[PROVISIONAL TRANSLATION FROM PERSIAN]

[Translator’s notes appear in square brackets.]

[Personal information has been redacted.]

[The excerpt below is from the section of the article that pertains to the Baha’i Faith]

[Adapted from website:] Cinemaye Azad

[Date:] 16 July 2026

The Bahá’í Artists of Iran: A Look at the Bahá’í Community’s Contribution to Iranian Culture and the Arts, and the Suffering and Crimes Inflicted upon Its Members

A nation that deprives some of its children of the right to learn, create, and live because of their beliefs, in reality loses part of its own future.

Introduction

In these days when the news of the passing of Manouchehr Farid, the accomplished and veteran Iranian actor, saddened the cultural community, perhaps it is an appropriate time to remember him and other Bahá’í artists: artists who, despite all the mistreatment they endured, never forgot their love for Iran and its culture.

The history of Iran is not only the history of invasions and wars. It is also the history of people who lived, created, and suffered in silence. Among these people, the Bahá’í community of Iran holds a special place: people who for nearly two centuries strove alongside other Iranians for the prosperity of their country, yet in return repeatedly faced deprivation, discrimination, and violence.

If we look at this history only through the lens of politics, we may see only arrests, executions, confiscation of property, and prisons. But through the lens of culture, another image emerges: the image of artists who, despite all limitations, composed music, made films, wrote poetry, produced works of architecture, and formed part of Iran’s cultural memory.

This article is not only about the suffering of the Bahá’ís. It is about the loss that Iranian society suffers from discrimination. Every artist who was silenced, every professor who was expelled from university, every musician whose instrument remained silent, and every filmmaker who was forced into silence or migration represented harm not only to an individual. Iranian culture also lost part of its own wealth.

Perhaps one can confiscate people’s property, deprive them of education and employment, or even take their lives. But thought, art, and truth cannot be imprisoned. The works of artists and thinkers who arose from within the Bahá’í community are today an inseparable part of the history of Iranian culture: a culture that transcends the boundaries of religion and belief and belongs to all Iranians.

This article is a tribute to them, and also to all the women and men who, solely because of their beliefs, were deprived of their basic human rights, yet never abandoned their love for their homeland, culture, and humanity.

Being Bahá’í in Islamic Iran: An Unwritten Crime

For many people in the world, religious belief is a personal choice which governments are obliged to respect. But for Bahá’í citizens in Islamic Iran, this belief has over decades become a reason for deprivation of fundamental rights.

Several months before Khomeini came to power, agents acting on the direct orders of Ayatollah Dastgheib, together with a number of thugs, raided the Saadieh neighbourhood of Shiraz on the night of 23 November 1978. Part of the neighbourhood was home to hundreds of Bahá’í citizens, whose homes were looted and set on fire. Following this attack, Bahá’ís of all ages—men, women, and children—fearing for their lives and safety, took refuge in the mountains around Saadieh in the severe cold of that year. In this incident, two Bahá’í citizens named Avaz-Gol Fahandej, aged 55, the mother of seven children, and Sefatollah Fahandej, aged 45, were killed. A similar incident occurred some time later, on 31 December of the same year, in the town of Miandoab. The homes of the Bahá’ís of this city were set on fire at night and all of them, children and adults alike, were expelled from the city. In this incident, two Bahá’í citizens named Mir Parviz Afnani and his son, Khosrow Afnani, were killed.

These incidents may be regarded, after the burning of Cinema Rex Abadan, which led to the deaths of 600 innocent people on 19 August 1978, as among the greatest crimes of the mullahs and Islamists before they came to power on 11 February 1979.

After the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, the new government did not recognise the Bahá’í Faith as an official religion. From the very first months of the revolution, a wave of arrests, property confiscations, closure of Bahá’í administrative and religious centres, and expulsion from offices and universities began.

Many administrators of the Bahá’í community, doctors, university professors, teachers, engineers, and entrepreneurs were arrested. A number of them, following trials which international organisations regarded as falling short of fair trial standards, were executed. Many families not only lost their loved ones, but also their homes, workplaces, and social security and stability.

But the pressures were not limited to the early years of the revolution. Over the past four decades, new generations of young Bahá’ís have also undergone the same experience: exclusion from university education, a ban on employment in many government jobs, closure and sealing of businesses, arrest because of educational and social activities, and destruction or confiscation of property have been part of the reality of life for many of them.

For a Bahá’í youth, entering university—which for others is the beginning of the future—has sometimes become the end of a dream. Many, after succeeding in the national entrance examination, were deprived of continuing their studies solely because they declared their religion. Some were also expelled from university after completing several semesters under the pretext that they had an “incomplete file”.

