Interview with a Bahá'í Who Escaped From Iran: Mehri Mavaddat

I grew up in a Bahá'í family in Iran. On my mother's side I am the fifth generation, and my father was third, and my grandfather became a Bahá'í during the time of Bahá'u'lláh.

In Iran the Bahá'í Faith was never recognized officially, so we were always under pressure. They cursed us in the streets, the children were beaten in school, and always I remember when I was a small child they broke our windows and put dirt behind our door because we were Bahá'ís. But we never tried to get revenge. My parents told me, and I always told my children later, that Bahá'u'lláh said to love people, even your enemies. So even when they beat us, we showed them love, and we helped them.

Mehri Mavvaddat

They burned my father's business in Hamadan when I was two or three years old. This sort of thing happened to all the Bahá'ís in Iran. In the last century 20,000 Bahá'ís were martyred -- put to the death in an attempt to eliminate the Bahá'í community -- and their houses were looted and they were tortured.

Something the Bahá'í community did was to try to educate everybody, because education is the most important principle of the Bahá'í Faith for everybody, especially girls who will be mothers later. Bahá'u'lláh said if you have two children, a boy and a girl, and you don't have funds enough for the education, just try to educate your girl. That's more important. The preference is always with girls.

We had classes for education, for handcrafts, and teaching them cooking and cleaning and everything. You could see when you went to the villages that Bahá'ís were different. Their houses were clean. The children were well behaved and clean and nice, and, as I remember before the Revolution, we didn't have illiteracy. We had a committee for the advancement of women, which later became a committee for the family.

In a Bahá'í family, Bahá'u'lláh has taught us, we have to read the Bahá'í Writings every day. I always woke up with my mother and my father chanting prayers. We grew up with all the Bahá'í Writings, and from three years old we went to all the meetings. Also, we had Bahá'í classes for all ages. I remember as a highschool girl that my weekends were busier than my other days. We had all these meetings -- youth meetings, school meetings, Bahá'í classes, and we really enjoyed it.

When I married, my husband was a chemical engineer, an expert in his field. We moved to different remote places for his work, and wherever we lived we always had a Bahá'í community, either small or a little bit bigger.

The Bahá'í Faith doesn't have clergy. In every village or city where there are more than nine adult Bahá'ís, they elect among themselves nine members who serve as a Local Spiritual Assembly. This is done by secret ballot -- no propaganda, no pressure. This is just a voluntary spiritual service, given to the community.

Most recently, my husband and I were members of the Local Spiritual Assembly of Karaj, which was a very big community. My husband was the chairman for a long time. He was very knowledgeable about the Faith. And I was also a member.

When the Revolution started, they thought that if they killed their "leaders" -- Assembly members -- and they took all the Bahá'í centers and books, they could paralyze the community. And then they could get rid of the rest very easily. They thought that when they didn't have leaders, the rest -- the women and the children -- would come and deny their faith and they could easily get rid of the Bahá'ís.

Their first target was National Spiritual Assembly and Local Spiritual Assembly members. They kidnapped fourteen members of the National Assembly and highly-educated Bahá'ís, and we still don't know where they are. Their families couldn't find any clue. They seized Bahá'í properties like Holy Places and Bahá'í Centers where we got together, and then they took other members of Assemblies.

They arrested two Bahá'ís from our community and asked us to come to the Revolutionary Court to be witnesses. This was only an excuse to arrest people; it was not something related to the case. They asked my husband and he went there. The Bahá'ís were so loyal and obedient, they went because they didn't have anything to hide.

When he went to be a witness, they came to our place while I was at home alone, waiting for the result. They searched all through our home. The first thing they were very interested in was Bahá'í books and literature and tapes, which they took or burned or tore up. And valuable things. All the Bahá'ís who were called or arrested, their houses were ransacked.

So he was put in prison, and then they came and took me, too. We were both placed in solitary confinement and there was a lot of pressure. Hours and hours of interrogation. The only thing they accused us of was spying. They always had some excuse to confuse people. It went on and on. Every night and day. After twenty days, they let him out. But they came even at midnight to our home, daily, and destroyed or took everything, and they took us to make us show them other Bahá'ís' places. They did this to other Bahá'ís too.

Then they called him to go to Evin Prison in Tehran for another reason. And he went again. For almost two months I didn't know where he was. I went to the authorities to ask about him, to defend our case, but it never worked. The minute they heard about the Faith, they couldn't stand it. It was just a prejudice. Because I was a lawyer for the government, I had a lot of friends who were lawyers and judges, and they told me, "If you were a criminal or a drug dealer we could help you, but because you are a Bahá'í we can't even talk about it because they will accuse us of being friends of Bahá'ís." They were too scared to do even a little about it.

