Talk:Baháʼí Faith in Iran

More cites...

• Iran Facing Others: Identity Boundaries in a Historical Perspective in Iranian Studies:Special Issue: Power Interplay Between Iran and Russia from the Mid-Seventeenth to the Early Twenty-First Century, Volume 46, Issue 3, 2013,
• A tale of resilience : a documentary on Baha'i persecution by Kazimi, Mesaq, Department of Television, Film, and New Media Production, San Diego State University, Date: 2013-06-17,
• Peter Smith (1 October 2013). A Concise Encyclopedia of the Baha'i Faith. Oneworld Publications. pp. 224–. ISBN 978-1-78074-480-3. --Smkolins (talk) 15:05, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

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Yaresan

User:Schlätzmeister, you have edited the page to say that Yarsanism (aka Yaresan, aka Ahl-e Haqq) is the second largest religion in Iran. Your edits have focused on saying that the Yarsan have 2-3 million and the Baha'i Faith 350 thousand. The numbers are not relevant for the discussion. Numerous publications from reliable sources describe the Baha'i Faith as the second largest religion in Iran, and I can see why they include the Yarsan with Islam. If you want to change the page, you must provide references that describe the Yarsan as the second largest religion in Iran, not just give numbers. And even if you find such references, you have to deal with the preponderance of other sources saying that the Baha'i Faith is the largest minority religion. It could look something like this:

The Bahá'í Faith is the second-largest religion in Iran after Islam (or third-largest depending on whether Yarsanism is considered Islamic), and the birthplace of the three central figures of the religion – The Báb, Bahá'u'lláh and `Abdu'l-Bahá.

Please stop reverting without addressing the issue of sources. And do please keep calling me a troll I like that. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 05:30, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Good day Cuñado ☼,

According Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa is the total number of followers of Yarsanism estimated at around 1,000,000 in 2004 and in article on Deutsche Welle is written „There are an estimated 350,000 adherents of the Baha'i faith in Iran, according to the UN report, making it the country's biggest religious minority“

I understand that find out numbers of followers of both religion is pretty hard, because neither is recognized as official religion and many followers of Baháʼí Faith are hiding their faith cause of persecution.

Nevertheless, I would like to reach a consensus and write something like:

Baháʼí Faith is often considered as the second-largest religion in Iran, after Islam but this is disputed because real number of follower is hard to provide because of persecution and hiding of religion. According to the UN report there are an estimated 350,000 adherents of the Baha'i faith in Iran. Another sources state that there are as many as 1,000,000 followers of another unrecognized religion called Yarsanism. This would make Yarsanism the second largest religion in Iran, but their numbers are also difficult to ascertain for the same reasons as followers of Baháʼí Faith.

Of course, we can shorten and edit this text, or if we don't want to make too big a part of the introduction only about the dispute over the second largest religion in the country, we can also create a new subheading called "Total number of followers" or something like that.

Sincerely, Dr. Ivan Kučera (talk) 07:56, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

You didn't address what I wrote above. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 18:41, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Dr. Ivan Kučera, you have added a reference saying that the Yarsan religion has about one million in Iran, and comparing that to a source that says the Baha'i religion has 350,000 in Iran. I think you have crossed over into original research. Your source does not say that Yarsan is the second largest minority religion after Islam. Yarsan is not included as an independent religion by the majority of demographers. For example, the World Christian Encyclopedia documents all the religions in every country, including Iran, and doesn't recognize Yarsan anywhere in the book. Numerous sources describe Baha'is as the second largest after Islam, and no source describes Yarsan as the second largest (that I've seen).

All this is aside from the fact that you mutilated the first sentence with a tangent. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 23:18, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Smkolins, Meditating, any thoughts? Cuñado ☼ - Talk 20:05, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

This issue revolves around one key point: Whether Yarsan is a "non-Muslim" religious minority in Iran?

• As it happens, all reliable academic and official sources (like the U.N.) categorically list the Bahá'í Faith as the "largest non-Muslim and unrecognized religious minority in the Islamic Republic of Iran" (e.g., 18-July-2019 report (A/74/188, p. 13) of Dr Javaid Rehman, UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran [1]).
• As User:Cuñado pointed out earlier, this is not the case with Yarsan, which many academic and official sources list as a form of Shia Islam. In a 2019 report on "International Religious Freedom: Iran", the U.S. State Dept. notes Iran's government itself "often considers Yarsanis as Shia Muslims practicing Sufism" [2].

Therefore, unless someone can provide more reliable sources than the huge number which name the Bahá'í Faith as demographically the largest non-Muslim religious minority in Iran, then arbitrarily applying that descriptor to Yarsan (as User:Schlätzmeister and User:Dr. Ivan Kučera have done) and changing what was previously written in this article -- that, "The Bahá'í Faith is the second-largest religion in Iran after Islam..." -- is indeed unacceptable "original research" or personal opinion.

It is also unreasonable to expect that this article on the "Bahá'í Faith in Iran" should include various notes about any and every other group that happens to "claim" (without adequate good sources) to be a larger "non-Islamic" religious minority in Iran than the Bahá'ís. Meditating (talk) 04:14, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

A) Most of those scholars list the Bahai Faith as the second largest religion in Iran because they don't even know about the existence of Yarsanism.

B) Sources that list the Bahai Faith as the second largest religion are usually just copying previous research that was done at a time when a lot was known about the Bahai Faith (due to its international spread) but not by any chance about Yarsanism, since followers of Yarsanism are usually peasants in remote mountains with no internet access, so sources listed the Bahai faith as the second largest because they knew nothing about Yarsanism, let alone its numbers.

