Women Martyrs and Collective Memory in the Bahá’í Faith

This paper examines how narratives of women martyrs are remembered and transmitted within contemporary Bahá’í community life through an ethnographic study of the global campaign Our Story Is One. The campaign commemorates the execution of ten Bahá’í women in Shiraz, Iran, in 1983, whose refusal to renounce their faith has become a powerful narrative of steadfastness within Bahá’í history. Drawing on ethnographic observation of the exhibitions organized by the Bahá’í community in Ireland, together with analysis of the campaign’s global digital materials, the paper explores how the story of the Shiraz martyrs circulates across transnational Bahá’í networks and is interpreted in local community contexts. By situating the Shiraz women within the longer tradition of female martyrdom in the Bahá’í Faith, including the nineteenth-century figure Táhirih, the study demonstrates how contemporary commemorative practices reproduce and reinterpret historical narratives that continue to shape Bahá’í collective memory and community identity.