasingly to band together seeking mutual safety. Granted, intercom- munal cooperation in Iran has not always been voluntary or constantly good-willed between those religious minorities—expediency and self- interest constantly play important roles as well. Such considerations, however, do not detract from the current trends. Owing to the hard- ships of life under the theocratic regime of modern Iran, Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians there increasingly view each other as partners who must remain committed to working together to ensure communal and personal liberties.51

OUTSIDE INFLUENCE? Nine centuries ago, the Persian poet Sa‘di wrote: “The children of Adam are limbs of one body, for in creation they are of one essence. When ca- lamitous times afflict one limb, the other limbs cannot remain silent. You who do not grieve for the tribulations of others, it is not fitting for you to be termed human”. U.S. President Barack Obama quoted the first line from Sa‘di’s poem in his video message to the Iranian people on Nav Roz March 20, 2009.52 Although troubled by negative developments within Iran, countries like the U.S. and Britain have been careful not to push fundamental rights questions too strongly to avoid backlash by the regime in Tehran against all Iranians. Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian groups have by and large followed that pattern too. Only the Baha’i communities outside Iran regularly speak publically about their coreligionists inside Iran—in part due to a well-organised network of institutions across the globe.53 But members of Iran’s non-Muslim minorities comment in private that foreign hopes of swaying the ruling theocracy on other issues like nuclear policy by leaving the ayatollahs repressive minority policies unchallenged is akin to a quest for the proverbial fool’s gold. They believe that on the world stage the importance of

51 Zoroastrian community members told me they were putting on a brave face when they informed Foltz 2011: 78, that “conditions are better now than at any time during the past 14 centuries”. They assumed Foltz would apprehend the comment’s irony. The progressively deteriorating condition Zoroastrians between the Pahlavi and Islamic Republic regimes becomes clear when viewed in the context of the results of decades of fieldwork among Iran’s Zoroastrians both before and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 by scholars, such as Boyce (1977), Fischer ( 1973), Sana- sarian ( 2000), Stausberg (2002), and Fozi (2011), in addition to my own fieldwork on which forms the core of this article. 52 The Golestān of Sa‘di 2008: 22, and http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/ videotaped-remarks-president-celebration-nowruz, respectively. 53 Details in Warburg 2012: 201–202.

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Iran’s Christians, Zoroastrians, and Jews as globally respected representatives of their faiths is not unknown even to the Shi‘ite fundamentalists who control Iran. Some Parsis or Zoroastrians on the Indian subcontinent hesitantly, but determinedly, have begun drawing attention to issues of religious freedom within the Islamic Republic of Iran. Their coreligionists’ or- deals of escape from Iran are being chronicled by members of Parsi communities who shelter the refugees. Parsi organisations and families in Mumbai and other Indian cities have contributed toward housing, clothing, and educating Zoroastrian refugees from Iran. Parsi communal leaders even have occasionally exerted persuasive influence via the Indian government on the current regime in Tehran to liberalise re- straints on basic rights and to enforce protection under the law (Choksy 2006: 131–133, 183–184). A slow but steady migration of Iran’s Jews has continued as well, some overtly and others covertly. Most resettle in Israel, receiving assistance from that state in building new lives. Some relocate to the United States of America with sponsorship of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. In addition to its security apprehen- sions vis-à-vis Iran, the Israeli government remains most concerned about the welfare and safety of Iranian Jews. But unlike the Parsis, Isra- elis and American Jews have not act openly on their coreligionists’ behalf lest the latter’s safety be jeopardised through negative reactions by Iran’s theocratic leaders (Rahimiyan 2008: 259, 262, 263; Menashri 2010: 596). Christian groups in Iran, especially the Assyrian-Chaldaean and Protestant communities remain the most neglected by outsiders. Al- though not experiencing the same level of violence and dislocation as their counterparts in Iraq, Assyrians now find themselves losing many of their traditional villages and agrarian-pastoral livelihoods in northwestern Iran to Kurdish and Turkmen Iranians. Consequently, migration to the United States of America, where the Assyrian Church is well established, occurs steadily (Naby/Choksy 2010). Only the Baha’i communities outside Iran regularly speak publically about their coreligionists inside Iran—in part due to a well-organised network of institutions across the globe (Warburg 2012: 201-202). However, the minority communities’ coreligionists’ outside Iran and Western governments may not be without influence on the Iranian government regarding religious freedom. One case in point dates to Sep- tember 2009 when, to shore up Iran’s image as a tolerant nation after the violent quashing of pro-democracy protests in the wake of the contested presidential election, Ahmadinejad “summoned the minorities to Iran’s aid”—as one Iranian political wag privately commented. Iran’s