After a while, when I found him, I could go to visit him behind the window and we could talk on the telephone for 10 minutes. He told me about all the pressure he was under, but he was very strong because this was for his Faith; he hadn't committed any crime and he wasn't guilty of anything. They told him, "Deny your faith, and you are free." Every non-Bahá'í prisoner who was released came and asked me, "Please tell him to deny his faith, because that is the only thing they want, and it's a pity to kill these nice, well-educated, kind people." I told them, "No, we will not lie. How do you respect a person who lies about what he believes in his heart?" What the government really wanted was to make the Bahá'ís recant their faith and to publicize that, but they could not.

I went to see him once a week, and one day he told me he had a trial. Fortunately, his is the only trial of an Assembly member that was reported in a national newspaper. The Islamic judge first asked him to read about Islam and become a Muslim. My husband said, "I believe in Islam and I have a Qur'an in my library and I have studied it and I believe in all religions. But I also believe that Bahá'u'lláh is the latest Manifestation of God." After that, the judge listed all the accusations -- having Bahá'í books, Bahá'í tapes, teaching Bahá'í classes, sending money for Bahá'ís, and so on. They were all published in the newspapers. All my non-Bahá'í friends said, "These are not crimes for which they kill anybody; they won't kill anybody for religion. They kill Bahá'ís and then announce that they were spies," they told me, "and how do you know? Maybe they committed something, but we know that your husband is not like that."

Two months after, I was in my office when my friends came and said they heard on the radio that they had executed several people, including three Bahá'ís. We went to the morgue where they take the bodies, and we had to identify which were ours. We had difficulty taking the bodies, because they were always throwing them out, but at last we managed to take them to our cemetery. I have a picture. The crime was written on their feet. It said "Bahá'í -- anti-God."

The day after they executed my husband, they killed four more Bahá'ís, so we had two days in a row of funerals. Three months after that they took even the cemetery. Now they have destroyed it and made it into a cultural centre for Moslems.

The day after the funeral, the authorities went to our house, sealed it, and took everything. They had ransacked the whole thing before, but now they seized the house, closed our bank account, took our car, and everything. And they were looking for me again. Before, my office had bailed me out because of some cases in which I was involved, but now, since I didn't have any house to go to and my friends would be in danger if I went to their places, my friends in the office said, "It's good for you not to come back again." And they arranged to smuggle me out of the country. It was a dangerous decision to take, but because of my friends and my situation, and my children who were out and worried about me, I went.

So far, 217 prominent, innocent people -- even villagers who they burned and beaten to death -- have been killed since the beginning of the Revolution. It is a very sad story. Thousands were imprisoned and a few Bahá'ís are still in prison. And all of the properties of the Bahá'ís have been confiscated. Bahá'í employees are out of jobs, and even people who have their own businesses are sometimes denied business permits. The Bahá'ís in Iran now are working very hard, helping each other to survive. And the only reason they have survived is because they are educated, hard-working, honest people, trustworthy, and they consider work as worship. Non-Bahá'ís really trust them when they deal with them.

Bahá'í children have always been under pressure in school. At first they tried to force them to become Moslem, but after international action they at last managed to put the children back in school. Since the beginning of the Revolution the universities are closed to the Bahá'ís. It's very sad for the Bahá'í youth to live in Iran without any education. They are trying to study among themselves because education is very important, but it's not the same.

Another thing is that they cannot come out of Iran easily. Maybe some older people or sick people can manage to come out, but the youth cannot come out of Iran and must stay there without any future. It's very hard for the family to see their children who are so smart and talented. They are studying, at home, but it's not the same for them.

We respect Islam. We love Islam, because it's a religion that we believe. We believe in Moses, Christ, Zoroaster -- we believe in all the religions. And we believe that Bahá'u'lláh brought the religion for today.

Justice is a prerequisite for unity and peace. Bahá'u'lláh said in my favorite Hidden Word, "The best beloved of all things in My sight is justice." The reason in Iran they are doing this to Bahá'ís is because they don't have justice. It is the leaders' fault -- what they are teaching their followers. I don't have any animosity against anybody. I love them, even though they tortured us. I say a prayer for them everyday that God will give them justice and fairness. If they were just and fair, they would study and would see that Bahá'ís are not their enemies and these principles are something that we need for the world -- a remedy, a solution for all these problems.

"In the Rose Garden of Thy heart plant naught but the Rose of love..." This is something that Bahá'u'lláh emphasized, this love. If we have real love for each other, this solves every problem. Because with animosity and revenge and hatred we don't go anywhere. If we try to revenge, we only bring more animosity and it never ends. Love is the most important thing. Then we can establish unity and peace.