There are now close to 17,000 clusters (2003) worldwide, out of which 500 clusters have crossed 3rd milestone (in 2019)

"Reports received at the World Centre indicate that there are now close to 17,000 clusters worldwide, excluding those countries where, for one reason or another, the operation of the Faith is restricted."

-The Universal House of Justice, 17 January 2003

https://www.bahai.org/r/532027753

Read More

The punishment for teaching the Baha’i Faith, membership and activity in this religious community is determined based on these articles of the IR law

The verdicts against Baha’is is issued based on articles 498, 499 and 500 of the Islamic Penal Code.

Article 498 of the code states: “Any person with any ideology who forms or leads a group, society or sub-group of more than two people, under any name or title, domestically or abroad, with the goal of disrupting national security, who is not considered a combatant, shall be sentenced to prison for two to ten years.”

According to article 499 of this law: “Any person holding a membership in one of the groups, societies or sub-groups mentioned in article 498 shall be sentenced to three months to five years in prison, unless it is proven that they were unaware of its goals.”

Article 500 also states: “Any person engaged in any way in propaganda activities against the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran, or in favor of anti-regime groups and organizations, shall be sentenced to three months to one year in prison.”

The punishment for teaching the Baha’i Faith, membership and activity in this religious community is determined based on these articles of the law.

http://iranpresswatch.org/post/20107/22-bahais-began-new-year-prison/

Read More

Baha'i faith cannot solve current problems ecxcept...

The guidance that Baha'i institutions offer to mankind does not comprise a series of specific answers to current problems, but rather the illumination of an entirely new way of life. Without this way of life the problems are insoluble; with it they will either not arise or, if they arise, can be resolved.

https://bahai-library.com/uhj_messages_1986_2001

Read More

UHJ is under the “care and protec­tion” of Baha'u'llah and the “shelter and unerring guidance” of the Bab

The following statements of Baha'u'llah and Abdul Baha are considered to relate solely to the Universal House of Justice: (a) It is under the “care and protec­tion” of Baha'u'llah and the “shelter and unerring guidance” of the Bab (Will and Testament, p. 11) and is “the source of all good and freed from all error” (ibid., p. 14); (b) its membership is confined to men (Selections, p. 80); (c) it can legislate laws and ordinances to cover all areas that are not expressly laid down by Baha'u'llah and may also repeal laws enacted previously by the Universal House of Justice, but it cannot alter the laws laid down by Baha'u'llah (Kalamāt-e ferdowsīya, in Majmūʿa, p. 37, tr. Tablets, p. 68; see also Will and Testament, pp. 14, 19-20); (d) it administers all religious endowments (awqāf: al-Ketāb al-aqdas quoted in Gan­jīna-ye ḥodūd, p. 221); (e) it receives the religious tax of Ḥoqūq Allāh and has full authority over its expenditure (Ganjīna-ye ḥodūd, p. 107); (f) all matters of state (omūr-­e sīāsīya) should be referred to this body (Lawḥ-e bešārat in Majmūʿa, p. 14; tr. Tablets, p. 27); (g) it must promote the “lesser peace” (Lawḥ-e donyā in Majmūʿa, p. 50; tr. Tablets, p. 89); (h) whosoever disobeys or opposes the House of Justice has disobeyed and opposed God (Will and Testament, p. 11).

Contributed by Moojan Momen

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bayt-al-adl-house-of-justice-a-bahai-administrative-institution

Read More

Houses of justice are supposed to take care of the old, the weak, and the ill who have fallen into poverty

Among the general functions of the Houses of Justice, as enunciated by Baha'u'llah, are the following: to promulgate the cause of God; to educate the souls of men; to preserve the law; to make the land prosperous; to administer social affairs; to educate the children; to take care of the old, the weak, and the ill who have fallen into poverty (Ganjīna-ye ḥodūd, p. 214).

Contributed by Moojan Momen

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bayt-al-adl-house-of-justice-a-bahai-administrative-institution

Read More

The growth of Baha'i Faith has slowed down in the United States (Video)

0:20 - Question: "Do you think there has been a slowdown in the growth of the Faith in the West?...What can be done about it?"

Answer: "It has slowed down...It needs to be accelerated."

-Dallas, TX - Hooper Dunbar - 2017 (Youtube)
https://youtu.be/u-v7hKI29ok?t=20s

Read More

Baha'i is a cult, why ?

1) Baha'u'llah is God. Pray to him, pray facing towards him, ask repentance from him, he is the creator of everything, he is the sender of all prophets, he is the lord of lords, he is the YAHWEH, he is Mahdi, he is Hussayn, he is Mohammed, he is the Father, he is Krishna, he is Buddha, he is what not!

