Bahá’i faith spreads

The diversity of AHS provides students with all sorts of interesting experiences not commonly available to students that attend other schools in the nation. One such experience is learning about different religions that students practice, such as the Bahá’i faith.

The Bahá’i faith, founded by Bahá’u’lláh in 19th century Persia, emphasizes the spiritual unity of all mankind and is the youngest of the world’s independent religions. Today, there are more than six million followers of this monotheistic religion in more than 200 countries around the world.
Junior Navid Chau is one follower of the Bahá’i faith, which exists in clustered Bahá’i communities worldwide.

“I belong to the Fairfax East area and although I don’t know of any other Bahá’i s at this school there are a lot of teenagers around the area that belong to the same faith.”

All of these teenagers and adults that follow the faith congregate at feasts, which occur every 19 days at either a volunteer’s house or a Bahá’i center.
This faith teaches that there is only one God and one human family and that all religions are essentially spiritually united. The Bahá’i faith believes that Bahá’u’lláh is only the most recent messenger in the line of the messengers of god, which stretches back to include icons from all religions such as Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Krishna, Zoroaster, Christ and Muhammad.

“We believe in all major manifestations of God and believe that within the next 800 years a new messenger will appear if the faith becomes corrupt,” said Chau.

Chau, whose parents converted to the faith before he was born, chose at the age of 15 to remain a Bahá’i. Age 15 is when followers of the Bahá’i faith become adults and have the right to choose whether they want to remain a Bahá’i. They also begin the obligatory prayers and start to follow the rules of the Bahá’i faith at adulthood. There are three kinds of obligatory prayers, short, medium, and long, named thus for their length.

“When we pray to God, we are praying to all of the gods of all religions worldwide because we believe that essentially, all of these gods are one,” said Chau.

Different rules and regulations are associated with each of these prayers. The short prayer is done in the afternoon, after washing the face and hands and praying to the East, facing the direction of Bahá’u’lláh in what is now present day Iran.

“Since I’m only 16, I only do the short prayer, the other mandatory prayers include long lists of directions, and there are many different prayers besides the three obligatory ones. We have more books than I can count in our house,” said Chau, “But basically, I just try to follow the three ones; oneness of religion, god, and humans.”

Bahá’i s believe that God has set certain events in motion that are breaking down barriers of race, class, creed, and nation to conform mankind into one universal civilization. The purpose of the faith is to assist all peoples in the process of this unification and offer spiritual guidance along with directives for personal and social conduct. Bahá’i  believe in abandoning all forms of prejudice, equality between the sexes, reducing extreme poverty and wealth, independent search for truth, and the unity of religion, man, and nations. The fact that Bahá’i s are so diverse and widespread in race, ethnicity, and nationality is a benefit in that they are able to spread the teachings of their faith to a larger audience.