The Bahāʾī Faith grew out of nineteenth-century Shīʿī messianic expectations much as Christianity grew out of similar expectations within Judaism. The Bahāʾī Faith's founders (the Bāb and Bahāʾuʾllāh), in claiming to be the latest messengers from God with new divinely revealed laws, irremediably divorced the new religion from its Islamic background. Among the distinguishing…