Soft music and candlelight filled the home of Ray and Mary Lillejord last Saturday, Feb. 6, as the Fall City couple and 20 other members of the Baha’i Faith raised prayers with visitors of all religious stripes.

The group joined Baha’is worldwide in a global prayer circle, raising awareness of the plight of those who fellow members say are being persecuted for their beliefs in the nation of Iran.

“The awareness will help persecuted people everywhere,” Mary Lillejord said. “The exposure of people’s wrongs helps to correct it.”

According to the Bahai.org Web site, for the past two years more than 50 Baha’i members and seven leaders have been held in Tehran’s Evin prison on charges that they had confessed to “illegal” activities.

The 300,000-person Baha’i community of Iran is the largest relgious minority in that country. Baha’is are oppressed because of religious hatred, the Web site states.

“Islamic fundamentalists in Iran and elsewhere have long viewed the Baha’i Faith as a threat to Islam, branding Baha’is as heretics and apostates. The progressive position of the Baha’i Faith on women’s rights, independent investigation of truth and education has particularly rankled Muslim clerics,” a post states.

Baha’is have been charged with corrupting the Iranian government, opposing the Islamic religion and causing the chaos during the recent Iranian presidential elections. Those charges are false, Baha’is claim.

Close to the Valley, Sammamish Baha’i members Roohieh Taefi and Hedieh Daeila said that their family member, Taefi’s sister Fariba Kamalabadi, is one of the seven imprisoned leaders.

“They are kept in a prison that is usually used as a temporary holding jail,” Daeila said. “They normally keep people there for 24 hours, but they’ve kept these people there for almost two years.”

Taefi visited her sister in the prison. She said Fariba is being held in a tiny room with no bed, bedding, chairs or windows.

Baha’is worldwide have refuted the Iranian government’s accusations. Many non-Baha’i Iranians are now speaking out in defense of the imprisoned group, Lillejord said.

Those who attended Saturday’s meeting hailed from Fall City, North Bend, Snoqualmie and other Eastside communities.

What is Baha’i?

A 168-year-old religion, Baha’i was founded by Baha’u’llah, a man regarded by Baha’is as the most recent in a line of “Messengers of God.”

The main goal of the faith is unity of all religions. Regardless of religion, any individual is accepted into the Baha’i Faith as long as they accept all other faiths of others who are within that community.

“The fundamentals of all religions are all the same, so that’s what the Baha’i Faith believes,” Lillejord said.

Lillejord was raised as a Christian, but was drawn to the Baha’i faith while raising her three children in California in the late 1960s. She saw much turmoil in that time, during the rocky years of the civil rights movement, experiencing the assassination of two U.S. presidents and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I was going, ‘I can’t stand this,'” Lillejord said.

Talking with a neighbor about the world they were raising their children in, Lillejord learned of the Baha’i movement. The faith, she said, helped her believe that humanity will get through hard times and create a new society.

“I could work for this, work for peace, work for human rights, work for unity,” Lillejord said. “There was no reason for us to go out and kill each other.”

A resident of Fall City for the past 30 years, and still a firm believer in the Baha’i faith, Lillejord said that she is now a spokesperson for the faith. She describes it as a way to believe in the unity of religions.

“We may call God all different things but there is only one,” Lillejord said.

She took her first steps in the faith as a way to make a better world for her children. Now, she thinks about her grandchildren.

As hostess of the prayer circle, Lillejord said the group’s goal is to show solidarity, not just with their Baha’i brothers and sisters in Iran, but with like-minded people and all those who are suffering around the world.

“It’s a way to encourage people to hang in there,” she said, “and to invite other people to hang in with us and be with them.”

• Learn more about the Baha’i Faith at bahai.org.