Middle Eastern Baha'is

Baha'is are the followers of the Baha'i Faith, which arose in Iran in the 19th century. The faith grew out of the Babi movement: Siyyid Ali-Muhammad, the Bab, declared his mission in Shiraz in 1844 and was executed in Tabriz in 1850, and in 1863 Mirza Husayn-Ali Nuri, Baha'u'llah, a nobleman from Nur in Mazandaran, proclaimed himself the one the Bab had foretold. Exiled by the Persian and Ottoman states, Baha'u'llah lived in Baghdad, Istanbul and Edirne before dying in Akka, and the faith's world centre now stands in Haifa. In the Middle East the largest community is Iran's, about 300,000 mostly Persian-speaking descendants of 19th-century converts from Shia Muslim, Jewish and Zoroastrian families, the country's largest non-Muslim religious minority. Türkiye's 5,000-10,000 Baha'is are mostly Turkish-speaking citizens from Muslim families, joined by Iranian asylum seekers; Iraq's fewer than 2,000 are Persian-origin, Arab and Kurdish families; and Jordan's 1,000-1,500 descend from Persian farmers who settled in the Jordan Valley around 1900 and now speak Arabic. No state in the region recognises the faith except Iraq's Kurdistan Region, and Iran regards Baha'is as apostates and a 'misguided sect'. The communities are close-knit, highly educated and largely endogamous, with family networks reaching across the region and a large Iranian diaspora formed since 1979.

Baha'i life follows the Badi calendar of 19 months of 19 days. Families gather in homes for the Nineteen-Day Feast of prayer, consultation and fellowship, keep nine holy days including Naw-Ruz and the twelve days of Ridvan, and fast from sunrise to sunset for 19 days in March. Daily obligatory prayer, abstention from alcohol and drugs, the equality of women and men, and education for every child are central values. Children's classes, study circles and devotional gatherings in homes hold the communities together. Places tied to Baha'u'llah's exile, such as the Garden of Ridvan in Baghdad and his house in Edirne, carry deep meaning. In Iran, where Baha'is are barred from state universities, the community runs the Baha'i Institute for Higher Education, an underground, volunteer-taught university founded in 1987, and its cemeteries, including the Khavaran site in Tehran, have been bulldozed or closed, with at least 83 attacks recorded since 2005.

Baha'is believe in one God revealed progressively through Manifestations including Abraham, Moses, Zoroaster, Jesus, Muhammad, the Bab and Baha'u'llah. The faith has no clergy and is governed by elected Local and National Spiritual Assemblies; Türkiye's and Jordan's communities have elected national assemblies, while Iran's were dissolved by government order in 1983 and the informal leadership that replaced them was imprisoned in 2008. Where the faith is not recognised, religious life is home-based: prayers, Feasts and study in private houses. Holy places have been destroyed in Iran, including the House of the Bab in Shiraz, and in Iraq, where Baha'u'llah's house in Baghdad was demolished in 2013. Younger Baha'is are highly educated and many emigrate; some children of Baha'i families become secular, while in Iran some Muslims have joined the faith quietly despite the danger.

Baha'is in the region have full access to the Bible and Christian media in their languages: Persian in Iran, Arabic in Iraq and Jordan, Kurdish in Iraq's Kurdistan Region, and Turkish in Türkiye, where conversion is legal and churches meet openly. They honour Jesus as a Manifestation of God but reject his unique divinity, bodily resurrection and atoning death, seeing Baha'u'llah as the most recent revelation, and their emphasis on the unity of religions makes exclusive claims a hard step. Strong communal bonds forged under persecution make leaving the faith socially costly. No Christian ministry focused on Baha'is is documented in any of these countries, although in Iran Baha'is and Christian converts sometimes share prison wards and mutual sympathy.

After the 1979 revolution the Baha'i community was singled out as heretical. Members of the national and local Spiritual Assemblies were arrested and executed in 1980-1981, more than 200 Baha'is were killed by 1998, and a 1991 government memorandum set out a policy of blocking the community's development, including expulsion from universities. All Baha'i administrative institutions were banned in 1983, the House of the Bab in Shiraz was demolished, and Baha'i cemeteries were confiscated. Seven members of the informal leadership group (the 'Yaran') were imprisoned from 2008 to around 2017-2018, and several, including Mahvash Sabet and Fariba Kamalabadi, were jailed again in 2022. Arrests, home raids and property seizures intensified after the June 2025 war and the 2026 war, as authorities tied Baha'is to Israel.