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 finally becoming a general magazine with little reference to Baha'i matters.

-Denis MacEoin

Source: Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies), Vol. 13, No. 1 (1986), pp. 85- 91
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/194982

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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 garbled version of Baha'ism to his growing circle of American devotees, and it was his often idiosyncratic views that dominated the early years of the religion in the United States. In due course, he clashed with more orthodox Baha'i teachers and finally with 'Abd al-Baha' 'Abbas, the head of the movement, thereby precipitating a major split in the early American community.

-Denis MacEoin

Source: Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies), Vol. 13, No. 1 (1986), pp. 85- 91
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/194982

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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 figure in the Bábí movement, and increasingly played a low-key leadership role after the government's incarceration of the Báb in Azerbaijan in 1847. When the Báb declared himself the Qá'im, the messianic return of the Twelth Imám, Bahá'u'lláh organized a conference of Bábí leaders in the hamlet of Badasht to publicize this claim and obtain a consensus about it. There, the Bábí disciple and poetess, Țáhirah Qurratu'l-'Ayn, scandalized some of the faithful by casting aside her veil to symbolize the advent of a new dispensation. At this conference, Mírzá Husayn 'Alí took as his Bábí title the divine name Bahá' (Splendor). In the late 1840s, fighting broke out between Bábís and Shí'ís in Mazandaran, Zanján and Nayríz. Bahá'u'lláh was not present when government troops besieged the shrine of Shaykh Ṭabarsí in Mazandaran, where hundreds of Bábís had gathered, because Shí'í adversaries imprisoned him in the town of Amul. They at length released him, but they stripped him of at least some of his property.

(From Iran East and West, edited by Juan Ricardo Cole, Moojan Momen)

https://books.google.com/books?id=7xbzoJ5wFG4C&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3

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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 entitled al-qasida al-warqa'iyya, penned by Baha' Allah in imitation of Ibn al-Farid's Nazm al-suluk while residing in the Khalidi khanqah there. Cole's interpretation of this somewhat obscure poem, in which he claims to find evidence that 'conclusively demonstrates' an early date for Baha' Allah's belief in his own mission as a prophet seems to me rather tendentious, as does his reading of a shorter and earlier poem entitled Rashh-i 'ama'. These interpretations seem to me to owe as much to a knowledge of later developments as to a direct reading of the texts. The author reads much into the poems about Baha' Allah's messianic awareness that may not really be there at all, except to the eye of faith. I wonder if his interpretation would have been the same had he not known the poems were the work of Baha' Allah and written at the period in question, thinking them instead that of an anonymous Sufi. I suspect he would have seen very little in them out of the ordinary. The Sufis in Sulaymaniyya to whom the Qasida al-warqa'iyya was first read are not recorded as having found anything unusual in the poem, and Baha' Allah himself states in a commentary on the work that various Ottoman 'ulama' to whom it was shown found nothing remarkable or objectionable in it. Most or all of the extreme language in the poem can be paralleled in other Sufi writings, and when Dr Cole sees foreshadowings in it of Baha' Allah's later claims, I rather feel he is simply reading those claims back into an earlier text. I am not convinced, on the plain evidence of the text itself, that these foreshadowings are there at all and suspect that knowledge of later developments seriously distorts the reading of it. If such foreshadowings are present, that must be demonstrated by providing sharper contrasts with traditional Sufi writing on the one hand and with contemporary Babi usage on the other.

-Denis MacEoin

Source: Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies), Vol. 13, No. 1 (1986), pp. 85- 91

Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/194982

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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 that, as a divinely-inspired prophet, he could not have fallen under any external influence at all.

-Denis MacEoin

Source: Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies), Vol. 13, No. 1 (1986), pp. 85- 91

Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/194982

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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' and 'an unfettered search after truth'. In spite of the very real difficulties of pursuing such principles within the context of a movement that also places a high premium on a belief in infallible knowledge enshrined in scriptural texts guarded by 'divinely-ordained' institutions possessed of considerable coercive powers, some younger Baha'i scholars have succeeded in pioneering fresh academic work in the subject. Since the completion of M.Zabih's doctoral dissertation entitled Die Losung der sozialen Frage auf Grund der Baha'i-Lehren at Stuttgart in 1949, over 30 doctoral and master's theses have appeared dealing with Babi and Baha'i topics (for details up to 1982, see bibliographies by P.Smith, BRISMES Bulletin, 6:2 [1979], pp.129-30 and 9:1 [1982], pp.98-90). With only a few exceptions, these studies have been carried out by members of the sect, and at the moment the present writer is the only non-adherent engaged in full-scale research or writing on the subject. That, clearly, is an unhealthy situation and one that must be remedied before long.

