The Conversion of Religious Minorities
to the Bahá'í Faith in Iran

Some Preliminary Observations

Susan Stiles Maneck

Abstract
In the period between 1877-1921 significant numbers of non-Muslims converted to the Bahá'í Faith in Iran. This was an essential development for the emergence of the Bahá'í Faith as an independent religion possessing a distinct identity apart from Islam. These conversions were largely confined to the Zoroastrian and Jewish communities and did not involve Iran's largest religious minority, the Christians. This study attempts to address some of the factors that were involved in this conversion process. These will include the manner in which Bahá'ís made the transition from Islamic particularism to a universalism that would attract non-Muslims, as well as the manner in which actual conversions took place and the factors surrounding them. Major emphasis will be placed upon examining what factors may have inclined certain minorities rather than others to convert.

The Jewish conversion movement began in Hamadan around 1877, and by 1884, according to the historian of Persian Jewry Habib Levy, involved some one hundred and fifty of the eight-hundred Jewish households there (Levy, Tarikh-i-Yahud-i-Iran 657). From there, the Bahá'í Faith spread to the Jewish communities of other Iranian cities, including Kashan (where half of the Bahá'í community was of Jewish origin), Tehran, Isfahan, Bukhara, and Gulpaygan (where seventy-five percent of the Jewish community was said to have converted) (Curzon, Persia 500). According to Dastur Dhalla, the eminent Zoroastrian theologian, roughly 4000 Zoroastrians converted to the Bahá'í Faith in Iran, with an additional 1000 in India (cited in Dhalla, Dastur Dhalla 703). This conversion movement involved a significant portion of the educated merchant elite of the Zoroastrians in Yazd (Stiles, "Early Zoroastrian"), all of the Zoroastrians of Qazvin (Dhalla, Dastur Dhalla 726), and a significant number in Kashan and Tehran as well. The accuracy of all these figures, being based largely on the impressions of outside observers, is open to question. Neither the Bahá'ís nor the minorities from which the conversions were occurring kept membership records at this time.

From Particularism to Universalism
A cursory examination of Bahá'í scriptures reveals that from early on, both the Báb and Bahá'u'lláh were consciously formulating a new religious system. Yet the paradigms by which Bahá'ís sought to establish their independence from Islam were largely Islamic ones. Bahá'ís based their distinctiveness on the claim that Bahá'u'lláh, the founder, had received a revelation direct from God, and that He had promulgated new scriptures and ordinances to supersede those of past religions. These criteria for what constitutes an independent religion-namely, a prophet, a book, a new law- are peculiarly Islamic. Where other religions have categorized themselves similarly, they have done so only in response to Islamic contacts.

The early Bahá'í community, as it had developed directly from that of the Babís, was made up almost entirely of former Muslims. Of these, a significant portion had been 'ulamá. Under the conditions of persecution that existed at the time, these Bahá'ís were careful not to draw attention to themselves by behaving differently from the Muslims. In any case, most of their perceptions were drawn from the Muslim milieu in which they lived. As long as the Bahá'í Faith remained entirely within the Iranian-Muslim context, its theological assertion of its own independent nature could not hope to become a sociological reality. While the initial changes were theological, proceeding from the writings of Bahá'u'lláh, Bahá'ís still had to cease to identify psychologically with Islam before non-Muslims would be attracted to the Bahá'í Faith.

During the Babí period there were few minority conversions. The only account I have found is the lone instance of a Zoroastrian who witnessed a Babí being beaten, stripped naked, and paraded through the streets. This persecution induced the Zoroastrian to examine the religion, and he soon became a Babí ('Abdu'l-Bahá, Traveller's 21). According to the Bahá'í historian Hasan Balyuzi, Táhirih was instrumental in converting a number of Jews to the Babí Faith in Hamadan (Balyuzi, The Báb 165).¹ These conversions do not appear to have had any connection with later Bahá'í conversions. It should be noted however, that of all the Babí leaders, Táhirih was the most outspoken in departing from Islamic norms.²

Harsh persecutions also caused some Bahá'ís to seek the protection and assistance of those of other religions. Many Bahá'ís associated closely with European missionaries, accepting employment from them, and in some cases feigning conversion to Christianity. This happened often enough that one missionary urged others to insist that any candidate for church membership be required to specifically deny Bahá'u'lláh as the "return of Christ" before being accepted for baptism.³ This disavowal was deemed necessary since Bahá'ís regarded that each prophet was the 'return" of the preceding prophet in a manner analogous to the way in which Christians understood John the Baptist to be the "return" of Elijah. "Return" in this sense involved not transmigration, but the symbolic fulfillment of the apocalyptic prophecies of another religion by one whose spiritual station was identical to that of the past prophet. Since all prophets were then regarded as identical, all of the religions They founded were essentially one. By this means, early Bahá'ís could justify "conversion" to Christianity so long as it did not directly entail denying Bahá'u'lláh.