C) Researches that refer to Yarsanism as a sect of Shiite Islam are devoted to Yarsanism only peripherally, usually they are encyclopedias about the Middle East and mention Yarsanism there, since there is and was little information about it (since their followers live in remote mountains without internet, they do not know English and they are peasants) so they had second-hand information that was often inaccurate. The most extensive research on Yarsanism, which deals directly with Yarsanism: The Yaresan: a sociological, historical, and religio-historical study of a Kurdish community *Hamzeh'ee, M. Reza (1990). The Yaresan: a sociological, historical, and religio-historical study of a Kurdish community. Berlin: K. Schwarz. ISBN 3-922968-83-X. OCLC 23438701. presents Yarsanism as an independent religion. I understand that at first glance Yarsanism may appear to be a part of Islam, but it is simply too far from it, and Yarsanists do not identify themselves as Muslims. You have the same thing with the Druze. Druzism is a religion that evolved from Shia Ismailism and Druze still believe in the Koran and that Muhammad was a prophet, so they are even closer to Islam than Yarsanism. Nevertheless, most academics and they themselves do not qualify them as Muslims, but as a separate religion. The qualification for someone to be considered a Muslim is the Shahadha. A Muslim must believe that there is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God. Yarsanists do not believe that Muhammad was a prophet because there are no prophets in Yarsanism. Instead, they believe that Muhammad was somehow divine (even if he did not receive a divine essence like Ali) and for making such claims, they would be rejected as heretics by Muslims themselves.

D) Reports from the Iranian government are not relevant because they are biased. You are using a double standard, why do you take information from the Iranian government relevant in the case of Yarsanism but not in the case of the Bahai Faith? They lie in the case of the Bahai Faith, but miraculously not in the case of Yarsanism? If we want to use information from the Iranian government as relevant, then I will go straight to the article about the Bahai faith and write that it is not a religion, but a criminal organization and ideology supported by Israel, whose mission is to subvert Iran, because this is exactly what says Iranian government about Bahai Faith. Dr. Ivan Kučera (talk) 07:48, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

You may be right, but Wikipedia is not about truth. You need to find reliable secondary sources that make the statement that you're trying to put in the article. You haven not provided one. The vast majority of religious demographers have not recognized Yarsan as an independent religion and have recognized the Baha'i Faith as the second largest religious in Iran. It's not up to us to debate it. I re-wrote the lead and included a "see also" comment so people can look into it. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 15:29, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I did not want to edit the article to say that Baha'i Faith is the third largest religion in Iran, but that it is questionable because of the limited freedom of religion in Iran and the so-called "unrecognized religion". I know my sources are weak and I understand that wikipedia is not about truth but about sources and studies. This system has holes, but it guarantees caution and trustworthiness. I just want to conclude by saying thank you for editing the article to at least mention Yarsanism, that's enough for me for now. I still have a lot of work to do in terms of religious studies to verify and find out the numbers of followers of each religion in Iran. Sincerely, Dr. Ivan Kučera (talk) 15:54, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

References

New Source

If anyone is interested, here's a potentially useful secondary source from this month that (briefly) discusses the Baha'i Faith in Iran: [3]. May require making a free account to view it. Meditating, since you have done a lot to expand the page recently, this might be useful to you. Gazelle55 (talk) 00:13, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Hi Gazelle55, thanks for pointing out the Economist article. Meditating (talk) 03:01, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Here are the relevant paragraphs in case you don't have a subscription:

The spiritual gap between Iran’s Shia ayatollahs and the people they rule is widening. The strictures of the theocracy and the doctrine of Shia supremacy alienate many. So growing numbers of Iranians seem to be leaving religion or experimenting with alternatives to Shiism. Christians, Zoroastrians and Bahais all report soaring interest. Leaders of other forms of Islam speak of popular revivals. “There’s a loyalty change,” says Yaser Mirdamadi, a Shia cleric in exile. “Iranians are turning to other religions because they no longer find satisfaction in the official faith.”
...
Millions more have joined Islam’s other offshoots, such as the Yarsanis, who follow the teachings of a 14th-century holy man, and the Bahais, who follow those of a 19th-century prophet. Their universalism and rites incorporating music, dancing and the mixing of the sexes draw many seeking a respite from the theocracy founded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who reportedly said, “There is no fun in Islam.”

There is a raging debate about this survey at Talk:Religion in Iran#GAMAAN Survey Being First on the Page. It was an online poll, so not very accurate. It estimated 0.5% Baha'is, corresponding to 414,000. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 04:40, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

I was mainly just thinking of the part that says Baha'is are reporting soaring interest. Given how it's worded, I took this to be based on reports from Baha'is, not based on the GAMAAN survey discussed later in the article. But it could be worth mentioning the GAMAAN survey too while also mentioning that respondents self-selected online and that only 90% were in Iran. It may well be wrong but I think it is WP:RS and we should wait for other sources to make criticisms. Gazelle55 (talk) 05:14, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Serv181920 mentioned a potentially useful source on a different talk page so pasting it here: "ANATOMY OF PREJUDICE, Reflections on secular anti-Baha’ism in Iran" by H.E. Chehabi - here : https://www.academia.edu/5024035/Anatomy_of_Prejudice_Reflections_on_Secular_Anti_Baha_ism_in_Iran. Could help with the pretty glaring pro-Baha'i POV on parts of the page... hopefully I'll have time to work on this soon... Gazelle55 (talk) 23:54, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Gazelle55 FYI, Mr. Chehabi is from Shaykhi background. Not sure if this info is helpful in any way. Have a nice day. :) Serv181920 (talk) 10:10, 15 March 2021 (UTC)