As the 21st century opens, the Baha'i religion has emerged in all parts of the globe as an independent world faith, with its own scriptures, laws, and community of believers who have a distinctive pattern of worship and community life. Its character as an independent religion has been recognized by the highest civil and religious authorities of many nations in both the East and West. Academics and scholars have confirmed this finding from the perspectives of history, sociology and the comparative study of religions. Civil authorities in more than 180 countries have recognized the religious character of Baha'i institutions and have permitted their legal incorporation. International agencies, national and local governments, interfaith groups and organizations of civil society around the globe have recognized the Baha'i Faith’s independent status and praised its contributions to social advancement, particularly in the promotion of communal harmony, the advancement of women, moral education, and sustainable development.
Born in the mid-19th century in the matrix of Islamic culture and civilization, the Baha'i Faith has become in a little over a century and a half the second-most geographically widespread religion in the world. Several independent studies of religious demographics have confirmed that the Baha'is have significant communities in more countries and territories than any religion, second only to Christianity. History offers few parallels to this dramatic birth of a new faith from the bosom of a parent religion. The rise of Christianity out of the Jewish faith and, to a lesser degree, the development of Buddhism from the Hindu tradition, offer illustrative examples of the process whereby a new religious message, initially delivered within a particular social and cultural context, quickly transcends these limitations and gains universal appeal among peoples of many nations.
The fact that this development has occurred in modern times enables the student of religion to obtain from authentic historical records a correct appraisal of the Baha'i religion’s independent character and of its aims and objectives. As the Baha'i Faith still struggles in the land of its birth, and indeed throughout much of the Muslim world, to break free from the shackles of religious prejudice and ignorance, it is well to review some of the milestones in this process of gradual emancipation and recognition over the past 150 years.
The earliest adherents of the Baha'i religion were drawn from the Shaykhí school of Shí‘ah Islám in mid-19th century Iran. Observing the degradation and corruption into which Persian society had fallen, they developed an eschatology based on the imminent fulfillment of messianic traditions contained in the Qur’án. On the evening of 22 May 1844, Siyyid ‘Alí-Muhammad, a 25-year-old merchant in the city of Shíráz, Iran, spoke to their expectations when he made the dramatic declaration that he was the Báb, or the “gate” through which a new religious dispensation would appear. He called for the spiritual and moral reformation of society in preparation for the coming of a universal Messenger of God, One Who would bring about the long-awaited age of peace and justice on earth. The Báb is considered the Herald or Forerunner of Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Baha'i Faith.
The Báb’s declaration produced an upheaval in Persian society as thousands from all classes and walks of life embraced His Cause. His prescription for spiritual renewal, His promotion of education and the useful sciences, and His call for the emancipation of women put forth the vision of an entirely new society and stirred intense fear within the religious and secular establishments. Accordingly, persecution of the Bábis quickly developed. One of the Báb’s leading disciples, the renowned poetess Táhirih, boldly removed her veil in a gathering of men and proclaimed that the new age then dawning would require women and men to work in equal partnership to establish a just society. Before she was put to death, she told her persecutors, “You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women”. More than 20,000 other early adherents were killed in a series of bloody repressions. In 1850 the Báb himself was executed by order of the clerics and civil authorities by a regiment of 750 soldiers in the courtyard of the Tabríz army barracks.
By the early 1850s it seemed that the Persian authorities had succeeded in stamping out the Bábí community. A small band of dispirited survivors, many in exile in neighboring Iraq, found solace in the leadership of one of the Báb’s leading disciples, Who had escaped death owing to the high position of His family. The son of a minister in the court of the Shah, Mírzá Husayn ‘Alíy-Núrí embraced the message of the Báb in his late twenties and adopted the title Bahá’u’lláh (the Glory of God). He was tortured, stripped of His possessions, imprisoned in a dungeon in Tihrán, and finally exiled to Baghdad. There, over a period of years, His leadership revived the Bábí community and made it an example of uprightness and industriousness. Because of His growing influence, the Persian authorities asked the Ottoman administration to remove Him farther from their border. He was exiled to Constantinople, then to Adrianople, and finally condemned to perpetual confinement in the prison-city of Acre in Ottoman Palestine.
