Behind Iranian Lines
Exported from Holy-Writings.com on 2026-06-18 - 1 clipping

Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: John Simpson, Behind Iranian Lines, bahai-library.com.
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Alrn &y the same author
JOHN SIMPSON
áDisappeared: Voices from a Secret War
JOHN SIMPSON AND JANA BENNETT

BEHIND IRANIAN
LINES

FONTANA/Collins
To all the good friends in London, Paris and Tehran
who know that this is addressed to them.
Contents

Introductory                              7

1    The Exile                                14
2    The Revolutionary Crowds                 32
3    Returning                                53
4    The Streets of the City                  68
5    Power to the Mullahs                     90
6    Divorce, Crime and Islamic Punishment   116
7    Imperial Echoes                         134
8    The Great Satan                         150
9    The Pebble on the Ground                176
First published in 1988 by Robson Books Ltd               10   Godly Pastimes                          197
This revised edition first published in 1989 by Fontana Paperbacks   11   Cruelties                               212
8 Grafton Street, London WlX 3LA                                                                 237
12   On the Road
Copyright© 1988 John Simpson                         13   Half the Body of Society                260
14   City of God                             279
All photos ©Tira Shubart with the exception of
the photo of Tira, which is ©John Simpson.
15   The War of Attrition                    299
16   A Paradise Full of Luxuries             323
Printed and bound in Great Britain                     17   Surviving the Revolution                346
by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, Glasgow
18   Leaving                                 363

CONDITIONS OF SALE
Valedictory                             377
This book is sold subject to the condition                     Bibliography                            385
that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,                 Index                                   391
be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated
without the publisher's prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed
on the subsequent purchaser
230 á BEHIND IRANIAN LINES                                                                                                CRUEL TIES á 231

branches of what might be called British intelligence, but no         d the Baha'is, who a~e under ins~c~ons to ~bey t~e la~s of the
them is known as 'the BIS'; the most familiar is the                lfl ntry in which they hve, have maintained their beliefs with great
Intelligence Service, which is usually known by its initials, SIS   C0'1 ge in the face of torture and death. And yet several thousand
its alternative (though no longer accurate) name, Ml6. Roger c'     :;:ers of the Faith in its earlier form were killed in Persia in the
as an experienced journalist, must have known this. As it ha          • teenth century, while since the 1979 Revolution nearly two
however, there is something called the BIS: the British Info        ::dred Baha'is have been executed, and about eight hundred
Service, which has nothing whatever to do with espiona              i.,aye been imprisoned.
provides information abroad about British life and industry.            Part of the reason lies in the origins of their religion. It began in
It had been widely expected that the broadcast would             die sou them Persian city of S~ir~z in the 1840s ~s a de~elopme.nt of
prelude to Cooper's release, or else at the worst that he wo        51U'a Islam, just a~cept~ble withi.n the boun~anes of its teac~ings,
charged with espionage. Neither happened. Perhaps a                 111(1 preaching the imminent coming of the Hidden Imam. But it was
agreement about his case within the regime prevented his            wry soon accused of heresy, and its central figure, Sayyed Ali
or perhaps the authorities were angered by the realization          Mohammed, who was styled the 'Bab' or Gate (that is, the gateway
had turned his carefully worded confession into a message           90 communication with the Hidden Imam) was sentenced to death
was not, after all, confessing to anything. Roger Cooper rem á      •&heretic in 1848. His execution took place in Tabriz in 1850, and
.Evin Prison, awaiting the decision of a judicial system which       Edward Granville Browne, who was fascinated by the Babis and
to have found him an embarrassment.                                 their Faith, relates the story, accepted by many Baha'is, that the
Mbis vanished unhurt after the first volley from the firing-squad,
In 1982, when he was in Britain, Roger Cooper wrote an influ         though he was later found and killed at the second attempt.
pamphlet for the Minority Rights Group, a London-based h                 In 1863 Mirza Hosayn Ali Nuri announced that he himself was
rights organization, about the persecution of members of             Baha'ullah, the Universal Manifestation of God foretold by the Bab.
Baha'i Faith in Iran. He had been, he wrote, initially sceptical     He was exiled to Acre, which was then part of the Turkish province
the publication of his report might help the Bahci'is; but he        ol Syria, and laid the foundations of the modem Baha'i Faith in his
persuaded eventually that it would. His authorship of the pamp       writings there. Its Shi'ite origins had long since ceased to be
which received wide attention, may well have added                   recognizable, and although the Baha'is teach that all revealed
difficulties once he was arrested. He wrote of it as follows:        ttligions are true, they maintain that theirs is the one most suited to
the modem age. That in itself is total heresy in Islam, which believes
Although, whether in English or Persian, it is almost certain      that Mohammed is the 'Seal of the Prophets' and that Islam is the
banned in Iran, where mere possession of anything that co         llnal revelation: to suggest that it can be improved upon is the worst
considered 'Baha'i propaganda' is a dangerous offence, it,         jorm of spiritual error.
be of use to those who meet or have dealings with Iranians a          The Baha'is, however, pressed on with their Faith, stressing the
... Official and unofficial Iranian attitudes towards Baha'        need to improve society through universal education, world peace,
largely (but not exclusively) based on misconceptions, so          and the equality of the sexes, and through living pure and loving
attempt to correct these, and thereby perhaps moderate atti        lives. They have no priesthood, and no public ritual. Anyone can
is surely worthwhile.                                              become a Baha'i without ceremony, and the choice is a free one;
but once made, it is adhered to. There are few if any cases in Iran of
It is always difficult for Westerners to understand the reasons             a'i giving up their religion, even under torture. Their courage
depth of feeling that exists in Iran against the Baha'i Faith.            the face of persecution has always brought them new converts;
religion of peace and tolerance, it has never advocated viol          nowadays there are believed to be between 150,000 and 300,000 of
Iran or anywhere else, it avoids any forms of political involv        them in Iran. But they are greatly disliked by most Iranians, who
232 á BEHIND IRANIAN LINES                                                                                               CRUEL TIES á 233

