The Jewish, Bábí, and Bahá’í Experience as Mirrors of Exclusion — and Pathways Toward an Iranian Citizenry

Othering as a Mirror of Society

The history of modern Iran is not only a story of power, reform, or revolution—it is equally a story of belonging and exclusion. The experiences of the Jewish, Bábí, and Bahá’í communities, while distinct in theology and circumstance, reveal a shared logic of othering—a process through which both the state and society have repeatedly defined themselves by denying full membership to certain groups.

To other is to determine who counts as “us” and who does not; to build identity by exclusion. Across the Qajar, Pahlavi, and Islamic Republic periods, ideas born in theology and ideology repeatedly crystallized into institutions—from clerical fatwas and local courts to ministries, school policies, and security organs.

This essay traces the co-evolution of ideas and institutions: how early notions of purity, heresy, and loyalty evolved into bureaucratic systems of surveillance and exclusion, and how, in parallel, Iran’s civic imagination has continually sought to reassert belonging, dignity, and shared citizenship.

Religious Foundations of Exclusion

The Jewish “Other” in Religious Imagination

Iran’s Jewish community—among the world’s oldest—has existed for over 2,700 years and is constitutionally recognized alongside Christianity and Zoroastrianism. Yet within Islamic eschatological and historical narratives, Jews often appear as metaphysical adversaries. Certain traditions depict the Qiyāmah (Resurrection) as a final battle in which Muslims kill Jews who hide behind rocks and trees, casting Jews as archetypal enemies of faith.

In Qur’ānic commentaries, Yahūd are portrayed as conspirators and covenant-breakers, contrasted with Banī Isrā’īl, the Children of Israel, who are treated more favorably. These moral archetypes became, as Mohsen Banaie explains in his 2025 lecture “یهودی‌ستیزی در دین و ایدئولوژی، از محمد تا مارکس”, cultural “chromosomes”—ideological codes carried forward even when detached from scripture. Over time, they migrated from religious imagination to political discourse, producing what Banaie calls the “enemy-within paradigm,” a tool repeatedly repurposed by rulers to define loyalty.

The Bábí Precedent: From Heresy to Prototype of ‘Security Threat’

The Bábí movement (1844–1853) was the first major modern case of religious othering institutionalized as state policy. Emerging as a millenarian reform within Shi‘ism, it drew thousands of adherents before being violently suppressed. The defense of the Bábís at Shaykh Ṭabarsí (1848–1849), the siege of Zanjān (1850–1851), and the uprisings at Nayrīz (1850, 1853) ended in massacres, mass trials, and confiscations.

The Báb’s execution in Tabrīz (1850) and the post-1852 crackdown following an assassination attempt on Nāser al-Dīn Shāh by radical Bábís created a template for repression: a coalition of clerical rulings and state coercion that redefined a theological challenge as a national security crisis. This episode marked the first time in modern Iran that heresy was translated into sedition, setting the precedent for later regimes.

Theological Roots of Anti-Bahá’í Hostility

The Bahá’í Faith, emerging from the Bábí crucible, inherited both the theological charge of abrogation and the security stigma forged in Qajar repression. Bahá’u’lláh’s declaration that the Islamic sharīʿa was superseded positioned the new faith as an existential challenge to clerical authority. By then, the institutional reflex for managing “heresy as threat” was already entrenched: exclusion from guilds, bans on association and marriage, denial of burial, and episodic violence. This fusion of religious law and security logic became a durable mechanism of exclusion, later updated through bureaucratic means.

Ideological Transfer and the Zionist Conflation

From Religious to Ideological Antisemitism

European antisemitic motifs entered Iran through Marxist and nationalist thought. Karl Marx’s On the Jewish Question (1844) equated Judaism with “usury” and “money,” secularizing ancient theological stereotypes. As Banaie notes, both religious and ideological antisemitism rely on depicting the “hidden Jew” as the root of corruption.

By the mid-20th century, Iranian leftist movements such as the Tudeh Party had absorbed Soviet anti-Zionism, portraying Israel as “the chained dog of imperialism.” This ideological frame—originally anti-colonial—soon became a domestic tool for labeling dissent as “foreign.” The Bábí experience had already shown officials how to translate theology into security language; twentieth-century ideologies simply modernized the vocabulary.

The Bahá’í as “Zionist Agent”

In the Islamic Republic, theology and ideology merged completely. The Bahá’í Faith was redefined as a political conspiracy. Because the Bahá’í World Centre is located in Haifa, Israel, the regime portrayed Bahá’ís as “dependents of Zionism.”

Clerical sermons and state media labeled Bahá’ís as agents of Israel, Britain, or the United States. No credible evidence supports such claims, yet the narrative persists because it serves a political function: defining loyalty by exclusion. The conceptual grammar—purity, betrayal, and vigilance—remains consistent with its Qajar prototype.

Institutionalized Exclusion

From Ideas to Institutions

The Bábí confrontations normalized the pairing of takfīr (excommunication) with state coercion, establishing an enduring relationship between theological dissent and institutional control. Under Qajar rule, persecution remained local; under the Pahlavis, clerical authority waned but recognition was codified selectively. After 1979, religion and revolution merged into an apparatus of exclusion: constitutional clauses, employment bans, admission quotas, and media propaganda—all policing who could belong.

The Bahá’ís: The Unrecognized Majority

The Bahá’ís, Iran’s largest non-Muslim minority, remain unrecognized by law. Their marriages lack legal status, their cemeteries are desecrated, and roughly 200 Bahá’ís were executed in the Revolution’s first years. A 2005 intelligence directive ordered nationwide monitoring of Bahá’ís (a related video).

