A Policy of Intolerance

While Iran's bitter battle of gaining nuclear technologies gets abundant news coverage, the horrific human rights abuse, intolerance and point blank hatred toward Iranian minorities do not get much attention it seems. Any questions raised against Iran's violating of human rights are labeled as "Pro Western" conspiracy against Iran and its state sponsored religion. For ordinary civilians these bloated words don't mean anything. What matters are being put into prison for simply having different religious belief than the Iranian state condones, that should be condemned for every instance of abuse, torture and questionable deaths while in custody happens.

In Iran, 350,000 Baha'is "are not recognized as a legitimate religious minority, unlike the country's Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians. According to the hard-line clerics, this reduces them to the status of “infidels” beyond the protection of the law.

This radical interpretation of sharia is clearly contrary to Iran's obligations under UN human-rights covenants to which Tehran is signatory. It is also contrary to the view of respected Islamic scholars that freedom of worship is a fundamental Koranic principle. Iran's policy of intolerance betrays a regime that has cynically manipulated Islam as an instrument of power and used hate-mongering to legitimize its authoritarian rule."

Ordinary Iranian citizens have started noticing the brutal treatment of their fellow countrymen of Bahai faith, "as ordinary Iranians increasingly reject the lies they have been fed over the past 30 years by the clerical leadership. To give but one example, the recent expulsion of a Baha'i student from a high school resulted in spontaneous protests from Muslim students outraged that one of their classmates was being denied the right to education solely because of his beliefs. There are increasing calls from eminent human-rights advocates, such as Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, for a constitution in which all citizens enjoy the same rights, regardless of religious beliefs."

Link:
A Policy of Intolerance