Baha’i
and Freedom of Religion in Iran: Jack Donnelly vs. Reza Afshari
In 2007 the eminent political philosopher and
scholar of human rights, Jack Donnelly, proposed a rather uncharacteristic
argument regarding so-called apostates in Iran.
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| Jack Donnelly |
Apostasy means abandoning or renouncing one’s
religious beliefs; in Iran, it means in particular abandoning Islam. The
religious Iranian regime considers all members of the Baha’i religion to be
apostates from Islam. The Baha’i are followers of the 19th century
Persian prophet, Bah’u’lláh, whom they consider a messenger of God, along with
Jesus, Muhammad and others.
Donnelly argued that “A state… might be justified in
denying certain benefits to apostates, as long as those benefits are not
guaranteed by human rights…It may even be (not im)permissible to impose modest
disabilities on apostates, again as they do not violate [their] human rights.”
Thus, he implied, apostates should be protected from discrimination or, even
worse, execution. This might be read as a defense of freedom of religion in Iran.
However, Donnelly also argued that the state was not obliged to protect apostates
“against social sanctions imposed by their families and communities that do not
infringe human rights.”
Donnelly based his argument in part on encounters he
had had with Muslim students in Iran who, he believed, accepted what he called the
concept of freedom of religion but who, at the level of what he called conception
(“the limits of the range of application of the principle of freedom of religion”)
could not accept a right of apostasy. Thus it appears, these students’ attitude
to freedom of religion was “we accept the principle, but not…”: that is, yes to
the right in the abstract, but no to the right in the concrete case of
fellow-citizens being denied their human rights. (See Jack Donnelly, “The
Relative Universality of Human Rights,” Human
Rights Quarterly, vol. 29, vol. 2, pages 301 and 302).
Noting that the state was not obliged to protect
apostates against social sanctions that did not infringe human rights, Donnelly
seemed to be suggesting that Iran should adopt the type of religious regime
found in Canada or the United States, where such groups as Jehovah’s Witnesses
or Amish are free to shun members they consider to have violated their
religious obligations or precepts. The government does not interfere to stop such
shunning, which it regards as a matter of personal preference. I agree with
Donnelly that the Iranian government is not obliged to protect Baha’is against
shunning by family, former friends, or neighbors, but it is obliged to protect
them when such shunning become, in effect, discrimination, as in universities
or places of employment.
In defending “modest disabilities”
in freedom of religion, Donnelly did not distinguish between societies that
largely respect human rights and those that do not. Countries such as the US and
Canada with constitutional principles that respect human rights, with independent
judiciaries and legal professions, and with active and free civil societies are
ones where restrictions on human rights can be debated, weighed, and ultimately
overturned. But in Iran, no one can
question such restrictions. Iran is an illiberal state that does not defend
Baha’is’ human rights.
The ban on apostasy in Iran is not merely a
hypothetical matter; it is a matter of real, urgent practice, as Donnelly’s
recent critic, the Iranian-American scholar Reza Afshari, points out.
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| Reza Afshari |
About 200
members of the Baha’i community were executed from 1979 to 1984. To this day
Baha’i suffer from considerable political and legal disabilities, such as
exclusion from universities and frequent harassment and imprisonment. Many are
now in exile, having suffered grievously from torture, imprisonment, deprivation
of property, exclusion from their professions, and execution of family members.
Thus, Afshari finds it perplexing that Donnelly would
suggest concessions to Iran’s illiberal regime, as long as the regime adheres
(in principle, at least) to the concept of human rights. What precise
concessions to actual human rights of the Baha’i, Afshari asks, does Donnelly
advocate in the name of a certain respect for cultural differences, as opposed
to merely noting the state’s inability or unwillingness to prohibit social
sanctions such as shunning? “[H]ere was a chance for Donnelly to explain to
skeptics as to what conditions should prevail in that [Iranian] polity for
Baha’is to live with the epithet of apostate with ‘modest disabilities’ and
still hope that they will ‘remain human beings entitled to all of their human
rights’” (See Reza Afshari, “Relativity in Universality: Jack Donnelly’s Grand
Theory in Need of Specific Illustrations,” Human
Rights Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 4, p. 896).
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| The Baha'i Temple in Israel |
It is surprising for a human rights scholar to
defend hypothetical “modest disabilities” imposed on a persecuted group instead
of issuing a ringing denunciation of those who persecute it. I am friendly with
Jack Donnelly, and in the 1980s and 1990s I edited a book and authored several
articles with him. But I agree with Afshari in this debate. I don’t think you
should discreetly defend “modest disabilities” for severely persecuted groups. If
Muslim Iranian students can’t accept the “conception” of human rights for
Iranian Baha’i, then they don’t accept the concept of freedom of religion at all.
