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The Baha'i religion could be viewed as a schism from a Islamic schism between Shi'ites and Sunnis. The Baha'is being derivatives of Shi'a Islamicate. They split from the Babi movement which split arguably from the Shaykhi movement, which was one form of Ithna Ashariyya Shi'ism, which is a sect of Shi'ism with other Shi'a sects such as the Isma'ilis, which followed a different Imam than the Twelvers (Ithna Ashariyya), a earlier split produced the Fiver Shi'ism of modern day northern Yemen. So it is not difficult to anticipate that there would be subsequent developments of sectarianism in the Baha'i religion. The vastly numerically superior Baha'i World Faith, represents probably 99% of Baha'is. A few small sects exist outside the authority of the Universal House of Justice (UHJ), the recognized leaders of the modern Baha'i World Faith.
non-Baha'i World Faith sects each probably represents 100-300 believers in total, a very rough estimate not scientific. It is problematic to try to estimate actual numbers of Religous communities, for instance most churches have a 50% turnover of members within two years the majority leave the church they have joined, likewise the Baha'is have had similiar problems, with a large revolving door, there are a significant number of people that say they are Baha'i but are not enrolled in the Baha'i World Faith in the United States, for instance there are listed about 135,000 enrolled members, usually half this number have no interaction with the Administrative order and have no working address for the Administration to contact them, of those with addresses only half-are active in the BWF, meaning that only about a quarter of actual members of the BWF in the US are active in their faith. Non-BWF sects can be viewed as one of three types: 1. sects with strong Guardian typologies, 2. BUPC which probably should be viewed as an independent religion that has sprung from Baha'i; 3. sans-Guardian, those with no allegiance to the Guardianship or the BWF UHJ:
1. Guardianists (with heavy emphasis on the infallibility of the Guardianship)
a. Orthodox Baha'is: loyal to Marangella as the Guardian
b. Soghomonian Guardianship Baha'is
2. Baha'is Under the Provisions of the Covenant, which could be viewed as a New Religious Movement itself, divided into at least four sub-sects after the death of it's founder Leland Jensen.
BUPC sub-sects:
-sIBC in MIssoula Montana (do not recognize any Guardian officially, but loyal to the concept of the Aghsan Guardianship.)
-UHJ loyal to Neal Chase as the Guardian
-Aspen Baha'is (do not recognize any Guardian officially, but loyal to the concept of the Aghsan Guardianship.)
-those loyal to the Guardianship claim of Glenn Goldman
-individual believers non-aligned to any organization or claimant to the Guardianship
3. Sans-Guardianship:
a. Reform Baha'is, do not believe in Guardianship
b. Unitarian Baha'is, do not belive in Guardianship, believe that Muhammad-`Ali was the successor to `Abdu'l-Baha.
an interesting research note would be to study why the BWF was able to remain as united as it was after the catastrophe of Shoghi's death, without relying on a conspiracy theory ;-)
1. control of communications
2. unity of faith strong motivator
3. nobody else supported Mason Remey amongst the Custodians.