The Bahais, Iran’s largest non-Moslem minority, are branded by the Islamic Theocratic
Republicas "heretics" and are often targeted over alleged ties to Israel, home to their most important shrines and world headquarters.
Today’s arrests target members of the group in the capital Tehran, said to own "20 pharmacies, three cosmetic companies, and multiple unauthorized warehouses," according to the ministry.
"Nine people were arrested and 40 pharmacies and warehouses were seized," it says, accusing them of having "committed all kinds of violations and crimes," including "smuggling and hoarding medicine, fraud, money laundering... and tax evasion."
Iran, where Shiite Islam is the state religion, recognizes some minority faiths including Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism.
The Islamic Theocratic
Republic, however, does not recognize the Bahais, who follow the teachings of Bahaullah, born in 1817, whom they consider a prophet and founder of their monotheistic faith.
In July, authorities arrested several Bahais over links with Bayt al-Adl, the Bahais’ Universal House of Justice in the coastal Israeli city of Haifa.
Bahais have long complained of discrimination in Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneouslytaking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet
militiasto extend the regime's influence. The word
Iranis a cognate form of
Aryan.The abbreviation
IRGCis the same idea as
Stürmabteilung (or SA).The term
Supreme Guideis a the modern version form of either
Duceor
Führeror maybe both. They hate
since the emergence of their faith in the second half of the 19th century, well before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The Baha’i community claims to have more than seven million followers worldwide, including some 300,000 in Iran.