Baha'i Studies Review - Volume 18, Issue 1, 2012

The Baha’i Faith, a young world religion, offers principles of unity – from family relations to international relations – as a paradigm for social salvation. These principles may be studied within the analytic prism of an ‘illness/cure’ approach to religious soteriologies – a conceptual model in the phenomenology of religions popularized by Stephen Prothero. World religions are systems of salvation, liberation or harmony. Their respective offers of salvation, liberation or harmony respond directly to the human predicament, as defined by each religion. If humanity is plagued by sin, then Christianity’s redemptive offer of salvation from sin makes perfect sense. Early Buddhism’s offer of liberation – from the fundamental problem of suffering – also fits perfectly in this model. In the Baha’i religion, the plight facing the world is profound estrangement at all levels of society. Therefore the social salvation that the Baha’i religion offers are precepts and practices that augment unity and harmony, as Baha’u’llah proclaims: ‘The distinguishing feature that marketh the pre-eminent character of this Supreme Revelation consisteth in that We have … blotted out from the pages of God’s holy Book whatsoever hath been the cause of strife, of malice and mischief amongst the children of men, and have … laid down the essential prerequisites of concord, of understanding, of complete and enduring unity’. After reviewing Raymond Piper’s typology, fifty (50) Baha’i principles of unity are enumerated and briefly described: types of unity propounded by Baha’u’llah in the Tablet of Unity (Lawḥ-i Ittiḥād); types of unity forecast by ‘Abdu’l-Baha in the ‘The Seven Candles of Unity’; and types of unity articulated by Shoghi Effendi – a splendid array of understudied elements of the Baha’i social gospel. Since the present study is a first extended survey – of the notion of unity vis-à-vis the Baha’i Faith, based squarely on authenticated primary sources – results are preliminary, not definitive.

The Baha’i Faith was introduced to the village of Mahfuruzak (near Sari in Mazandaran, Iran) when the village chief invited his nephew Mulla `Ali Jan to come to be the religious leader of the village in about 1871. Mulla `Ali Jan had already become a Baha’i while studying and now gradually started to spread the new religion among the people of the village. Eventually the whole village became Baha’is as did many from surrounding villages. Mulla `Ali and his wife `Alaviyyih Khanum also began the social and economic development of the village. The progress made attracted the enmity of the Muslim clerics of the area who sent false reports to the government, resulting in an attack on the village and the arrest and execution of Mulla `Ali Jan. Despite this, `Alaviyyih Khanum continued the development of the village as well as travelling to spread the Baha’i Faith. The traditional school that had been set up in the village was transformed into a modern school. Persecution of the Baha’i community resumed during and after the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

There has been much debate about the mysterious life and complexities of the world-famous scholar, explorer and orientalist Arminius Vámbéry (1832–1913). During his long life he outlived many political and religious events, which markedly influenced his own personality. His encounters with different religions and religious identities are one of the most peculiar signs of his career. A unique character who equally came into contact with Judaism, Christianity and Islam though regularly regarding himself as an atheist, Vámbéry finally declared himself a follower of the Baha’i Faith in the last weeks of his life. The aim of this paper is to throw light on Vámbéry’s contacts with Baha’is, his perceptions on this religion and the reasons that led him to fully embrace this faith at the end of his life.

The word ‘humanism’ can and does mean different things in different contexts. Secular humanism or materialistic humanism is often the demon of religious fundamentalists who see it as the opposite of godliness. Such a simple-minded view is challenged by the teachings of the Baha’i Faith, especially those teachings having their roots in the philosophical theology of the Shaykhi school. Here the human being is a locus of unbounded potential and knowledge precisely because of the unutterably lofty station of firstly, the divine manifestations (who for Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsa’i included the Imams) through whom, secondly, God himself is ‘known’ or, more precisely, ‘indicated’.

In investigating the relationship between the Baha’is and the Western Esoteric Tradition several individuals emerge as important in both circles; however, none are as prominent in as many fields as Robert Felkin. Felkin was notable as a physician, a missionary, an Anglican, a magician and a Baha’i. The purpose of this paper is to examine his life and work in the context of his search for Ascended Masters and the multiplicity of identities and roles he assumed.

