Iranian Authorities raid an online learning network June 15th, 2011
[movements.org, MAY 25, 2011] BY ASHIYAN RAHMANI-SHIRAZI
This past weekend, amidst continued, under-the-radar simmering of Green Movement activities, an online educational network for Baha’i youth was raided. The Baha’i[s] are, at about 300,000 people, the largest non-Muslim religious minority in Iran.
It’s the policy of the Iranian regime that no Baha’I is allowed to have access to higher education. Anyone found to be a student at a higher education institution is immediately expelled. That’s why, in an effort to meet the educational needs of young people, an effort was made to establish what has now become the ‘Baha’I Institute for Higher Education’, to give these otherwise capable, but excluded youth access to education via online distance learning. The BIHE has been described by the New York Times as “an elaborate act of communal self-preservation.”Bahai’I young people have been able to access courses taught by professors from all corners of the world using the open course management system Moodle.
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