Religious Minorities in Iran. By Eliz Sanasarian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 249p. $59.95.

Extract

Eliz Sanasarian's book is a welcome addition to the growing number of books on Iran since the Islamic Republic replaced the monarchy in 1979. She deals with an important yet little-covered subject: how religious minorities fare under an Islamic government. Just as Sanasarian's first book, The Women's Rights Movement in Iran, broke new ground and added much to our knowledge about of the status of women under the monarchy and the first few years of the Islamic Republic, Religious Minorities in Iran also fills a gap in scholarship. Some books and articles have been published since the Islamic revolution on Iranian Jews and Bahais, but little has appeared on Iran's Zoroastrian and Armenian communities, and virtually nothing on Iran's Chaldeans and Assyrians. No one has treated all the religious minorities in one volume. (Sansarian is, of course, dealing with religious minorities, not ethnic communities such as the Arabs, Kurds, Baluchis, Turks, and others.)