It is difficult to imagine a purer strain of religious intolerance than the fanaticism that pervades Iran's leadership class. It is just as difficult to conjure a purer essence of tolerance than that which distinguishes the Bahais, who recognize Abraham, Krishna, Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad as divine messengers; who preach pluralism, equality between the sexes, universal education and the harmonization of secular and religious knowledge; and who stress the oneness of humanity, to the point of explicitly encouraging interracial marriage.

Intolerance hates tolerance most of all. At the very moment Unesco has chosen to recognize what it calls the "outstanding universal value" of the Carmel shrines and what they stand for, the mullahs are moved to persecute these believers who emerged from the very heart of Islam -- and who represent a future that fanatical Islam has so disastrously chosen to reject.