An image from the New Delhi Regional Conference

Good news! You have a wide choice.

You could go to the official Indian Baha'i website and be told:

We are the Bahá'ís of India - members of the largest Bahá'í Community of the world, numbering some 2.2 Million.
The Baha'is of India

Or you could check out a copy of the community's 2006-2007 annual report and see that that the total number of Baha'i adults, youth and children was 86,612.

There is one very odd thing about the detailed population data on page 55. Many of the rows and columns simply don't add up. Perhaps that page has errors in it, or perhaps it's been tampered with. I guess it means that the 86,612 figure is suspect. Decide for yourself.

There is a third source for figures on the Baha'i population of India. The 1991 Indian census  (the most recent for which data at this level of detail is available) puts the Baha'i population at 5,575.

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Gandhi International Peace Award

Please put The Gandhi Foundation’s Multi Faith Celebration in your diaries:

Date: 31 January 2009
Time: 16:00 - 18:30
Venue: London Inter Faith Centre
Address: 125 Salusbury Road, London NW6 6RG
Directions: click here

Every year, around the anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination (30th January 1948), there is a Multi Faith Celebration of Gandhi’s life which brings together people of different faiths such as Buddhist, Baha’i, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh. Our aim is to remember Gandhi, and to share words, music and dance from our religious traditions.

“I believe in the fundamental Truth of all great religions of the world. I believe they are all God-given and I believe they were necessary for the people to whom these religions were revealed. And I believe that if only we could all of us read the scriptures of the different faiths from the standpoint of the followers of these faiths, we should find that they were at the bottom all one and were all helpful to one another.” M. K. Gandhi

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Vote for your choice for Best Religious Blog. "Dervish" is amongst the finalists, but don't let that influence you.

Drumroll please: voting is now open for the 2008 Weblog awards and Dervish is nominated for Best Religious Blog. Participants can vote once every twenty-four hours, and polls close Tuesday January 13 at 10:00pm GMT.

I do think the award should go to the blog that writes the most interesting and compelling posts on religion and religious matters, and not just the blog that can get the most amount of votes by partisans expressing preference for a particular denomination or religion.

So rather than simply asking you to go vote for Dervish so a Muslim blog can win, I honestly hope that you take the time to read some posts from the ten different nominations (see below) and vote for the blog you think deserves the title.

Umm Yasmin - Dervish

Voting is really easy -- there's no registration required.

Vote here...

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One of the friends asked:

What is the ideal future envisioned in Baha’i religion? Is it a global order in which the world is composed of many diverse religions, each tolerant of one another, and the Baha’i just one amongst many? Or would the Baha’i be the organizing principle?

I think it is both a pluralist world of diverse religions tolerant of one another and working together, and one new world religious order, whose organising principle is one that is given in the Bahai Scriptures. Tolerance and cooperation between religions is new (although not entirely unknown in history), and it is a Bahai principle, but it is not a monopoly of the Bahais. It’s something the world must learn.

Religious diversity is here to stay. This would not have been obvious to the early American Bahais. America’s domination by Christianity, and its history of revivalism, made it plausible for them to think of everyone converting to the Bahai Faith in a world religious revival. Their concept of progressive revelation was that the Great Magician waves His wand, the old religions vanish in a puff of smoke, and when it clears, the Bahai Faith remains.

We cannot imagine that today. Geographic mobility and the increasing trend for people to leave and join religions of choice mean that every society on earth will, in the near future, become religiously diverse (most already are), and they will stay that way. So long as there is freedom of religion, and free investigation of truth, religious uniformity is simply impossible. Since both of these are Bahai teachings, a religiously uniform world could not be Bahai, and a Bahai world could not be religiously uniform.

Permanent religious pluralism is an obvious fact we can see in the world. How does this relate to the Bahai teaching of progressive revelation?

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"Hezbollah is awake and despises the Baha'is" reads this piece of graffiti on a building in the city of Abadeh.

Editor’s Note: The following essay was contributed by one of the readers of Iran Press Watch and is published as an original piece. Iran Press Watch greatly welcomes such contributions by our informed readers on issues that impact the Baha’i community of Iran and their 160-year old struggle to achieve civil rights in that country and to be given a voice to freely express their views and convictions as they work to create a better society. It should be noted that views expressed in such essays are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Iran Press Watch.

Unfounded Accusations Against the Baha’is!

I’ve been told by Baha’is encountered in the Middle East and elsewhere that Muslims have been telling the same stories, over and over again, about Baha’is, stories which are, most of them, completely without foundation. In other words, the Muslims who believe this nonsense are freiers. I say, if they want to be ignorant, who can stop them?

If you feel that your survival is being jeopardized by the Israelis then act like men and wage your jihad directly against that nation – not against Baha’i who won’t even fight back.

The first story they tell about Baha’is is that the members of this religion are Israeli spies. How ridiculous that is, and how ignorant you’d have to be to believe such a thing! Anyone who has had any dealings with Mossad knows it would not have any operatives who are pacifists, and globalists to boot. No, Mossad agents are hawks and Zionists. Whereas Baha’is believe in and practice non-violence, while Mossad agents do whatever they have to for Israel, provided the order comes from their superiors. So don’t confuse Mossad with Baha’is, because there is no way that Mossad would tolerate for a minute what Baha’is have been made to endure for a century and a half. Those cowardly Muslims who target Baha’is are blaming the victims when they called Baha’is Israeli spies….if they had any honor they would take on Mossad directly — but they know better than that, don’t they?

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Four years ago, on December 26, the day after Christmas, a massive tsunami hit the shores of the Indian Ocean.

This year, on December 26, a different kind of tsunami hit the shores of the Mediterranean Sea – a tsunami of bombs and missiles. On that day, according to the Jerusalem Post, Israel sent at least 100 fighter jets and helicopters, over 200 bombs and missiles, to destroy more than 170 targets in the tiny coastal strip known as Gaza, home to about 1.5 million Palestinians.

Shaynee Rainbolt has not only authentically recreated the classic era of 1950s and 60s pop/jazz albums by bringing into the studio one of the great arrangers of that era, Russell Garcia. She has also brought to light the Garcia songbook, which has been waiting for just this moment to be discovered by a new generation of vocalists. Rainbolt, with her vocal ability and appreciation, becomes the perfect conduit to introduce in one package these soon to be classic songs.
Michael Anthony, WHPC 90.3 FM

Catch the show live in New York on January 14th.

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Grey River Argus, 6 November 1911:

BAHAISM
a new religion from Persia
"PROPHETS" VISIT TO LONDON

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Evening Post, 8 March 1913

A PROPHET OF PEACE

Abdul Baha, the apostle of universal peace and brotherhood, recently visited England on his way back from America to the Orient. "London has rarely sheltered a more impressive personality," says the Christian Commonwealth, "than the leader of the Bahai movement, whom three million followers call master."

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