Photo Banned - Newspaper Closed

It is odd that a travel advertisement can shut down a newspaper. This wouldn’t happen in Topeka and it didn’t happen here. But it did happen earlier this month in another capital (which, oddly, also starts with the letter ‘T’) in another land. That capital is Tehran.
The action did not surprise one Topeka resident who grew up in Tehran. Mahin Stanley left Tehran in the 1960s in pursuit of education and more opportunities than were possible for women in Iran at that time. Now the times are worse.
Before leaving Tehran, Mahin watched members of the Iranian military and clergy take pick axes to the dome of the national Baha’i Center just down the street from her home. At the time an art display was exhibited inside in which a drawing of hers was entered. Needless to say, she never saw her drawing again. The building was seized for a time, trashed, then returned to the Bahá’ís (but only after Bahá’ís in thousands of communities around the world objected. Bahá’ís in Topeka sent telegrams directly to the Shah of Iran and President Eisenhower asking for the persecution to be curtailed.).
For the last thirty years the situation has been worse. Not only was the national center seized again, as well as all other Bahá’Í owned property in the country (including cemeteries, homes and businesses of individuals) but hundreds of Bahá’ís have been murdered and more tortured. Today a couple dozen Bahá’ís are in prison, some for over a year, on such charges as “spreading corruption on earth,” “provoking in insanctaties” and supporting Zionism.
What on earth can they mean?
“Supporting Zionism” is easy to understand. The world center of the Bahá’í Faith is located in Haifa, just as the Vatican is located in Rome. That location in Haifa is the result of a decree of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire in 1868. Bahá’ís today are being killed for it.
This is rational?
“Provoking insanctaties.” This term has no meaning to most people, but in Iran it is a capital crime. It means, as far as I can tell, that Bahá’ís do not revere Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) as the last Messenger of God. No. Bahá’ís believe Bahá’u’lláh to be the most recent Messenger of God.
In American, and most of the world, that is one’s choice. In Iran it is a capital crime and hundreds have died (and for those who are already dead, the cemeteries are bulldozed).
“Spreading corruption on earth,” is similar but can only happen in Muslim countries such as Iran. In such countries, add Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the government does not marry people or perform other actions of that nature, they are conducted solely by the religions community. And in most of those countries existence of the Bahá’í Faith cannot be acknowledged (because there can be no Prophet after Muhammad and it is illegal to think differently). The result of this is that Bahá’í marriages are not recognized as valid so every Bahá’í husband and wife is in an adulterous relationship and all the children are illegitimate – and has been so since the nineteenth century!
And what does this have to do with a travel advertisement that shut down a newspaper? The ad was promoting travel to India. The ad featured the most visited building in India (the Taj Mahal is now second) that has won international acclaim. This building, in the shape of a lotus blossom surrounded by pools of water, happens to be the Bahá’í House of Worship in New Delhi.
And the alarms sounded!!!
The Bahá’í Faith does NOT exist (despite it being the largest minority religion in Iran), therefore there can be no photo of a Bahá’í building in a newspaper in Iran!
The fact that it was the newspaper with the highest circulation in Iran is also very interesting – and the photo ad was on the front page!
No wonder the newspaper, Hamshahri, was shut down!
And life in a totalitarian state lurches on. In just the past ten years 120 newspapers and other news outlets have been shut down with editors and reporters jailed and murdered. Most closures have been permanent. This time, oddly, the closure was only for one day. Very curious.