erasing Azal from history

Subsequent Bahā’ī theologian-historians began the process of erasing Azal from history, denying his popularity among the Bābīs 1854–1865, and finding it implausible that an old-time Bābī like Mukārī could have initially leaned toward Azal. By the time we get to Tāherzādeh in the 1970s, information to the contrary is being actively suppressed in English. Bahā’u’llāh in the view of these later partisans had to have not only won out that September, he had to have always possessed supremacy. That the magnitude of Bahā’u’llāh’s victory can only be diminished by rendering Azal a non-entity did not faze them.

(Juan R. I. Cole, THE AZĀLĪ-BAHĀ’Ī CRISIS OF SEPTEMBER, 1867)

Read More

Splits, divisions among the Babis and nominating Azal as a head, and receiving contributions in Azal’s name from believers.

The millenarian Bābī movement roiled Iran (1844–1850) under the leadership of Sayyid ‘Alī Muhammad Shīrāzī, the “Bāb” or supernatural gateway to God (Amanat 1989). After the Bāb was executed in 1850, the leadership of the movement became extremely fragmented, with many claimants to Bābī leadership and to divinity putting themselves forward (MacEoin 1989). Sometimes in the 1850s a single city would be split into three distinct Bābī communities, each with a different “divine” leader. Mīrzā Sa‘īd “Basīr” Hindi, a claimant to leadership with great charisma, was executed by a government official in the early 1850s, and many Bābī leaders died in regional conflicts and then the pogrom of 1852 after the Bābī attempt on the life of the shah.

The Nūrī household of four brothers from a great-landlord background was another focus of leadership. They seem to have made a self-conscious decision to put forward the youngest brother, Mīrzā Yahyā Subh-i Azal, as a sort of first among equals, and to attempt to convince the generality of the Bābīs to look to them, and to Azal in particular, for leadership. They were bolstered in this endeavor by a letter of the Bāb written before his execution that appeared to appoint Mīrzā Yahyā to a leadership role (Bāb 2001). The household consisted of Mīrzā Yahyā “Azal” Nūrī, of Mīrzā Husayn ‘Alī “Bahā’u’llāh” Nūrī, of Mīrzā Mūsā “Kalīm” Nūrī, and of Mīrzā Muhammad Qulī Nūrī. These were sons, all but two of them from different mothers, of the Iranian nobleman Mīrzā ‘Abbās “Buzurg” Nūrī, who had served in high governmental positions under Fath-‘Alī Shāh (r. 1797–1834). They were forced into exile in Ottoman Baghdad in the wake of the failed Bābī assassination attempt on Nāsiru’d-Dīn Shāh of 1852. Bahā’u’llāh was the treasurer for the household and for contributions received in Azal’s name from believers. He also screened Azal’s appointments and met with pilgrims, given that Azal’s position of leader put him in great danger from the shah’s assassins. Bahā’u’llāh himself in the 1850s was careful to deny that he had a high station or could work miracles (Cole 1997). Despite Azal’s reclusive style of leadership, and despite continual behind-the-scenes conflicts between Azal and Bahā’u’llāh, they succeeded in presenting a relatively united front from their place of exile in Baghdad (1853–1863). They continued in this vein when the Ottomans first exiled Bahā’u’llāh to Edirne in Ottoman Europe near Istanbul. He and his brothers and some Bābīs lived there November 1863 through summer, 1868, and it was midway through this period that open conflict between Azalīs and Bahā’īs broke out (Cole 1998a: 27–29).

(THE AZĀLĪ-BAHĀ’Ī CRISIS OF SEPTEMBER, 1867 by Juan R. I. Cole)

Read More

Azal was an idolater but Baha'u'llah helped build Azal up for a “secret reason” (hikmat).

...he does insist that the bonds with any loved ones (such as a brother) who rejected Bahā’u’llāh’s cause in favor of Azal had from that moment been severed. He defines Azal as having previously been the embodiment of only one of God’s names, and to prefer one of the divine names over God himself would be a form of idolatry. He redefines religious authority (prophets, messengers, imams and vicars) as being legitimate only if it upholds Bahā’u’llāh’s Cause. (This assertion undermines Azal’s authority as the supposed vicar of the Bāb.) Finally, Bahā’u’llāh complains that Azal had once been just one of the Bābīs, like any other man, but that his passions and selfishness had led him to begin having grandiose ideas about himself. Bahā’u’llāh explains that he had himself helped build Azal up, to his current regret, for a “secret reason” (hikmat). (The traditional Bahā’ī explanation is that Azal was put forward as the exoteric leader in order to protect the real leader, Bahā’u’llāh, though this story no doubt presents an overly rationalized picture of the complex relationship between Bahā’u’llāh and Azal, 1850–1865)

(THE AZĀLĪ-BAHĀ’Ī CRISIS OF SEPTEMBER, 1867 by Juan R. I. Cole)

Read More

Rashid Ridá's encounter with the Baha'i faith in Egypt

Rashid Ridá, then a student in Tripoli, read the al-Muqtataf article and with a group of friends wrote a letter to Gulpáygání protesting its contents. This was the beginning of Ridá's antipathy to the Bahá'í Faith. Later, when he arrived in Cairo, he met with Gulpáygání and was unhappy with the latter's exposition of the divinity of Bahá'u'lláh. As a strict Sunní Muslim, Ridá was unable or unwilling to understand the doctrine of theophany (zuhuru'lláh) preached by the Bahá'ís. It smacked to him of incarnationism and seemed to make the Bahá'í Faith far more similar to Christianity than to the transcendalist faith of Islám.

