some depth and breadth behind "second most widespread religion"

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smkolins

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Hi folks,

Just an FYI that I've been working on a Wikipedia project of my own. I discovered a niche, as it were. There were no articles about Baha'i Faith in (name country.) So I've spent over a year working on the list of countries. Many many more to go but a very interesting process along the way - countries where it is effectively banned, others where it's a noticeable part of the population, and so on.... have fun and if you want to add content and have citations or even write your own article - the more the merrier..... see Baha'i Faith by Country for the list so far!
 
Sounds really interesting ... so eventually each country will have information about Baha'is and their history there.. Sort of an online "Baha'i World".:)
 
arthra said:
Sounds really interesting ... so eventually each country will have information about Baha'is and their history there.. Sort of an online "Baha'i World".:)
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Volume XVIII is a major resource in fact - lots of memorial so early pioneers collected in the online version (though it needs more proof reading.)

But yes it is indeed a Baha'i World - there are already parallel articles for Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism - Catholics also have a parallel set for that matter. Some of the smaller groups have spotty coverage. There have been some summary articles for the Baha'i Faith but while it itself is large it offers about two or three sentences per country it mentions and it also didn't mention so many countries.

So that's what I've been at for a year plus now. Others have chimed in here and there - the UK and Germany articles got a fair bit of coverage and some editors jumped with with structural connections I'd had no idea how to do so there's now continental/regional links.

But the basic work on all the articles has been mine so far. Only two haven't been originated by me - Scotland and England. Both were skimmed from the UK article. I jumped into the Scotland one and added massively to it. I'm waiting to see what happens with the England one.

My latest one was Rwanda. There is one estimate that as many as 30,000 Baha'is were among the million or so who were killed in the genocide there. The citation is a bit weak so I softened the entry in the article just mention thousands.

I usually take a random walk around the planet but follow up with making sure I'm making roughly equal progress in all the regions. Africa has a lot of small countries so I adding one there for every other wandering entry.

At some point there aught to be regional summaries and also some of the big names need to be done - US, Iran, Ottoman Empire days.... But the work there is going to take a lot of development of many articles - they are just too big to do in one article. At some point I'm going to re-read various biographies to write up their respective articles more as a stepping stone to getting to the big articles....

Interestingly I was recently on pilgrimage and there was a lot of interest in reading articles where people were from. I've mentioned my articles in various Baha'i circles with rather lack luster response but while on pilgrimage people really really wanted to read about the history in their own countries. Interesting.
 
I've moved over to Cyprus 3 months ago, having been born and lived most of my life in the UK. My Greek isn't that good so I buy a weekly newspaper called the Cyprus weekly which a very popular paper down here, it's written in english and covers all major news of the week. There is advertisments in this paper and some of them are religous promotion, they are all Christian denominations accpet for one which promotes the Baha'i faith for the Baha'is of Cyprus, I see it almost every week. But this week the paper itself wrote an article on world religion day and makes a big mention of the Baha'i faith and finishes the article with a Baha'i prayer. Which I was suprised to find in the Cyprus weekly as Cyprus is a predominantly conservative Christian Orthodox country.

Cyprus has a crime rate of virtually nothing and has the highest rate of educated people in the whole of the European Union if not the world, I know a trained pilot that works in a supermarket stacking shelves..
 
I just want to add that the statistics don't include the North part of the Island which is under occupation.

Also Cypriots of Cyprus are historically a very genetically and culterally diverse people. And the majority of Cypriots live out of Cyprus (a very diaspora people). So i wonder if this has anything to do with a Greek Cypriot based newspaper having empathy for the Baha'i faith.
 
Postmaster said:
I just want to add that the statistics don't include the North part of the Island which is under occupation.

Also Cypriots of Cyprus are historically a very genetically and culterally diverse people. And the majority of Cypriots live out of Cyprus (a very diaspora people). So i wonder if this has anything to do with a Greek Cypriot based newspaper having empathy for the Baha'i faith.
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Hello Postmaster! Good to read your post after such a long time!

I'm not familair with the situation there in Cyprus.. Many people though that are culturally diverse do find the Baha'i Faith attractive!

There are some Baha'is in Cyprus and here are some of their sites:

Welcome from the Baha'is of Limassol, Cyprus

North Cyprus: Turkish-Cypriots of Bahá'i Faith

Community Name: Baha'i Community of Cyprus - Welcome!
 
Hey nice to hear from you too. Cyprus is a uniquely amazing country it’s the only Middle Eastern country in the European Union. I live in view of the salt lake which is the third most important site of Islam, Mohammad’s auntie’s shrine is there. It's also important to Christians because folklore has it that Saint Lazarus Miraculously turned into a salt lake from a Vineyard. His tomb also very sacred is only 5 minute drive from the salt Lake. Cyprus has had a vast history of ancient occupation and settlers from Jews, Venetians, Franks, Egyptians, Phoenicians, British, Turks, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Arabs, Maronites and Armenians all leaving there unique marks on the Island. Our Greek dialect is full of different words of these settlers including our surnames.
 
Postmaster said:
… they are all Christian denominations accpet for one which promotes the Baha'i faith for the Baha'is of Cyprus, I see it almost every week. But this week the paper itself wrote an article on world religion day and makes a big mention of the Baha'i faith and finishes the article with a Baha'i prayer. Which I was suprised to find in the Cyprus weekly as Cyprus is a predominantly conservative Christian Orthodox country.
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As I mentioned above, there are widely quoted statistics that the Baha'i Faith is the second most widely spread religion in the world - after Christianity. From writing these country pages I can tell each place has it's history and circumstances - all of them trace from the progress of the religion beyond Persia of course and some, like Slovakia that I'm working on now, are very recent arrivals while some mark themselves right from the earliest times associated with the Baha'i Faith ( like I didn't know Azerbaijan's community dates back to before the martyrdom of the Bab.)

We have no little resources reflected in this thread that there should be a page on Cyprus!

The challenge of diversity is a place where Baha'is do tend to find a place at the table of civic thought - though the challenge remains, and often a heritage of distrust or worse has allot to work through. But presuming good faith, and working on awareness and mutuality and service across social lines, are great ways to build community.
 
Yeah true it’s easy to distrust the Baha'i faith. There has been alot of bad cult’s spring up now and again which people have now become cautious with and not forgetting the bad behaviour within established religions and for many other reasons. But I don't think you will find anywhere else in the world a news paper article with a Baha'i prayer in it, that really says something. It has alot do with Cypriots though. Our history is extremely diverse you only have to visit wikipedia to see a 7000 year old history of multiculturalism which is still on going with the Cypriot people today, in Cyprus our National Cheese is of Lebanese origin (Haloumi), our national lace is Burano crafted in the mountainous regions. We have Venetian defensive walls, European Castles, Ottoman watch towers, British bases and runins and artefacts from Arabs (Islamic empire), Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Roman, Ottoman and all Periods of Hellenism (Neolithic, Minoan, Mycenaean, Macedonian, Byzantine). And not forgetting settlers like Jews (that got ethnically removed in the 2nd centyry by the Romans), Maronites and Armenians. This is no exageration lol History of Cyprus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2 to 3 million Cypriots live outside of Cyprus whereas only 900'00 (if you include the north) live in Cyprus, the diaspora is all over the world from southern Africa, Sweden the whole American continent, the whole European continent to Australia with a very successful entrepreneurial reputation.

The Hala Sultan Tekke
1265551-md.jpg


Tekke applies to a building designed specifically for gatherings of a Sufi brotherhood.
 
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