Baháʼí Faith in Africa
[7][8] In Egypt, he was successful in converting some thirty of the students of Al-Azhar University, the foremost institution of learning in the Sunni Muslim world.
Abu'l-Faḍl also became friends with writers and magazine publishers, and many articles that he authored appeared in the Egyptian press.
[7] ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, head of the religion after Baháʼu'lláh, lived in Egypt for several years and several people came to meet him there: Stanwood Cobb,[9] Wellesley Tudor Pole,[10] Isabella Grinevskaya,[11] and Louis George Gregory, later the first Hand of the Cause of African descent, visited ʻAbdu'l-Bahá at Ramleh in 1911.
[13] One of the earliest Baháʼís of the west and a Disciple of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, Lua M. Getsinger, died in 1916 and she was buried in Egypt[14] near Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl.
The tablets were translated and presented by Mirza Ahmad Sohrab on 4 April 1919, and published in Star of the West magazine on 12 December 1919.
Before joining the religion, Richard St. Barbe Baker served in the country in 1920 under the Colonial Office as Assistant Conservator of Forests.
[22][23][24] In 1997 the National Spiritual Assembly presented a Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa which said in part: Abhorring all forms of prejudice and rejecting any system of segregation, the Baháʼí Faith was introduced on a one to one basis and the community quietly grew during the apartheid years, without publicity.
Despite the nature of the politics of that time, we presented our teachings on unity and the oneness of humankind to prominent individuals in politics, commerce and academia and leaders of thought including State Presidents.... [b]oth individual Baháʼís and our administrative institutions were continually watched by the security police.... Our activities did not include opposition to the previous Government for involvement in partisan politics and opposition to government are explicitly prohibited by the sacred Texts of our Faith.... During the time when the previous Government prohibited integration within our communities, rather than divide into separate administrative structures for each population group, we opted to limit membership of the Baháʼí Administration to the black adherents who were and remain in the majority of our membership and thereby placed the entire Baháʼí community under the stewardship of its black membership....
Because of the successive waves of people becoming Knights of Baháʼu'lláh, Enoch Olinga was entitled "Abd'l-Futuh", a Persian name meaning "the father of victories" by Shoghi Effendi.
However, the Baha'is were able to demonstrate to these governments that they were not agents of Zionism nor anti-Islamic and succeeded in having the ban reversed in all of these countries except Niger.
[57] On the other hand, Sub-Saharan Baháʼís were able to mobilize for regional conferences called for by the Universal House of Justice 20 October 2008 to celebrate recent achievements in grassroots community-building and to plan their next steps in organizing in their home areas.
[71] Through succeeding decades Baháʼís have been active in a number of ways and by some counts have become the third largest international religion in Chad with over 80300 members by 2000[72] and 96800 in 2005.
[73] The Baháʼí Faith in Democratic Republic of the Congo begins after ʻAbdu'l-Bahá wrote letters encouraging taking the religion to Africa in 1916.
The Baháʼí Faith in Equatorial Guinea begins after ʻAbdu'l-Bahá wrote letters encouraging taking the religion to Africa in 1916.
[53] The Baháʼí Faith in Ethiopia begins after ʻAbdu'l-Bahá wrote letters encouraging taking the religion to Africa in 1916.
[19] The second individual was Enoch Olinga who traveled to Kenya when he served in the British Royal Army Educational Corps.
[81] The Association of Religion Data Archives (relying on World Christian Encyclopedia) estimated about 429,000 Baháʼís in Kenya in 2005.
[94] The first specific mention of Rwanda was in May 1953 suggesting the expanding community of the Baháʼí Faith in Uganda look at sending pioneers to neighboring areas like Ruanda.
[99] The Baháʼís of Rwanda have continued to strive for inter-racial harmony, a teaching which Denyse Umutoni, an assistant director of Shake Hands with the Devil, mentions as among the reasons for her conversion to the religion.
[103] With the first Tanganyikan to join the religion in 1952[104][105] the first Baháʼí Local Spiritual Assembly was elected in 1952 of Tanganyika in Dar es Salaam.
[112] Following the reign of Idi Amin when the Baháʼí Faith was banned and the murder of Baháʼí Hand of the Cause Enoch Olinga and his family,[113] the community continues to grow though estimates of the population range widely from 19,000 to 105,000 and the community's involvements have included diverse efforts to promote the welfare of the Ugandan people.
[147][148] In 1956 at Ridván, a marked holy day of the religion and a day on which major elections are held, three new Regional Spiritual Assemblies were established including that of North-West Africa with the chairmanship of Enoch Olinga[149][150] In 1963 a survey of the community counted 1 assembly and 18 organized groups (between 1 and 9 adults) of Baháʼís in Tunisia.
[153][154][155] The Baháʼí Faith in Angola begins after ʻAbdu'l-Bahá wrote letters encouraging taking the religion to Africa in 1916.
[1] The Baháʼí Faith in Botswana begins after ʻAbdu'l-Bahá wrote letters encouraging taking the religion to Africa in 1916.
Before World War I the area of modern Malawi was part of Nyasaland and ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, then head of the religion, asked the followers of the Baháʼí Faith to travel to the regions of Africa.
[179] It also ranks Zambia's as the tenth-largest national Baháʼí community in the world in absolute terms, and the fourth-largest in Africa.
[179] The William Mmutle Masetlha Foundation, an organization founded in 1995 and run by the Zambian Baháʼí community, is particularly active in areas such as literacy and primary health care.
[19] Hosting various conferences through the '70s the community was somewhat disrupted by the First Liberian Civil War with some refugees going to Côte d'Ivoire in 1990[188] and the re-establishment of the National Spiritual Assembly in 1998.
[195] Following a period of oppression, making the institutions of the religion illegal in the late 1970s and 80's, the National Assembly was re-elected starting in 1992.
The most recent estimate, by the Association of Religion Data Archives in a 2005 report details the population of Senegalese Baháʼís at 22,000.
