Bahá'í Faith in Tunisia

Early phase

The first presence of the religion is not well documented but all suggestions point to the arrival of Bahá'ís during the ministry of `Abdu'l-Bahá which is to say before 1921. It is suggested a Bahá'í visited circa 1910 possibly from Egypt. Frenchman Bahá'i Hippolyte Dreyfus-Barney is known to have obtained permission from the French authorities to have the Bahá'í teachings promulgated in Tunisia. Dreyfus-Barney was remembered by Shoghi Effendi, then head of the religion, for his "stimulating encouragement" to the Bahá’í community of Tunis. Later, Hafez Nadim Effendi, who died in 1933, was similarly encouraged by Shoghi Effendi to twice visit Tunis to teach and encourage the Bahá'ís. Circa 1928 the first Baha’i pilgrim from Tunis and a representative of its Bahá'í Local Spiritual Assembly visited the Bahá'í spiritual and administrative centers of the religion. In 1937 Dr. M. Sálih, chairman of the National Spiritual Assembly of Egypt, visited Tunis again based on the encouragement of the head of the religion with a view to strengthening the Bahá'ís in Tunisia and encouraging their activities.

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 covering Tunisia with its secretarial seat in Tunis. Another well known Bahá'í who served the area and that assembly at the time was Helen Elsie Austin. The assembly was established covering about 600 Bahá'ís and 38 local assemblies across northwestern Africa. The seat of the national assembly was later transferred from Tunis to Rabat, Morocco. The regional national assembly including Tunisia achieved incorporation in 1961.

Growth

A survey of the religion taken in 1963 found an Assembly in Tunis, groups between 1 and 9 adults in 18 locations, and an additional 6 locations isolated Bahá'ís lived.

During 1967-69 the regional assembly was reorganized and had jurisdiction over Algeria and Tunisia. When the pioneers to Tunisia were expelled in November 1968 the Attar-Hamedani family left behind a villa and office before eventually settling in Hong Kong. In 1969 the regional national assembly of North Africa was dissolved when Tunisia was placed under emergency rule. The National Spiritual Assembly of Tunisia was elected in 1972.

Persecution

In October 1984 Bahá'í institutions were banned and Bahá'ís were interrogated in Tunisia. In the mid 1980s 6 known polemical attacks were made against the Bahá'ís in Tunisia in newspapers. Near the same period Abdelfattah Amor served as dean of the faculty of legal, political and social science at Tunis University. He would later work professionally as a human rights lawyer who, as a Muslim, would serve as a UN Special Rapporteur who took a keen interest in the treatment of the Bahá'ís of Iran. In the same period Muhammad Talbí, a professor of the Letters and Human Sciences at Tunis University, published an article "What Muslims Really Believe About Religious Liberty" in Liberty, a magazine of religious freedom, in 1986. Though it didn't mention the religion specifically it was considered significant enough that Bahá'ís reprinted the article with permission in their publication the Bahá'í News in January 1987.

Traditionally the government regarded the religion as a heretical sect of Islam and permitted its adherents to practice their faith only in private.

Modern community

In 2005 a Tunisian Muslim academic, Dr. Iqbal Al-Gharbi, a psychology lecturer at the University of Ez-Zitouna in Tunis, called on Muslims to reconcile with Bahá'ís and other religious groups, even to "apologise to the Baha'is that have been humiliated and denigrated in Muslim countries."

The modern Bahá'í community has been alittle in the news since the Arab Spring by commentators interested in events in Tunisia. A series entitled “Tunisia’s Spiritual Pluralism" covered the religion in February 2013. It noted that though the Bahá's have "not been overtly persecuted by the Tunisian state, they nonetheless often feel socially marginalized and excluded".

Demographics

2001 estimates by the US Department of State counted some 150 Bahá'ís. However World Christian Encyclopedia (2001) claimed that the number of Bahá'ís in Tunisia was 1,450 in 1990. The Association of Religion Data Archives estimated 2,000 Bahá'ís in 2010. A recent mention in a newspaper quoted a Bahá'í estimating that more than a thousand exist in Tunisia.

Though the government has proscribed the religion publicly it has permitted Bahá'ís to hold meetings of their national council in private homes as well as three local spiritual assemblies that have been elected since 2004.