2) All 12 Baha'i principals are marketing slogans. Baha'is don't follow even one of these principals.

3) These people are hypocrites, reason? Because their religion makes them so. It asks them to observe 'tact' and 'wisdom'.

4) These people are liars. They always mislead people when it comes to proving their population numbers.

5) Baha'is will take away your money and spend it on their marketing campaigns.

6) Baha'i scripture is very carefully, selectively translated for the western members. History is re-written, books edited, so call 'scripture' censored, real scholars harassed.

7) The concept of covenant and being 'absolute obedient' to the center of the Cause makes this religion a cult. You are required to be absolute obedient to the UHJ.

8) They want to establish a Baha'i super-state.

9) They want Covenant-Breakers, enemies of faith and non-Baha'is (those who are not enemies but rejected Baha'u'llah) to suffer. They become happy when these people live a miserable life.

10) They will make you blind, deaf and submissive.

Read More

Accepting Baha'u'llah is real paradise!

The purpose of God in creating man hath been, and will ever be, to enable him to know his Creator and to attain His Presence…Whoso hath recognized the Dayspring of Divine guidance and entered His holy court hath drawn nigh unto God and attained His Presence, a Presence which is the real Paradise, and of which the loftiest mansions of heaven are but a symbol.

(Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, XXIX)

Read More

Labib learned Esperanto in 1914 and later taught the language at the Baha'i Tavakkul School in Qazvin

In 1905 he (Muhammad Labib) and his family moved to Tehran, where Labib received an education at a Baha'i school. Labib learned Esperanto in 1914 and later taught the language at the Baha'i Tavakkul School in Qazvin (Iran). He also served as an official representative of the World Esperanto movement.

http://onthisdateinbahaihistory.blogspot.com/2019/03/march-14-on-this-date-in-1981-muhammad.html

Read More

The book contains nothing that might reasonably be called an argument. Instead names of God and invocations are endlessly repeated

The book contains nothing that might reasonably be called an argument. Instead names of God and invocations are endlessly repeated and varied, often in ways unsanctioned by Arabic usage. Syntax is nearly as idiosyncratic. Thus, for example, the first page has Allah used as a superlative in the form a'lah, an infinitive ilhn, participles mu'talih, mu'lah, and so on. To the extent that the book has content, it is not in the form of an extended argument but in enraptured rhapsodies about particular themes. Thus the sermon on the first day rhapsodizes about the first day of Baha—Naw-Ruz—as the "day of God," the name given it by the Bab in the Bayan. In such respects it is similar to the Kitabu'l-Asma', written sometime earlier and also arranged on a calendrical basis.

https://bahai-library.com/walbridge_kitab_panj-shan_commentary

Read More

The Shaikh Tabarsi siege was the most markedly religious, while the Zanjan and Neyriz uprisings were more closely linked to local politics.

It is impossible to identify a consistent pattern in these events. Ivanov’s (1939) Marxist analysis shows serious limitations in its treatment of motives and its portrayal of the Babi participants in the struggles as “peasants, artisans, urban poor, and small trades-people.” More recent studies by Momen (1983), Smith (1982), and MacEoin (1982) reveal a more complex interplay of social, political, and religious factors at work. The Shaikh Ṭabarsī siege was the most markedly religious of the larger incidents, while the Zanjān and Neyrīz uprisings were more closely linked to local politics. It is arguable that, whereas those involved in the Shaikh Ṭabarsī struggle and in the smaller pogroms were convinced Babis, many of those who participated in the fighting at Zanjān, Yazd, or Neyrīz may have been vague about or indifferent to the specific religious issues propounded by the Babi leadership. At Shaikh Ṭabarsī, messianic ambitions were linked to a belief that, through martyrdom, the defenders were reenacting the events of Karbalāʾ; the Qajar state and its forces were condemned as illegitimate and a defensive jehād proclaimed against them. At Zanjān, religious millenarianism was less marked, while puritan and egalitarian ideals were clearly in evidence.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/babism-index

Read More

In all, something like 3,000 Babis died in these episodes...

In all, something like 3,000 Babis died in these episodes, or, if we take the lower figure of 1,000 deaths at Zanjān, just over 2,000 in all. Later estimates of 20,000 and more found in some Bahai works do not, in fact, correspond to the more detailed figures given in Bahai historical sources. Similarly, the very high figures for both participants and casualties given in state chronicles like the Nāseḵ al-tawārīḵ are manifestly exaggerated, probably in order to explain away the failure of the government forces to put down the disturbances rapidly.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/babism-index

Also check : https://bahai-library.com/uhj_mazandarani_number_martyrs

Read More

Babi law called for the destruction of the shrines and holy places of previous religions and, the universal slaughter of all save those who believed and were faithful...