On the other hand, Bahá’í business owners have repeatedly faced the closure and sealing of their businesses. Sometimes this was solely because they closed their shops on the holy days of their faith. These pressures have affected the economic lives of thousands of families.

Bahá’í cemeteries have also not remained immune from harm. In different years, reports have been published of the destruction of cemeteries, preventing families from burying their dead, or restrictions on funeral ceremonies. Even death has not been the end of suffering for many Bahá’í families.

Despite all this, perhaps the greatest loss has been neither the confiscation of homes nor imprisonment, but rather the loss of opportunities that could have benefited Iran. Every student denied a university education, every doctor denied permission to practise medicine, every professor who was dismissed, and every artist forced into silence or migration, was a resource withheld from Iranian society. Discrimination not only wounds its direct victims; it also impoverishes the future of a nation.

From Tahereh Qurrat al-Ayn to the Women of Shiraz

If we wish to summarise the history of suffering and steadfastness in one name, undoubtedly we must begin with Tahereh Qurrat al-Ayn.

She was an unparalleled poet, a learned woman, and an eloquent speaker: a figure who, in the middle of the nineteenth century, at a time when many women were deprived even of the right to education, spoke of freedom of thought, the dignity of women, and the necessity of social transformation.

Tahereh was among the first women who removed the traditional veil of her time in a public gathering: an act not out of protest against religion, but out of belief in the beginning of a new age and the equality of human beings. This act shook the traditional society of that era and turned her into one of the most controversial figures in Iranian history.

In the end, the Qajar government, under pressure from Islamic powers, killed her. But her ideas were not silenced. Today many researchers of women’s history in Iran regard her as a pioneer of the women’s emancipation movement in Iran.

More than one century later, history repeated itself in a painful way.

In June 1983, ten Bahá’í women and girls in Shiraz, including Mona Mahmoudnejad, who was only 17 years old, were executed on the charge of teaching Bahá’í children and refusing to renounce their religious belief.

More than a century separated Tahereh and Mona. What they shared was steadfastness in the face of pressure from Islamic authorities to renounce their beliefs and conscience. These two names have today become two symbols of the resistance of Iranian women against coercion and discrimination.

Execution for One’s Beliefs

Before the massacre of tens of thousands of Iran’s children during the national uprising of 7 and 8 January 2026 across more than 400 towns and cities in all 31 provinces, the 1980s could be described as the bloodiest chapter in the history of the Islamic Republic, and the Bahá’í community was among its earliest victims. Only a few months had passed since the victory of the Islamic revolution when the arrests, executions, and disappearances of well-known figures of the Bahá’í community began. Members of the “National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Iran” and local assemblies were arrested one after another. Many never returned home and their families were not even informed of their burial places.

In the early years of the Islamic revolution, dozens of Bahá’í community leaders, doctors, teachers, university professors, engineers, farmers, and people from many different professions were executed. For many of them, the alleged crime was neither armed action, nor political activity, nor participation in violence. Rather, it was solely adherence to their religious beliefs.

Alongside the executions, hundreds of families faced confiscation of property, dismissal from workplaces, closure of businesses, prolonged detention, deprivation of education, and constant security pressures. The aim was not merely to punish a few individuals. The aim was to break an entire community.

But history showed that faith cannot be destroyed by prison and the gallows.

The Story of Mona Mahmoudnejad: The Girl Who Became a Symbol of Freedom of Conscience

Among the victims of those years, the name of Mona Mahmoudnejad has become more widely known internationally than that of many others.

Mona was born on 10 September 1965 in Yemen. Her family returned to Iran after the Islamic revolution. She was an enthusiastic teenager interested in literature, music, and teaching children.

In 1982, the security forces of the mullahs arrested her along with a number of other Bahá’í women in Shiraz. Their charge was organising moral education classes for Bahá’í children, classes that families organised after Bahá’í children had been deprived of many social activities.

Interrogators repeatedly asked Mona to renounce her belief and accept Islam. She was only 17 years old, an age at which many teenagers are still occupied with choosing what to study at university or dreaming of their future. But Mona was unwilling to deny her belief.

Finally, on the evening of 18 June 1983, she was hanged together with nine other women in Chowgan Square in Shiraz.

The names of those ten women will forever remain in the history of Iran:

1. Mona Mahmoudnejad (aged 17)

2. Roya Eshraghi (aged 22 or 23)

3. Simin Saberi (aged 24)

4. Akhtar Sabet (aged 21 or 25)

5. Mahshid Niroumand (aged 28)

6. Shirin (Shahin) Dalvand (aged 25 or 27)

7. Zarrin Moghimi Abyaneh (aged 29 or 30)

8. Tahereh Arjomandi (aged 30 or 32)

9. Nosrat Ghufrani (aged 56)

10. Ezzat Janami (aged 57)

The execution of these women provoked widespread reactions from human rights organisations and the international public. Today Mona Mahmoudnejad has become a symbol of steadfastness in the face of coercion, not only for Bahá’ís but also for many defenders of freedom of belief.

