'teaching' vs 'proselytism'

On page 174 [of Hatcher and Martin's book], the authors state that 'Despite the strong emphasis on teaching... proselytism is explicitly forbidden'. Whatever distinction may be made between the English terms 'teaching' and 'proselytism', original Baha'i texts generally use a single term that covers both concepts; tabligh. Baha'is engaged in the preaching...

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Haj and Ziyara (Pilgrimages) in the Baha'i faith

Errors stemming from a lack of familiarity with original source materials or ignorance of Islamic and Persian matters are not, of course, confined to issues relating to Islam as such. On page 180 [of Hatcher and Martin's book], for example, we are told that 'Baha'u'llah encouraged each of his followers to try, at least once during a lifetime, to undertake...

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The ignorance (?) of Baha'i scholars Hatcher and Martin about Islam

Let me turn to the book [of Hatcher and Martin] itself. The authors begin with a woefully short (5-page) examination of the 'Islamic background' to Baha'ism that fails utterly to do justice to the topic. This chapter touches inadequately and amateurishly on only one or two general aspects of Islam that have some bearing on the origins and systems either...

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Intellectually dishonest Baha'i scholars (loyal to the UHJ) try to avoid citing these scholars in their works.

Any study of the Baha'i faith claiming to incorporate 'the results of recent scholarship', should have at least some reference to studies and articles by Amanat, Berger, Smith, Johnson, Hampson, Bayat, Lambden, Garlington, Beveridge, Kahn, Bramson and MacEoin.(Denis MacEoin (1987) A. Article, British Society for Middle Eastern Studies. Bulletin, 13:2,...

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MacEoin's opinion about the book "The Baha'i Faith: The Emerging Global Religion" and its authors William S. Hatcher and J. Douglas Martin

According to its publishers, it is 'the first definitive introduction — sure to become a standard reference work — to the... Baha'i Faith'. It is, moreover, claimed as 'the most balanced and detailed examination of Baha'i belief to date'. Let me, then, begin my review by putting on record my firm opinion that this book is absolutely none of those things...

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Baha'ism is the largest of the many new religious movements (NRMs) that have come to prominence since the Second World War

I do not think I am exaggerating if I suggest that Baha'ism is the largest of the many new religious movements that have come to prominence since the Second World War...(Denis MacEoin (1987) A. Article, British Society for Middle Eastern Studies. Bulletin, 13:2, 193-208, DOI: 10.1080/135301987087054...

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Pros/Cons of Shoghi Effendi's leadership

Pros:He understood the direction society was going in the early 20th century, and predicted the moral decay of the West with surprising clarity for someone who died in 1957. Some of his writings on this (e.g. Signs of Moral Downfall and Isobel Sabri's Pilgrim's Notes) seemed almost prophetic.Remained true to the conservative aspects...

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Beloved Hand of the Cause of God Ugo Giachery on why the women are not eligible to the UHJ

"... why the women are not eligible to the House of Justice. You see, but the women who have the right, who are a member National Assembly, or the electors of the Universal House of Justice, and they don't have the duty of a member of the House of Justice. You will see how wonderful it would be with these little baby running around inside that the...

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Shaykhism is "something very close to a Shi'ite Sufi order".

His [Shaykh Ahmad's] essentially Sufi metaphysics and his emphasis on experiential religion, on dreams and visions and meditations, created space for popular involvement in the Shaykhi order - which became something very close to a Shi'ite Sufi order.(Juan R. I. Cole, The World as Text: Cosmologies of Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsa'i, Studia Islamica No. 80...

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Shaykh Ahmad's mystical cosmology and Kabbalah

The close parallels between Shaykh Ahmad's mystical cosmology of the letters and the gematria of the Kabbalah is striking. Moses Cordovera of the sixteenth-century Safed school in Ottoman Palestine saw the Pentateuch or Torah as made up of divine letters, themselves manifestations of the divine light, which go on to form the names of God and ultimately...

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Shaykh Ahmad's attitude towards Ibn Arabi and Mulla Sadra

The radical aspect of Shaykh Ahmad's thought is apparent in its revisionism and its dynamism. On the one hand, he clearly was motivated by what Harold Bloom called the "anxiety of influence", the desire of creative thinkers to somehow escape the conceptual and literary structures erected by their forebears where these are perceived as limiting. Shaykh...

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Shaykh Ahmad's cosmology

Shaykh Ahmad creates his poetic and imaginative cosmology by juxtaposing the idea that the world is like an organism with the notion that the world resembles a language. Like an organism, it develops over time, growing from a simple seed into an ever more complex being, putting out ramifying branches. Like a language, it is a system made up of a finite...

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Shaykh Ahmad about the creation of Mohammed and his other myths

Shaykh Ahmad in his mystical and theological anthology quotes a passage from "one of the learned", about how God created the Tree of Certainty (shajarat al-yaqin), from which he in turn made the light of Muhammad bloom from one of its branches in the shape of a peacock, which praised God for seventy thousand years. After this time, God created a mirror...

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Shaykh Ahmad was influenced by mythologies

The other symbol to which Shaykh Ahmad appeals in this treatise is more obviously a "cosmic reality", a natural phenomenon that, as Ricoeur has said, both manifests and signifies higher realities. The world-tree, a powerful mythological image in many cultures, has especial resonances for mystics in the world religions, for it immediately suggests the...

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Shaykh Ahmad's belief about the creation of the universe.

The plane of the Universal Intellect, the first emanation from the divine Will, is also called the One (wahid), since it is on this plane that number and specification first appear. On this plane God pronounces nineteen letters, creating the lower nineteen levels of existence: the nine spheres, the four elements, the three kingdoms of nature, man,...

