People have often asked me when, how and why I became a Baha’i, as I was not born into a Bahá’í family, was happy with what I had been taught on the spiritual front growing up and was not seeking any further enlightenment when I turned up to study for a degree in Business Studies at Hatfield Polytechnic in September 1977.

I had been born into a Christian family, my father had been baptised Church of Scotland and my mother had been brought up attending the Congregational Church in Parrswood, Didsbury, Manchester. After marrying, my mother moved to India where my father was a tea estate manager and where my brother and I were born.  We returned to Britain when I was about 5½ years old and having settled into UK life, started attending the United Reformed Church every Sunday in Bramhall, where we lived.  I attended the children’s Sunday School classes and went on to help conduct them myself before I left for university.

So how did I hear of the Bahá’í Faith? The answer is through my husband, Faran, who at the time was a fellow student living on the same floor as me in the mixed Halls of Residence of the University.  The conversation arose when I questioned why he did not drink, when we were in the college bar at a social gathering one evening.  He said that as a Bahá’í he avoided all alcohol. Accepting that he was entitled to his beliefs I left the matter at that.

My next encounter with the Bahá’í Faith arose as a result of the antics of my nextdoor neighbour in the Halls of Residence, a Humanities student.  Also new to university life, he took to smoking cannabis, drinking a lot, playing his music far too loud and partying for a large proportion of his time.  As the wall between our rooms was paper-thin, I found it very hard to study to complete my college work when he was in. Other colleagues on the floor, seeing my predicament, offered me their rooms to work in when they were not there so I could concentrate, and one of them was Faran.  He frequently went to the library or computer labs to work so I sat at his desk and worked.  But like any normal person I needed breaks and that was when I started to idly browse the Bahá’í books he had on his shelf.

Over time I read God Loves Laughter, The Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, God Passes By, excerpts from The Dawn Breakers and The Báb by Hassan Balyuzi.  The more I read, the more interested I became.  I asked Faran if he could take me to meet other Bahá’ís so I could ask more questions and so I attended a couple of fireside meetings of the Welwyn/Hatfield Bahá’í community at the house of Massoud Tahzib. I was always asked if I had any further questions about what we discussed, but I rarely did as there was nothing I found to disagree with.  In a very short time I showed my desire to become a Bahá’í by completing a declaration card at the home of Earl and Audrey Cameron. Eventually becoming a member of the first Spiritual Assembly of Welwyn/Hatfield.

This leads me neatly on to why I became a Bahá’í and the answer to that is simply because to me the Faith all made sense, the key factor being the concept of progressive revelation.  To me it is totally logical that if God has created us and loves us, we would not be left to our own devices but would be sent messengers through time to guide and nurture humanity, to reinforce the same essential spiritual teachings we have been taught, but also to bring new social teachings to help mankind to progress and develop in the age that people are now living in.  I could see the same spiritual tenets in each religion – to love God, love one another, to be truthful and honest etc.  I liked Baha’u’llah’s teachings on the need for compulsory universal education, a world government and legislature, and a universal language, as I saw that the time was now right, as today we are living in a global society where such concepts can be realised and will be beneficial to the progress of mankind. I liked the principles of the equality of men and women, that religion and science should go hand in hand to prevent superstition and provide a tempering conscience when considering the use of scientific developments.  I easily supported the principle of the need for the elimination of any form of prejudice, perhaps as a result of my growing up in India and having been brought up by parents who showed love and respect to everyone.

I was happy to see that the Baha’ Faith encouraged the independent investigation of truth, that Bahá’í parents encouraged their children to learn about other religions as well as their own in order to make an informed choice for themselves when older on whether or not they wished to call themselves Bahá’ís and follow the Faith. When I took classes at church Sunday School, I rather felt that I was indoctrinating children in Christian teachings, as there was never any mention of any other religion. I feel that if something is the truth it will stand up to the test of scrutiny and questioning, which I believe the Bahá’í Faith does.

When I became a Bahá’í there were some principles that I was not particularly keen to adopt, such as the avoidance of alcohol, especially as a student, where drinking was such a large part of university social life.  However, I accepted that if I believed Bahá’u’lláh to be truly a messenger of God (which I did), I had to obey all His teachings, not just cherry pick those easiest to follow. When I became a Bahá’í, I didn’t know everything about the Bahá’í Faith. Even now, 40 years on, I still don’t, but what I had learned at that point I felt comfortable and happy with.

Choosing to change one’s religion is not an easy decision to make as one is always concerned about what others will think.  I was extremely worried about how my parents would take it, especially as they were persons of faith.  In myself I have never felt that I have lost any of the beliefs I had been brought up with, rather I have just extended them and updated them.  I still revere Christ, as a Messenger of God, but alongside Krishna, Zoroaster, Abraham, Moses, Buddha and Mohammad.

Yes, my parents were initially upset at my decision to become a Bahá’í, perhaps because they were picturing in their mind that I was joining some weird sect.  I learned years later that my mother wept when alone, after I told her the news. They however soon became very accepting of the Faith, when they saw that I did not change negatively in any way, that I still held the same spiritual and moral values that I had been brought up with, but had just incorporated new values, to which they had no objection. Over the years, they have been invited to and attended activities run by the Stockport Bahá’í community and developed Bahá’í friendships of their own.  Although in their lifetime they never became Bahá’ís, they always held the Faith in the highest regard and were thoroughly supportive.