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:43:50AM via free access J. K. Choksy / Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) 271-299 295 president included the five minority representatives from the parliament on an official entourage to the United Nations General Assembly. Iran is one “big and unified family” with full legal rights for religious minorities, Ahmadinejad declared at a meeting of the minority parliamentarians according to official reports. Not only could the parliamentarians be punished if they resisted inclusion in the presidential retinue, their religious communities would suffer the hard-line regime’s re- prisals as well. “Communal welfare is important, so absence will not be possible” another Iranian minority religious leader apologetically explained before the New York trip. All five minority delegates at that time—Jewish lawmaker Siamak Moreh-Sedeq, Armenian-Christian legislators Robert Biglerian and Giork Vartan, Assyrian-Chaldean Chris- tian representative Yonatan Bet-Kolia, and Zoroastrian parliamentarian Esfandiar Ekhtiari—were hostages to Iran’s deceptive diplomacy as one later whispered to an American coreligionist. Indeed, they had specific instructions not to engage in any unauthorised “contacts or interviews” while in the U.S.54 Yet, including them in official diplomacy demon- strates both the symbolic and actual valence Jews, Zoroastrians, and Christians—and, although not included in Ahmadinejad’s entourage, Baha’is and Mandaeans—still hold in Iranian society. On the world stage, the importance of Iran’s Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians as globally respected representatives of their faiths is not underestimated even by the Shi‘ite fundamentalists who control Iran. As events ignited by the contested presidential elections of 2009 demonstrated, Iranians of all confessional backgrounds have begun to contest more publically than before whether religion should dictate sociopolitical norms and what role should be played by clerics in their nation's politics. Iran’s leadership regards minority issues as an internal Iranian matter not as one in which Western or Eastern nations should get involved. Certainly, the Iranian people have to work toward and de- cide their own future. Involvement by foreign governments on behalf of minorities or any other groups can be misused as an issue inside Iran to strengthen the hand of Shi‘ite fundamentalists in the short-term. How- ever, as I have been asked on several occasions by Christians, Jews, Mandaeans, Zoroastrians, and Baha’is during my research in Iran, “does respecting Iran’s sovereignty mean restricting assistance for Iranians who seek to ensure religious liberty, civil rights, and equal justice in their society?”.

54 Quotations and other details are taken from Choksy/Shea 2009a, and based on email correspondence with some of the parliamentarians, their communities in Iran, and community representatives in the U.S.

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Non-Muslim religious minority leaders in Iran point out their country’s president, when addressing the 65th session of the U.N. General Assembly in September 2010 acknowledged: “Freedom is a divine right that should serve peace and human perfection”.55 So they speak of an expectation that all of Iran’s communities, not just Muslims, should en- joy the fundamental right to be treated equally and to worship freely. Indeed, the mediaeval poet Sa‘di’s words were invoked by magi, rabbis, and bishops alike to press their communities’ cause at home and abroad long before being recited by U.S. President Obama. The central question raised by them in numerous conversations with me is whether the world will continue to remain exactly as the calculating and intolerant ayatollahs have conditioned it to be, i.e., uncertain of how to act and ever-hopeful of the Islamic Republic’s cooperation, or will freedom of belief and practice for all citizens be emphasised prominently, publically, and repeatedly to Iran’s leaders as a requisite for seeking a major role among the community of nations? Time and work among Iran’s religious minorities suggests that they seek and desperately need assistance both inside and outside their troubled country. Representatives from all the religious minorities—privately in all cases other than for the Baha’i leadership in diaspora—expressed satisfaction the United Nations acknowledged “deep concern at reports of human rights viola- tions in Iran… that at times amount to persecution” through a resolu- tion in December 2011. Similar satisfaction had been expressed after the British Parliament discussed the deterioration of religious freedom inside Iran in January 2011.56 After all, as they say repeatedly, Iran’s Zoroastrians, Christians, Jews, Baha’is, and Mandaeans wish to live as equals among the Muslim majority because they remain proud of their Iranian heritage.57

55 The official audio-video recording is posted on the United Nations General As- sembly site at http://www.un.org/en/ga/65/meetings/generaldebate/View/SpeechView /tabid/85/smid/411/ArticleID/104/reftab/224/t/Iran-Islamic-Republic-of/Default.html. 56 “General Assembly Voices Concern over Iranian Human Rights Record”, UN News Center (December 11, 2011), http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40788 &Cr=iran&Cr1. The British House of Commons debate can be found at http://www. parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=9743 and http://www.theyworkforyou.com /whall/?id=2012-01-11a.109.1. 57 As noted poignantly by the Tehran Jewish Hospital’s director Ciamak Mor- sathegh in a report compiled by Harrison 2006.

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