c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ Despite the talk of improved relations between Iran and the United States, the recent arrest of 13 Iranian Jews on trumped-up charges of spying for America and Israel clearly reveals virulent religious persecution is alive and well in the land of the ayatollahs.

The 13 Jews, including the chief rabbi of the city of Shiraz and teachers and students at the local Jewish school, face the death penalty if found guilty of alleged espionage on behalf of the”big devil”(the United States) and the”little devil”(Israel).

Radio Tehran said the arrested suspects had spied on behalf of”world arrogance,”a euphemism for the United States. In 1997 Iran hanged two people who were convicted of spying for the United States and Israel.

The Israeli government has emphatically denied the charges and said it”is deeply worried about the arrests, which have occurred only because these people are Jewish. We demand their immediate release.” The State Department is treating the arrests as”a religious persecution and human rights issue.”President Clinton’s Middle East adviser Bruce Rydell said the espionage charges are baseless.

Germany, the current president of the European Union, is seeking the release of the Iranian Jews. Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi, Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, has communicated his concern to Pope John Paul II, Morocco’s King Hassan and the head of Al-Azhar, the Islamic study center in Cairo, Egypt.

American Christian leaders have also spoken out, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson; the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches; and Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, chairman of the U.S. Catholic Conference’s international policy committee.

When the ayatollahs came to power in 1979, nearly half of Iran’s 100,000 Jews escaped to lands of freedom and since then another 25,000 have left. Today, about 27,000 Jews remain and emigration is extremely difficult.

Harassment has increased recently, and some observers believe the spy charges are part of a power struggle between Islamic extremists and political moderates. As usual, Jews provide a convenient scapegoat for a government that needs domestic enemies to explain away a disastrous economic situation.

However, the agony of the 13 Jews is part of a larger pattern of persecution inside Iran.

In its 1998 report on human rights practices, the State Department charged that Iran’s government restricts freedom of religion. Approximately 90 percent of Iran’s population are Shiite Muslims, the country’s”official religion.”The remaining 10 percent are Sunni Muslims, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and Baha’is.

Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, adherents of”divine religions,”are considered”protected minorities,”but Iran’s 350,000 Baha’is lack even that second-class status. They are denied the right to religiously educate their children and conduct funerals. Many Baha’i gravestones have been destroyed. Baha’i marriages are not officially recognized, leaving women open to charges of prostitution. And children of Baha’i marriages are considered illegitimate and denied their inheritance rights.

Last October three Baha’is were arrested in the city of Damavand on the grounds they had buried their dead without government authorization.

Evangelical Christians are also oppressed in Iran. There are reports of armed government agents entering an Assembly of God service in Tehran and demanding worshippers’ identity papers. The intent was to discover whether Muslims were present or, worse, whether the Christians had engaged in conversionary practices aimed at Muslims.

One hopes that immediate pressure from world governments and religious institutions will be strong enough to prevent a new round of obscene”show trials”that are always an integral part of totalitarian regimes.

Unfortunately, the plight of the 13 Iranian Jews sounds painfully familiar. In 1970, the Soviet Union arrested some of its Jewish citizens and falsely charged them with hijacking an airplane so they could fly to Israel. Then, as now, the prisoners were threatened with capital punishment.

The world’s outcry prevented such a travesty of justice, and many historians trace the beginning of the worldwide Soviet Jewry movement to the horrific 1970 arrests. Once again, an aroused world community, already disgusted with Iran’s wretched human rights record since the Islamic revolution in 1979, is being called upon to save innocent lives.

What is urgently needed is an organized and effective global outcry against the brutal Iranian government. As in past cases, that effort must be led by our Congress, president, State Department and religious leaders. The time to act and to speak out is now.

DEA END RUDIN