Maziar Bahari Film To Light A Candle Highlights Iranian Abuses of Bahá'ís

Newsweek's Iranian correspondent Maziar Bahari's newest documentary, To Light A Candle, will be screened on Saturday at St. Helen's Hall in Bend. Bahari has been in the media most recently due to The Daily Show's Jon Stewart's film Rosewater, a retelling of Bahari's 118 days of detention and torture in Iran.

His new film focuses on the persecution of the people of the Bahá'í faith in Iran and tells the stories of the individuals that were effected by the closing down of the Bahá'í Institute for Higher Education. During the 1979 expulsion of the Bahá'í professors and students by the Islamic government, instead of capitulating out of fear of death and imprisonment, they instead created a unique religious university, the Bahá'í Institute for Higher Education in 1987. Now the BIHE offers 17 degree programs and has a faculty close to a thousand. Bahá'ís remain barred from higher education in Iran. 

The film is being shown across the country as part of a global Education is Not A Crime campaign and is being made possible through a joint partnership between the Interfaith Network of Central Oregon and the Central Oregon Bahá'í community and is free to everyone.