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 and that a balanced, serious, and informed study of the subject remains to be written.
The book is, in fact, nothing more than a straightforward work of Baha'i apologetics masquerading as an academic introduction.
Whatever it has now become, Baha'ism is a religion firmly rooted in Shi'ite Islam and in nineteenth-century Iranian culture, particularly during the most controversial phase of its origins within the Babi sect. Since all the scriptural and almost all the historical materials relating to the early period of the movement (up to the 1890s) are in Persian and Arabic (the bulk of them still in manuscript), it is hard to grasp how two Western writers, neither of whom is an Islamicist and neither of whom knows Persian or Arabic, could possibly hope to clarify to anyone's satisfaction 'many of the central textual and historical issues'. I wonder if they even know what most of the central textual and historical issues are.
Denis MacEoin (1987) A. Article, British Society for Middle Eastern Studies. Bulletin, 13:2, 193-208, DOI: 10.1080/13530198708705441
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