AUSTIN, Texas — Aliyah Marandiz, who grew up a member of the Baha’i faith, said that her religion influences her actions, her perspective and how she treats other people, much the same way any religion would.
Yet while many religious communities are grappling with how to talk about race in the wake of recent protests against racism and police brutality, Marandiz said she has seen her fellow Baha’i practice their core belief of eradicating racism through service to their community.
“It’s been really helpful to have these allies that are ready for action,” she said. “The biggest thing is that all my Baha’i friends and the people in the Baha’i community have been so ready to act. We believe this so deeply, so we’re like, ‘How do we act on this?'”
Khotan Shahbazi-Harmon, who serves as the chair of the elected Local Spiritual Assembly in Austin, described service to the community as akin to worship.
“We’re always thinking, how do we interact with people? How do we build relationships? How do we serve the community in a way that reflects the community?” said Chwinwi Ghogomu, who became Baha’i with his mother and sister at the age of 13. “How do you take the society that you’re living in and serve that society and how do you learn to recognize the dignity that is inherent in all of us?”
For many Baha’is, this service has recently meant attending protests or turning out to support local organizations involved in social justice work.
Shivani Jain, who discovered the Baha’i faith in college a decade ago, said she appreciated the notion of a religion dedicated to achieving concrete, long-term structural change.
“It’s a faith that’s really about the critical investigation of truth and about hopefully working toward a better world order that eradicates extremes of wealth and poverty, and racial prejudice,” she said. “The idea is that true unity comes from justice. So we can’t have unity unless we have fairness and justice at all levels, and we’re working toward that in a very constructive way.”
This belief in justice is built into the structure of the religion itself. When electing members of the local spiritual assemblies, Baha’i policy says that a tie vote will go to the person whose identity is underrepresented in the local community.
Baha’is are involved in many social causes in Austin, Jain said.
“People are coming together to do things like food drop off, advertising things like rent relief, trying to help elderly people stay away from the heat,” Jain said. “Baha’is are multifaceted and engaged in many ways. Many of them are vegan. Many of them are fighting for climate change issues.”
Eastern tradition in the West
The Baha’i faith is built around ending racism and striving for peace and justice. The religion, which emerged from Islam in mid-19th century Persia, now Iran, has about 5 million followers worldwide. Baha’is believe God has given progressive revelation over the ages and they honor all the major prophets and religions. Their founding prophet, Baha’u’llah, preached unity of humankind and world peace.
“For Baha’is, racial unity is an imperative. It’s an integral part of our faith,” said Chris Bishop, a member of the Baha’i Local Spiritual Assembly in Austin. “Race unity does not mean sameness or assimilation. It means that we each have our own individual culture to bring to the faith, that those need to be included.”
Shahbazi-Harmon, chair of the Austin assembly, explained that Baha’is view racism as a spiritual disease in the nation that must be addressed.
While Baha’is are discouraged from participating in partisan politics, Austin’s 400 Baha’is have long dedicated themselves to working toward racial equality in other ways.
Along with service focused on the wider Austin community, Baha’is make sure members of their own faith are being cared for.
Black Austin Baha’is have started to gather every Wednesday in a Pupil of the Eye group that Bishop started in response to recent racial justice protests and to help people process their emotions and check in on one another.
The group’s name stems from Baha’i religious writings, which compare Black Americans to the “black pupil of the eye surrounded by the white.” The metaphor is used to illustrate how their experiences deepen their capacity for empathy and sense of social justice. Baha’is believe Black Americans have a crucial role in the nation’s social and spiritual transformation.
“It’s something that I see as temporary, hopefully as things calm down we might not need that space, but it is something I felt was important especially to deal with the exhaustion,” Bishop said.
Ghogomu, who is Black, said he appreciated the opportunity to congregate with people who share aspects of his experience and identity.
“I think any space where you have African Americans that can just come and be themselves and reflect on things, it’s a valuable space because that doesn’t really exist in wider society in the U.S.,” he said. “Just having an opportunity to reflect and think about our experiences and have someone who shares some of those experiences, positive or negative.”
He said he draws strength from belonging to a religion in which local and national leadership boards recently released statements in support of equality, equity and justice, and where his community is openly communicating about racism and trying to address it.
“Like any community in America we are influenced by the wider society,” he said. “But I think we have a system that is workable and built to attack this problem. Since the early 1900s, representatives have talked about the problem of race unity in America very directly. … It’s so supremely nice to be in a community where I feel loved and supported.”
The pursuit of truth
As part of the religion’s focus on the pursuit of truth, Austin’s Baha’i community also holds an annual symposium on racial unity with Huston-Tillotson University, the historically Black college in East Austin.
The symposium is named after Louis Gregory, a Black lawyer and prominent Baha’i who visited Austin in 1920 at the invitation of the first Baha’i in Texas, Anna Renke. This year, on the 100th anniversary of his visit, the symposium was planned for March as a retrospective of his legacy, but was ultimately canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Marandiz said that the wider community can learn from how Baha’is approach change at the grassroots level, rather than from the top down.
“We start with the foundation at this grassroots level and building these communities from the ground up,” she said. “It has to start with the core society units, which are your family and your neighborhood. … If we see each other as family members we can hopefully switch on that empathy and then change the world and society faster.”