On the eve of His banishment from Baghdad to Constantinople in 1863, He declared to a small group of Bábís that He was the universal Manifestation of God foretold by the Báb. The majority of the Bábís recognized His claim and became known as Baha'is. Already at this early stage, the Baha'i religion was transcending the bounds of its Islamic origins. Bahá’u’lláh’s claim to fulfill the prophetic traditions of all the scriptures of old, and not only the Qur’án, resonated with the longings and expectations of peoples from many religious, ethnic, and national backgrounds. By the time Bahá’u’lláh passed away in 1892, thousands of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Buddhists and Hindus, in addition to Muslims, from Egypt to Burma had embraced His Cause.
Many of the early Baha'i communities developed in Muslim countries that did not have civil codes of law. Instead, civil affairs, such as marriage and inheritance, were handled within each religious community by its own religious courts. The appearance of a new religious community with its own laws and practices led to various degrees of conflict and accommodation with the civil authorities in various parts of the Muslim world.
As early as 1925, a Muslim court in Egypt, faced with the question of administering a Baha'i marriage, and after a lengthy process of investigation, ruled that “All these [investigations] prove definitely that the Baha'i religion is a new religion, with an independent platform and laws and institutions peculiar to it…. Nor can we state a Baha'i to be a Muslim, or the reverse; as we cannot say of a Buddhist or a Brahman or a Christian that he is a Muslim or the reverse…” A religious court in Sudan ruled in 1958 on a similar case that the Baha'i Faith “is a religion other than Islám, and that Baha'is, while bearing names which may appear to be Muslim or Christian names, belong to an independent Faith”. And in Pakistan, the Provisional Constitution was amended in 1981 to define a “non-Muslim” person as “a person who is not a Muslim, and includes a person belonging to the Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist or Parsi community, … or a Baha'i…”.
Over the years, court rulings in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey and other Muslim countries have confirmed the independent character of the Baha'i religion. In 1970, for example, a civil rights court in Kadikoy, Turkey, heard an appeal from the Baha'i community regarding its right to register its property. The court stated that “we cannot classify the Baha'i Faith under the Muslim order, and it has never been mentioned as a Muslim order”. The court found that the Baha'i Faith has all the attributes of a religion, including a holy book, a worldview, a specific form of worship, a community, and a prophet. The ruling continued: “When we find a community believing in a religion, it is not our concern to look at its origin and its development and to the opposition by non-believers of that religion. If we do not base our criteria on historical and sociological angles, we can claim the same doubts about any religion other than our own.” The court ruled unanimously that the Baha'is had the right to register their endowments as a religious community.
In the 1960s and 70s several courts in Turkey recognized the Baha'i Faith as an independent religion when ruling in favor of the right of individuals to have their faith identified as “Baha'i” in their personal identity cards. For example, the Court of Law of Ghazi Antab ruled in 1971 that “The Baha'i religion exists in the Western world, and the Baha'is have Temples. They have special gatherings and organizations. Therefore, it is necessary that we should recognize the Baha'i religion as an independent faith. Although in Islamic belief there should be no prophet after the Islamic one, this does not mean that we should not recognize the Baha'i Faith as a religion. Moreover, the general and social situation of the Turkish nation will necessitate the recognition of the Baha'i Faith as an independent religion.” The significance of such rulings for the Muslim world is the precedent they have set for recognizing a religious community on the basis of objective criteria and the rule of law, rather than on the basis of competing claims of religious truth.
In the West, the existence of clearly defined codes of civil law has for the most part enabled Baha'i communities to legally incorporate the institutions of their Faith as religious or charitable organizations. The Faith’s administrative system, the organizing principles of which are set out in the Faith’s authentic Scriptures, consists of elected councils at the local, national and international levels. The path to the legal recognition of this administrative system was spearheaded by the North American Baha'i community, which in 1927 prepared a document entitled “Declaration of Trust and By-Laws of the National Spiritual Assembly”. This document became the model for the legal incorporation of the elected councils that govern the Faith at the national level in more than 180 countries. The North American community drew up a similar declaration for local Baha'i councils, which now exist in more than 13,000 cities and towns around the world. In 1949, when the American and Canadian Baha'i communities became separate entities, the governing body of the latter was formally recognized by a special act of the Canadian Parliament.
The Baha'i administrative system has so many unique features and is so different from the organizational structure of other religions that in some countries difficulties were encountered in conveying to the authorities a clear understanding of the nature of the Baha'i institutions. Thus such institutions were prevented from obtaining a status accorded to other religious bodies under civil law. A landmark case in Germany in 1991 highlighted incompatibilities between Baha'i constitutional law and German civil law resulting in a legal conflict that was appealed to the German Federal Constitutional Court. Lower courts had ruled that the Baha'is had to change their administrative structure to conform to German civil law. The Baha'is claimed that this requirement would violate their right to freedom of belief and worship, as protected in Article 4 of the German Constitution.
