On a recent Wednesday afternoon, six students gathered outside Tydings Hall, chatting about classes, Chipotle and the Terps victory over Duke.
To an outsider it might not have looked like much, but for these students the informal gathering maintained a connection to a more-than-100-year-old religion promoting “world peace, world unity and oneness of religion.” A meeting of the university’s Bahá’í club was under way.
Though their ranks are small — a handful of students typically show up at their weekly meetings — the club unifies the university’s community of about 20 Bahá’í students and creates a forum for the students to work toward the religion’s goal of fostering world peace.
The Bahá’í faith dates back to the late 19th century when Bahá’u’lláh, a son of Persian aristocrats, turned his back on his family’s vast estates and revealed a message promoting equality among all religions. The religion implores its followers to actively pursue peace, a lofty goal for an individual.
Members of the university Bahá’í club said the group setting makes reaching this aspiration a little bit easier.
“We are unified by this idea of peace and building unity in the world. It’s a very strong ideal that Bahá’ís have,” communication graduate student Leysan Khakimova said. “We are working for peace, so it’s kind of hard to do it on your own.”
Promoting this cause, the group last year hosted a speaker series to raise awareness for the condition of human rights and religious freedom for Iranian Bahá’ís.
Still, on a week-to-week basis, the club mostly serves as a place for Bahá’ís to meet and socialize. There are about 200,000 Bahá’ís in the United States, and an individual Bahá’í community in a given area may only be a few hundred people or less.
To celebrate the end of a fasting holiday, the club hosted a sleepover.
“It’s not just a club,” freshman international business major Navid Mazloom said. “We’re all also friends as well.”
Bahá’ís don’t drink alcohol or run for political office. Still, they have thrived on the campus.
But in other parts of the world, following the Bahá’í faith isn’t as easy.
Coming to the United States from Eritrea, junior computer science major Haidet Gilamichael found himself in a Sudanese jail because of his religion.
“Coming here, I went through Sudan,” he said. “When they found out I was Bahá’í, they didn’t like the whole idea.”
Gilamichael was thrown in jail on false charges of “spying for Israel” and locked up for an indefinite amount of time. Luckily, a Bahá’í friend living in Sudan drove across the country to bribe Gilamichael’s way out of prison.
“The whole country is corrupt. They operate on bribes,” he said. But if it weren’t for the help of a fellow Bahá’í, his two weeks in jail could have easily been a lifetime.
“It’s pretty scary when you think about it,” he said.
Several members of the Bahá’í club have similar horror stories. Most members have a relative who has been imprisoned or forced to leave their home country.
But regardless of the challenges they face abroad, here at the university, Bahá’ís will continue to advocate for their main cause: peace.
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