In the 1840s and 1850s a series of violent incidents involving members of the Babi sect (see babism) and Shiʿites took place in Iran, the most serious of which were four military encounters at Shaikh Ṭabarsī in Māzandarān, Zanjān, and Neyrīz (twice). At the inception of the Babi movement in 1260/1844, an uprising (ḵorūj) against unbelievers was keenly anticipated; it was at first believed that this event would begin in 1261/1845 in Karbalāʾ, when the Hidden Imam would appear to lead the jehād in person. The Bāb’s earliest major work, the Qayyūm al-asmāʾ, contains detailed regulations governing the conduct of jehād (Qayyūm al-asmāʾ, sūras 96-101; see MacEoin, “Holy War,” pp. 101-09). Up to 1264/1848, the sect’s jehād doctrine was essentially that of orthodox Shiʿism, but after that date, with the Bāb’s assumption of the role of Mahdī, a new legal system was promulgated in the Persian Bayān and other works. It appears that the entire Shiʿite population of Iran was now regarded as subject to jehād: non-Babis were to be forbidden to live in any of the five central provinces of Fārs, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Khorasan, and Māzandarān. More broadly, Babi law called for the destruction of the shrines and holy places of previous religions and, as one later Bahai source puts it, “the universal slaughter of all save those who believed and were faithful” (ʿAbbās Effendi, Makātīb ʿAbd-al-Bahāʾ II, Cairo, 1330/1912, p. 266).

Several sources indicate that Babis in different centers were collecting and manufacturing arms in readiness for the postponed ḵorūj on the imam’s appearance (ibid., pp. 111-12; Māzandarānī, Ẓohūr al-ḥaqq, p. 374). The first serious incidents occurred in 1264/1848 in Mašhad, where armed members of the large Babi community clashed on two occasions with local soldiery. Expelled from Mašhad in Šaʿbān, 1264/July, 1848, a party of Babis under the leadership of Mollā Moḥammad-Ḥosayn Bošrūʾī headed into Māzandarān and in October of that year established themselves near Bārforūšī at the shrine of Shaikh Abū ʿAlī al-Fażl Ṭabarsī, which they fortified. From an original total of about 300, the number of insurgents rose to between 540 and 600 (Momen, “Social Basis,” pp. 161-65, esp. table 4). Leadership of the fort was in the hands of Bošrūʾī and another of the Bāb’s original disciples, Mollā Moḥammad-ʿAlī Bārforūšī Qoddūs. Between 14 Ḏu’l-qaʿda 1264/13 October 1848 and 16 Jomādā II 1265/9 May 1849, the Babi defenders and state troops under the overall command of Mahdīqolī Mīrzā engaged in sporadic fighting, with heavy losses of life on both sides. The siege was finally ended by a ruse and the surviving Babis either executed or taken prisoner.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/babism-index

Read More

Anyone claiming a Revelation direct from God is a lying imposter.

Whoso layeth claim to a Revelation direct from God ere the expiration of a full thousand years, such a man is assuredly a lying imposter. We pray God that He may graciously assist him to retract and repudiate such a claim. Should he repent, God will, assuredly forgive him. If, however, he persisteth in his error, God will, assuredly, send down one who will deal mercilessly with him. Terrible, indeed, is God in punishing!

- Baha'u'llah (Kitab-i-Aqdas)

http://bahai-library.com/writings/bahaullah/aqdas/aqdas2/K37.htm

Read More

How a faithful Baha'i son treated his Covenant Breaker father?

Mr. Muhibat (Lutfullah Mohebat - son of Jamal-i-Burujerdi) repeatedly related the following event about his own father:

He said after his father was openly expelled from the Bahá'í community he completely cut off from his father. He had not seen his father for quite a long time. He said one day I was passing on Sepah Avenue near Meydan-i-Tupkhanih. Suddenly I noticed that an old beggar was sitting at the roadside asking for money from the passers by. I recognized that the beggar was my father. Muhibat said that his father also recognized him but they did not say anything to each other. Muhibat said that I could not believe my eyes that such an arrogant and highly distinguished figure had fallen from the climax of honor retrograded to such a pitiful perigee, the lowest point of dishonor.

https://bahai-library.com/cole_biography_jamal_burujirdi

Read More