By: Mark Obenauer

Mark Obenauer — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:54:34 +0000

I have been told by a Muslim friend that on the Judgment Day, we all meet our Maker and called to give account for our acts in this earthly realm. If these instructors believe in God, what must be their feeling after going home after a long day after they have traumatized children or worked as State agents oppressing university students? I would feel guilt and remorse for my actions. If I were a college professor in such a police state as Iran, I would feel extreme guilt because I am supposed to uplift a society and here I am being an agent of oppression, and I am supposed to be an agent of enlightenment, not of ignorance. Surely these school teachers and professors have consciences?

By: Donald Addison, Ph.D

Donald Addison, Ph.D — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 04:59:15 +0000

The tactic of dismissing Baha’i students from their schools because they are Baha’is is such a cheap and ugly policy on the part of educators in Iran. What kind of a message does such a policy send to the non-Baha’is of this society, once it becomes known generally that Baha’i students are dismissed from their schools not for a legitimate reason, but solely because they are Baha’i students.
Doesn’t this make the school administrators look lame and unjust? How can any REAL educator lay her or his head on their pillow at night with any sense of a conscience free from bigotry? How can such a school administrator live with himself or comfortably in her or his own skin after dismissing a Baha’i student from education SOLELY on the basis of that student’s membership in the Baha’i Faith? This whole tactic makes these so-called “educators” look like the worst administrator themselves.
Why doesn’t faculty or administrator or school office personel look within their own sense of educational ethics and work standards and see how truly unjust their own actions are. I am a college/university instructor in Eugene, Oregon and I can’t think of a more cheap or blameworthy action for school instructors to put up with such incredibly unethical behavior as dismissing students from their classes simply on the basis of their religious affiliation.
I have Baha’is in just about every class I teach (whether the topic be ethnomusicology, ethnic studies, cultural anthropology, American Indian studies, Arabic or Native American languages I have taught from time to time—-and to think that IF I were ordered by higher authorities in my college or university to dismiss a student because of their religious belief, I would rather go to prison myself rather than take such an unfair stand as dismissing students of mine solely on the grounds of their religious affiliation.
How can Iranian school officials live with themselves? What do they do with their consiences after singling out some young and helpless young Baha’i kids for embarrassing verbal abuse infront of a whole class to make fun of a youngster solely because of her or his being a Baha’i at such a young age and then be emotionally mistreated this way! It sickens me to think of the trauma and scares that are inflicted deliberately on these innocent young students who are guilty of nothing except membership in the Baha’i Faith.
It is for this reason that I have vowed to shared information and literature of the Faith with as many peoples daily as I possibly can, all efforts of which I dedicate to the names and self sacrifice of these precious believers back in Iran who are suffering such unfair treatment. With much love from my aching heart,
Dr. Don Addison (Eugene, Oregon)

Comments on: A Book-dealer Arrested in Arak Accused of Being Baha’i

By: Mark Obenauer

By: Donald Addison, Ph.D