The Muslim Network for Baha'i Rights » Site info

New Baha’i Rights Illustration!

Muslim Network for Baha'i Rights — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 18:18:10 +0000

We’re proud to present to you a new Baha’i rights illustration that aims to highlight some of the human rights abuses Baha’is are subjected to in the Middle East: arson, unjustified incarceration and limitations on freedom of speech. We’ve been hard at work on this illustration for quite some time and hope you like it!

Twitter map tracking tweets about Baha’i human rights

Muslim Network for Baha'i Rights — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:01:01 +0000

Twitter is a great tool for raising awareness about all kinds of human rights violations. To help keep track of the cause we champion here at BahaiRights.org, we’ve created this app that tracks tweets about Baha’i human rights abuses in real time and displays them on a map or as a list.

We hope that you would find it useful.

RFE/RL story about our new animated campaign

Muslim Network for Baha'i Rights — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:29:58 +0000

Following is a story Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty carried about The Muslim Network For Baha’i Rights:

Animation In Support Of Iran’s Baha’is
October 08, 2009

A new animated campaign aims to raise awareness about rights abuses against those following the Baha’i faith in Iran.

The campaign, run by the Muslim Network for Baha’i Rights, was the brainchild of Esra’a al-Shafei, a 22-year-old woman from Bahrain who won a prestigious award for her Internet projects from Harvard University last year.

In an interview with RFE/RL’s Radio Farda she said, “I created the Muslim Network for Baha’i Rights because I knew that I wasn’t going to be the only Muslim who believes in this. Soon we started gathering Muslims from all over the world who are speaking up for Baha’i human rights, in the name of Islam.”

“If even more Muslims committed to this, Baha’is will no longer be discriminated against this widely and violence against them will cease to be justified by either governments or our societies at large,” she said.

Al-Shafei said that she used animation for her campaign because “it’s attention grabbing and interesting, and helps us reach our target audience better.

“We live in an age today where people are bored with content. There is a massive war of information online, and everyone is struggling to be heard and noticed, so we have to resort to creative ideas in order to ensure that some people are still listening to us.”

– Arash Alborzi

3 Baha’i Rights videos nominated for an award at the Bitfilm Festival: Please vote!

Muslim Network for Baha'i Rights — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:09:41 +0000

A few months ago at Mideast Youth, we wrote about the Bitfilm Festival, whom we are a partner with, to give attention to some digital mash-ups that we have done in the past few years. All but one of these videos have to do with Baha’i human rights abuses in Iran and Egypt.

This morning, the Bitfilm Festival’s website just started accepting votes. Four of our videos are currently competing for an award for the “Politicool” category.

We hope you will register and vote for us! We worked very hard on our videos and hope you can take the time to appreciate them, as it really helped spread the message about Baha’i human rights abuses in a creative, sometimes satirical way.

Our videos are the following:

Iran’s New Voice

Persepolis 2 (Trailer) – Safeguard the Innocent

Egypt Tourism Ad

We have nothing else to count on but your vote! Please register and vote for us, and help spread the word by requesting that others do so via Twitter, Facebook or your own blog! The deadline for voting is the 24th of September.

Banner for Baha’i Rights Day

Muslim Network for Baha'i Rights — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:27:32 +0000

If you wish to use a graphic to place as your Facebook avatar, or on your blog, feel free to use the one below:

Recovery from a hack

Muslim Network for Baha'i Rights — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:34:16 +0000

Dear friends,

We apologize for the very few updates that we were able to generate during May and June. This is due to the fact that our sites were under serious attacks that left us unable to publish entries on our sites, and later took the entire sites down for as much as an entire week. We have been very busy trying to get our sites back up and did not realize that it would take this long, however the process is now thankfully complete.

We want to assure you that we are working hard still, we did not disappear, and soon you will see our efforts again as we focus on videos and comics in the near future.

Thank you all for your patience and support. Hackers may be able to slow us down, but they will not be able to stop us from our activities. Our efforts for Baha’i rights will remain consistent.