In its ruling, the Federal Constitutional Court explained that the mere assertion of a community that it is a religious community would not be sufficient for it to submit such a constitutional appeal. The authorities would have to examine in each case whether it is really a religion and a religious community, according to spiritual content and external appearances. The Court stated: “In the present case it is not necessary to go more deeply into this, as the character of the Baha'i Faith as a religion and the Baha'i community as a religious community is evident, in actual everyday life, cultural tradition, and in the understanding of the general public as well as the science of comparative religion.”
The Court reviewed in detail the constitutional right to freedom of religious organization and came to the conclusion that it was possible, within the framework of German civil law governing incorporations, to give special considerations to the religious requirements governing the internal organization of a religious community. The positive decision rested in large measure on the recognition that the Baha'i administrative organization was based on revealed law that formed an indispensable part of the religion. This landmark decision has assisted judicial authorities in other countries to appreciate both the stature of the Baha'i Faith as an independent religion, as well as the central place of its elected institutions in its religious identity.
In Iran, where persecution of the Faith intensified after the 1979 Islamic revolution, the Faith’s administrative institutions were banned in the early 1980s. The Iranian government never recognized the Baha'i Faith as a religion, and therefore its members, numbering some 350,000, are not accorded the same minimal protections given to members of other minority religions, such as Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians. The Islamic government views the Faith as a heresy and as a subversive movement. The government’s policy, approved at the highest levels, has been to destroy the Faith as a viable religious community. Hundreds of Baha'is have been executed; thousands have been tortured and imprisoned. Community properties have been confiscated and holy places destroyed. The entire community has been denied basic civil rights, such as the right to own property, practice professions, attend universities, and bury their dead.
This systematic campaign of genocide has drawn the sympathy and concern of governments and international organizations for the past two decades. Beginning in the mid-1980s, annual resolutions have been passed by both the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations General Assembly, calling for the “complete emancipation” of the Iranian Baha'i community. Presidents, prime ministers, parliaments and legislatures throughout the world have called on the Iranian government to recognize and emancipate the Baha'i community.
In the United States, the United States Congress has passed eight concurrent resolutions calling for the emancipation of the Iranian Baha'i community. Presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Bill Clinton all publicly expressed their alarm and dismay at the continuing repression of the Baha'is. In 1998, President Clinton called for the formation of a Federal Commission on International Religious Freedom to advise the United States government on its policies to protect and advance religious freedom around the world. In a significant sign of the recognition that the Baha'i Faith had achieved, President Clinton appointed a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States to the nine-member commission. Other members of the commission represented the Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities in the United States. The Baha'i representative was reappointed to the commission in 2001 when the initial two-year term expired.
Throughout the 1980s and 90s, the United Nations, governments and nongovernmental organizations increasingly recognized the positive role the Faith was playing in the areas of social and economic development around the world. In 1992, in a message to 30,000 Baha'is who gathered in New York City to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the passing of Bahá’u’lláh, President George Bush called to mind the persecution of the Baha'is in Iran and praised the humanitarian principles of the Faith. “Baha'i teachings on religious tolerance, the unity of mankind, the elimination of prejudice, equality of the sexes, and universal peace embody principles that all people of goodwill admire and support,” he said. “As you salute the life and writings of Bahá’u’lláh, I join with you in praying that we may see the realization of these fundamental principles in every land.”
The 100th anniversary of the passing of Bahá’u’lláh was also commemorated by the Brazilian Federal Chamber of Deputies in a solemn special session in which representatives of the various parties in the legislature rose, one after another, to give tribute to Bahá’u’lláh and to the benevolent influence His Teachings have had on Brazilian society. The Chamber referred to Bahá’u’lláh’s Writings as “the most colossal religious work ever produced by the pen of a single Man”.
Another example of such recognition came in the form of a judgment by the Supreme Court of India in 1995, in the wake of a religious dispute between Hindus and Muslims. A crisis erupted when a group of Hindus razed the Babri mosque in the town of Ayodha because it had been erected, in 1528, on the spot where the Hindu god Rama was said to have been born thousands of years earlier. Muslim and Hindu mobs attacked each other’s homes and houses of worship, resulting in the deaths of hundreds and the destruction of property in Pakistan, India and even in Britain.
