Aug 1, 2013

Iraq is one of the main starting points of the Baha'i religion. Baha'u'llah, the founder of the religion, spent 10 years in Iraq, where he announced his religious call. This occurred in the Radwan garden in Baghdad, which is said to be on the banks of the Tigris River in what is currently Baghdad Medical City. The Baha’i religion was preceded by a heavy presence of the followers of Bab (another central figure to the Baha'i religion) in Iraq, most notably Tahirih Qurratu l-`Ayn, the most prominent female figure among them.

Ever since its establishment, the Baha'i religion has been facing pressure and persecution in the Middle East at large, and in Iraq in particular. Many of its followers have been killed and its holy sites destroyed. Baha'is have been subjected to investigations and persecution during different periods. A number of provocative writings have been produced against Baha'is, supporting violence against them. They have been accused of a variety of charges, ranging from undermining religion to preaching atheism, pornography and being the fruit of colonialism and Zionism, and the list goes on.

There are no official statistics on Baha'is in Iraq, and their exact number remains unknown due to adherents’ fear of revealing their identities. Al-Monitor’s correspondent met with a number of Baha’is in Baghdad and Sulaimaniyah in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. However, none of those interviewed gave statistics on their numbers, due to their dispersion as a result of the intense fear of being oppressed by both the authorities and ordinary citizens. However, Baha'is in Sulaimaniyah feel safer and have greater stability than their brothers in Baghdad, although they abstain from openly practicing their faith for the above-mentioned reasons.

During the royal era, however, Baha'is managed to officially declare their identity. The Iraqi Baha'i community was founded in 1931, the first central Baha'i forum was established in 1936 in the al-Sa’doun region and they have possessed a cemetery in the New Baghdad district since 1952 known as the “eternal garden.” The Iraqi government registered the Baha'i religion in the 1957 census.

Restrictions on Baha’is started to gradually spread following the fall of the monarchy, until the repression reached its peak during the reign of the Baath regime. The regime issued a set of decisions against Baha'is in 1970, and published them in the Official Gazette of Iraq. Under these decisions, the Baha'i religion was officially banned and Baha'is were deprived of all their property and forbidden from registering their religion in civil records. Furthermore, they were ordered to delete references to the Baha’i faith from existing records and replace them with one of the three officially recognized Abrahamic religions. Subsequently, a large number of adherents were imprisoned and many Baha’i political and religious followers were sentenced to death in the late 1970s.