BAHAʾI FAITH

Baha ʾism is a religion founded in the second half of the 1860s by an Iranian Babi, Mirza Hosayn Ali
Nuri (1817–1892), known as Baha ʾullah (the Glory of God).

Bahaʾism grew out of the millenarian (messianic) Babi movement that began in the 1840s.
Bahaʾullah, a Babi nobleman, had been exiled for his beliefs to Baghdad in the Ottoman Empire in
1853. He declared himself in 1863 to a small group of close relatives and disciples as the messianic
figure promised in Babism, "He whom God shall make manifest." He was exiled to Istanbul (1863), to
Edirne (1864–1868), and finally to Acre in Ottoman Syria (1868–1892). From about 1864 he began
sending letters back to Babis in Iran, announcing his station. He later asserted that he was the
fulfillment of millenarian hopes, not only in Babism, but in Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and in
other traditions as well. Within a decade or so the vast majority of Babis had become Bahaʾis.

Bahaʾullah, in an age of Middle Eastern absolutism, advocated parliamentary democracy. His own
religion lacked a formal clergy, and he put executive power in the hands of community-steering
committees he called "houses of justice," which later became elective bodies. Bahaʾullah preached
the unity of religions, progressive revelation, and the unity of humankind. He urged peace, criticized
states for engaging in arms races, and advocated a world government able to employ collective
security to prevent aggression. He said all Baha ʿis should school their children, both boys and girls,
and he improved the position of women, saying that in his religion women are as men. Bahaʾi
women are not constrained to practice veiling or seclusion. The initial social base of the movement
was the urban middle and lower-middle classes and small landowners who had been Babis.
Merchant clans who claimed descent from the prophet Muhammad (Sayyids) emerged as especially
important in the leadership of the Bahaʾi community in Iran. Substantial numbers of Shiʿites, Jews,
and Zoroastrians also became Bahaʾis throughout Iran.

Bahaʾullah was succeeded by his eldest son, Abduʾl-Baha, who presided over the religion from 1892
to 1921. By 1900, the community had recovered from the persecution of the 1850s and had reached
from 50,000 to 100,000 out of a population of 9 million. Shiʿite clerics and notables agitated against
the Bahaʾi faith, and major pogroms broke out in 1903 in Rasht, Isfahan, and Yazd. In 1905, the
Constitutional Revolution broke out in Iran. Abduʾl-Baha at first supported it, but later declared his
community's neutrality. Nonintervention in party politics then became a Bahaʾi policy. The religion
spread internationally. Restricted to the Middle East and South Asia in Bahaʾullah's lifetime, it now
spread to Europe, North America, East Asia, Africa, and South America.

From 1921 to 1957, the Bahaʾi faith was led by Shoghi Effendi Rabbani, Abduʾl-Baha's grandson, from
his headquarters in Haifa, Palestine/Israel. Thereafter, from 1963, the worldwide Bahaʾi community
periodically elected a central body, the Universal House of Justice, as prescribed in Bahaʾullah's
writings. The religion developed close ties with the United Nations, and it is recognized as a
nongovernmental observer. In Iran, the rise of the Pahlavi state from 1925 to 1978, and a more
secular policy had both benefits and drawbacks for Bahaʾis in Iran. Greater security and a decreased
clerical influence produced less violence toward them, although they continued to face harassment.
The authoritarianism of the Pahlavi state also led to tight restrictions on Bahaʾi activities and
publications, and occasional state persecution, as in 1955.

By an accident of history (Bahaʾullah's Ottoman exile), the world headquarters of the religion since
the nineteenth century, Haifa, are now in Israel, although less than a thousand Bahaʾis live in that
country. Critics of the Bahaʾis in the region charge them with being Zionist agents, but Bahaʾis point
to their principle of nonintervention in partisan politics. Israel has granted Bahaʾis freedom of
religion, as it has other religious communities, and no evidence of political collusion has ever been
produced. In the 1960s, the rise of authoritarian populist regimes stressing Arab nationalism led to
the persecution of Bahaʾis in Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Arab world, a situation that
continues to this day.

In Iran, by 1978, the Bahaʾi community numbered around 300,000 out of a population of 35 million.
Most Bahaʾis were lower-middle and middle class, although they included a few prominent
millionaires. The Islamic Republic of Iran launched an extensive campaign against the Bahaʾis from
1979 through 1988. Many Muslim clerics despised the Bahaʾis as heretics and apostates, whose
beliefs posed a dire threat to traditional Islam. Iran executed nearly 200 prominent Bahaʾis for their
beliefs and imprisoned hundreds more. Bahaʾi investments and philanthropies were confiscated.
Bahaʾis were denied ration cards, excluded from state schools and universities, and often forced to
recant their faith. After 1988, most were released from prison but still suffer widespread official
discrimination in Iran.

As the religion has grown in India and the Americas, the often persecuted and constrained Middle
Eastern communities have come to represent less than 10 percent of Bahaʾis worldwide—estimated
in 2001 at 5 million.

see also arab nationalism; babis; constitutional revolution; muhammad; zoroastrianism.

BAHĀ'Ī FAİTH

Bahā'ī Faith. A religion founded by Bahā'u'llāh in the 1860s. After his death in 1892, it was led
successively by his eldest son, ʿAbdu'l-Bahā (from 1892 to 1921), his great grandson, Shoghi Effendi
(from 1922 to 1957), and then (in 1963, after a brief ‘interregnum’) by an elected body, the Universal
House of Justice.

Claiming to be the promised one of all religions, and preaching a message of global socio-religious
reform, Bahā'u'llāh initially drew his followers from amongst the Bābīs, most of whom became
Bahā'īs. Significant expansion in the non-Muslim Third World began in the 1950s and 1960s, Bahā'īs
from these areas now constituting the majority of the world's five million Bahā'īs.

Bahā'ī is monotheistic, but as God is regarded as in essence completely transcendent and

unknowable, religious doctrine centres on the belief in a series of ‘Manifestations of God’ (mazāḥir-i
ilāhī). These individuals reflect and manifest the attributes of God and progressively reveal the divine
purpose for humankind. The Manifestations include Abraham, Moses, Zoroaster, Gautama Buddha,
Jesus, Muḥammad, the Bāb, and for the present age, Bahā'u'llāh. At a societal level, the present age
is regarded as unique. The unity of all the peoples and religions of the earth is the destined hallmark
of the age.

Religious life centres on various individual acts of devotion (daily obligatory prayer and moral self-
accounting, an annual nineteen-day fast), and a communal ‘Feast’ held once every nineteen days at
the beginning of each month in the Bahā'ī calendar. Bahā'ī communities come together to
commemorate various Holy Days, including the Bahā'ī New Year at the vernal equinox (usually 21
Mar.), and the Ridvān festival (21 Apr.–2 May) marking the anniversary of Bahā'u'llāh's first
declaration of his mission (1863). With no priesthood, administration rests with locally and
nationally elected councils (‘Spiritual Assemblies’), supreme authority resting with the Universal
House of Justice.