I’m not really that old, but dad was a WW2 vet, and I have some sense of history. Back in the latter ‘30s, the Unites States was struggling to slough off the Great Depression, and the cloud shadows of war were creeping up on us. The country was nervous, for certain, and contained pockets of isolationism. We had our own issues to deal with – why did we need to involve ourselves in this?

In this atmosphere, in our media of that time, came whisperings of a campaign in Germany, against the Jewish people. It was warned that Hitler was scheming to rid the world of Jewish people – ethnic cleansing was to be a policy of the Third Reich. After Kristallnacht, the whisperings became a background rumbling – as in a nightclub, or the buzz of conversation in a crowd after someone has made an auspicious remark – or blunder. In the countries which would ultimately ally with each other to ward off the Fascists and the Nazi menace, this murmur was greeted for what we perceived it to be – a murmur.

The horrors which greeted Allied troops liberating the death camps are a matter of documented history. In our time, the murmur is on the ‘blogosphere’. This is ironically wondrous. Santayana’s revenge: Those who do not learn from their history may be condemned to watch it repeat itself.

The wondrous part is - we’re all out in the open now! Those who would campaign for ethnic cleansings of any size face worldwide scrutiny – Milosevic had to – it may soon be Ahmadinijad’s turn. He, the mullahs of Iran, and many others in the Moslem world would be happy to be rid of the members of their largest religious minority – the Baha’i community. I’ve been following the blog posts on several sites. I would direct my readers to www.iran.bahai.us for the further exploration of this. Amnesty International has become involved and several other orgs, there are House and Senate resolutions against this. If you follow the link I just posted, it’ll become quite clear. The site also posts a large number of links of blog sites on Baha’i issues, persecution and otherwise. But let’s pump some ironies …

In the pre-war era mentioned, Hitler’s propaganda minister downplayed their pogrom – currently, the administration in Iran attempts to do the same – and we are attempting to stave off a deepening recession. The Prosecutor General of Iran, and subordinates, do the same today.

They attempt to disguise their hatred; cloak it in a so-called constitutional guarantee of freedom of belief. Then they bring up ‘Irtidad’ – the Islamic concept we call apostasy. So, one is allowed to be any religion he or she likes – as long as they didn’t convert from Islam to it. Who said you can’t legislate morality? They certainly have ‘Irtitad’ on the books … This is used as justification for a campaign of every type of persecution in the present wave – Baha’i s are denied rights, have their cemeteries bulldozed, the enforcement of laws against it, assuming there are any, are lax.

The problem with the concept is that ‘Irtidad', like any claim to exclusivity, is a sign of limited understanding of the primary purpose for religion. Baha’is hold that Divine Educators have come to us all. That the divine Message is as one whole bolt of fabric, meant for all humanity. Each time one of them appeared, the Message was meant for all. Besides, every religion has followers who have apostatized. How do they think Jews become Christians? How did some Christians become Moslems? That they accuse Baha’is of the ultimate cardinal sin of Islam – doesn’t Islam itself place the responsibility of that between the believer and the creator? Does it make sense, then, to use this to justify the persecution? Apparently, if the mullahs think so …

The marvel of this time is that what had to be done the hard way back in 1939-1945 are now a few clicks away. I certainly hope that the current economic crisis doesn’t prevent us from investigating this current wave of persecutions. It doesn’t belong in the 21^st century. It’s a carry-forward from the 19^th – when the

Baha’I Faith came to be born.