150 honor Baha'i who died imprisoned in Iran

The Baha'i faith was founded in what is now Iran in 1844.

From Wikipedia:

Baha'is believe in a process of progressive revelation recognizing the major religions' founders including Adam, Noah, Zoroaster (Zarathustra), Krishna, Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad. Like Muslims, Baha'is' interpret religious history in terms of a series of prophetic dispensations. Each prophet, or Manifestation, brings a somewhat broader and more advanced revelation for the time and place it appeared in. Unlike contemporary Muslims, Baha'is do not believe that this process of progressive revelation has an end.

And that's a problem for Iran's mad mullahs, since it is a key belief of Islam that Muhammad was the final prophet of God, and the Koran is God's last message to humanity.

Non-Muslims have lived in an oppressive state in the Islamic Republic of Iran since the Ayatotallah Khomeini brought what's now called Islamofascim to the Persian state. Jews and Christians are treated very poorly by the Iranian government, but the mullahs save their vilest hatred for the Bahai's. After, the mullahs reasons, Jews and Christians haven't been enlightened by the "true faith," whereas the Baha'i religion in Iran is viewed as a wrong-turn from Islam.

Yesterday in the beautiful Baha'i Temple (pictured above) in Wilmette, IL, a memorial service was held there for an Iranian Baha'i, as the Chicago Sun-Times reports:

All it would have taken for Dhabihu'llah Mahrami to end his decadelong imprisonment in an Iranian jail was the renunciation of his faith.

But on repeated occasions, Mahrami, a follower of the Baha'i faith, Iran's largest religious minority, refused.

His death of unknown causes last month in a government jail where he had been held on charges of abandoning Islam brought international attention to the ongoing struggle Baha'is have faced in Iran since the birth of their religion about 150 years ago.

Saturday night, about 150 people gathered at the North American Baha'i Temple in Wilmette to honor Mahrami, who was named a martyr by the religion's international leadership shortly after his death.

More...

Since the Islamic revolution of 1979, more than 200 Iranian Baha'i followers have been killed and hundreds more imprisoned by the Iranian government, Baha'i officials estimate. Discrimination against students and workers of the Baha'i faith has also affected thousands.

The persecution, Fullmer said, stems from the belief among orthodox Muslim clerics that "any claim of having a religious revelation after Muhammad is heresy."

Hopefully, the rest of the mainstream media will pick up on this tragic story. Although reporting on the development of "peaceful" nuclear power in Iran, as well as the recent onslaught of anti-Israeli rhetoric from the Islamic Republic are being reported, there are other stories from Iran that need telling.

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