Choosing to change your religion is a decision very personal to you.  Although I liked the Bahá’ís when I met them, I did not become a Bahá’í because of them. I became a Bahá’í purely because I fell in love with Bahá’u’lláh and his teachings.

So how has my life been since becoming a Bahá’í? As a youth I remember going to lovely family picnics hosted by the Cardell family in Cambridgeshire before they moved to California; going travel-teaching with other youth to Derbyshire; joining the Stockport Bahá’í community for feasts when home from university, and attending national youth conferences, national conferences and conventions held in different parts of the country such as Lancashire, Yorkshire and Staffordshire. These activities have given me the opportunity to learn more about the faith and its growth in the UK, to make new friends and feel part of a wider British Bahá’í community.

My sense of feeling part of a wider global community has come about through opportunities to attend various Bahá’í events: a European Youth Conference in Fiesch, Switzerland in 1971, where a coach load of us youth travelled from the UK;  the opportunity to go travel teaching in Malta and interact with the local Maltese Bahá’ís, and attend summer schools on the island of Rab in Croatia and Evia in Greece in more recent years.  I have also been fortunate in my travels with my husband to visit the Bahá’í Houses of Worship in India and Australia, which are both totally different, but stunningly beautiful. Bahá’ís we have met wherever we have travelled have been so friendly and welcoming. We may not always speak the same language, but that same openness to all regardless of creed, colour, or gender shines through, something that attracted me to the Bahá’í Faith in the first place and remains a core principle of mine to this day.

I was blessed to have the opportunity to go on a 9 day pilgrimage to visit the Bahá’í shrines and World Centre, Haifa, in the 1980s, to undertake a tour of Bahá’í holy places in Turkey organised by Mrs Alaee, and to re-visit Haifa for one day as part of a mini cruise to Israel and Egypt from Cyprus.  I was enthralled by the talk of Hand of the Cause, Mr Furútan and talks by Mr and Mrs Sabri in the Pilgrim House, and will never forget the beauty, simplicity and tranquillity of the Shrine of Bahá’u’lláh at Bahjí, with the sunbeams filtering in from the high windows, shining on the delicate ferns growing within the centre of the shrine.  I have never experienced a more peaceful place to say my prayers.  The one day visit, which was in August, gave me a ‘behind-the-scenes’ glimpse of Haifa; now I know why the cypress tress growing on the terraces leading to the Shrine of the Báb are so perfect and exactly the same, (a mystery for others to solve for themselves!).  One of the most beautiful sights we experienced on the trip was viewing the terraces and the Shrine of the Báb all lit up as we sailed out of Haifa at night bound for Egypt.

I married Faran in November 1981, the first Bahá’í wedding to take place in Welwyn Hatfield, and was beautifully conducted by Dermod and Roshan Knox, Chairman and Secretary of our Spiritual Assembly.  I still have the paper clippings of the article the press wrote about it in the Welywyn/Hatfield Times, describing how “a prince from the East married his princess from the West” – talk about being ‘bigged up’.  After we married we lived in Baldock, then Stevenage, Hertfordshire for 6 years, where our son Simon was born in 1984. We moved to Kent in January 1987 to help form the first Spiritual Assembly of Gillingham.  Our second child, Isla was born in 1987.  Both of our children have married non-Bahá’ís in Bahá’í ceremonies and this year we were blessed with a grandson from each union – Jaxon and Alex, the jewels in our crown!!!

Looking back on my life so far, I can see how I have tried to live a Bahá’í life and the happiness it has given me. After graduating I went to work in Personnel and Training, undertaking a postgraduate qualification to become a secondary school teacher when my children were young and later gained qualifications for headship, moving on to become Assistant Headteacher of a secondary school in Maidstone, Kent.  Throughout my working and personal life I have tried to incorporate Bahá’í values in all that I do, applying principles of Bahá’í consultation in management meetings; the elimination of any form of prejudice in interactions with students, parents and staff, promoting equality of men and women, and celebrating unity in diversity through assemblies etc.  Bahá’ís whom I have particularly admired and who have influenced me over the years have been Philip Hainsworth, Hand of the Cause Rúhíyyih Khánum and my in-laws Farzaneh and Mohammad-Ali Forghani-Ashfrafi.

I have had the good fortune to attend meetings where Philip Hainsworth and Rúhíyyih Khánum have spoken, been hosted as a pilgrim by Rúhíyyih Khánum at the House of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Haifa and seen video footage of her interacting with Bahá’ís all over the world in some of the remotest of regions.  I have admired their inspiring, practical ‘can do’ approach to the Bahá’í Faith, and the extreme humility of Rúhíyyih Khánum, widow of Shoghi Effendi, grandson of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Guardian of the Faith.

I have admired the staunch belief of my in-laws. Neither was allowed to come from Iran to attend our wedding.  All they had to do was to deny being Bahá’ís in order to get passports enabling them to leave, but true to their beliefs neither was prepared to do that.  When my father-in-law was subsequently put in prison and tortured purely for being a Baha’i, he refused to deny his beliefs in order to get released. Instead he endured the ill treatment inflicted, which sadly left him with permanent damage to his eyes and blood clots in his brain which eventually caused a fatal stroke.  He and his wife stood firm and resolute when their Faith was tested.  I would like to think that I would do the same should I ever be faced with such a position.  If you truly believe something is from God how can you ever refute it!

________________________

 

Sharon Forghani

Kent, June 2019