In 2014, the husband converted to Twelver Shi‘i Islam, while the wife remained a follower of the Baha’i religion.

In 2020, a civil lawsuit seeking the dissolution of a marriage (infisakh-i nikah) was filed before a family court in Tehran. The parties, a man and a woman, had married in 2003, both adhering at the time to the Baha’i faith, a religion unrecognized under the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2014, the husband converted to Twelver Shi‘i Islam, while the wife remained a follower of the Baha’i religion.

Initially, the husband filed a claim for annulment of the marriage, arguing that their religious divergence rendered continuation of the marital relationship impossible. The family court rejected this claim, stating that the grounds for annulment (batiliyat-i nikah) are narrowly enumerated in the Iranian Civil Code (Qanun-i Madani-yi Iran), and that conversion of one spouse alone does not constitute a valid basis for annulment.

(Equality, Plurality and Personal Status Laws A Research Companion Edited by Nathalie Bernard-Maugiron, Baudouin Dupret, Jean-Louis Halpérin, Radhika Kanchana, Ayang Utriza Yakin and Zohra Aziadé Zemirli)