The Bahá'í faith is the youngest of the world’s independent religions, arising in mid mid-19th century Persia. There are currently about five million adherents worldwide, with believers from a wide variety of nations and ethnicities.[1] While the Bahá'í faith is not recognized in Iran’s constitution, the group constitutes the country’s largest religious minority.[2]
Bahá'ís recognize Siyyid Ali-Muhammad of Shiraz, Persia – who took the title of the Bab – as the forerunner of Baha’u’llah (meaning “the Glory of God” in Arabic), the founder of the faith. The Bahá'í religion is built on Baha’u’llah’s central message that the day of unification of humanity into one global family has come.[3] Bahá'ís believe in one God that is the same for all of humanity and they see Baha’u’llah as the most recent in a line of messengers that has included Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Zoroaster, Christ and Muhammad.[4]
Demography
Some 300,000 Bahá'ís live in Iran today.[5] The majority are Persian, but there is also a significant minority of Azerbaijani Bahá'ís, and even a few who are Kurdish.[6]
Geographic Distribution
Small Bahá'í communities can be found throughout Iran, with a larger concentration in Tehran. Most Bahá'ís live in cities, but some also live in villages, particularly in Fars and Mazandaran.[7]
Historic Hardship
Since the inception of Bahá'ísm, believers have been put into prison, exiled and killed. The teachings of the Bab were viewed as heretical by the Persian establishment and he was imprisoned during the mid 19th century. Over 20,000 of his followers, known as Babis, died in violent massacres throughout Persia during the 1840s and 50s.[8]
Although Bahá'ís enjoyed greater rights under the Pahlavi shahs, circumstances took an abrupt downturn with the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. Under the revolutionary government, Bahá'ís saw hundreds of their leaders jailed – with some executed for apostasy – their schools shuttered, and their communal property seized. To make matters worse, adherents were denied identification cards and banned from government posts.[9]
Ongoing Hardship
In 2006 and 2007, Iranian Bahá'ís continued to experience government imprisonment, harassment, intimidation, and discrimination based on religious beliefs, according to the U.S. State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report for 2007. The report also said that Bahá'í groups “often reported arbitrary arrests, expulsions from universities, and confiscation of property.” Targeted anti-minority and anti- Bahá'í campaigns in the state-run media are also a significant point of concern, with the report noting that “since October 2005 state-owned media has launched a series of weekly anti- Bahá'í broadcasts” that “had the intention of arousing suspicion, distrust, and hatred for the Bahá'í community.” In addition, during the reporting period, Tehran “arbitrarily arrested Bahá'ís and charged them with violating Islamic Penal Code Articles 500 and 698, relating to activities against the state and spreading falsehoods, respectively.”[10]
Even more disturbingly, the report, citing the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States, says that “since 1979 more than 200 Bahá'ís have been killed, and 15 have disappeared and are presumed dead.”[11]
At a September 2007 meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, a Bahá'í representative raised concerns over the systemic and organized persecution of Iranian adherents, particularly with respect to a government memorandum that, given its more vigorous application of late, was denying the group basic civic, economic, social and cultural rights.[12]
