The organising idea of the Bahai Faith is progressive revelation: that God is beyond direct human knowledge, and that what is known of God comes through a succession of figures Bahais call Manifestations, each founding a religion suited to the capacity of the age that received it. Abraham, Moses, Krishna, Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus, Muhammad and the Bab are named among them; Bahaullah is the most recent. He is not held to be the last, since the succession is understood to continue, though no further Manifestation is expected for a long period.
The consequence is a distinctive claim about the world's religions: that their differences are matters of social teaching, given for particular times and places, while their spiritual core is one. Bahais therefore do not regard the earlier faiths as false. That position is also what makes it difficult for others to accept. Islam holds Muhammad to be the seal of the prophets, and a claim of subsequent revelation is rejected in Islamic terms as a denial of that finality. This is the root of the hostility the faith has met in Iran since its beginning, and the two sides describe the relationship in incompatible terms: an independent religion on one account, a heresy out of Shia Islam on the other.
The teachings that follow are stated plainly: the oneness of God, of religion and of humanity, with racial and national prejudice named as the obstacles to the last; the equality of women and men; universal education; the harmony of science and religion; the abolition of extremes of wealth and poverty; independent investigation of truth rather than inherited belief; and an international auxiliary language and system of collective security. Scripture is the writings of the Bab, Bahaullah and Abdul-Baha, an unusually large body of text recorded in the founders' own lifetimes, which removes many questions of transmission that surround older traditions.