Praying in a private home is customary for members of the Baha’i faith. That is because in their native Iran, practicing their religion in any visible place of worship could lead to their death. And so, as refugees in Mesa, Arizona, a small seven-person cadre of Baha’i faithful practice their religion every Saturday in the home of Manijeh Shahidi Clarke.
As reported in AZ Central, a website affiliated with USA Today, the 76-year-old Clarke, herself a refugee who fled Iran more than 30 years ago, fully understands the plight of her guests. In Iran, the Baha’i are regarded as heretics.
Since the 1979 revolution in Iran, government authorities there have killed or executed 200 Baha’i leaders, according to the 2017 annual report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. An estimated 10,000 Baha’i have been dismissed from jobs or prevented from pursuing higher education, and over the past decade, nearly 1,000 members of this religion have been arbitrarily arrested.
Since 1979, some 2,000 Iranian refugees have arrived in Arizona, according to the state’s Department of Economic Security, which oversees its refugee resettlement program.
“For me, it happened when I was in middle school,” recalls Farzaneh Barati, a 44-year-old woman who fled Iran for the U.S. in July 2008. She was excluded from her middle-school cooking class. When she asked why, her teacher told her, “You are Baha’i and you are untouchable.”
After arriving in Arizona, Barati graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in health sciences.
She looks back with sadness to her time in Iran when, as a 15-year-old student, she was asked in a written exam to admit she was Baha’i. In doing so, she knew that she would be disqualified from continuing her education in Iran. “That means no job, no future, no career,” she says.
Barati admitted the truth anyway, against the advice of her own mother. “I had a very strong feeling that this is the right faith,” she adds. “It talked about unity and peace and kindness, truthfulness—all those qualities that made me choose to be a Baha’i.”
Shahidi Clarke had a similar experience in Iran: because of her faith she was fired from her high school teaching job and had to make ends meet by knitting. She still owns one of the sweater and caps she made to support herself in Iran.
Today, she celebrates her new life by opening her home to fellow refugees, so they may profess their faith in safety and without persecution.
