What Is Bahai Orientalism?

Abstract

Scrutinizing the literature of a modern religious movement this article argues that postcolonial theory can effectively be brought to the analysis of religions and religious writing. The case study focuses on the way in which colonialism impacted the Bahai faith in a specific and formative way, causing its leadership to present aspects of the faith’s development by employing the codes of Western Orientalism. Drawing on nineteenth and early twentieth-century European orientalist texts composed either about their own faith, or the Islamic society out of which it grew, the article demonstrates how these led Bahais “themselves [to]… adopt [..] an essentially Orientalist vision of their own community and of Iranian society”. Edward Said’s Orientalism throws light on an enduring situation in which mutual othering has crossed from culture and religion into politics, however since the late 1990s critics have demonstrated that Orientalism can function in more varied ways than Said allowed. Finally, the possibility is discussed as to whether there can be such a thing as a postcolonial Bahai scholar.