Unholy War

Assault on Iran's Anglicans

Hardly had the Ayatullah Khomeini taken over Iran last February when Aristo Sayeh, the Anglican vicar in Shiraz, was found with his throat slit. The crime has not been solved.

Last summer Muslim authorities seized an Anglican hospital and a school for blind children in Isfahan. Ever since then they have been intimidating churchmen to lead them to a supposedly missing cache of money.

One night last October, two gunmen burst into the Isfahan bedroom of Anglican Bishop Hassan Barnaba Dehqani-Tafti and his British-born wife Margaret, spraying them with automatic-pistol fire. Four bullets pierced the pillow near the bishop's head. Amazingly, he was not hit, though his wife received a bullet in the arm. The bishop, president of the Central Synod which includes all Anglicans in the Middle East, fled to exile in Cyprus.

The bishop's English secretary, Jean Waddell, remained behind, and on May 1 a team of gunmen entered her apartment in search of another Anglican clergyman. First they began to strangle her, then fired two shots into her chest. She is still in serious condition. Only a week later, the bishop's son Bahrain, 24, was murdered with shots in the head and chest.

Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie has denounced the murder and called upon Iran's President Abolhassan Banisadr to safeguard the nation's religious minorities, already officially protected by law. The Koran advocates tolerance for Jews and Christians as "People of the Book" (in their case the Bible). Beyond that, the nation's new Islamic constitution guarantees freedom for both religions and for Zoroastrianism as well, provided they are practiced "within the law." (That means, for example, they cannot use wine in ritual because alcohol is banned in Iran.) Others are guaranteed no freedom of worship at all.

Worst off is the biggest religious minority in the country, some 500,000 members of the Baha'i faith, many of whom held important posts under the Shah. Khomeini's revolutionaries seized all official Baha'i properties, and last fall a construction crew systematically tore down the House of the Bab in Shiraz, the holiest Baha'i shrine.

Baha'is are hated as heretics because they believe that The Promised One--expected by Shi'ite Muslims--has already come in the person of Baha'u'llah, who founded the Baha'i faith in 19th century Persia. But why the attacks on Anglicans? The church has existed in Iran for 150 years, but the 1,000 native Anglicans are associated with onetime British colonialism and suspected of serving as spies. There is a second reason: "Most of our members are Muslim converts," Margaret Dehqani-Tafti told a British reporter. "They are trying to drive us out."

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