A Convenient Scapegoat: Baha'is Amidst the People, the Clerics and the Government

On 15 September 1944, Muhammad Parvin Gunabadi (d. 1979), a member of Iran’s parliament, wrote a letter to the Prime Minister, Muhammad Sa‘id (d. 1973), expressing his concern about disturbing news coming in from different parts of the country. From these reports, Parvin concluded that "a coordinated plan" had been devised. He further informed the Prime Minister that some five hundred religious groups in Khurasan had formed and were preparing a “major uproar.” Parvin Gunabadi’s letter was a rare attempt by a member of the parliament to prevent anti-Baha’i attacks that had exacerbated since Reza Shah’s abdication. During the war-stricken years of the first half of the 1940s, as Iran became a refuge for displaced peoples from other countries, its own Baha’i population faced mob attacks, raids, arsons, looting, and sporadic murders. The resurging power of the clerics, the emergence of several Islamic and Islamist groups that were anti-Baha’i to the core, weak and unstable cabinets, a young and inexperienced Shah, and local and national governments that were unable or unwilling to challenge fiery clerics and radical Muslims—these factors made the 1940s the most turbulent decade of the Pahlavi era for Iran’s Baha’i community. This paper focuses on the interactions among the people, the clerics, and the government vis-à-vis this religious community during those years.