Wednesday 29 April 2009

Gloomy story of Bahais in Iran

I read the autobiography of Anwar Sheikh, the Indian writer, and I motivated to write about the
Muslims attitude toward nonbelievers or other cults and religions.
An introduction to Anwar SheikhAnwar biography:
Anwar Shikh was born in 1928 in Gojerat of India. a city that is part of Pakistan now.Because his birthday was in the hajji month, they named him Hajji Mohammad, later he was named Anwar, because he was circumcised at birthday. (anwar means enlightened) His mother was both a religious woman and a scholar, so Anwar Sheikh grew up in a very religious family. He says, in his autobiography that he had killed 3 Sikh men to gain Allah's mercy and end up in heaven living with eternal virgins & hurries. He claims that he was raised in a religious family, and that he had read the Koran several times. Because he had read the Koran blindly, he had never grasped the contradictions in the Koran. He added that he had been a Muslim up until the age 25. One day when he had been reading the Koran, he recited a verse loudly. In that verse Allah says "when you are speaking with Mohammad, don't raise your voice before him." Something shook him in his mind: -- Is Allah Mohammad's servant? Why couldn't Mohammad utter these petty guidance to his followers himself? He started to recite the Koran again. However, he read it critically with an open mind this time. He immigrated to Britain and when he became a well-off man, he quit his occupation, and started to write .Today, in the Muslim world, he is presumed more dangerous than Salmon Rushdie. Somewhere in his autobiography, Anwar Sheikh says that, in India Muslims burned a man in a fireplace and fastened his corpse to a big motorcycle and pulled him on the ground, simply because he accidentally threw one of the pages of the Koran in fire. His autobiography motivated me to write about the Bahai faith in Shiraz. Muslims try to convince other religious followers that Islam is a religion of peace. They do indeed mis-represent and misinterpret the Koranic verses in order to deceive the populace, but truth will manifest itself. Many Koranic verses order the Muslims to kill the infidels or the people of the book until they subdue or give tribute. (We will not mention those verses here.)Bahaees faith in Shiraz:(Shiraz is a fairly large city in Southwest part of Iran and is the capital of the Fars province.) Before the victory of the Islamic revolution in Iran, some benighted fundamentalist went to the Bahais township in Shiraz and started harassing them. Sefat was a Bahai hunter. He was a very compassionate and patient man. Every night when he came home exhausted, he heard the voice of the Muslim hoodlums insulting him and his family. One of them told Sefat that he should give them his daughter. Sefat couldn't tolerate such insults. He took his gun and went atop the roof in his house and shot the Muslims who insulted the Bahais . Then after killing about 70, he committed suicide. The day after this incident, the hoodlums were named as martyrs of Islam. All Muslim men and women spit on the corps of this brave man who defended his family. Then they attacked all the Bahais they knew looting their house, their belongings and everything in their reach such as meat grinder, juicer, gas cylinders and etc., finally setting the house on fire. Some of the Bahais escaped that night. However, some of the old women and men have to remain in their houses, because they could not go anywhere or they did not have any acquaintances elsewhere in other cities.That morning, as a child, I was witness to the beastly behaviour of the Muslims toward the Bahais. I saw a man who made a loop by a rope, threw it around an old Bahai man, and dragged him on the ground. They took off another man's pants and ran him around the township. One of my Bahai friends told me that, when Muslims burnt down the Bahais' homes she had only been a little child. Her brother owned a van. They got on the van and wrapped a blanket on themselves, in order not to be recognized by the Muslims. They went to their aunt's house who was a Muslim woman. It was 12 pm. Nonetheless, the aunt did not permit them to enter her house. She told them that "I am afraid the Muslims might burn down my house because of you." It was a rainy night in winter. They wondered in the streets for 2 hours. Her brother told them he had a close friend nearby & that he would perhaps allow them to stay at his house.They went there hopelessly. The friend embraced her brother & invited them in his house, and told them that his home is like theirs. He added: "Help yourselves." He took care of them for two months .They did not have any funds to live on. After two months, they decided to leave that house and start a new life. The family, who were wealthy, has to live on working in Muslim houses now. They went to a place near their township. My friend told me that whenever Muslim women saw her mother in a queue or somewhere in the township, they insulted her and some times, they pulled her scarf and pulled her hair. She came back home with tears running down on her face. In another part of the story, my friend told me that, one of her relatives who had been a Major in the army had been accused of being one of those who helped Sefat on that incident. His name was Azamatollah Fahandezh. He never did so. He was a man of prestige, and every body loved him. After the Islamic revolution, Hezbollah (The Party of Allah) executed him just because some Muslim gave a false testimony that he had helped Sefat in killing Muslim insulters. He was executed for the crime he had never committed. These are sad stories of those who live in the Muslim countries and have a different faith.

No comments: