The Rise of Bahá’í: A Protestant Islam
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Bahá’í, a faith relatively unknown in the West, is gaining global prominence. Its unique religious culture has an emphasis on the global community. With 7 million members worldwide, the largest centers of Bahá’í are in India, Iran, and the United States. Leaders of the faith recently initiated plans to expand the infrastructure of the religion with a specific focus on raising youth awareness, although Bahá’í strictly outlaws forced conversion and advocates religious tolerance. The Bahá’í faith is monotheistic and several of the basic principles share similarities with Islam. Bahá’ís in good health are expected to recite an obligatory prayer each day and to observe a sunrise-to-sunset fast for nineteen days each March.
Midway through the nineteenth century in the Persian city Shiraz, a young merchant named Mirzâ Ali Muhammad proclaimed himself to be the “Bab” or “gate” of God. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Bab’s declaration fit nicely within the framework of the region’s traditional denomination, Twelver Shi’a Islam. Twelver Shi’as believe that a list of Imams, starting with Muhammad’s cousin Ali, has been divinely appointed as the path of succession for Islamic leadership. Historically, Sunnis and Shi’as agree on the existence of 11 Imams, the last being Hasan al-Askari. When Hasan died, he left one son, Muhammad al-Mahdi. Prophecies have it that Muhammad al-Mahdi, born in 868 CE, has lived in occultation since that time and will eventually reemerge to deliver absolute peace and justice through the world by establishing Islam as a global religion.
Which brings things back to the Bab. For, in the Shiraz of 1844, having been rocked by plague and cholera epidemics in 1822, ripped apart by severe earthquakes in 1824 and decimated by plagues of locusts in 1830, the conditions were ripe for any type of deliverance, whether theological or material. When Mirzâ Ali Muhammad claimed himself to be a prophet, his choice of the word “Bab” for his title purposefully evoked the “Minor Occultation” of Imam Mahdi, which took place between 873 and 939 CE. During this time, the Mahdi remained hidden from his community and communicated to his followers through deputies identified as his “Gates”. Years later, the Mahdi announced that in 951 his last “Gate” would die and that the period of “Major Occultation” would follow. Nearly a full millennium later, Mirzâ Ali Muhammad insisted that the era had ended.
In 1850, the Bab was executed by a firing squad in Tabriz by order of the Islamic government of Persia. But he had ensured the longevity of his ministry by proclaiming that very soon after his passing, a new leader would rise to direct the “Babis” of the world. Whereas Mirzâ Ali Muhammad believed himself to be a kind of messianic figure within Shi’a Islamic conventions, he insisted that “the one whom God shall make manifest” would be the synthesis of the “Savior” promised in the scriptures of all the world’s great religions.
Husayn Ali of Nur, an early follower of the Bab, shortly thereafter took the name Bahá’u’lláh and announced that he was the fulfillment of the eschatological expectations of all prophetic cycles. His preaching attracted many followers, and Bahá’í quickly expanded despite its conflict with the prophetic beliefs of Muslim authorities of that day. Bahá’u’lláh made enough of an impact on his disciples through several volumes of writings that rapid Bahá’í development was maintained. With this basic understanding of the history of Bahá’í, we can extrapolate on the faith’s meaning in relation to Islam.
Interestingly, while Shi’a Islam often persecutes Bahá’ís in present-day Iran, many important figures in Bahá’í history conceive their faith to be almost a sect of Shi’a Islam. Shoghi Effendi, the head of Bahá’í in the mid-20th century explains in his writings that “the mission of the American Bahá’ís is, no doubt, to eventually establish the truth of Islam in the West” and even in the letters of Baha’u’llah, Islam is treated as the “exalted” faith.
Countering the monopolistic power of figures like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that is ensured by Sharia law, Bahá’ís advocate secular rule and, in fact, donate heavily to the United Nations to support an impartial world government. Furthermore, where some elements of Shi’a Islam discriminate against other religions that do not uphold the truths of the Quran, the Bahá’í faith accepts the validity of the majority of the world’s religions. In the context of an Iranian society that has sometimes distinguished itself in the modern era by underscoring differences between faiths and peoples, Bahá’í continues to gain attention by instead emphasizing the unity of religion and the unity of mankind.
Bahá’í can somewhat be viewed as a modernized iteration of traditional Islam and in this way proves to be a unique challenge to Islam. Orthodox Muslim authorities have difficulty dealing with followers of such post-Islamic monotheistic religions because, as Bernard Lewis explained, “they cannot be dismissed either as benighted heathens, like the polytheists of Asia and the animists of Africa, nor as outdated precursors, like the Jews and Christians,” and that “moreover, their very existence presents a challenge to the Islamic doctrine of the perfection and finality of Muhammad’s revelation.”
Only in the next decades will we see what is to be the lasting impact of Bahá’í. But whether we regard it as a branch of Islam inspired to grow by various inequities within certain Islamic beliefs or whether we treat it as a wholly distinct faith outright opposing various aspects of the Muslim system, its rise to prominence is no doubt very significant. Universalistic thinking that proclaims the evolution of a faith’s thought to be complete spawns messianic movements that will maintain this evolution from outside the standard faith. The ascent of Bahá’í constitutes a revolutionary streak of thought within Islam. Should its expansion follow the familiar patterns, historians may look upon Bahá’í as Protestant Islam.