Christians were not the only religious group to offer assistance to Bahá'ís in difficult situations. When Mírza Abu'l-Fadl, the great Bahá'í scholar, was expelled from his position as a teacher in a religious school after it became known he was a Bahá'í in 1876, he was able to obtain employment from the Parsi agent Manakji Limji Hatari, who had been sent by the Zoroastrian community in India to assist the Zoroastrians of Iran. Mírza Abu'l-Fadl taught Persian literature to Zoroastrian children in Manakji's new school and served as Manakji's personal secretary. Some of the earliest Zoroastrian conversions to the Bahá'í Faith resulted from Mírza Abu'l-Fadl's association with the Zoroastrian community (Mihrabkhani, Sharh Ahval-i 19-23).

Among the theological doctrines introduced by Bahá'u'lláh that prepared the Bahá'í community to receive non-Muslims as converts was his injunction to "consort with the followers of all religions in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship" (Tablets 22). Islamic and Babí doctrines relating to the ritual impurity of non-believers were discarded. Most important, Bahá'u'lláh claimed to be not only the One foretold by the Báb but also the Promised One of all religions: the return of Christ to the Christians, the Messiah to the Jews, Shah Bahram to the Zoroastrians. Because of this, Bahá'ís came to regard all religions as essentially true and believed religions all could find their ultimate culmination in Bahá'u'lláh. They approached other religions determined to fulfil and not destroy. 

Early Contacts and Conversions
While the psychological and theological changes that occurred within the Babí-Bahá'í-communities between 1850 and 1875 prepared Bahá'ís to receive non-Muslims, those changes did not in themselves cause the conversions. Were this the case, we might expect a close correspondence between conversion and Bahá'í outreach to certain groups. This does not seem to have been the case. Bahá'u'lláh's writings addressed Christians more than any other non-Muslim religious groups and addressed them at an earlier date. Early Bahá'ís often approached European Christians and requested their scriptures,⁴ and missionaries were often dismayed to find Bahá'ís using the missions as bases for their own conversion efforts.⁵ Yet Christian response to the Bahá'í revelation was negligible. The conversion of Jews and Zoroastrians to the Bahá'í Faith occurred almost accidentally. Bahá'ís did not, at first, make any concerted efforts to reach these people, who were attracted by association rather than active proselytizing. The actual conversions took many Bahá'ís by surprise. Hájí Muhammad Táhir, a Bahá'í from a Muslim background, observing this phenomenon, wrote:

Up to that time [1882-83] no one from among the Zoroastrians [in Yazd] had accepted the Faith. Indeed, the Bahá'ís could not imagine that these people would embrace the Faith, because they were not involved in the early history and events associated with the Manifestations of God and were not included in any discussions concerning the Faith. (Quoted in Taherzadeh, Revelation 103 1)

The conversions of the first Jews of Hamadan were equally unexpected. In 1877 a Jewish physician Hakim Aqa Jan was called upon to treat the malaria stricken wife of Muhammad Baqir, a prominent Bahá'í of Hamadan. Accidentally, Aqa Jan gave her strychnine pills instead of quinine. When she nearly died, Aqa Jan became panic stricken, expecting violent repercussions, not only for himself but towards the entire Jewish community as well. Seeing his consternation, Muhammad Baqir assured him that he would not hold him responsible for what was obviously a mistake. The wife recovered, but Aqa Jan was so impressed by Muhammad Baqir's kindness that he assumed Baqir could not be a Muslim and asked him regarding his religion. Muhammad Baqir then informed him that "a new religion has appeared in the world by the name of Bahá'í"(quoted in Sulaymani, Masabih-i 4:452-53). Aqa Jan made a thorough investigation of the tenets of the Bahá'í religion and eventually embraced it along with some forty friends and family members, including his father, a leading rabbi of the town.

Early Jewish and Zoroastrian converts carried out most of the actual teaching work themselves within their respective communities, relying on Muslim Bahá'ís for support. Neither the theology, attitudes, nor the efforts of the Bahá'ís themselves adequately explain why conversion occurred among Jews and Zoroastrians, but not Christians in Iran.

 Factors Underlying Conversions
Various Jewish scholars have suggested reasons why the Iranian Jews might have been attracted to the Bahá'í Faith. We might see how many of these can be shown to apply both to Jewish and Zoroastrian converts.

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