ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an inversion of what is usually considered the typical example of cultural genocide. When Raphael Lemkin first conceptualized the crime of genocide, he envisaged a systematic and synchronized attack on a people that was multi-faceted, including physical and cultural elements. The chapter focuses on the manner in which the present regime in Iran has waged a campaign of cultural genocide against the Baha’i community since it came to power in 1979, and the manner in which the Baha’is have met the threat. When Mohammad Reza Pahlavi ascended the throne in 1941, he relaxed the iron grip of his father, allowing the creation of fiercely anti-Baha’i organizations by the Islamic clerics. The phase of persecutions of the Iranian Baha’i community began under the present Islamic government of Iran which came to power in 1979. The Islamic government perceives the Baha’i community as an ideological threat to its world-view.
