Posted Wednesday, April 13, 2016 10:00 pm

FLEMING ISLAND – For some teenagers, the morning ritual is a careful balance between yawning, sighing, and rushing for the bus, but for Maria Mahmoodi, she was just grateful that she woke up in her home that morning.

As a teenager, Mahmoodi was forced to escape her native Iran and the ensuing religious persecution her family faced from the Islamic Republic during the revolt that overthrew the Shah of Iran in 1979. Now a Fleming Island resident and a physician at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Riverside, Mahmoodi – a member of the Baha’i faith – can still remember the uncertainty she felt at age 17 struggling to sleep in a city where the rise and fall of the moon in her window was the only certainty.

“After the revolution the Baha’is were severely persecuted, and although we are the biggest minority of religion in Iran, we are not recognized,” Mahmoodi said. “We were excluded in the constitution, so we had no rights at the all. As a result, the Baha’i children could not go to school. Baha’is could not be employed in general. There was a lot of persecution.”

When the Islamic Republic revolted and subsequently took power, they ostracized Baha’is for a multiplicity of reasons, but predominantly Islam saw Baha’is as spies, and criticized them as a false religion. For Iran’s hard line government, Islam is seen as the final religion, and Muhammad the final prophet, hence his title ‘the seal of the prophets.’

Mahmoodi and her family escaped when she payed smugglers to sneak her through the Pakistan border. In doing so, however, she left the birthplace of her religion whose roots are in Tehran, Persia, present day Iran. The Báb – considered the Herald of the Bahá’í faith – lived in the mid 19th century and announced he was “the bearer of a message destined to transform humanity’s spiritual life.” His message continued with Bahá’u’lláh – which means the “Glory of God” – “is the Promised One foretold by the Báb and all of the Divine Messengers of the past.”

Bahá'u'lláh taught that all of humanity is of the same race and stressed the importance of uniting in the ‘oneness’ of God and humanity itself.

It was these disruptive teachings that saw Bahá'u'lláh thrown in prison for the remainder of his life, however the Baha’i faith did not end there. Instead, Bahá’í began spreading around the world in 1844 as the Báb fulfilled the same role for Bahá'u'lláh that John the Baptist did for Jesus.

“People want to call this a new religion, and in a sense it is a new development of religion, but there is only one religion, God’s religion,” said Tom Armistead of Orange Park, one of the 30 members of the Clay County Baha’i community. “It’s not Christianity, it’s not Judaism, and it’s not even the Baha’i faith. It’s God’s religion, it just has different stages of revelation throughout the whole sweep of history. So we revere the revelations of every divinely revealed religion.”

The acceptance is visible in their Sunday service, which includes members from Brazil, Uganda, and Clay County natives intermingling and singing their hymns, which speak of peace, harmony, and the love of humanity.

“We like to draw boundaries, and divide people up into this class, and this race, and this nationality, but in fact there is only one human race, because God has created us all with the same love, care and compassion.” Armistead said. “This is an entirely fresh depiction of what we have always thought of as the brotherhood of man. This is recognizing that just as there is one God, that God’s oneness is so vast, so massive, and so great, that there is only one humanity as a reflection of his oneness.”

This oneness with humanity means that Baha’is cannot participate in bipartisan politics. They do vote, however. It is beliefs like this that can be confusing for some people, as another member of the Clay County Baha’is, Ellen Borger, points out.

“They would first look at me and assume that because I’m a blonde haired blue-eyed girl that I was a Christian,” Borger said. “They asked me if I believe in Jesus ‘yes I do believe in Jesus,’ ‘are you saved?’ ‘Well no I’m not saved’ ‘how do you believe in Jesus if you’re not saved?’ So, I educated them and some of them were very accepting, other people, like one of my boyfriend’s parents, didn’t like it, so they made him break up with me saying I was in a cult. Especially with kids it can be very hard on them.”

Baha’is still face persecution. However, the Baha’i Community Center of Jacksonville off Greenland Road is thriving. Their library contains the Bible and all the volumes of their religion written by Bahá'u'lláh and the Báb.

The multicultural congregation sings out in unison in the next room over while a man with a curly gray beard strums on a guitar:

“We are all waves of one sea,

We are all leaves of one tree,

We are all flowers of one garden,

Bring us together in unity,

Bring us together as one family.”

For the members, it reminds them of the unity they all believe in so wholeheartedly, the unity that saw the death of their prophet, the unity that still binds them hand in hand, and the unity that lets them harmonize the words of the hymn “Bring Us Together in Unity.”

Mahmoodi doesn’t need the reminder. She sees it every morning in her family and recalls the same nostalgia when she thinks back to her life as a teenager in Austria, standing on the blazing cement in front of the United States Embassy.

“When I was in Austria, I had an interview with the American embassy, I’ll never forget this,” she said while tears welled up in her eyes. “When I interviewed with the person who was making the final decision in allowing me into immigration he shook my hands and said ‘I have read your file and I’m very sorry for what you have been through, and I hope you find safety and security in my country.’ I’ll never forget that. For someone who didn’t even know me try to realize how difficult it was for me, what I experienced, and open up his country to help me find a new life. I’ll never forget that.”