Baha'u'llah the charismatic leader

After reading about charismatic leaders in the Rastafarian religion, I could see many parallels in the forming of religion between Rastafari and Baha'i. For example, Baha'u'llah is widely considered the founder of Baha'i, but really he was expanding off of teachings from the Bab, which in turn was rebelling from Islam. This reminded me of how Haile Selassie is the prophet of the Rastafari, but most of their beliefs originated with Marcus Garvey and were a rebellion of English colonial culture. More similarly to other Muslim or Judeo-Christian prophets, Baha'u'llah proclaimed himself as "He whom God shall make manifest" and was an active leader of the Baha'i.
Also, I think the role of Islam was important for how the Baha'i faith was formed. First of all, from what I understand the Bab's teachings were a sort of radical offshoot from Islam, so they accepted the ideology of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, with a few changes. Also, because conservative Muslims were against the Bab, the persecution of the Baha'i ended up being something to unite them. Baha'u'llah's influenced seemed to really grow during his exile, when the Baha'i faith was under a lot of criticism. This is true of many religions. When people feel threatened, it often activates their sense of self-defense, strengthening religions in times of adversity.
Baha'i is a relatively young religion, so in some respects you could argue that founding of Baha'i was a sudden change, especially when compared with Judaism that had already been in existence for over 2000 years by the time Baha'u'llah was born. However, when you look at it as an off-shoot of other religions, it is just a gradual change, like a new fork on a long river of religious beliefs throughout history. There were many belief systems that fed into the Baha'i faith, so it could also be argued that it's creation was as long as that of it's contributing faiths.