Recent FAQs

Muslim Network for Baha'i Rights — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:54:34 +0000

Many people have been coming to us with various concerns and frequent questions. We felt the urge to address some of such concerns:

What is the political “agenda” behind this campaign?
This campaign is far from political. Civil rights is a societal issue and not a political one. BahaiRights.org is an independent campaign for human rights and is no different from any other campaign whose aim is to secure the human rights of any other religious or ethnic minority. No post of ours implies political affiliation, as indeed there is no political affiliation to begin with. Defending equal human rights for all citizens is our responsibility as people.

Do you misuse facts or produce false information?
We work hard to provide facts that are either historically verified or that have been checked by reliable, often on-the-ground sources. We condemn any fact that is proof of discrimination against the Baha’i minority. Such facts are neither false nor misused. If we are uncertain about a specific incident, we will mention it, and if so we check the progress of the situation regorously. If there is any information here that is factually false do let us know and we will correct it.

We are Muslims, why can’t we focus on the human rights of other Muslims, like the ones in Palestine?
First, the denial of human rights to any person merely because of their ethnicity or religion is a grave crime and have historically proven to be extremely dangerous. It has resulted in genocide, centuries of isolation, severe discrimination, torture, harrassments, et al. How is this not a timely issue of concern? Baha’is are being denied their human rights primarily in Muslim countries, what does this say about us and our religion? We have a responsibility to ensure their human rights. This is what our Prophet (PBUH) would have wanted. We are not here to undermine any other crimes or conflicts such as the Palestinian one (which also includes discriminated religious minorities by the way.) However this campaign is about the human rights of the Baha’is and we cannot discuss all human rights here or only the human rights that are more “relevant” to us – if Baha’is are affected in our societies then we should and will continue to stand for them.

This campaign is a Zionist conspiracy. Baha’is are headquartered in Israel.
Firstly, this campaign is run primarily by Arabs and several Iranians. The founder is in Bahrain and the main editor is a Sudanese activist living in the UAE, with occassional contributions from Egypt, Iran, and elsewhere throughout the region. As mentioned earlier, it is run independently on a voluntary basis and there is no conspiracy. Secondly, the Baha’i World Centre ended up in Palestine due to the fact that Baha’u'llah was exiled there by the Ottoman Sultan. Baha’is were established there long before the formation of the state of Israel. Baha’is are not Israelis nor Zionists.

Apologies for the downtime

Muslim Network for Baha'i Rights — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:06:22 +0000

Regular readers of our website will note that in the past several months, our website has suffered from downtimes that would extend to hours (and sometimes even days) on end. We wish to thank all our readers for their patience, especially those of you who have written to express concern.

The frequent downtimes were occassioned by our moving to a hosting service that proved itself incapable of securing and maintaining our work. A lot of our resources had to be diverted towards ensuring the website is up and replacing lost content, instead of posting new content.

However, we are pleased to announce that this nightmare is finally over with and we will be finally resume normal activity.

In less than 2 weeks, Egypt’s courts are set to issue final verdicts on the appeals and challenges launched against last year’s ruling that granted Egyptian Baha’is the right to obtain official documents with a “-” listed under the religion field.

Our prayers are with Egypt’s Baha’i community during this critical time, and we will keep you informed about the verdicts.

MNBR on The Media Line

Muslim Network for Baha'i Rights — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 08:42:47 +0000

An article about our work for Baha’i human rights was recently featured in The Media Line:

Iran might be famous for Avicenna, the Cyrus cylinder, and its leaders’ scathing remarks, but for over 6 million Baha’is across the world, it holds a special significance, as it is the birthplace of their faith.

Founded a century and a half ago, the Baha’i faith encourages the independent investigation of “truth,” and calls – among other things – for the unity of religion and humankind, and the elimination of gender inequality. However, one of its central tenets – that Islam is not the final revelation of God – has led to it being declared a heresy, and its adherents denounced as apostates.

