Shoghi Effendi discarded eastern dress (with the exception of a karakul hat) and cutting off intercourse with locals altogether received mainly British and Zionist VIPs

An ethnic Iranian born in Palestine in 1897 and brought up in a predominantly Persian speech-community, associating in his early adult years with British colonial administrators, high-ranking military officers, orientalists, and Western Bahai figures from wealthy and professional backgrounds, as a religious leader Shoghi Effendi occupied a niche and decidedly ambiguous position in the newly transplanted British colonial outpost in the Middle East. Marked out to play the role of interpreter of Bahai doctrine and becoming the architect of a far flung administration, he was educated at the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut then sent to Oxford University in 1920. There he gained an exceptional proficiency in English, a language in which none of the three founder-figures of the faith had been able to communicate. Having mastered the codes of formality of the dominant world imperial power he brought this expertise to the newly centralized Bahai World Center situated on Mount Carmel. Performance of his role as Guardian of the faith coincided with the situation of “double colonialism” in which the British administered the native Arab and oriental populations while the Zionist movement took over the land of Palestine (Thompson 2019, p. 5). Called back to Haifa at the close of 1921 on the death of Abdul Baha, Shoghi Effendi largely detached himself from the oriental locale his grandfather had moved in. He discarded eastern dress (with the exception of a karakul hat) and cutting off intercourse with locals altogether received mainly British and Zionist VIPs (Khanum 1969).

(What Is Bahai Orientalism? by Geoffrey Nash)

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/10/1/2