From: N.W. Azal
Date: Thu, Dec 22, 2022 at 8:03 PM
Subject: Re: Censorship of Iran Protests by Facebook/Meta
To: <mp@stephenbates.com.au>
22 December 2022
Dear Stephan Bates, greetings:
Many
thanks for your response to my email of 9 December 2022. I couldn't
agree more with everything you succinctly stated in your
response, and I
am very heartened that you are my MP in this electorate. I have one
question and then a clarification to one of the points made by you. So I
will start with the question.
Are
there any impending plans by the Australian Greens to address the
problems and/or propose something on the floor of the Federal
Commonwealth parliament regarding Facebook and its regulation?
Next,
in your first paragraph you mentioned the Baha'is among the list of
Iranian groups being suppressed by the Iranian regime. As an ex-Bahai
and present adherent of Bahaism's precursor, the religion of the
Bayan
(as well as someone who has acted as a public dissident to this
organisation since the 1990s after my resignation from it), I can with
confidence say that the inclusion of the Baha'is is problematic.
I
understand that the Baha'is maintain an active lobbying presence in
Canberra and elsewhere, and have for years offered their own narratives
regarding their situation in Iran under the ayatollah's regime. However,
as someone with extensive knowledge of the subject, I can say that many
of the narratives the Baha'i regularly offer may not be entirely
accurate and may in fact be gratuitous. The most persecuted segment of
the population in Iran since the inception of the Khomeini regime in
1979 have always been Iranian women. This has been followed by the
Kurdish minority whom the Khomeini regime literally declared war on as
of March 1979. Leftists, trade-unionists, environmental activists,
Sunnis, Sufis,
LGBTIQA+
and a variety of ethnic, religious and political dissidents in general
have been the next group that have been relentlessly targeted by the
regime in Iran since its beginnings. But because almost all of these
groups do not maintain active, professional lobbying presences in
Western capitals and amongst Western human rights organisations - or
have deep pockets like the Baha'is do - they have rarely if ever been
heard during these past 43 years. Instead a professional and active
Baha'i lobbying presence throughout the West
since 1979
(and in Australia in particular) has dominated the landscape with their
own narratives, often overshadowing the legitimate concerns of others.
While almost all those mentioned have vocally offered their support to
the Iranian people at this time, at present no official statement has
been forthcoming by Baha'i authorities doing the same.
Furthermore,
as my own experience with them since the 1990s has shown, the main
Baha'i organisation itself is a human rights violator. Internally, they
also regularly persecute, shun and disfellowship LGBTIQA+ individuals,
citing their purported scriptures as justification. Externally, they
regularly harass schismatics, dissidents and individuals associated with
alternative Baha'i organisations and tendencies - such as the Orthodox Baha'is, the Baha'is Under the Provisions of the Covenant
and similar whom they label as "covenant breakers" and actively
encourage their rank and file to shun - while pretending to be a united
organisation to representatives of Western governments and
organisations.
As
a consequence of a publication exposing their authoritarian and
cult-like tendencies authored by the Swiss Italian and ex-Baha'i
Francesco Ficicchia, during the 1980s the West German government revoked
the Baha'is recognized religion status in West Germany, forcing them to
act as an NGO until in 2014 a German Federal administrative court
decision in Stuttgart reinstated it again. Regarding them, in a 2009
publication Ficicchia writes:
If Islām as a political
order is equated with Islamism, then this also applies to Bahāʾism, although a
corresponding Bahāʾī equivalent to the term “Islamism” has yet to be invented.
Like the Islamists, the Bahāʾīs also aim to establish a God-state (theocracy)
with a globally recognized, religiously constituted legal and social order. Nevertheless,
they emphatically deny any involvement in worldly [political] affairs and
prohibit any political activity, at least on the part of the faithful base.
They emphasize their peacefulness and oblige their followers to obey the ruling
authorities — by which prospectively also, and above all, their own is meant.
However, a secular (non-religious) order is rejected and the goal is to elevate
Bahāʾism to the status of a “state religion” in a “Bahā'ī State” or “Bahā'ī
World Government” that is to be created. The supreme authority of this
universal faith-based dictatorship is the [all-male] “Universal House of
Justice,” which is endowed with infallible authority. Per this premise,
Bahā'ism is also a political and ideological religion, although its [presently]
marginal position in society means that
it must exercise due restraint in achieving its goals....In Bahāʾī: Einheitsreligion und global
Theokratie. Ein kritischer Einblick in die Universalreligion der Zukunft
(Bahāʾī: Religion of Unity and Global Theocracy. A Critical Insight into the
Universal Religion of the Future), (Monsenstein und Vannerdat: 2009): 131–132 (my
trans.)
I will leave it here, but I wished to clarify this latter point.
With best regards,
Wahid Azal
