“Sen’s Day” is closing down

Editorial, 24 November, 2022. –

I’ve decided to end updates on this Bahai news blog, for personal reasons.

As Iran moves into a new era, the triangle of relations between the regime, the population and the Bahai community is shifting. It seems likely that anti-Bahaism is a spent force in regime polemics, and that the regime will shift primarily to repression by brute force, and to blaming “the west,” modernism, globalism and the like. Bahai rights will be one of the demands of the people, along with women’s rights, addressing the complaints of cultural groups, democracy and the separation of church and state.

As for the era that is ending, I recommend Chapter six in Meir Litvak’s 2001 book, Know Thy Enemy. This includes a good summary of how anti-Bahaism has been used in Iranian Islamism, even before the 1979 Revolution, to provide an internal “other.” Professor Litvak is not the first in this field: footnotes list the many previous works. The chapter surveys the themes employed by a number of anti-Bahai writers and propaganda sources, highlighting the different emphases of each source, and some contradictions. It also includes a quick survey of some of the Iranian intellectuals who have stood up for the civil rights of Bahais in Iran.