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A group of local Baha'is held a prayer service at the Argyle Local Park in Silver Spring last week to pray for the safety and release of seven members of their religion who are being held by the Iranian government on charges of espionage.

Baha'is all around the world deny these charges and maintain that those arrested have done nothing wrong. Instead, they say their arrest is the capstone of decades of persecution of the Baha'i faith in Iran, according to members of the Baha'is of Silver Spring, many of whom are refugees from Iran.

"It's more or less ethnic cleansing," said Brian Penoyer, the chairman of the 60 or so members of the Baha'is of Silver Spring.

The seven arrested have been in Iranian custody for the past eight months. Last week, the Iranian government officially announced they were being charged with espionage, according to international news reports.

Before their arrest, the seven served as unofficial leaders of the Baha'i faith, which is one of the youngest monotheistic religions in the world. The Baha'i religion was founded in the mid-19th century in what was then Persia. There are about 500 Baha'is in Montgomery County, Penoyer said, and 165,000 in the United States, with about 5 million more around the world.

Iran has not recognized the religion since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, a situation that has prevented the hundreds of thousands of Baha'is in the country from getting jobs, leaving the country and having a higher education, say members of the Baha'is of Silver Spring.

More than 20 Baha'is and their friends held their own service in Olney on Friday to pray for the release of their fellow believers and the worsening human rights situation in Iran, said Olney resident Ali Afnan.

Not only did they pray for the seven administrative leaders of their faith who have been charged with spying for Israel and denied access to their attorney, the Nobel Laureate, Shirin Ebadi, they also prayed for another 30 or so other Baha'is who are imprisoned in Iran because of their religion. Close to 80 more Baha'is, have been required to post deeds of property and business licenses as collateral for bail. They have likewise been falsely charged and are awaiting trial, Afnan said.

Vahdat Marghi fled Iran for the United States with his family about nine years ago because of persecution.

Before the prayer service Friday night, he described life in Iran as a Baha'i, saying members of the faith were denied basic human rights.

"We never feel safe. We never feel absolutely, 100 percent safe," he said.

Marghi said on just about every application an Iranian citizen fills out — from marriage and birth certificates to job and college applications to passports — there is a line for religion.

To fill it in with Baha'i, Marghi said, means you will automatically be denied what you are applying for.

A basic tenet of the Baha'i faith is honesty, which put Marghi and thousands of others in quite a quandary, he said.

"As a Baha'i, we always say the truth, sign the truth, write the truth. We don't have any secrets," he said.

To attend public school, Marghi's son, now a junior at Montgomery Blair High School, couldn't speak to his friends or teachers about his religion. Many Baha'i children in Iran are taught inside houses secretly, Penoyer said.

Sadi Sahbazian considers herself one of the lucky ones: When she was 7, she escaped to Turkey with her Turkish mother. Her Iranian father was left behind, she said, and many of her friends in Turkey crossed the mountainous border illegally.

Penoyer said within the past two years, there has been a marked increase in the repression of the Baha'is, as Baha'i cemeteries are destroyed, Baha'i literature is burned and holy sites are desecrated.

"You can't misconstrue their intent" to eradicate the Baha'i faith, he said.

As Marghi's fingers traced the faces of a photo of the seven arrested, he ticked off their names and families — many of them he had known, he said.

Marghi and others said they are both baffled and not surprised by their arrest.

They, and others before them, acted as unofficial advocates for the religion under the eyes of the Iranian government for 30 years without problems, Marghi said.

But the continued disenfranchisement of an already disenfranchised religion in Iran was just the next logical step, Sahbazian said.

And so the Baha'is of Silver Spring hoped their prayers for international peace and oneness of mankind were heard Friday night.

"Just one of the many series of an entire of chain of prayer flowing throughout the globe," Penoyer said.

What can you do?

The Baha'i community of

Silver Spring is asking for help to protest the imprisonment of seven members of the religion by the Iranian government. They recommend calling your congressional representative to voice your concern for

the Iranian Baha'i leaders

and ask them to support House Resolution 175, condemning the recent actions of the Iranian government.

You can also monitor events regularly by visiting http://iran.bahai.us

or ww.bahai.org.