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Shaykh Ahmad, Akhbarism and a commentary on a tradition attributed to the Prophet of Islam.

Shaykh Ahmad's short treatise on cosmological symbolism was penned in response to an inquiry from Mirza Muhammad 'Ali Mudarris* (d. 1825) of Yazd, who desired a commentary on a saying attributed to the Prophet : "God wrote a Text (kitabah) two thousand years before He created the universe, on a myrtle leaf that He caused to grow. He placed it upon...

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Shaykh Ahmad's approach towards Sufi mysticism and Shi'ite gnosis. He was much influenced by Ibn Abi Jumhur al-Ahsa'i

He [Shaykh Ahmad] innovated within, quarrelled with, and pushed to its limits the highly sophisticated heritage of Sufi mysticism and Shi'ite gnosis ('irfan) that had crystallized in the seventeenth-century School of Isfahan. In addition, Shaykh Ahmad tapped into a little-known stream of indigenous Eastern Arabian thought.* His use of symbolic language...

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Shaykh Ahmad's started to claim when it was a bad time for the Shias

He [Shaykh Ahmad] came to "consciousness" at a tragic time for Shi'ite Islam, which was battered in the eighteenth century by the Sunni Afghan invasion of Shi'ite Iran and dethronement of Shi'ism as the state religion, by the anti-Shi'ite Wahhabi tribes of Arabia, and by growing Russian and British power.(Juan R. I. Cole, The World as Text: Cosmologies...

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Promoting the Baha'i faith in Iran in a semi-clandestine manner.

Nasir al-Din Shah’s successor, Muzaffar al-Din Shah, had a more favourable attitude towards Baha’is. They were able to publish semi-clandestinely through alternative print technologies, such as the lithograph and jellygraph, that proved difficult to regulate.Baha’is were also active in the early history of Iranian newspapers where, so long as they...

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Abdul Baha censored the book

In the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, Baha’is increasingly confronted secular modes of thought. As was the case in India, publishing and public debates often went hand-in-hand. In 1919 to 1920, Sayyid Mahdi entered into a public debate with communists on a range of economic and religious issues resulting in the publication of a treatise...

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How Baha'is invaded the Bans?

In 1917, ‘Abdu’l-Baha appointed an association (anjuman) to run the operations of the press and to establish a Baha’i magazine, Khurshid-i Kavar. Mirza Mahdi [Gulpayigani] drew on his previous printing expertise to publish the magazine, using it in part to respond to what Mashhad newspapers would write about the Baha’i Faith. Since the magazine was...

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Gulpaygani made his livelihood as the editor of the Russian imperial government’s Persian magazine

It was only twenty years later, in the aftermath of the Russian revolution in 1917, that Mirza Abu al-Fazl’s vision for a Baha’i magazine was realized through the efforts of his nephew, Sayyid Mahdi Gulpayigani. Sayyid Mahdi made his livelihood as the editor of the Russian imperial government’s Persian magazine, Majmu‘ah-i Mavara-yi Bahr-i Khizir.(Farzin...

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In 1920, Muslims and Zoroastrians allied themselves with local Parsis in debating Baha’is.

By the 1920s, the itinerant Baha’i teacher, Mirza Munir Nabilzadah, was at the centre of a number of Iranian propagation efforts in India. As if directly responding to ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s call for the prioritization of oral engagement over the mere textual circulation of scripture, Nabilzadah’s publications were usually the direct outcome of face-to-face...

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Abdul Baha's policy of vetting Baha’i texts prior to publication

‘Abdu’l-Baha’s policy of vetting Baha’i texts prior to publication should be understood against the backdrop of these divided loyalties. While he recognized the potential for print in propagating the Baha’i message, he also realized it could be used to back contesting claims to authority.(Farzin Vejdani, Transnational Baha’i Print Culture: Community...

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With the death of Baha’u’llah, Nasiri press was closed down.

Mirza Ibrahim Afnan, a Shirazi merchant residing in Bombay, established the Nasiri press, the first Baha’i press of its kind. Two early publications of the Nasiri press included Baha’u’llah’s Kitab-i Iqan, an apologetic work defending the claims of the Bab, and ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s political reformist text Risalah-i Madaniyah. Both texts had a Muslim audience...

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the Baha'i divorce rate in the United States was above the national average

Typical of the book's uncritical idealizing are the references (pp.158-59, 164, 203) to Baha'i marriage and family life. We are told, for example, that 'the institution of marriage must be restored to its position as the foundation on which civilization can flourish' and that 'the public will be watching to see whether... Baha'i marriages and family...

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If a person is registered as a member of a church or similar religious organization he should withdraw from it on becoming a Bahá’í.

If a person is registered as a member of a church or similar religious organization he should withdraw from it on becoming a Bahá’í.In the case of new believers, it should be made clear to them in the course of teaching them the Faith that one cannot be a Bahá’í and also a member of another religious organization. This is simply a matter of straight-forwardness...

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The doctrine of metempsychosis upheld by the Hindus is fallacious.

'The Bahá'í view of 'reincarnation' is essentially different from the Hindu conception. The Bahá'ís believe in the return of the attributes and qualities, but maintain that the essence or the reality of things cannot be made to return. Every being keeps its own individuality, but some of his qualities can be transmitted. The doctrine of metempsychosis...

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We believe that what Bahá'u'lláh has revealed and Abdu'l-Bahá has written is from God

'We as Bahá'ís are not influenced by the categorical assertions of scholars. We believe that what Bahá'u'lláh has revealed and Abdu'l-Bahá has written is from God, and divinely inspired; that Bahá'u'lláh is a Manifestation of God, and has access to a knowledge denied to ordinary human beings.'(Letter written to an individual believer, April 22, 1954...

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