Bahai Faith

The Bahá'í Faith (Persian: بهائی‎‎ Bahā'i) is a religion teaching the essential worth of all religions, and the unity and equality of all people. Established by Bahá'u'lláh in 1863, it initially grew in the Middle East and now has between 5-7 million adherents, known as Bahá'ís, spread out into most of the world's countries and territories, with the highest concentrations in India and Iran.

The Bahá'í Faith formed from the Bábí religion, a 19th century outgrowth of Shia Islam that faced persecution by Persian authorities. In 1853, Bahá'u'lláh was imprisoned and exiled from his native Iran. He spent time in Baghdad before being further exiled, spending over a decade in the prison city of Akka in the Ottoman province of Syria, in what is now Israel. Following Bahá'u'lláh's death in 1892, leadership of the religion fell to his son `Abdu'l-Bahá (1844-1921), and later his great-grandson Shoghi Effendi (1897-1957). Bahá'ís around the world annually elect local, regional, and national Spiritual Assemblies that govern the affairs of the religion, and every five years the members of all National Spiritual Assemblies elect the Universal House of Justice, the nine-member supreme governing institution of the worldwide Bahá'í community, which sits in Haifa, Israel near the shrine of Bahá'u'lláh.

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