Among the central tropes of Baha’i socio-political theology is a single sentence from the Persian Bayan which, alluded to in Baha’u’llah’s Kitab-i Aqdas became, in Shoghi Effendi’s interpretation, the ‘myth of origin’, in the sense of a starting point in sacred narrative, for the Baha’i Administrative Order structuring the Baha’i community, and for the Baha’i World Order envisaged as its culmination, ultimate purpose and eventual fruit. The passage in question states, in Shoghi Effendi’s translation, ‘well is it with him who fixeth his gaze on the Order of Baha’u’llah’. Shoghi Effendi’s interpretation of that passage as alluding to a sacred socio-political entity which is the hallmark of the Baha’i revelation and is anticipated as the embodiment and structure of the millennial promise of the unification of humankind, represents a radical interpretive leap, given that the passage in the Persian Bayan in its most intuitive reading refers, not to an institutional idea, but to the compilation and arrangement of sacred Babi texts. At the heart of this seemingly incompatible usage lies the single word nazm, which may be translated as both order and arrangement.

The present paper will explore the interpretive trajectory of the word nazm, from its roots in the earliest Qur’anic hermeneutics dating from the 2nd Islamic century, to its complex articulation in the Bab’s writings, including various instances in the Persian Bayan and in the Kitabu’l-Asma’. It will contextualize these occurrences in the Bab’s subtle and esoteric (batini) cosmogony of the universe as Text, including the simultaneity and parallelism of levels of interpretation, within which the apparently inoccuous passage of the Bab is revealed to be charged with cosmological, communal and messianic dimensions, which it will be argued form the implicit substratum or at least demonstrate a substantive correlation to the counter-intuitive, although not exclusive interpretation of that passage by Shoghi Effendi as denoting likewise a communal, global and, in its deepest level, a messianic cosmic order.

The memoirs of Mīrzā Yahyā ‘Amīdu’l-Atibbā Hamadānī, covering the period 1889 to 1903 is one of the sources for the study of the early Baha’i community of Rasht.2 The author was a physician in Hamadan of Jewish ancestry. He migrated to Rasht in 1889 and in 1926 wrote his recollections of the events and prominent believers that he had encountered in that city. He passed away two years later in 1347 AH3 [1928 CE].

Memoirs of a Baha’i in Rasht: 1889–190312 By Mīrzā Yahyā ‘Amīdu’l-Atibbā Hamadānī

Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam: Qur’an, Exegesis, Messianism, and the Literary Origins of the Babi Religion. Todd Lawson.1 (2011) London and New York: Routledge. 230 pp. ISBN 978-0-415-49539-4 (hbk), £85.00

The Baha’is of Iran, Transcaspia and the Caucasus. Soli Shahvar, Gad Gilbar and Boris Morozov (eds.) New York: I.B. Taurus & Co Ltd.

Volume 1: Letters of Russian Officers and Officials. International Library of Iranian Studies Volume 26. 2011 ISBN-13 978-1-84885-391-1, ISBN-10 1-84885-391-2 (hbk), $105.00

Volume 2: Reports and Correspondence of Russian Officers and Officials. International Library of Iranian Studies Volume 27. 2012 ISBN-13 978-1-84885-392-8, ISBN-10 1-84885-392-0 (hbk), $105.00

The Bahá’í Faith in Africa: Establishing a New Religious Movement, 1952–1962. Anthony A. Lee. Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2011 xii, 280 pp. Studies of Religion in Africa, vol. 39. ISBN-13: 9789004206847 (hbk), €105,00, $144.00

Philosophic Values and World Citizenship: Locke to Obama and Beyond. Jacoby Adeshai Carter and Leonard Harris (eds.). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010. 247 pp. ISBN 978-0-7391-4803-7 (hbk), $90.00 (£57.95) ISBN 978-1-4616-3403-4 (eBook), $89.99 (£57.95)

Compassionate Woman: The Life and Legacy of Patricia Locke. John Kolstoe. Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 2011. 226 pp. ISBN 978-1-931847-85-8 (pbk), $21.00. Also available as eBook.