[…] I am aware that Baha'i authors have problems in getting their materials past official 'reviewing committees' and that the publishers are in the difficult position of trying to promote academic scholarship in face of opposition from powerful fundamentalist elements within the Baha'i ranks; but 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. … for example, … Peggy Caton's article entitled 'Baha'i Influences on Mirza 'Abdu'llah, Qajar Court Musician and Master of the Radif'…. It is an excellent, illuminating, and scholarly piece of writing by a Westerner with a rare knowledge of Persian music, but, for all it tells us about Mirza Abd Allah Farahani and his role as a court musician under Nasir al-Din Shah, or about Persian music in general, or Qajar court life in particular, it is rather forced in its attempt to relate any of this to the fact that the subject of the article was a Baha'i convert. He seems to have done nothing conspicuous within the movement, nor does his conversion appear to have had any clearly discernible effect on his music.

-Denis MacEoin

Source: Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies), Vol. 13, No. 1 (1986), pp. 85- 91
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/194982

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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 MacEoin

Source: Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies), Vol. 13, No. 1 (1986), pp. 85- 91

Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/194982

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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 scholars in religious studies working within the major traditions; and sociologists of religion had not yet developed a serious interest in non-Christian sects or what are now termed 'new religious movements'. The religion's adherents wrote plenty of books and pamphlets, of course, but these contributed next to nothing to a real understanding of the subject, being directed almost exclusively to apologetic, devotional, didactic, or organizational ends.

-Denis MacEoin

Source: Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies), Vol. 13, No. 1 (1986), pp. 85- 91
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/194982

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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 (Arabic: “Gateway”) and was the head of the Bābī, a Muslim sect professing a privileged access to final truth. After the Bāb’s execution by the Iranian government for treason (1850), Mīrzā Ḥosayn joined Mīrzā Yaḥyā (also called Ṣobḥ-e Azal), his own half brother and the Bāb’s spiritual heir, in directing the Bābī movement. Mīrzā Yaḥyā later was discredited, and Mīrzā Ḥosayn was exiled by orthodox Sunnī Muslims successively to Baghdad, Kurdistan, and Constantinople (Istanbul). There, in 1863, he publicly declared himself to be the divinely chosen imām-mahdī (“rightly guided leader”), whom the Bāb had foretold. The resulting factional violence caused the Ottoman government to banish Mīrzā Ḥosayn to Acre.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Baha-Allah

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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 in the name of Islam.

We believe that the promised Imam Mahdi was a spiritual reality and ideal which the Bab manifested. Shaykh Ahmad and Siyyid Kazim both rejected the Orthodox position in Shi'ih Islam by teaching a spiritual occultation and that the Qa'im/Mahdi would be born and then declare Himself. The Bab was born into this world and is the Imam Mahdi and Qa'im according to the Baha'i Faith. That is one reason the Bab was opppsed by many fanatics in Shi'ih Islam.

Baha'u'llah taught that the 12th Imam died before his father and that the Shi'ih beliefs are in error regarding the occultation of the 12th Imam. See https://bahai-library.com/bahaullah_masumian_existence_qaim/

Source : https://old.reddit.com/r/bahai/comments/1e3k6t8/ahmadi_religion_of_peace_and_light/

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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 Lucid Book."

(Kitáb-i-Aqdas)

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"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 when a new regime is established to make their mark on the new government and help move it in genuinely new directions...

(Ian Kluge, Canadian Baha’i scholar, public list: talisman9@yahoogroups.com, April 15, 2006)

https://www.academia.edu/25534284/Behind_the_Politics_of_a_Current_Brouhaha_in_Iran_An_ex_President_Ayatollahs_Daughter_and_the_Bahais

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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, the Word of God has many significances which are beyond the ken of men. There are inner meanings enshrined in the Word of God which only His Manifestation and those whom He guides understand. Bahá'u'lláh explains that in this phrase 'There is no God but Him', the letter of negation precedes that of affirmation. Therefore as a result of the creative influence of this phrase, ever since it was revealed, the violators of the Cause of God, representing the letter of negation, dominated over the faithful in the past. All the sufferings which the hands of the breakers of the Covenant of God inflicted upon the steadfast Muslims and their apparent superiority, were the fulfilment of the Words uttered by Muhammad. God had, through His wisdom, so destined that those who were impure and rebellious should dominate those who were true and sincere.

It is a Bahá'í belief that those who usurped the right of Imam Ali, the lawful successor of Muhammad and the interpreter of His Word, were acting against the expressed wishes of their Prophet. They disregarded the injunctions of Muhammad concerning His successor, became the primary cause of division within the Faith of Islam, brought about the death of the holy Imams and persecuted their followers. They were the letters of negation and till the end of the Dispensation of Muhammad, dominated His faithful followers.

History demonstrates that great differences arose among the followers of each religion soon after the death of its Founder. These differences led to schisms and divisions which have increased with the passage of time.

(Revelation of Baha'u'llah volume two: Adrianople, 1863-1868 by Adib Taherzadeh)

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