Why the neo-Nazis salute Iran’s President

3 June 2006

Would-be appeasers of Iran ignore its religious intolerance

Given Ahmadinejad’s view that Israel must be ‘wiped off the map’, it is no surprise that he is being feted as a hero by Nazis, racists and even white supremacists. But it is not only the Jews who need fear Ahmadinejad; a sinister crackdown on all of Iran’s religious minorities is gathering pace. Non-Shia Muslims have long been treated as second-class citizens by the Islamic Republic, discriminated against in education, government jobs and services, banned from serving in the military, and their public religious expression severely restricted; now they are positively under siege. It is a story that has gone unreported in Britain but which confirms the monstrous nature of a regime that could soon have access to nuclear technology.

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the Guardian Council, recently described non-Muslims as ‘sinful animals’ and ‘corrupt’. After criticising him, the only Zoroastrian member of parliament (there are 22,000 Zoroastrians in Iran) was charged with the ‘dissemination of false information, slander and insult’.

Paradoxically, compared with minority Muslims and Baha’is, Iran’s 30,000 Jews have so far got off relatively lightly — they have only had to put up with a new barrage of propaganda and incitement to hatred rather than direct violence or mass arrests, as was the case a few years ago. The education of Jewish children is also becoming trickier, and it is even harder to distribute religious texts.

Some of Iran’s 300,000 Christians have been unluckier. Ali Kaboli, a carpenter from Gorgan, was arrested by the secret police on 2 May. Kaboli had previously been threatened for holding Christian meetings in his home, had survived an arson attack and had long been kept under close surveillance. His ‘crime’ is to have converted to Christianity from Islam —albeit 33 years ago — and to have tried to share his faith with others. Since his arrest, many of those who worshipped in his house have also been questioned.

It could have been worse. Six months ago Ghorban Dordi Tourani, 53, another convert to Christianity, was found stabbed to death in front of his home in Gonbad-e-Kabus, a few hours after being arrested. But Kaboli could share the fate of Hamid Pourmand, a lay pastor in the Assemblies of God Church and an Iranian army colonel, now serving a three-year sentence in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison for supposedly concealing his faith from his military superiors. After intense international lobbying, Tourani was acquitted of apostasy, an offence punishable by death.