{"id":16712,"date":"2018-09-29T00:25:57","date_gmt":"2018-09-29T00:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=16712"},"modified":"2018-09-29T00:25:57","modified_gmt":"2018-09-29T00:25:57","slug":"iran-arrests-city-council-member-for-supporting-bahais","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=16712","title":{"rendered":"Iran arrests city council member for supporting Bahais"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1379286\/middle-east\" readability=\"56\">\n<p>\nTEHRAN: Iran has detained a member of the Shiraz city council for supporting two Iranians of the minority Bahai faith and expressing concern over their arrest, state news agency IRNA reported Friday.<br \/>\u201cMehdi Hajjati, a member of this council, was arrested Thursday evening for supporting two people of the outlawed cult of Bahaism,\u201d IRNA quoted council presiding board member Ghasem Moghimi as saying.<br \/>Hajjati, a reformist, had tweeted on Tuesday that \u201cfor the past 10 days, I did whatever I could to release the two Bahai friends that were arrested but failed.\u201d<br \/>\u201cOur generation is tasked to not back down in reforming judicial processes and other things that endanger social justice,\u201d he wrote, also using a Persian hashtag that translating into English as \u201cfair trial.\u201d<br \/>His twitter account, @MehdiHajjati was suspended hours after his arrest.<br \/>Bahram Parsayi, a lawmaker from Shiraz, came to Hajjati\u2019s defense on Thursday.<br \/>\u201cDefending the civil rights of citizens should not be equated with supporting a cult,\u201d semi-official news agency ISNA quoted him as saying.<br \/>Parsayi also vowed to pursue the case through the judicial and security authorities.<br \/>Iran allows religious freedom for several minorities but targets the Bahai faith, which believes in unity among religions and equality between men and women.<br \/>The Bahai faith considers Bahaullah, an Iranian born in 1817, to be the latest prophet sent by God, in contrast with Islamic orthodoxy.<br \/>Bahais have been targets of persecution and discrimination in Iran since the emergence of the faith in the second half of the 19th century, well before the 1979 Islamic revolution.<br \/>The Islamic republic regards Bahais as \u201cheretics\u201d and suspects many of espionage for Israel, where the community has a center in the northern city of Haifa.<br \/>The Bahai faith has an estimated seven million followers worldwide, including some 300,000 Iran where the community says they are barred from pursuing higher education and holding government jobs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TEHRAN: Iran has detained a member of the Shiraz city council for supporting two Iranians of the minority Bahai faith and expressing concern over their arrest, state news agency IRNA reported Friday.\u201cMehdi Hajjati, a member of this council, was arrested Thursday evening for supporting two people of the outlawed cult of Bahaism,\u201d IRNA quoted council&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":16713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}