“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Then yesterday I read a long newspaper account of how the members of the Bahai faith in Iran are being severely persecuted by the government and the Shiite clergy. Why, I wondered as I began to read, are Iranians harassing a whole group of other Iranians in such unpleasant ways—really seeking to exterminate them? The hatred the Shiites hold for the Bahais is based upon a century-old, primitive religious zealotry. Even though they too worship but a single God and the Koran, the Bahais are too liberal, too heretical in their peaceful and progressive ways; they are called unpatriotic and secular; some Bahais are attacked, dispossessed, lynched or executed, it seems, every day.

Six weeks ago in Tehran, the capital city of Iran, over 150 officials of the ruling Islamic Republican Party were killed by bomb explosions which destroyed their headquarters building. At first revolutionary zealots blamed the “Great Satan”—America—for the crime. They also accused Iraq, with whom Iran is at war, but it’s almost certain that one of the dozen or more Iranian underground revolutionary groups is responsible. [The most powerful one, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, for example, is a Marxist-based guerrilla organization of “People’s Crusaders” that espouses its own brand of radical Islamic republicanism.] The mass killing resulted in an immediate increase in the government’s campaign to eliminate opponents of clerical [Shiite] rule in Iran. Over 70 dissidents had already been executed by the time of the blasts; many others have been arrested since.

[...] Mohammed, the founder of the Moslem religion, died in 632; conflicts over his successor led to an overall division of the religion into the Shiite and Sunni branches (although this is a simplification). But this great split is also a factor in the current challenges being explored by the two nations: Iran is ruled by Shiite Moslems, Iraq by the Sunni.

In a passionate, bloody series of events later in the seventh century, a split occurred in which the Moslem religion was divided into two main branches, the Shiite and the Sunni. Now Iran is ruled by the Shiites, and is religiously oriented; Iraq is ruled by the Sunnis, and is more secular and socialistic. [...] There is much disillusionment in Iran over the excesses of the Shiite clergy. [...]