The Western media often likes to blow the Baha'i issue in Iran beyond all reasonable proportions while conveniently remaining silent or otherwise downplaying similar parallels existing in Western countries. Almost nothing is mentioned by them about Baha'isms sordid history or eyebrow raising linkages and connections presently. This is precisely because these Western establishments are engaging in carefully orchestrated neo-colonial perception management, consensus building and so information war against Iran due to the fact that the Haifan Baha'is have in fact been their dependable comprador lackeys and trojan horse in the region -- and so, native informers -- for the good part of one-hundred and sixty-six years.
The Yaran, Faezah Hashemi and the Converging Forces of Destabilization in Iran
Now, the Yaran referred to above had initially been allowed to operate in Iran by the government of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005). But a series of incidents during the period of his presidency involving corruption, profiteering, the establishment of illegal front companies, hawala networks and illicit property speculation as well as overall activities deemed to be threats to Iran's national security committed by Baha'is; where ostensibly the openness of the Khatami years was being systematically abused by the Yaran and its cronies; convinced the succeeding Ahmadinejad administration (2005-13) to instead shut it down altogether, arrest and charge its seven-man membership, initiate proceedings against it in the judiciary which finally culminated in the 2008 sentence against the body. One sticking point of the case was the active Baha'i missionary and mass conversion efforts underway during the Yaran's tenure (which the Yaran had earlier made written guarantees and explicit undertakings to the Iranian government not to do), especially on Iranian university campuses, which the Iranian judiciary determined in its 2008 verdict to be a subversive recruitment effort in collusion with foreign powers, notably Israel and the United States.
With that said, Faezah Hashemi's key involvement with the Iranian Green movement during 2009; that this movement was a linchpin for a specifically Western coordinated regime change operation in Iran; together with the persistent allegations that the Baha'is themselves were heavily involved in it; transforms the nature, configuration and registries of the entire discussion and locates it elsewhere besides questions revolving around religious freedoms or minority rights in Iran. That quote above from Canadian Baha'i scholar Ian Kluge says it all, so for Faezah Hashemi to be openly cavorting this closely in public with a temporarily paroled leader and representative of the Haifan Baha'i organization in Iran says that the concerns of her principalist rivals are not entirely off the wall or misplaced, nor are they remotely predicated by merely base sentiments of religious bigotry either.
Be that as it may, the Iranian judiciary has called for Hashemi's appearance over the incident. But given who her father is, and the muscle he wields within the system (after all, in 1989 following the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini, Hashemi-Rafsanjani was the proverbial king-maker), it is unlikely that much, if anything, will be done to muzzle her. Nevertheless that certain forces may be in the process of converging that include the Haifan Baha'is, foreign based regime-changers, the Rafsanjani family and the moderate-reformist bloc should give serious concern to any genuine well wisher of Iran because it signals that even though we have a nuclear accord and sanctions have theoretically been lifted on Iran as of February 2016, something dastardly may be afoot and of potentially far more menacing proportions than 2009. This, together with the Obama administration's duplicitous behaviour in dragging its foot on the unfreezing of nearly 2 billion dollars worth of Iranian assets while also strong arming both American and European business and finance from dealing with Iran, suggests it strongly. These developments are indeed connected, and the Baha'i issue is being strategically used by the West and its internal Iranian allies as not only leverage against the Islamic Republic of Iran but as an outright weapon.
Notes
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/world/middleeast/iran-bahais-kamalabadi-hashemi-meeting.html (retrieved 20 May 2016).
[2] Originally http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Baha'i_Faith; now https://www.scribd.com/doc/235458694/Baha-i-Faith-SourceWatch (retrieved 20 May 2016); see as well, William M. Miller The Baha'i Faith: Its History and Teachings, Pasadena, 1974, and Francesco Ficicchia Baha'i: Einheitsreligion und globale Theokratie. Ein kritischer Einblick in die Universalreligion, Munster, 2009.
[3] http://www.thesectsofbahais.com/ (retrieved 20 May 2016); see also http://www.orthodoxbahai.com/ and http://www.bupc.org/ as well as Frederick Glaysher's two websites https://www.fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/ and http://www.reformbahai.org/ (retrieved 21 May 2016); also more recently, Shua Ullah Behai and (ed.) Eric Stetson A Lost History of the Baha'i Faith: The Progressive Tradition of Baha'u'llah's Forgotten Family, Newark, 2014, and the two blogs and website associated with this specific faction http://www.unitarianbahai.org/, http://www.abdulbahasfamily.org/ and https://historyofbahaifaith.wordpress.com/ (retrieved 21 May 2016).
[4] See Denis MacEoin's entry "Baha'ism" in A Handbook of Living Religions, (ed.) John R. Hinnells, London, 1984, and (writing under the alias Daniel Easterman) New Jerusalems: Reflections on Islam, Fundamentalism and the Rushdie Affair, London, 1993; see as well Juan R.I. Cole "The Baha'i Faith in America as Panopticon," originally published in The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, vol. 37, no. 2 (June 1998): 234-248; digitally republished on his website http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/bahai/1999/jssr/bhjssr.htm (retrieved 21 May 2016).
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