refuse to accept that their Faith constitutes a real religion, and    saha'is, under Muslim law, are mahdur al-damm: those whose
believe - in the face of all the evidence - that the Baha'is          blood can be shed with impunity. The official media vilify the
especially favoured by the Shah and were linked with the corru        saha'is as corrupt and treacherous, and as agents of Zionism; but
under his regime; that their religion was instigated and enco         the Imam Khomeini himself, though bitterly opposed to the Baha'i
by the British, as a means of undermining the authority of            faith, has never attacked it as he has the Kurds or the Mojaheddin.
Islamic clergy in Iran; and that they are today under the con         As with so many other things in Iran the persecution is neither
Israel.                                                                 fficially sponsored nor officially condemned; the initiative is left
The Shah certainly allowed the Baha'is a measure of prot           :nth the more violent of the mullahs and the local Komitehs, and
and some members of the Faith grew rich under his rule.               nothing is done to curb their excesses.
long-serving prime minister, Amir Abbas Hoveyda, w                       The National Spiritual Assembly which constitutes the leadership
executed after the Revolution, was always regarded as a               of the Baha'i Faith in Iran, and the Local Spiritual Assemblies from
because his father had been one; but each individual B                which it is elected, have been an especial target. In August 1980 all
required to affirm his membership of the Faith, and Hovey             nine members of the National Spiritual Assembly, together with
not, regarding himself instead as a Muslim. When the Shah             two officials, disappeared. A little over a year later the nine who
Iran into a one-party state in 1975, the Baha'is, being forbidd       replaced them were arrested and executed. In 1981 two members of
associate with political groups, were often penalized fortheir        the Local Spiritual Assembly of Shiraz were executed, and in
to join his Rastakhiz Party.                                          January 1982 six members of the Local Spiritual As~embly of Tehran
The supposed links with the British are fictitious. Various B      and the woman in whose house they were meetmg were shot. In
scholars, Edward Granville Browne among them, found                   June 1983 seventeen Baha'is, including seven women and three
religion interesting and attractive, and devoted study to it. A       teenage girls, were arrested in Shiraz. Several of them, both men and
Baha, the son of Baha'ullah, was given a British knighthood in        women, were tortured in an attempt to get them to renounce their
for having supported the British cause in Palestine against the T     faith or to provide video-taped confessions that they had been spies
during the 1914-18 War. But the Baha'i Faith owed nothi               and that the Baha'i Faith in general was involved in espionage for
British help or British involvement. It arose as an indepe            Israel. They refused. All seventeen were hanged.
entity and has become one of the world's fastest growing religi           The regime as such may not have instituted this pogrom against
The choice of site for the Baha'is' international headqu            the Baha'is, but it has taken administrative measures against them
what is now Israel was an historical accident; when Baha'ullah         which amount to full-scale persecution. As a community, they pay
obliged by the Turks to settle in Acre in 1868, the foundation of      great attention to the education of their children, which helps to
Israeli State still lay eighty years in the future. It is true that    explain why the Baha'is have been so successful in Iranian life. For
the Revolution Iranian Baha'is, as well as being expected to           some years schools have been instructed to demand evidence that
to Israel to visit their World Centre in Haifa, were required to       children belong to one of the formally recognized religions (Islam,
donations to it; but the funds have never been used for poll           Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity) before they can be
purposes in Israel.                                                    enrolled. Baha'i wedding services are not accepted as lawful by the
Given the Persian's weakness for conspiracy theories, howe          Islamic Republic, so that individual members must either deny their
is not difficult to see how even those who have no love for the Is     Faith and marry according to the rites of a recognized religion, or
Republic are prepared to regard the Baha'is as a subversive            they must live in what the state regards as sin: an offence which
Before the Revolution, in the atmosphere of nationalism whi            theoretically renders them liable to whipping, or even stoning to
Shah fostered, the Baha'is were unpopular for the intema               death.
nature of their doctrines; since the Revolution, they have p á            By July 1982 the government had dismissed all the Bahci'is it
penalty for being heterodox at a time of fierce religious orth         employed in the civil service, and no longer paid the retirement
234 á BEHIND IRANIAN LINES                                                                                                             CRUEL TIES á 235