They are barred from universities and public employment, leading to the underground Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education (BIHE), repeatedly raided. Despite exclusion, Bahá’ís pay taxes and perform military service. During the Iran–Iraq War, Bahá’í conscripts such as Farhang Shah Bahrami and Farhad Abdi died in combat yet were denied martyr status—symbols of civic contribution unacknowledged by the state.

Jews and Christians: Conditional Belonging

Recognized as ahl al-ketāb (“People of the Book”), Jews and Christians hold reserved Majles seats but face limits. Jewish schools require Muslim principals; converts from Islam are harassed. Nevertheless, Jewish, Armenian, and Assyrian martyrs from the Iran–Iraq War are officially honored—a selective inclusion that legitimizes the state’s narrative of tolerance while concealing systemic inequity.

The Broader Logic of Othering

The recurrence of exclusion reveals not prejudice alone but a philosophy of governance. Religious differentiation (impurity, apostasy) became clerical law; ideological reframing (foreign agent) became prosecutorial practice; securitization (existential threat) became bureaucratic routine.

Across this continuum, scholars such as Moojan Momen, Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Janet Afary, and Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi have traced how Iran’s institutional modernity has been shadowed by recurring cycles of purity and fear. Abbas Amanat, in his 2025 interview “تاریخ یک دشمنی؛ ریشه‌های ستیز با بهائیان”, deepens this analysis by describing the othering of the Bábís and Bahá’ís as a complex, evolving, and deeply entrenched process driven by what he calls the “necessity of the internal enemy.”

He argues that nineteenth-century Iran, humiliated by imperial powers such as Russia and Britain, redirected its rage inward by constructing a domestic enemy. This gave both the state and the clerical establishment an outlet for resentment and a mechanism of control. Over time, the form of accusation evolved: first, apostasy; then, moral depravity; and finally, political espionage—each reflecting the anxieties of its era.

By the twentieth century, the Bahá’ís were successively accused of serving Russia, then Britain, and finally Israel, transforming a theological difference into a political conspiracy. Amanat emphasizes that this process has now become institutionalized within security organs like the Ministry of Intelligence and the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization, making persecution an administrative routine rather than a spontaneous prejudice.

Even within modern academia, Amanat observes, the psychological residue of this othering persists: many researchers still hesitate to engage with primary materials on the Bábí–Bahá’í story, reflecting an enduring cultural fear of contamination by association.

Azadeh Pourzand, in her 2025 lecture “دیگری‌سازی؛ مانعی بر مسیر صلح؟” and interview “ دیگری‌سازی و بازتولید شکاف‌های اجتماعی”, extends this logic beyond religion. She argues that othering is manufactured, not organic. Dominant power structures deliberately designate difference, intensify prejudice, convert difference into threat, erase belonging, and dehumanize. Through this multi-stage process, exclusion becomes normal—framed as self-defense.

Her framework complements Banaie’s account of ideological continuity and gives it psychological depth. Growing up “born into otherness” in post-revolutionary Iran, Pourzand illustrates how state-defined stigma seeps into moral imagination, shaping both fear and empathy across generations.

Together, Banaie, Amanat, and Pourzand illuminate the full anatomy of othering in Iran—from idea to institution to imagination. Their insights reveal not only how exclusion has been perpetuated, but also how understanding it opens pathways toward empathy, reform, and an inclusive vision of Iranian Citizenry.

Contributions Beyond Exclusion

Despite persecution, Iran’s minorities have profoundly shaped its civic and cultural identity. Jewish physicians and educators founded Tehran’s first hospitals and schools; Armenian and Assyrian Christians pioneered the printing press, cinema, and modern music; Bahá’í institutions advanced women’s education, literacy, and rural development.

During the Iran–Iraq War, members of all these communities served—and sometimes died—for a nation that denied them equality. Their taxes, service, and civic participation prove that citizenship in practice has long preceded recognition in law.

Counter-evolutions toward inclusion have periodically surfaced: the Constitutional Revolution (1906–07) introduced representation and legal equality; Pahlavi reforms standardized rights while diluting clerical control; and reformist movements (1997–2005) reopened civic discourse. The “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement now reframes belonging around dignity rather than creed—a generational pivot in Iran’s evolving civic consciousness.

From Exclusion to Civic Reawakening

Iran’s history of othering—from theological polemic to ideological persecution—shows how institutions can ossify around fear. Yet the endurance, creativity, and patriotism of its minorities illustrate another trajectory: the evolution of Iranian Citizenry as both moral idea and civic practice.

If othering is a technique of governance, overcoming it requires both moral and institutional renewal: rethinking recognition, dismantling discriminatory structures, and aligning law with lived citizenship.

As Pourzand notes, when artificial walls between “us and them” collapse, collective strength emerges—rooted in empathy, storytelling, and shared experience—a power greater than repression. Banaie’s historical insight and Afary’s civic lens converge on the same truth: inclusion is not concession but return, a recovery of Iran’s oldest civilizational principle—unity in diversity.

A society that defines itself by exclusion cannot build trust.
A nation that reclaims belonging for all its citizens reclaims its humanity.

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Acknowledgment

The author thanks Mohsen Banaie for his lecture “یهودی‌ستیزی در دین و ایدئولوژی، از محمد تا مارکس” (2025) and his scholarship on ideological continuity; Azadeh Pourzand for her 2025 lectures “چگونه حکومت از دیگری‌سازی بهره می‌برد؟” and related interviews on power and belonging; Amir Khadem for “ماجرای مشروطه” and its framing of Iran’s constitutional awakening; and Dr. Abbas Amanat, Moojan Momen, and Mangol Bayat, whose historical analyses illuminate the Bábí–Bahá’í continuum within the broader evolution of Iranian civic identity.

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