Apartheid was mostly about the state, systematic and legal application of racist policies against blacks in South Africa. The result of this racist discrimination was the rise of the anti-apartheid movement, which eventually led to the release of freedom fighter Nelson Mandela after 27 years in prison in 1990 after years of struggle against the apartheid regime. Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999 and became a symbol of the struggle against racism and freedom and passed away on December 5, 2013.

The same apartheid policy and actions are being implemented in Iran against the Kurdish nation. However, this fact is not visible to the Western world. Apartheid is more commonly known as “racism,” but in the Islamic Republic of Iran, apartheid has taken on a state, systematic, legal, and religious form.

We talk about apartheid in Iran because much of the discrimination in Iran is based on both the constitution and laws passed by the Islamic Consultative Assembly and state resolutions. In fact, discrimination is legal and organized in Iran.

 Apartheid in the Islamic Republic begins with the country's constitution. The Islamic Republic is a religious republic whose religion is Islam. According to Article 13 of the Iranian Constitution, the country's official religion is the Shiite Twelfth[1]. In other words, there is no such thing as human beings in Iran under the Islamic regime, just as in South Africa it was not “human beings” who had rights, but “race” and “white people” who had all rights.