The decision of the Supreme Court of India in this case cited the Baha'i Faith as an example and the Teachings of the Faith as guidelines for solving such disputes. The Court decision stated that “a neutral perception of the requirements for communal harmony is to be found in the Baha'i Faith”, and then went on to quote from a publication of the Indian Baha'i community titled “Communal Harmony—India’s Greatest Challenge”.
At the United Nations, the Baha'i community’s involvement extends to the very birth of the world body. Baha'i representatives attended the United Nations charter signing ceremony in San Francisco in 1945. Three years later, the Baha'i International Community, a global association of national Baha'i communities, was recognized as an international nongovernmental organization by the United Nations Department of Public Information. In 1970 the Baha'i International Community gained consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), permitting it to submit official statements to the deliberations of this important United Nations body.
The Baha'i International Community also has consultative status with United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and collaborative relations with other United Nations bodies such as the World Health Organization and the World Bank. At the World Bank, for example, Baha'is are founding members of the World Faiths Development Dialogue, a consultative body established in 1998 to enable the world’s major religions to advise the Bank on its development policies and goals. The participating religions include Baha'is, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and Taoists.
By the early 1970s, the Baha'i representative to the United Nations was serving as the chairman of the NGO Executive Committee, and this kind of leadership role has continued in the decades since then. Baha'is played an active role in the series of United Nations summits and parallel nongovernmental forums held during the 1990s, beginning with the 1992 Summit on Environment and Development. These summits culminated with the Millennium Forum and Summit, held at the United Nations headquarters in New York in May and September 2000. In his capacity as the cochair of the Millennium Forum, the Baha'i representative at the United Nations was the only civil society representative to address the plenary session of the Millennium Summit, the largest gathering of heads of state and government ever held. In August 2000, a Baha'i addressed the United Nations Millennium Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders as a representative of one of the recognized major religions.
Baha'is have made other recognized contributions in the interfaith arena, both at the international level and through hundreds of local and national interfaith organizations. For example, the Baha'is of South Africa served on the organizing committee of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, held there in 1999. In Cambodia the Baha'is organized the first ever celebration of World Religion Day in January 2000, and received a letter from His Majesty King Norodom Sihanouk thanking them for organizing an event promoting interfaith harmony and cooperation in Cambodia. Also in January 2000, Baha'is of the United Kingdom took part in an interfaith service in the Royal Gallery of the Palace of Westminster, and were recognized as one of the nine major religions in the United Kingdom in the presence of their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Prime Minister Tony Blair. And in December 2000, representatives of Norway’s principal religions, including the Baha'i religion, met with King Harald V to present the results of a government-sponsored interfaith dialogue on values and moral education.
In May 2001 the international Baha'i community celebrated a significant milestone in the emergence of the Faith on the world stage: the completion of its world spiritual and administrative center on Mount Carmel, in the Holy Land. The Baha'i World Centre, a complex of Shrines, gardens and administrative buildings in Haifa and Acre, had been under development for more than a century. Bahá’u’lláh Himself, while still a prisoner, visited Mount Carmel in 1891 and ordained that the Báb’s mausoleum and the senior institutions of His religion be established on its barren slopes. In an intensive construction effort lasting more than a decade, the entire north face of the mountain was reconfigured to create 18 majestic garden terraces that extend one kilometer from the foot to the crest of the mountain and bracket the Shrine of the Báb midway up the slope.
The completion of the Terraces on Mount Carmel was celebrated with the world premier of an original symphonic oratorio, performed at the base of the mountain by a full symphony orchestra and philharmonic choir. The event was carried live by satellite around the world and received widespread coverage by the international media. “The New York Times” referred to the Terraces as “a work of monumental religious architecture” comparable to the medieval cathedrals of Europe or a Mogul-era mosque. News reports of the inauguration were carried on CNN, the BBC, the major wire services, on Chinese national television, and hundreds of other television networks, and were printed in national newspapers and magazines around the world.
The unveiling of the Baha'i World Centre on Mount Carmel is a fitting capstone to the Faith’s emergence as an independent world religion. International agencies, governments, nongovernmental organizations, the academic community, the news media—all have scrutinized the claims of the Faith and have been nearly unanimous in their assessment that the Faith deserves the same stature and recognition as the world’s other principal religions. Moreover, civil authorities on every continent of the globe have praised the humanitarian principles of the Faith and recognized it as a force for positive change and social advancement.
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