Is Baha'i a religion or a political organization?

I often wondered why many of my Jewish friends tended to dismiss me when I would favor the attitude of the Palestinians over the Israelis, especially when I get the "you’ve never been persecuted" look, or comment. Then I read this article which reminded me of my upbringing in the Baha'i Faith, and how Baha’is have been persecuted, ever since the religion came into existence.

Putting that aside, for the moment, let me just say that I have never been comfortable with the hard line Israeli attitude since the 1967 war, nor with how they took land that was not theirs, and displaced a great many Palestinians in the process. I understand the level of persecution and aggression directed towards Israel since it was granted statehood in the 1940's, but there has to be a solution that resolves the issue of the land that was taken, and Israel has conceded that it will never give back the land it took from the Palestinians. Therein lies the permanent dilemma.

First there was the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) whose mandate was a return to Palestinian self-rule. Eventually, the PLO stood for a Palestinian state within the boundaries of Israel. Yasser Arafat became the recognized leader of the PLO by most of the world, including Israel. The PLO sought support from other Arab nations such as Jordan, Syria and Egypt, and over the past 40 years, has been helped by these countries and then expelled from these countries, depending on the changing ideology of the Arabs at specific times in history and their own peculiar problems within their own nations. Suffice it to say that the PLO was oftentimes supported by other Arab nations in its continued quest for Palestinian independence, and sometimes abandoned by the same Arab nations when political pressure was exerted by Israel, the United States, and other leading countries. The PLO has always been considered by Israel and the United States to be a terrorist organization until around the early 1990's. Most of the world had recognized the PLO to be the representative of the Palestinians.

PLO committed many terrorists acts in concert with other Arab nations’ political terrorist groups in Jordan, Syria and Egypt. The United States, after 9/11, reclassified the PLO as a terrorist organization in 2004.

In the Arab nations, terrorism is almost a common comport to daily living and politics. Infighting amongst many organizations, all of which mainly had in common the opposition to the state of Israel, created many diverse and disparate terrorist groups, most of which could not inflict a great deal of damage – at least not on the level that Israel has shown it has the capacity to do.

Now we move on to Hamas, which was originally founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as an Islamic charity, and an offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, and was at the time of its inception supported by the Israeli government. This support by Israel was, of course, an effort to undermine the PLO’s influence in the area, and especially with Palestine. Israel considered Hamas as a counter balance to the PLO, the former being a charitable group, the latter a terrorist group. Thereafter, based on Arafat’s support of Saddam Hussein’s invasion into Kuwait, Arab groups began to withdraw their financial support of the PLO and direct it to Hamas. As the PLO and its influence was waning and Hamas was on the rise, the following is interesting to note:

"The 1993 Oslo agreement inaugurated the final phase of the PLO's degeneration, as its leadership -- or rather the leading nucleus of this leadership, bypassing the official leading bodies -- was granted guardianship over the Palestinian population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This came in exchange for what amounted to a capitulation: the PLO leadership abandoned the minimal conditions that were demanded by the Palestinian negotiators from the 1967 occupied territories, above all an Israeli pledge to freeze and reverse the construction of settlements which were colonizing their land. The very conditions of this capitulation -- which doomed the Oslo agreements to tragic failure as critics very rightly predicted from the start -- made certain that the shift in the popular political mood would speed up. The Zionist state took advantage of the lull brought to the 1967 territories by the Palestinian Authority's fulfillment of the role of police force by proxy ascribed to it, by drastically intensifying the colonization and building an infrastructure designed to facilitate its military control over these territories. Accordingly, the discredit of the PA increased inexorably. This loss in public support hampered more and more its ability to crack down on the Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist movement -- as was required from it and as it began attempting as early as 1994 -- let alone its ability to marginalize the Islamic movement politically and ideologically. Moreover, the transfer of the PLO bureaucracy from exile into the 1967 territories, as a ruling apparatus entrusted with the task of surveillance over the population that waged the Intifada, quickly led to its corruption reaching abysmal levels -- something that the population of the territories hadn't seen first-hand before. At the same time, Hamas, like most sections of the Islamic fundamentalist mass movement -- in contrast with "substitutionist" strictly terrorist organizations of which al-Qaeda has become the most spectacular example -- was keen on paying attention to popular basic needs, organizing social services, and cultivating a reputation of austerity and incorruptibility."

Let’s switch now to Hezbollah, which although based in Lebanon, has been supported by the Iranian government. Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah was defined by its own actions from its inception, as terrorists. It was linked to the PLO until they distanced themselves from the PLO after Israel began massive attacks against Lebanon.

Hamas eventually went on to win parliamentary victory in Palestine territories, much to the shock of the United States. From Juan Cole:

"The sweeping electoral victory of Hamas is but one of the products of the intensive use made by the United States in the Muslim world, since the 1950's, of Islamic fundamentalism as an ideological weapon against both progressive nationalism and communism. This was done in close collaboration with the Saudi kingdom -- a de facto U.S. protectorate almost from its foundation in 1932. The promotion of the most reactionary interpretation of the Islamic religion, exploiting deeply-rooted popular religious beliefs, led to this ideology filling the vacuum left by the exhaustion by the 1970's of the two ideological currents it served to fight. The road was thus paved in the entire Muslim world for the transformation of Islamic fundamentalism into the dominant expression of mass national and social resentment, to the great dismay of the U.S. and its Saudi protectorate. The story of Washington's relation with Islamic fundamentalism is the most striking modern illustration of the sorcerer's apprenticeship. (I have described this at length in my Clash of Barbarisms.)"

According to Iran, the Baha'i Faith is not a religion, it is a political organization bent on the destruction of Islam, and Iran, in particular. The religion is banned in Iran, and many Baha'is are arrested on a regular basis. Therefore, its members are considered terrorists.

From Wikipedia: "The Iranian constitution that was drafted during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution in 1906 set the groundwork for the institutionalized persecution of Bahá'ís. While the constitution was modeled on Belgium's 1831 constitution, the provisions guaranteeing freedom of worship were omitted. Subsequent legislation provided some recognition to Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians as equal citizens under state law, but it did not guarantee freedom of religion and ‘gave unprecedented institutional powers to the clerical establishment.’ The Islamic Republic of Iran, that was established after the Iranian revolution, recognizes four religions, whose status is formally protected: Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Members of the first three minority religions receive special treatment under Iranian law. For example, their members are allowed to drink alcohol, and representatives of several minority communities are guaranteed seats in parliament."

Which brings me back to the universal question: Is Baha'i a religion or a political organization with terrorist thoughts and/or activities on its mind or under its belt? It is obvious that it is a religion, but Iran has chosen to ignore that fact and raise it to the level of terrorist group, subject to penalty of death. Yet, Iran supports Hezbollah, whose main operation is the destruction of Israel, while it allows Judaism to exist within its borders. Why, then, is Iran so threatened by the Baha’is? Why are they not allowed recognition within Iran, the country of the religion’s birth?