the Baha'is and the success the mullahs have had in poisoning the minds of

many decent and well-meaning Iranians.

sprouts deep roots.

Religious prejudice, like racism,

In 1925, frightened by the spread of republican ideas from neighboring Turkey, a nation that was undergoing complete secularization, the Shiite clergy helped the military dictator Reza Khan become shah.

However, Reza

Shah pushed the mullahs to the periphery of national life. He secularized the courts and the schools, and crushed all clerical protests by brute force. Not until his removal in 1941 did the clergy get a new lease on political life and begin to organize clubs and auxiliary societies dedicated to the reestablishment of their former influence.

In the early 1950s, one of the leading mujtahids, Ayatollah Kashani, first lent support to Dr. Mosaddeq, then abandoned him at the last moment facilitating the restoration of Mohammad Reza Shah after his three days exile abroad. Of course, the Shah was expected to pay for the help he had received. The extremists among the clergy led by Mullah Taqi Falsafi, were granted the right to conduct an anti-Baha'i campaign using government radio and the press. The clergy was also permitted to organize societies such as Tabliqat-e Eslami whose aim was the eradication of the Baha'i Faith from Iran. A number of individuals later prominent in the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, for instance its second president Mohammad Ali Rajai, had participated in the anti-Baha'i activities of the 1950s. These consisted of the disruption of Baha'i study classes, prayer meetings, weddings and funerals;

physical attacks on individual Baha'is; the intimidation of employers who hired Baha'i workers; the harassment of Baha'i children in schools; the publication and dissemination of scurrilous anti-Baha'i literature, and the promotion of outright anti-Baha'i pogroms.

In 1955 the Iranian government fully cooperated with the Islamic extremist societies. The army occupied the national Baha'i headquarters in Tehran, the chief of the imperial staff himself dealing the first blow, with a pickaxe, to the dome over the large meeting hall. World public opinion loudly condemned the persecution of the Baha'i community, forcing the Iranian government to relent and to abandon the campaign.

In the next decade, the Shiite clergy again lost much of the influence it had regained in the 1950s. A substantial segment of the clerical establishment assumed a firmly negative attitude toward land reform, the extension of the franchise to women, and toward the ever-accelerating process of modernization. This negativism turned to the mullahs' advantage in the 1970s.

Rapid urbanization with the concomitant dislocation of the agricultural sector, the rise of modern industry, the arrival of traffic problems and air pollution, the visible increase in foreign influence, drastic changes in the lifestyle of urbanized Iranians, widespread corruption in government and business, the conflict between the traditional bazaar bourgeoisie and the modern entrepreneurial class, the oppressive policies of a government that seemed insensitive to the non-material needs of the population, the rise of a large class of educated technocrats-these were only some of the factors

that suddenly made the negativism and fundamentalism of the mullahs seem attractive to much of the population.

Elements among the reactionary clergy, particularly those that clustered around the specifically anti-Baha'i organizations, such as the Tabliqat-e Eslami and the Anjoman-e-Hojjatiyyeh, played a double game. Founded with the blessings of the government and working in close cooperation with the SAVAK--the political secret police-these organizations used their resources and membership against both the government and the Baha'is, creating the impression that the Baha'is dominated the Pahlavi regime.

The Shah

Clerical propaganda constantly repeated that Mohammad Reza Shah was surrounded by Baha'is and was, perhaps, one himself; that his long-term prime minister Amir Abbas Hoveida, and a number of other cabinet ministers, as well as several high officials of the SAVAK, were Baha'is. These carefully planted and widely circulated rumors gradually became part of the received ideas shared by much of the urban population. The facts, of course, were rather different. was a professed Shiite with mystic tendencies that he openly discussed in person and in his autobiograhy. He did not hide his aversion for the Baha'i Faith but did not see it as a threat. For him the Baha'i community was a source of reliable, technical personnel and a convenient scapegoat. He did use the services of a Baha'i doctor and occasionally appointed Baha'is to government offices that demanded a high degree of specialized competence. However, no Baha'i served in the cabinet, because acceptance of a cabinet post by a Baha'i would have led to the expulsion of such an individual from the Baha'i community.

Prime Minister Hoveida was never a Baha'i.

His father had been one years ago

but was expelled from the Baha'i community. Hoveida always insisted he was a Muslim and frequently stressed his negative view of the Baha'i Faith. The same was true of the SAVAK official Parviz Sabeti, whose parents had been Baha'is but drifted out of the Baha'i community. Parviz Sabeti has never been

a member.

It should be pointed out, however, that the misdeeds of an individual cannot be held against an entire religion. Were one to accept the contrary principle, a criminal born in a protestant family would make all protestants parties to the crime. Is it necessary to point out that Ivan the Terrible was a practicing member of the Orthodox Church, Tamerlane a Muslim, and Hitler a Catholic?

When the Iranian revolution broke out in 1978, the most radically conservative fundamentalist elements within the Shiite clergy were determined to purge Iran of everything they disliked: modernism, emancipation of women, the rights of minorities, academic freedom, non-conformist thought, opera and the theatre, most forms of music; but their strongest yearning was for the destruction of the Baha'is. Having achieved power, the old enemies of the

Baha'i Faith could not but use that power to crush a religion and a community for whose eradication they have striven for 138 years.

Mr. BONKER. We will continue now with Mr. Mitchell, who is secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States.

Mr. DYMALLY. Just a note of personal interest. I had the occasion to visit your shrine in Haifa after the Six Day War, which would be 1967.

Mr. BONKER. I understand that Mr. Mitchell was to be the last speaker.

Mr. KAZEMZADEH. Yes; if it please the Chair, Mrs. Nourani would go next.

STATEMENT OF RAMNA MAHMOUDI NOURANI, EYEWITNESS TO PERSECUTION

Mrs. NOURANI. My name is Ramna Mahmoudi Nourani. I am an Iranian Baha'i who came to the United States 11 years ago to study. I was doing my Ph. D. in mathematics at UCLA before my studies were disrupted due to family circumstances in Iran.

I would like to make the plight of the Baha'is of Iran known on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of Baha'i men, women, and children whose legal rights are being denied and who are living under the threat of extinction, those who have lost their jobs, their properties, their means of livelihood, their all, and who may also lose the custody of their children and those who have been imprisoned, tortured, or executed.

The story of the persecution of the Baha'is of Iran is an intensely personal one for me. I have lost both of my parents with the blessings of the Islamic Government and the clergy of Iran. The story is even more tragic because what is taking place there is in the name of religion.

There were days I remember, back in the school days, when I was humiliated in the classroom for being a Baha'i. This was during the reign of the Shah, and my parents could face perhaps a few months or a few years of imprisonment because their Baha'i marriages were not recognized by the Government. Days I remember when Baha'i meetings were disrupted by young men from the Islamic society called the Organization for the Propagation of Islam. But those were the extent of the persecution that we could expect. These days, one pays even more dearly for being a Baha'i. You can give your life for it.

I would like to tell you the story of my parents. My father, Houshang Mahmoudi, 53 years old, was a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Iran. He, along with all his colleagues, were abducted on August 21, 1980 and simply disappeared. We have not heard anything from my father or from any of his colleagues. All the appeals made by the Baha'i community of Iran to the Government on behalf of them went unheeded. I have no doubt that they have all been killed, and perhaps they faced the most cruel death.

My mother, Ginous Mahmoudi, was elected to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Iran and served as its chairman. She, along with her colleagues on the assembly, were arrested on December 13, 1981. They were taken to a prison and for a week before they were executed they were kept in the hallways of an in