pensions of Baha'is. In 1985 it went even ftirther by announcing - á              Baha'is, they started again, and his father obtained a government
that civil servants who were Baha'is would be required to repay the á             job which, as a result of hard work and intelligence, he did well. But
full amount of the salaries they had received during their enttre                 he was continually passed over for promotion; the discrimination
working lives; many, unable to pay, had been imprisoned. But these:               may not have been so savage under the Shah, but it was certainly
administrative measures, cruel as they are, seem gradually to be.                 there. In the end the father decided to give up and become a farmer.
taking the place of the more brutal persecution of the Baha'is; aa
with other aspects of life, the fire has diminished somewhat during'                The first day in 1968 all you could see was stones and desert. The
the latter part of the 1980s. Nevertheless hatred of the Baha'is is nof             mountains were up there and the village was down there. But my
something which was introduced by the Islamic Republic, and á                       father made a success of it. He was one of the few people who did
will not fade altogether.                                                           make a success of farming there.
But by 1978 all you could see round about was other people's
'Being a Baha'i must be like being a black in America.' The feeling;
property. The boom had come, and people had made a lot of
of being discriminated against of being despised, of being pe á
money in building. So they wanted to tum my father's farm into a
tually in danger of random attack, was real enough, though the.
residential area, because it was more profitable for the
analogy would have been more exact if the speaker had likened
developers. They didn't like us being there anyway. We weren't
himself and his family to Jews in a mediaeval city. All his life he had
welcome in the village, and sometimes they'd tum all the
been treated by ordinary Muslims as an outcast: as someone to he
loudspeakers from the mosque in our direction.
avoided where possible, and a convenient scapegoat at moments of'
Then the Revolution came, and the company that supplied us
social and political tension.
.f{;_
with our animals couldn't send them to us any more, because
I remember one time when we were in a village. I was seven or:&.                  they'd all died. After that we had to try to import our animals, and
eight. We had a driver, and we gave him some ice to take home to    f .:          that meant we needed permits. But the permits took a long time
coming. That meant we weren't earning much money, and the
his family because it was a very hot day. I went with the driver.á~á•
when he took the car home and gave the ice to his wife. I saw her t}á             bank wanted its loans back.
throw the ice out and shout out something about Baha'is.          :~á.              In the end they took the farm away from us, and all our
t:
Sometimes my father would come home and say he had met.~áá                     furniture got stolen. All my father's clothes went, and all the
so-and-so, and after they had shaken hands he would see him go~á                  things from my childhood: you know, toys and books. And that
off to wash his hands. It was a ritual washing, like when a dog .;                was how we lost our heritage.
passes a Muslim in the street before prayers. Other times whená::"
you went to someone's house you knew that after you left they                   The father's problems grew. He used to be stopped all the time in his
would wash out the chair you had sat on, and the cup you had                    car, and the Revolutionary Guards came to arrest him several times.
used. It was always worse in smaller places where there was more                He was unable to obtain a ration-book since they were distributed
ignorance and the mullahs had more power. Some people used to                   by the mullahs, and the family had to buy all its food at top prices on
tell their kids not to play with us. I remember that.                           the black market. They moved to their house in Tehran; and in 1982
they decided they would have to leave the country altogether, since
He is a young man, serious and well-educated in the way Baha'is                   the farm had gone and they had no money except what they could
usually are. His family is haute bourgeoisie, but the money has been.             get from selling their furniture and jewellery.
heavily depleted by the exactions and losses incurred through years
of public and private pressure. These are not the first troubled times              The time when they just confiscated things or you could just pay
the family has been through, and the young man's parents both.:                     money to keep out of gaol was over. Now they wanted people.
knew poverty when they were young. But, again in the way of the                     Father went into hiding for two months, and he didn't contact my
236 á BEHIND IRANIAN LINES

