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The Baha'i Faith and Islam are closely related in their history, phenomenology and theology. Because of the common factors in their teachings and terminology, the superficial onlooker quickly comes to the conclusion that the Baha'i Faith is only a special school of thought of Islam. If he is ready to apply the religious-sociological notion of the "sect" to relatively small communities because they are small, and without considering their constituent elements, he will call the Baha'i Faith an Islamic sect without taking into account its self-interpretation and its sociological structure. Thus in earlier literature, especially in reference works and textbooks by Islamic scholars, the Baha'i Faith is more often than not described as a sect of Islam, and even-- in the case of Roemer, a Jesuit-- as an order of dervishes. But the more recent scholars have come to understand that the Baha'i Faith is an original and independent religion. Irrespective of the fact that the criteria of the sect-concept worked out by Max Weber, Ernst Troeltsch and Gustav Mensching are without exception absent in the Baha'i Faith, its original character can be deduced from the fact that the 'Qur'an', the revealed book of Islam, is not for Baha'is the foundation of their faith or of their law.
(113:2)
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