Reality magazine

'Reality' was a Baha'i magazine produced in New York between 1919 and 1929. During the ten years of its existence, it changed its style and contents dramatically, serving first as an organ for articles on Baha'ism and related topics, then (1923-1926) as a vehicle for attacks on the new Baha'i organization being built up by Shoghi Effendi Rabbani, and...

Read More

The first Baha'i missionary in the USA

Ibrahim Kheiralla, was the first Baha'i missionary to travel to the West, arriving in Chicago in 1893 and winning his first converts in the following year. Something of an eccentric, Kheiralla -- a Syrian who was a member of the first graduating class of the American University in Beirut (then the Syrian Protestant College) in 1870 -- presented a curiously...

Read More

The Bábí movement developed out of a school of Twelver Shiism known as Shaykhism, Mírzá Husayn 'Alí took as his Bábí title the divine name Bahá' (Splendor).

The Bábí movement developed out of a school of Twelver Shiism known as Shaykhism, so called after its founder Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsá'í (d. 1826), which contained millenarian emphases. Many prominent Bábís were converts from Shaykhism which came under the leadership of Sayyid Kázim Rashtí, al-Ahsá'í's successor…. Mírzá Husayn 'Alí quickly became a prominent...

Read More

MacEoin's opinion about Baha'u'llah's sufi-style writings

I enjoyed the first part of Dr Cole's essay, in which he discusses the development of the Mujaddidi and Khalidi branches of the Naqshbandi tariqa as 'neo-orthodox Sufi movements' as a prelude to discussing Baha' Allah's involvement with the Khalidis of Sulaymaniyya. I was less happy with the following section dealing with the contents of a Sufi poem...

Read More

Sufi influence on Baha'u'llah's writings

Mirza Husayn 'Ali Nuri Baha' Allah [spent some time with] some Naqshbandi Sufis during a period of self-imposed exile in Iraqi Kurdistan from 1854 to 1856. Many of Baha' Allah's writings from the period of his Baghdad exile (1853-1863) show profound Sufi influence, but until now this issue has been little studied because of the prevailing doctrine...

Read More

if this is a sign of the direction in which Baha'i studies may be moving, it does not augur all that well for the future.

Since the 1950s or so, however, the situation in the West has changed somewhat, largely with the advent of a new generation of better-educated converts eager to study their religion in a more systematic and academic manner than has hitherto been the case. Such an approach is encouraged by doctrinal approval for 'the harmony of science and religion'...

Read More

Denis MacEoin about Ishraq Khavari

Ishraq Khavari's many editions of Baha'i texts, for example, useful as they are in the absence of anything else, betray great carelessness and a lack of the most elementary knowledge of editorial methods.-Denis MacEoinSource: Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies), Vol. 13, No. 1 (1986), pp. 85- 91Published by: Taylor & Francis,...

Read More

In the West, Baha'ism had established itself as a moderately-successful middle-class cult, but it remained too peripheral to attract serious attention within the academic world.

In the West, Baha'ism had established itself as a moderately-successful middle-class cult, but it remained too peripheral to attract serious attention within the academic world. It had become far too Westernized in its modern phase to hold much appeal for orientalists; its pretensions to the status of a 'new world religion' carried little weight with...

Read More

Who was Baha'u'llah and how he reached Israel? -Encyclopedia Britannica

Bahāʾ Allāh (born November 12, 1817, Tehrān, Iran—died May 29, 1892, Acre, Palestine [now ʿAkko, Israel]) was the founder of the Bahāʾī Faith upon his claim to be the manifestation of the unknowable God.Mīrzā Ḥosayn was a member of the Shīʿite branch of Islam. He subsequently allied himself with Mīrzā ʿAlī Moḥammad of Shīrāz, who was known as the Bāb...

Read More

Baha'i belief about Imam Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam of the Shi'ih

One Baha'i says:We do not believe that the Imam Mahdi is the Twelfth Imam or that the Twelfth Imam remained alive and in physical occultation for 1000 years waiting for the time to suddenly appear and make Himself known. We do not believe that the Imam Mahdi will do some of the fantastical and improbable things like leading an army to conquer the world...

Read More

Changing the meaning of Bahá'u'lláh's teachings by interpretation is explicitly forbidden

Changing the meaning of Bahá'u'lláh's teachings by interpretation is explicitly forbidden by Bahá'u'lláh, with no exception for 'Abdu'l-Bahá:"Whoso interpreteth what hath been sent down from the heaven of Revelation, and altereth its evident meaning, he, verily, is of them that have perverted the Sublime Word of God, and is of the lost ones in the...

Read More

"I fully support a first strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities wherever they may be" - Ian Kluge, Canadian Baha'i scholar

...I fully support a first strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities wherever they may be hidden and by whatever means are needed to destroy them. If the Iranians deny us their oil, destroy their oil facilities – if we can’t have their oil, neither will they… Regime change (one way or another) is coming in the relatively near future and Baha’is must be there...

Read More

Sunni Muslims are Covenant-breakers

In the Tablet of Salman Bahá'u'lláh explains one of the most interesting mysteries in the Qur'an, a mystery which had hitherto remained unnoticed. He refers to the well-known phrase, 'There is no God but Him'. This is the cardinal statement of faith which every Muslim must make, and which is the basis of the Islamic religion.As we have previously written,...

Read More