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President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won't be given a prestigious academic
podium this time in New York when he returns to address the United
Nations General Assembly on September 23, but neither will he be given
the kind of reception befitting a dangerous tyrant. In fact, he will
receive another propaganda gift perhaps more valuable than last year's
Columbia University forum.
Courtesy of new General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto, who is
Nicaragua's foreign minister, and a coalition of left-wing American
Christian groups, he will be the guest of honor at a private iftar
dinner to celebrate the end of Ramadan. The September 25 event at the
Grand Hyatt Hotel has all the trappings of a Cold War solidarity
event. Joining D'Escoto as hosts are some companeros from the former
Catholic priest's Sandinista days: The World Council of Churches, the
American Friends Service Committee, the Mennonites, and the US section
of the World Conference of Religions for Peace.
Given these hosts' track record of downplaying Communist crimes in
Soviet days, Ahmadinejad will, likely without contradiction, portray
Iran's government as a progressive third-world champion, defending the
world's oppressed, resisting American hegemony, and, by dint of the
dinner itself , accommodating of religious pluralism. His
well-publicized anti-Semitic rants, Holocaust denial, and threat to
wipe Israel off the map will be dismissed as inconsequential by these
Christian "peacemakers."
This dialog comes the same month that the U.N.'s nuclear agency
announced that it has reached a "dead end" with Iran due to Tehran's
refusal to cooperate and, moreover, that Iran has made substantial
progress in developing its nuclear capability. The gathering sends a
reassuring message there is little to fear from Ahmadinejad's
government.
But fear is precisely what this government instills at home. Apart
from its nuclear ambitions, Iran is intensifying a domestic program of
radical Islamization on a scale not seen since the Ayatollah
Khomeini's death. The West is beginning to comprehend some of the
horrors of Iran's laws— two women in Tehran are currently due to be
stoned to death on allegations of adultery. But not well known is
that, simply because of their beliefs, Iranians are imprisoned and
killed for apostasy and blasphemy. Since, in theocracies, politics is
conflated with religion, these laws crush political dissent as well as
religious non-conformity. Their victims are the very people who stand
against Iran's agenda of revolutionary Islamization, the underlying
impediment to secure peace.
The interfaith dinner coincides with the Iranian parliament's adoption
of a mandatory death penalty for "apostasy." Among its primary targets
are the co-religionists of Ahmadinejad's New York hosts, and the Bahai
minority. Other targets are dissident Muslims who, because they
criticize the Iranian government, are jailed for supposedly insulting
Islam itself.
On September 9, the Iranian parliament, by 196 votes for, seven
against, and two abstentions, voted to make the death penalty for
apostasy compulsory (previously, judges could waive capital
punishment). The bill now goes to committee before a second vote and
final approval from the ayatollahs on the Guardian Council. The first
victims of the new law may well be Christians. Just last week, two
Christian men, Mahmood Matin Azad and Arash Basirat, who had converted
from Islam, were charged with apostasy. This follows the arrests last
summer of 16 Christians in Isfahan and 10 in Shiraz.
The bill also targets heresy, a charge often used against Baha'is,
Iran's largest non-Muslim minority. If passed, it could threaten some
350,000 people with the death penalty. Bahais are already subject to a
campaign of repression. Seven leaders were arrested this spring and,
on August 3, the Iranian press reported that they "confessed" to
running an illegal organization with ties to Israel and other
countries in order to undermine the Islamic system. Bahais are
excluded from universities and "sensitive" jobs such as "catering at
reception halls," "childcare," and "real estate," as well as cultural
areas.
Most of those prosecuted for apostasy, though, are Muslims. The
ministry of intelligence is currently arresting dervishes, but more
widespread is the crackdown on reformers who criticize clerical rule.
In 2007 three student activists, Ehsan Mansouri, Majid Tavakoli, and
Ahmad Ghassaban, were convicted of "insulting Islam." Prominent Shiite
dissident Hashem Aghajari was arrested originally for saying "Muslims
are not monkeys to blindly follow the clerics." At his trial, he said
his punishment was for "the sin of thinking." In 2002, due to
international pressure, his death sentence for blasphemy was commuted
to five years imprisonment, an option the new law forbids.
Iran's criminalization of apostasy and blasphemy is integral to its
ideological arsenal. Peaceful reform becomes ever more remote when
Muslim dissenters are silenced. They are the Iranian equivalent of the
Sakharovs, Solzhenitsyns, and Sharanskys who gave lie to Soviet
propaganda claims. It is no small irony that the courageous Iranians
are undercut by some of the same groups who pursued "peace" with the
oppressors of that prior generation of human-rights defenders.
If Western religious communities want to show solidarity with
Iranians, they should do so with the religious minorities and
courageous reformers imprisoned by the regime. If Ahmadinejad
sincerely wants interfaith dialog, he should start by releasing Azad,
Basirat, Bahai leaders and Muslim reformers from prison and dialog
with them.
— Paul Marshall and Nina Shea are respectively, senior fellow and
director of Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, and
authors of a forthcoming book on the politics of apostasy.