The first time you visit an area, teach. The second time you visit, teach again. This teaching is, in itself, deepening. It is good to ask one of the visitors to preside at public meetings. When youth accept the Faith, it is good if their parents are visited so that the Faith can be explained to them. If they are angry, do not worry. Once they learn...
Monday, May 5, 2025
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Abdul Baha's love for abgusht
...at dinner time in the pilgrim house he (Abdul Baha) had himself a full serving of abgusht (a common Persian dish made of lamb, yellow split peas, beans, potatoes and tomatoes, with dried lemon) which he ate with great relish, and the next morning he felt no shame in putting away a good size breakfast either, after which he hastened to the darb-khanih....
a stew of vegetables and lamb
Khan was often present at meals, at the luncheons or dinners in ‘Akká or Haifa. Various dishes would be served the guests, but ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself would have a bowl of ábgúsht, a stew of vegetables and lamb, very simple, and this plain stew was often the diet reserved for Him alone.(Summon Up Remembrance, Marzieh Gail, p. 1...
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
What is expansion?
Expansion means growth of the community: more individuals, more localities, more Assemblies. The major targets of this expansion are all strata of society; however, we must reach more people of capacity, specific minorities and the masses (middle-class America).(National Bahá’í Review, Issue 1...
Friday, April 18, 2025
Why Baha’is should know more about Christianity and other world religions?
‘Abdu’l-Bahá and the beloved Guardian state the followings on this matter: "The Holy Books of all religions—the Bible, the Qur’án, and others—are the foundation of divine education. Whosoever desireth to be a teacher of the Cause must be familiar with these Books, so that he may speak in accordance with their contents and prove the truth of this Cause...
Thursday, April 17, 2025
Baha'i growth!!!
Converting People, Entry by Troops, House of Justice (UHJ)
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The increased intensity with which programmes of growth around the world are being pursued tells an impressive story of its own. In this five-year span, we had called for growth to be accelerated in every one of the 5,000 clusters where it had begun. This imperative became the impetus for earnest endeavour throughout the world. As a result, the number...
Wednesday, April 16, 2025
The first Bahá'í funeral
Lorol Schopflocher arrived back in Haifa from another trip to India and Persia on 8 May 1927 and told many stories of her adventures. She stayed until 28 May when she departed for Cairo, Alexandria and Paris. Another pilgrim asked the Guardian when he would come to America. His frank and very clear answer was, 'When you have learned to obey the National...
I drank seven drops of the blood of Imām Ḥusayn
The Bab describes his dream in his Ṣaḥīfa-yi ʿAdliyya as follows:Know that the appearance of these verses, prayers, and divine sciences is the result of a dream in which I saw the blessed head of the prince of martyrs [Imām Ḥusayn] severed from his sacred body, alongside the heads of his kindred. I drank seven drops of the blood of that martyred...
Quddus’s own claims to divine status for himself are reinforced by many of the Bab’s statements about him.
As in the case of claims of Qāʾimiyya, it seem to have been Muḥammad ʿAlī Bārfurūshī, Quddūs, who was the Bāb’s chief rival in respect of claims to some form of divinity. Abbas Effendi ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ, maintains that Quddūs’s commentary on the letter sād ̣ of the word al-samad ̣ (Qurʾān 112:2) which he “revealed” (nāzil farmūdand) at Shaykh Tabarsī,...
Tahirih was definitely somewhat of a cult leader
MacEoin's Messiah of Shiraz has details, my recollection of it is that since the Bab was almost immediately arrested the Babi community for the most part had no access to anything written by him. Because of this his disciples basically just invented their own religions, so Tahirih's Babi Faith was entirely different to Quddus's Babi Faith and arguably...
Monday, April 14, 2025
"For amid this turmoil opportunities will abound that must be exploited" and "winning of fresh recruits"
As humanity is tossed and tormented by the ravages inflicted upon it by a civilization gone out of control, let us keep our heads and hearts focused on the divine tasks set before us. For amid this turmoil opportunities will abound that must be exploited "for the purpose of spreading far and wide the knowledge of the redemptive power of the Faith of...
Saturday, April 12, 2025
the Seat of Guardianship
The Bahai World Administrative Center. The passage “Ere long will God sail His Ark upon thee” in Bahāʾ-Allāh’s Tablet of Carmel (Lawḥ-e Kārmel) (Bahāʾ Allāh, tr. Taherzadeh et al., p. 5) was later interpreted by Sho-ghi Effendi as an allusion to the future establishment of The Universal House of Justice on Mount Carmel. Sho-ghi Effendi designated the...
Thursday, April 10, 2025
Most of the village of al-Nuqayb was purchased by Bahá’u’lláh and sold by Shoghi Effendi to the Jewish National Fund.
In his book All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, the historian Walid Khalidi details the history of many of these Palestinian villages and how they were depopulated. For example, he notes that in the 1880s most of the village land of al-Nuqayb was purchased by Bahá’u’lláh, with the villagers continuing...
Superlative character of Baha'u'llah's Revelation
Stressing the superlative character of His Revelation as compared with the Dispensation preceding it, Bahá’u’lláh makes the following affirmation: “If all the peoples of the world be invested with the powers and attributes destined for the Letters of the Living, the Báb’s chosen disciples, whose station is ten thousand times more glorious than any...
one of the first acts of the Guardian
Dissimulation, Guardianship, Islam, Palestine, Shoghi Effendi
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He beheld a widely diversified, loosely organized community, scattered in various parts of the globe, and with members in about twenty countries. These people, loyal, devoted and sincere though they were, were still, to a great extent, living in their parent religion’s house, so to speak; there were Christian Bahá’ís, Jewish Bahá’ís, Muhammadan Bahá’ís...