The Baha'i Faith - Research Paper Example

(Hartz, 2009, p. 6) The Baha’i Faith is said to be the youngest religions of all. It originated in Persia (now Iran) in less than two hundred years ago. It originated as a small local religious movement. It comprises of diverse groups of people belonging to varied religions, nationality, creed, ethnic background etc. (Hartz, 2009, p. 6) It developed out of Babi religion. Babi was a movement within Shi’i Islam. The Shi’i Muslims believe that a series of twelve Imams from the Prophet’s own family are the deserving successors of Prophet Muhammad.

According to this belief, those twelve Imams were only eligible to rule the Islamic world and were true divine instruments of divinely transmitted knowledge. Shi’i Islam continues to uphold the Islamic Theosophical philosophy; later developed the Shaykhi school of Shi’i theosophy. They in turn followed the teachings of Ahmad al-Ahsa (1753-1826). His teachings were continued by Sayyid Kazim. Both of them served as true messengers of God for people who craved to know the truth and to seek God.

They served as divine instruments to interpret and reveal various esoteric teachings to the deserving followers. With the death of Sayyid Kazim, arose the Babi movement centering the ‘Bab’ out of a deep succession crisis (Smith, 2008, pp. 3-5). After a prolonged series of events, over the years, the ‘Bab’ emerged out to be a very prominent leader and in 1844 he claimed that he had a deep revelation from God and that he knew the divine truth. Many people followed him. However, the Muslim religious leaders of Persia executed the Bab and also killed many of his followers because they felt threatened by this movement.

Finally, Baha’u’llah was the person who gave Baha’i Faith its special significance and shaped its moral values. He was one of the early followers of the Bab but his contribution is considered to be far