Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Attention Students

Hello again guys. As promised, here is an update on the situation for class this week. The VCR is fixed. Come to class as usual.

As an aside, Rainn Wilson, better known as Dwight from the Office, has written a commentary on Bahaiis in Iran. Here is the link. You can comment on it if you wish. I, on the other hand, will be watching the Office.

-Amir

3 comments:

ChriSe7en said...

I found Rainn Wilson's commentary very interesting, although also saddening. Still, I am glad to see that someone is drawing attention to the religious persecution that occurs in Iran. I have met many families who fled Iran for this very reason. Many of my friends have known people who were tortured or even killed in Iran for what they believed. Hopefully Rainn's will not be the last such commentary.

Corvos said...

I had never head of the Baha'i religion before reading this article. Obviously I clicked on the article because it was written by Rainn Wilson, but (also obviously) that has nothing to do with the point. It is never happy news to hear of another group of people being prosecuted for their beliefs, race, sex, etc. but these are issues are not widely publicized, even if there are people trying to do so.

In this case, the seven national leaders of a religion, founded on the idea of unifying the community of all religions, are being persecuted for their religious views; a sort of ironic tragedy. This seems like it would be an example of what the Iranian government forbade Rick Steves from covering in his documentary. I would be surprised if the Baha’is were not listed on his forbidden topics.

Asa Zernik said...

For Jews the danger came and went with the chaos of the revolution (barring random charges of espionage).

The Baha'i are still outlawed as apostates, not members of a recognized religion, and actively persecuted. Given the political clergy's view of any religion more recent than Mohammed, that's probably going to be one of the last things to change in Iran's political system (if/when change does come).