Discrimination Repeated Every Day

Although the wave of mass executions of political prisoners in the 1980s subsided, discrimination against the Bahá’ís did not end.

Thousands of young Bahá’ís were denied admission to university. Many, after succeeding in the university entrance examination, encountered the phrase “incomplete file” during registration, a phrase which in practice meant deprivation because of religious belief.

To respond to this deprivation, the Bahá’í community established the Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) with the cooperation of professors expelled from universities: an unofficial university held in homes which was repeatedly raided by security forces. Its professors were arrested and educational equipment confiscated, but education never stopped.

Art: A Language That Could Not Be Silenced

Despite all these pressures, the Bahá’í community has made a remarkable contribution to Iranian culture and the arts, a contribution about which less has sometimes been said.

In music, the name of Habibollah Badiee (1933–1992) is intertwined with the Iranian violin. He was one of the greatest violinists in the history of Iranian music, with his unique style, an artist who, in the enduring “Golha” programme, with his poetic playing and the creation of more than 200 songs, created enduring works. His violin was not merely an instrument: it was a voice narrating the emotions of a nation. After the revolution, like many musicians, he was deprived of the opportunity to work freely. The isolation of an artist of that stature was not only the deprivation of one individual. It was the deprivation of Iranian culture.

Soheil Ighani (1957–1986) was among the prominent and talented santur players in traditional Iranian music. He was born in the city of Shiraz and from the age of six became interested in music, especially the santur. In addition to playing the santur with his distinctive technique and style, he also possessed astonishing ability in playing the violin, tar, and piano. Among the prominent characteristics of his playing was its “pleasant sonority” (the production of delightful and clear sound). Tragically, however, this gifted young artist, due to the pressures and restrictions imposed upon him by the Islamic government, ended his life at the age of 29.

Golnoush Khaleghi (7 January 1941–14 February 2021), composer, orchestra conductor, and daughter of Master Rouhollah Khaleghi, worked for years to preserve the heritage of Iran’s national music. Her activities outside Iran played an important role in keeping the works of Iranian classical music alive. She was the first Iranian woman to receive specialist training in conducting. Before the Islamic revolution of 1979, Golnoush Khaleghi was the conductor of the choir of the National Iranian Radio and Television Organisation. In 1980, she emigrated to the United States and in 1991 returned to Iran in order to hold a concert, but because she was a woman, she was not permitted to conduct or perform publicly in Iran. In an interview she said: “The Iranian government confiscated my father’s assets on the pretext that he was a Bahá’í and prevented the sale of his works.”

Ahdieh Badiee (born 21 September 1949) was also among the popular singers of Iranian music before the Islamic revolution. Her voice still lives in the memory of different generations of Iranians. At the age of eight she joined Radio Iran’s children’s programme and sang around 200 songs for children. Through the efforts of Davoud Pirnia, Ahdieh performed the first Golha programme (“Shakheh-ye Gol” No. 328) at the age of 14.

She performed 55 songs in the modes of Iranian music for the Golha programmes and nearly 300 songs in various styles for Radio Iran and also sang more than 700 songs for Iranian films, in styles suited to the storylines of the films, which have kept the name of Ahdieh familiar and alive for present generations to this day. During her artistic career, Ahdieh never performed in private gatherings or cabarets in Tehran.

Mirza Nematollah Beyzai Arani, known by the pen-name Zekaii (1903–1986), biographical anthologist and poet, was an important Iranian cultural figure. His works formed part of contemporary Iranian literature and his family played an enduring role in the culture of this land. He was the brother of Adib Beyzai Arani, the uncle of Partow Beyzai Arani, and also the father of Bahram Beyzai.

Zekaii left behind more than 13 books and 75 literary articles.

In architecture, Houshang Seyhoun (22 August 1920–26 May 2014), as the designer of the mausoleums of Ferdowsi, Khayyam, Avicenna, Nader Shah Afshar, and Kamal-ol-Molk, is an enduring figure in the history of Iranian architecture. His works were a blend of Iranian tradition and modern vision and are still regarded as among the most valuable examples of contemporary Iranian architecture.

