Fernando Martin, Guillermo Morales and Juan David Suarez

Baha’ism

The Baha’i faith was founded in 1852 in Teheran by Alì Mohammad, a merchant who later became known as “The Báb”. He developed the first sacred texts and, due to the growing number of followers, the political authorities of Persia incarcerated and executed him, and started a repression against his followers. His successor was a noble with a title of Bahá’u’lláh, who, during his imprisonment started to believe that he prophecies of the Bab were taking about him. After this he went to Bagdad, which was a part of the Ottoman Empire. Soon after, the ottoman authorities imprisoned him and sent him to the penal colony of Acre, where he died in 1868. to the religion of Baha’ism , his tomb in the outskirts of Acre is the holiest place in the world, in fact nowadays the Baha’is pray in the direction of the tomb. His son Abdu’l-Bahá became the new head of the religion, and after his release from the prison sentence that he shared with his father, he traveled to Europe and the United States to spread the religion.

The main basis of the Baha’ism is that the different religions of the world are based on the same god who has been revealing himself to humanity in a progressive way through time, giving birth to all the previous religions such as Judaism and Islam. They also believe that the humanity is only one, with no natural differences, and that the current differences between people are product of the will of the man. Based on this, the main social principles of Baha’ism promote the understanding and cooperation between different religions and individuals. The formal rituals are scarce which are basically oriented to the daily life. Fundamental laws, which establishes the obligations that the believers should follow are similar to the ones of other monotheistic religions, including chastity outside the marriage, prohibition of gambling… In hierarchical terms, they follow a geographical order based on localities,regions,countries and the Haifa universal House of Justice, in where the supreme assembly, the highest body of the religion, resides. The distinctive feature of Baha’ism is that, in order to be accepted no rituals are needed and that they are based on a respect towards other religions.

The bahá’i Faith in Spain starts with Virginia Orbison in 1947. She was an American that discovered the faith in California and was sent to Spain by Shoghi Effendi who was the last relative of Bahá’ulláh. After this Madrid became the first nucleus of an organized country where the freedom of religion wasn’t guaranteed. Malaga was considered one of the main zones of settlement and the oldest assembly is located there. When the 70s came around the faith was expanding to provinces like Cordoba and Cadiz. We have to take into account that the influence of the Baha’i in the southern part of Spain is helped by the number of people with Iranian origins. An example of this is that 60% of the followers in Sevilla have those

Symbol of the Baha’ism. Each tip of the star represents a different religion, and the whole symbol is a metaphor of the unity of religions

origins. The National Assembly is inscripted in the “Registro de Entidades Religiosas del Ministerio de Justicia” since the year 2000. This Assembly has only an administrative function as all of the Assemblies only depend on the one in Haifa (Israel) Nowadays the number of believers in Spain is around 13000