- Joined
- Apr 14, 2014
I mean, just because the Bahá'í faith isn't anti-tranny doesn't mean individual Bahá'í won't still have cultural stigma attached to it (similar to how Christianity and Islam both denounce homosexuality, but individual Christians and Muslims in the West can be accepting). Honestly it's a moot point as I don't actually think she was a tranny but who knows.
Heh, I totally get the vibe that she was trying (unsuccessfully) to channel Googoosh...
No, they have nothing to do with Zoroastrianism, beyond being Iranian and claiming Zoroaster as a Prophet. But Zoroastrianism had long since been overtaken by Islam in Persia by the 19th century and is pretty much a tiny ethno-religious minority at this point. Being non-Persian she couldn't be Zoroastrian. You have to be born into it, they don't accept converts, and ethnic Azeris or anyone mixed race generally wouldn't be accepted. But I've also heard Iranian Zoroastrians are more liberal than the community in India and the diaspora so who knows. Bahá'í do celebrate Nowruz though, and that was a couple weeks ago, but everyone in Iran does. It's just a religious holiday for Bahá'í too (and the Zoroastrian and us for that matter).
Nah, sounds more like us. We took the Imams and ran with them and now nobody can decide if we're really Muslim or not. LOL.
Nah, there's still Bahá'í in Iran though they're a persecuted minority. Some other Middle Eastern countries too. Egypt has a small community (again also persecuted). Their world headquarters is actually in Haifa, Israel. They have had some conversions in Africa and Latin America, but the biggest (and possibly oldest continuous population) is in India. A couple million, which is amazing considering their relatively small numbers overall.
The history of Bahá'í is interesting. Like their predecessors the Babi movement they grew out of Ithna'ashari Shi'a Islam in the 19th century, just as the modern incarnation of Ithna'ashari Shi'ism was taking form around the Ayatollahs. Despite what Western audiences want to hear, Islam has changed just as much as Christianity. It's not culturally static. The Bahá'í and Babi grew out of a sort of mystic, charismatic school of Ithna'ashari Shi'ism as opposed to the more literalist interpretations and those that centered around learned scholars.
See the problem the Bahá'í ran into is twofold. First and foremost they threatened the political power of religious scholars. The second is that they accepted a Prophet AFTER Muhammad. By definition all of the Jewish and Christian Prophets are before Muhammad and thus accepted by default, but the Bahá'í have the same problem as the Ahmadis. Moreover, neither the Jews nor Zoroastrians (not Christians for that matter, as they're almost all ethnically Assyrian or Armenian) convert Muslims in Iran. Bahá'í did.
Fun fact: The Iranian government doesn't actually recognize the Bahá'í religion; they consider it a Muslim "heresy."