Houshang Seyhoun was born into a cultured Bahá’í family with a rich background in Iranian music. His maternal grandfather, Mirza Abdollah Farahani, was among the most prominent masters of traditional Iranian music and one of the founders of the modern school of tar and setar playing. His mother, Moloud Khanom, played the tar and setar, and his uncle, Ahmad Ebadi, was regarded as one of the most famous masters of the Iranian setar. His father, Ziaollah Seyhoun, was also among the students of Mirza Abdollah Farahani, and his mother’s uncle, Agha Hossein-Gholi, was one of the great figures of traditional Iranian music and the father of Ali-Akbar Shahnazi. However, unlike his family, from childhood he became attached to painting and design, an interest which eventually led him to study under Hossein Behzad, the prominent master of Persian miniature painting.

Bahram Beyzai (26 December 1938–26 December 2025) stands like a towering peak in Iranian theatre and cinema. He was a scholar of mythology, playwright, filmmaker, and writer whose works transcended geographical borders and became part of Iran’s cultural heritage. Although his artistic life was also marked by restrictions and migration, his works continue to inspire new generations of artists. Free Cinema has published various articles about Bahram Beyzai, and to learn more about this artist, read the article below:

Bahram Beyzai: A Look at His Life, Artistic Standing, and Relationship with the Islamic Republic

Shabnam Tolouie (born 12 April 1971), actress, writer, and theatre director, was also among the artists who, because of pressure resulting from her religious beliefs, were forced to leave Iran. Her migration, like the migration of many other artists, is a reminder of this bitter truth that discrimination drives talented people from their homeland.

In recent days, Iran’s cultural community lost one of its most distinguished members: Manouchehr Farid:

Manouchehr Farid (27 February 1938–3 July 2026), who was a follower of the Bahá’í Faith, after the Islamic revolution of 1979, like many Bahá’í artists, lost the opportunity to continue his professional career in Iran and, despite an established career in theatre and cinema, was effectively banned from work and no longer had the possibility of appearing on stage or before the camera. This deprivation eventually forced him to leave Iran. Farid first emigrated to the United States and then to Australia, and although in exile he continued to write and engage in cultural activities, his distinguished acting career in Iranian cinema was cut short. Therefore, his professional life is not defined solely by the quality of his performances, but his story is an example of the impact of political developments and restrictions arising from religious affiliation on the fate of an artist: an actor who could have had a more prominent presence in the history of Iranian cinema, but because he was a Bahá’í was deprived of continuing his activity in the country.

Manouchehr Farid was among the influential actors of the first generation of Iran’s New Wave cinema: an actor rooted in theatre, and this background gave his performances special depth and discipline. His acting was based on realism, emotional control, and avoidance of exaggeration. Instead of outward displays of emotion, Farid used silence, looks, and pauses to reveal the inner world of the character and had a calm yet penetrating presence on camera. His warm voice, precise diction, and mastery of speech techniques were the result of his professional training in the Dramatic Arts Administration and collaboration with masters such as Hamid Samandarian. In films such as “Ragbaar”, “Gharibeh va Meh”, “Kalagh”, and “Cherikeh Tara”, he created multilayered and human characters that differed from the common clichés of the cinema of that period. His ability to give life to silent, introverted, and sometimes bitter characters made him one of the trusted actors of Bahram Beyzai. Although Farid’s cinematic record is not extensive, the quality of his performances and his harmony with the intellectual cinema of the 1960s and 1970s have made his position enduring in the history of Iranian acting. His passing is a loss for Iran’s independent culture, and his memory will remain alive in the minds of lovers of theatre and cinema.

Conclusion

The history of the Bahá’ís of Iran is not merely the history of a religious minority. It is part of the contemporary history of Iran. It is a history in which discrimination has wounded not only people but also the country’s culture, art, education, and future.

Iran is the land of Hafez, Ferdowsi, Khayyam, Nima, Forough, Saba, and Khaleghi: a land that has always drawn strength from diversity of thought and culture. No society becomes richer by excluding those who think differently. Every voice that is silenced also silences part of the larger orchestra of Iranian culture.

Today, the memory of Mona Mahmoudnejad, the memory of the ten women of Shiraz, the memory of hundreds who were executed and thousands of imprisoned Bahá’ís, alongside the memory of artists such as Habibollah Badiee, Ahdieh, Golnoush Khaleghi, Bahram Beyzai, Manouchehr Farid, and other distinguished figures of this community, is a reminder of one truth: culture transcends the boundaries of religion and belief.

Perhaps one can imprison a human being but not thought. Perhaps one can force an artist into isolation, but not the artist’s art. And perhaps one can deprive a generation of many rights, but their memory cannot be erased from history.

The future of Iran will be shaped not by eliminating differences, but by accepting the dignity of all its citizens, regardless of their religion, belief, or conviction. This is not only the wish of the Bahá’ís. It is the aspiration of all those who desire a free, just, and culturally rich Iran for future generations.