Bahá’ís in the world

There are more than 5 million Bahá’ís in the world.

The Bahá’í Faith is established in virtually every country and in many dependent territories and overseas departments of countries. Most nations and a few territories have a National Spiritual Assembly elected by the Bahá’ís of that jurisdiction.

Bahá’ís live in some 100,000 localities around the globe. Thousands of these localities elect a local Spiritual Assembly each year.

About 2,100 indigenous tribes, races, and ethnic groups are represented in the Bahá’í community.

Members of the Bahá’í Faith are engaged in approximately 600 ongoing social and economic development projects, and several thousand smaller projects of fixed duration.

The Bahá’í International Community has been registered with the United Nations as a nongovernmental organization since 1948, it holds consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council and with UNICEF, and it has an ongoing working relationship with several other U.N. agencies.

There are currently seven Bahá’í Houses of Worship – in Australia, Germany, India, Panama, Samoa, Uganda, and the United States. The eighth temple will be in Chile. More than 100 sites for future temples have been acquired.

Bahá’í writings and other literature have been translated into more than 800 languages.

Each year, nearly 400,000 people visit the Bahá’í Shrine, terraces, and gardens on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel.

The country with the most Bahá’ís is India, with over a million Bahá’ís. The Bahá’í House of Worship in New Delhi is the most visited Bahá’í site in the world; it had 4.6 million visitors in 2007.

In Iran, where the Bahá’í Faith originated, there are now about 300,000 Bahá’ís, constituting the largest non-Muslim religious minority in that country.

The Encyclopedia Britannica Yearbook has listed the Bahá’í Faith as the second most widespread religion in the world (in terms of geographic reach), after Christianity.

 

Localities where Bahá'ís live (world, 1956): simplified map

compiled by National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States.
published in Baha'i World
Wilmette, IL: Baha'i Publishing Trust, 1956

Source: news.bahai.org