mother the whole of that time - it was too dangerous. The Pian
was for her to get out to Pakistan, and then he would join her a                                           12
week later.
Well, she made it. You could get out quite easily then to PalQs.•
tan through Baluchistan, if you paid money. They don't lilce.                                  On The Road
Baha'is much in Pakistan now, because they're pretty stro
Muslims too; but she got out all the same. It wasn't until shew~
safe that she found out my father had been arrested. There'd beeQ               But when he [the Persian muleteer] is fairly started he
a raid on the house, and they took him away. She wanted to        go            becomes a different man. With the dust of the city he
back, of course, but it would have been suicide. They'd h                       shakes off the exasperating manner which has hitherto
executed her for sure.                                                          made him so objectionable. He sniffs the pure exhilarating air of the desert, he strides forward manfully on the
broad interminable road (which is, indeed, for the most
The father was charged with helping his wife to escape, with sen                   part but the track worn by countless generations of
money out of the country, and with Zionism. The case dragged on                    travellers), he beguiles the tediousness of the march with
several years, and there was never any result. Now it has fallen intO              songs and stories, interrupted by occasional shouts of
abeyance; but at any moment, if the authorities chose, he could~                   encouragement or warning to his animals. His life is a
arrested again and brought to trial. He has no money of his own tO                 hard one, and he has to put up with many disagreeables;
live on, and for them to send him money from abroad would be                       so that he might be pardoned even if he lost his temper
dangerous. Instead, he has to exist on the generosity of relatives. His            oftener than he usually does.
wife and son talk to him occasionally on the telephone, they in their                                              Edward Granville Browne,
new life and he in the old. During those difficult, strained calls they                                    A Year Amongst The Persians, 1893
never mention the case against him; and the only way they have of
judging whether he is in any trouble is from his tone of voice.         á
There are many Baha'is in worse conditions: their pensions                We had skirted round the southern edge of Qom, and had left
stopped, obliged to pay back enormous sums to the governmen~.                behind us the well-constructed freeway which links the holy city
imprisoned, perhaps tortured. Those who have survived best are               with Tehran and enables the civil servants to consult the ayatollahs,
the people who work for themselves - taxi-drivers, small busi                and the ayatollahs to make the journey to the capital to check that
nessmen, craftsmen. The richer Baha'is help the poorer ones. They"           their instructions are being carried out. South of Qom the road had
are not like the early Christians, rejoicing in martyrdom; but since         reverted to its pre-Revolutionary self: a narrow ribbon of black
they only have to make a simple statement to cease being Bahci'is,           tarmac, two lanes wide, across the dry yellow landscape. We were
and thereby cut their links with the most important part of their            driving too fast, but that was something I had long grown used to;
lives, the simple statement remains unmade.                                  my first extensive experience of long-distance driving in Iran had
been on this road in February 1979, a week or so before the
It's difficult to understand, maybe, if you aren't a Baha'i. It's a       Revolution took place, and Mahmoudi, then as now, was the driver.
system of living. For us, working in a spirit of service isn't any           He settled now behind a grey Paykan which contained at least
different from praying. Being a Baha'i is a progressive thing -           seven human beings, and maybe more: two of the women on board
kind of like going to school, except it never ends. It doesn't matteráá   may have had small children on their laps. In front of them was a line
how many Baha'is are in gaol, or even killed, it'll carry on.             of four other cars. We were perhaps five yards behind the grey
we certainly don't want to convert anybody. We just want                  Paykan. I tried nervously to read Mahmoudi's speedometer, but it
make them understand.                                                     seemed to function irregularly, dropping back or surging forwards
-- Behind Iranian Lines (Used by permission of the curator)