Baha’is

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Ponder this news question: What happens to Afghan religious minorities post-USA?

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Ponder this news question: What happens to Afghan religious minorities post-USA?

First things first. There is no question that, if and when U.S. troops leave Afghanistan, the biggest security issue will be protecting women who have taken modest steps to move into public life in recent decades.

Thus, it is totally appropriate that information about women’s rights received the lion’s share of attention in the recent New York Times report on the sobering behind-the-scenes realities in that troubled land. You can see that right in the headline: “Afghans Wonder ‘What About Us?’ as U.S. Troops Prepare to Withdraw,” with its subhead mentioning fears that the “country will be unable to preserve its modest gains toward democracy and women’s rights.”

Again, this news hook is totally valid. However, I think that this story needed some information — at least a paragraph of two — acknowledging the serious concerns of members of minority religious groups in Afghanistan. These range from Islamic minorities (and more moderate forms of that faith) as well as small, but historic, communities of Baha’is, Sikhs, Jews and Christians. And then there are the reports about growing underground networks of secret Christian converts.

This is, literally, a life-and-death situation for thousands of people. Might this human-rights issue be worth a sentence or two?

Hold that thought. First, here is the overture in this otherwise fine feature:

KABUL, Afghanistan — A female high school student in Kabul, Afghanistan’s war-scarred capital, is worried that she won’t be allowed to graduate. A pomegranate farmer in Kandahar wonders if his orchards will ever be clear of Taliban land mines. A government soldier in Ghazni fears he will never stop fighting.

Three Afghans from disparate walks of life, now each asking the same question: What will become of me when the Americans leave?

President Biden on Wednesday vowed to withdraw all American troops by Sept. 11, 20 years after the first Americans arrived to drive out Al Qaeda following the 2001 terrorist attacks. “War in Afghanistan was never meant to be a multigenerational undertaking,” he said, speaking from the White House.

The American withdrawal would end the longest war in United States history, but it is also likely to be the start of another difficult chapter for Afghanistan’s people.


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Iran's Baha'is lose 'other religion' ID card bracket: A global story ripe for local coverage

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The world, unfortunately, is awash in cases of state-supported religious persecution.

Among the better known examples are China’s treatment of its Uighur Muslim and Tibetan Buddhist minorities. Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims and Russia’s Jehovah’s Witnesses have also drawn international attention.

Perhaps less well known is the case of Iran’s Baha’is, who have long been persecuted for their beliefs in the land where their faith first emerged in the 19th century. Since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, however, government-instituted oppression has increased substantially.

Late last month, Teheran’s rulers moved to prevent Baha’is from obtaining national identity cards. Without such cards they cannot participate in Iran’s banking system — which means they cannot cash a check, apply for a loan, or purchase property — adding to their impoverishment.

“The exclusion of the Iranian Baha’i community from national identification cards is unconscionable, and we are disturbed to see how this action against the Baha'is fits into a broader pattern of heightened persecution over the past few months,” Anthony Vance, an American Baha’i spokesman, told The National an English-language publication based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

(Other than the The National, as of this writing my quick web search turned up little other international coverage of this latest Iranian Baha’i twist. Great Britain’s The Telegraph was the best that I found. Also, Germany’s Deutsche Welle carried a piece on its English web site, as did the U.S.-financed Radio Free Europe (Radio Liberty), and Israel’s English-language daily The Jerusalem Post. I suspect other outlets will sooner or later follow suit.)

The faith’s official international website says that Baha’is, Iran’s largest non-Muslim religious minority, “are routinely arrested, detained, and imprisoned. They are barred from holding government jobs, and their shops and other enterprises are routinely closed or discriminated against by officials at all levels. Young Baha’is are prevented from attending university, and those volunteer Baha’i educators who have sought to fill that gap have been arrested and imprisoned.”

The latest affront to Baha’i freedoms resulted from Teheran’s decision to eliminate the “other religions” category from government-mandated personal identity cards. Other than Islam, Iran recognizes only Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism as acceptable religious identities. Previously, Baha’is registered under “other religions.”


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Friday Five: YouTube shooter, Pearl Joy, Trump's Latino adviser, a mom's Easter Taser and more

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After a woman named Nasim Najafi Aghdam shot and wounded three people at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, Calif., before killing herself this week, the San Francisco Chronicle had an excellent angle for a meaty religion story.

The Chronicle reported on what its headline characterized as "a troubling rush" by social media users to view the shooter as "driven by faith."

To some extent, this was a typical "Muslim backlash" story — the kind that often make headlines after someone of the Islamic faith is involved in an attack such as this.

But there was a major problem with the online rush to judgment, as the Chronicle noted: 

In the end, investigators said the shooter, Nasim Aghdam, was angry about YouTube’s “policies and practices” — a message echoed by her family. And her videos reportedly included messages describing herself as of the Baha’i faith — a religious minority in Iran.
The same pattern has often emerged following mass violence — a wave of presumptions that the incident is linked to a perpetrator’s religious practices, assumed to be Islam. Muslim Americans, and others, see a profoundly unsettling routine.
“It’s sad to see how some people are literally giddy rather than somber after a shooting when they can exploit the tragedy to further their racist agenda,” said Dalia Mogahed, research director for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a think tank in Washington, D.C., that seeks to empower American Muslims.

It's an interesting piece, although I wish the paper had identified the social media offenders rather than referring to them in vague, anonymous terms.

Meanwhile, let's dive into the Friday Five:


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Weekend of #MuslimBan: Did it help for press to ignore key contents of executive order?

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Weekend of #MuslimBan: Did it help for press to ignore key contents of executive order?

What a train wreck. There is really no way to dig into the thousands, maybe millions, of words that the mainstream press poured out over the weekend in coverage of President Donald Trump's rushed, flawed executive order creating a temporary ban on most refugees from lands racked by conflicts with radicalized forms of Islam.

My main question, in this post, does not concern the merits of order or the process that created it. That's clearly part of the train wreck and, as someone who was openly #NeverTrump (and #NeverHillary), I think mainstream reporters should go after that mess that with the same fervor they dedicated to the humanitarian impact of the previous administration's policies in Syria, Iraq, etc. We need to know who decided to rollout such a important executive order in such a slapdash, incompetent fashion -- especially whatever it did or didn't say about people in transit or those with green cards.

Now, I would like to focus on one question in particular related to this journalistic blitz that I think will be of special interest to GetReligion readers.

The hashtag for the day was clearly #MuslimBan, even though the order contained language specifically trying to protect many oppressed Muslims. The media also focused on Trump's statements pledging to protect oppressed Christians (I know it's hard to #IgnoreTrump, even when it's wise to do so), even though the text of the order said something else.

My question: Did journalists make this tragic crisis worse by ignoring or mangling some key contents of this order? Following the action on Twitter, it seemed that there are two stances on that.

The first was from Trump critics on the left, which included almost all elite media. It said: The news coverage of the executive order was fine. We all know what Trump meant, no matter what the order's words said. So there.

The second -- with very few exceptions -- was among conservative Trump critics (click here for essential National Review essay by #NeverTrump stalwart David French). I said: The EO was messed up and flawed, but press didn't help by ignoring the order's content. This, along with Trump sloppiness and ego, helped add to the panic and added to the firestorm that hurt real people.

It certainly did appear that, in many cases, panicky police and immigration officials acted like they were enforcing what press reports said the executive order said, rather than the text of the order (which was rushed out in a crazed, flawed manner). I hope there is follow-up coverage on that issue.

So, when considering these questions, what is the key passage of the #MuslimBan order?


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