The earliest followers of the Baha’i faith in Iran experienced imprisonment, expulsion and execution, but as the faith’s followers grew in number and spread over more countries in the region, it soon became evident that other states would not provide a safe haven for Baha’is to freely practise their faith.

Communities from Morocco to Egypt, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere underwent an onslaught of propaganda attacks and arrests, and several countries placed a ban on all Baha’i activities.

While in recent years the situation of Baha’is has improved (with Indonesia, for instance, repealing a ban on Baha’i activities), Iran remains the only country where Baha’is experience grave persecution. To date, however, hardly any Muslim-majority countries recognize the Baha’i faith as an independent religion. The lack of recognition rendered many Baha’is incapable of obtaining identification documents, effectively denying them their right to equal citizenship.

The Muslim Network of Baha’i Rights was founded in an effort to address and challenge the discrimination that Baha’is have to suffer under the supposed banner of Islam. Its mission is to secure their basic human rights within our societies, through raising awareness of the plight of Baha’is in many Muslim-majority countries, and encouraging fellow Muslims to speak out against such injustices.

Propaganda campaigns (spread primarily by state-owned media and religious clerics) have led to a deep and dangerous misunderstanding amongst many Muslims of Baha’is and their faith, wrongly associating them with political ideologies like Zionism or referring to them as “Satanists.”

Since Baha’is are often censured within the mainstream media, such claims are hardly corrected, putting members of the faith in a very difficult situation. It is our responsibility as Muslims, and as members of the dominating majority, to raise awareness of who Baha’is actually are and to make sure that they are treated equally within the law and society. They are citizens of our countries regardless of their faith, which for the record is extremely respectful of Islam.

As practising Muslims we don’t believe in the Baha’i faith, but why should that stand in the way of granting them their full rights? Why should our religious differences justify decades of abuse, wrongful imprisonment, murder, denial of education, and other crimes?

Baha’is have been ignored in their requests for peaceful coexistence, and despite the abuse they have never resorted to violence. It is therefore time for us to stand up and demand that their rights are fully ensured and legally protected. It is time for us to help Baha’is factually refute wrong accusations within regional media outlets that have dire consequences for their security.

As a strategy, and a recruitment tool, we have relied on the power of the Internet, the most open network in the world, to reach our target audience in an honest, uncensored fashion. It is to our advantage that increasingly more people rely on the Internet for news instead of traditional media, which in much of the Middle East is heavily censored. Many curious people resort to the Internet for research because of the amount of information that resides in it.

One of our biggest accomplishments was our successful utilization of creative media in order to raise awareness about the abuse perpetrated against the Baha’i minority in the Middle East, and encourage others into taking action.

Before any significant changes are made to the perceptions of citizens of the Middle East, or discriminatory laws are removed, it is important that we start a discussion, and our media productions have been more successful than any written post in achieving that.

Our first video campaign was documented in one of Egypt’s most prominent papers within one week of its launch. Some of our comics have also been published and used in relevant conferences around the world. When the site was first established in the summer of 2007, it was covered by BBC Persian Service in an exclusive article only three weeks later. We owe this success to the accessibility of the Internet, where we break our way into global media outlets without having to worry about censorship.

Despite the amount of controversy we continue to stir in the Muslim world, we are committed to the cause of championing equal rights for the Baha’i minority in the region.

Vote for us at the Staples Youth Social Entrepreneur Competition!

Muslim Network for Baha'i Rights — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:24:14 +0000

Mideast Youth, the independent youth organization behind the Muslim Network for Baha’i Rights, is one of the 15 finalists at the Staples Youth Social Entrepreneur Competition. Your votes will determine whether or not we will be the global winner.

We work hard voluntarily for Mideast Youth and its many projects, including this one. We do not have an income or have any sources of official funding. Donations are extremely rare. It’s therefore awards like these that are vital for us to survive and improve, so if you support our work, please consider voting for us.

You would need to register and login in order to vote.

Please be sure to check your bulk/spam folders for the email that confirms your registration to vote.

Thank you for supporting our work! Please spread the word, as voting ends in less than a week.