Juan R.I. Cole. "Muhammad `Abduh and Rashid Rida: A Dialogue on the Baha'i Faith." World Order Vol. 15, nos. 3-4 (Spring/Summer 1981):7-16.

https://www.h-net.org/~bahai/diglib/articles/A-E/cole/abduh/abduh.htm

Read More

Abdul Baha would attend Muhammad 'Abduh's study sessions

He [Rashid Ridá] says that when 'Abduh [one of the key figures of Islamic Modernism and the Salafi movement, also an opponent of the Ottoman ulama] was living in Beirut (presumably in the late 1880s) 'Abdu'l-Bahá more than once came to Beirut from Haifa and would make a point of attending some of Muḥammad 'Abduh's study sessions. Bahá'í sources, however, speak of only one encounter between 'Abdu'l-Bahá and 'Abduh, and the matter of how intimate the two men were bears more investigation. After 'Abduh returned to Cairo, he continued to correspond with 'Abdu'l-Bahá, and Ridá said that he had in his possession some of the latter's letters to 'Abduh.

Juan R.I. Cole. "Muhammad `Abduh and Rashid Rida: A Dialogue on the Baha'i Faith." World Order Vol. 15, nos. 3-4 (Spring/Summer 1981):7-16.

https://www.h-net.org/~bahai/diglib/articles/A-E/cole/abduh/abduh.htm

Read More

Baha'u'llah was the spiritual return (raj'ah) of the Bab.

After his exile to Edirne in Rumelia in late 1863, and ten years after his withdrawal to Sulaymaniyyah, he began sending letters to Iran announcing that he was the spiritual return (raj'ah) of the Bab. In 1867 he broke decisively with Azal. In the following years the vast majority of all Babis gave their allegiance to Baha'u'llah, becoming Baha'is.

(Baha'u'llah and the Naqshbandi Sufis in Iraq, 1854-1856 By Juan Ricardo Cole)

Read More

Baha'u'llah is the Self of God

The most great infallibility as a doctrine, Bahá'u'lláh says, acts to protect his religion. He reiterates that no one can share in it other than the Self of God. This phrase refers to the universal manifestation of God, who is the manifestation of the Self of God,...

(The Concept of Manifestation in the Bahá'í Writings by Juan Cole published in Bahá'í Studies, 9 Ottawa, ON: Bahá'í Studies Publications, 1982)

https://bahai-library.com/cole_concept_manifestation/

Read More

the Bahá'í distribution services stopped carrying titles by this publisher

While Bahá'ís are free to purchase and own books by Kalimat Press, the Bahá'í distribution services stopped carrying titles by this publisher.

https://bahai-library.com/kalimat_distribution_bahai_agencies#1999

Read More

Claims to divinity

A third significant convert during this time was a blind Sayyid, Jinab-i-Basir. Nabil states that he was the above mentioned Sayyid converted by Shaykh Sa'id-i Hindi. In contrast the Tarikh-i-Jadid claims that Jinab-i-Basir heard of the Bab's appearance in Bombay from where he traveled to Mecca and met him in person. After the Bab's death Jinab-i-Basir, along with several other Babis, made extravagant claims, but he was eventually "faced-down" by Bahá'u'lláh who made his own claim to divinity.* Jinab-i-Basir was later executed for his beliefs in Luristan.

*Juan R. Cole, ""Baha'-Allah, Mirza Hosain `Ali Nuri." Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. Ehsan Yarshater, (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983-), vol. 3, pp. 422-429.

(The Bahá'í Faith in India: A Developmental Stage Approach by William Garlington, published in Occasional Papers in Shaykhi, Babi and Bahá'í Studies, 2, 1997-06)

https://bahai-library.com/garlington_bahai_faith_india

Read More

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 (1994), pp. 145-163 Published By Brill)

Read More

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 spanning of earth and sky; more, it speaks of development, of the growth of a towering complex being from a tiny kernel. The Indo-European root deru is the origin of both the English word "tree" and the word "true". "Druid", the name for holy men in Celtic Europe, means the "knower of the tree (or the true)" (deru-wid). In ancient Iranian mythology, preserved in Zoroastrian texts, the Saena tree that stood in the midst of the cosmic Lake Vourukasha was said to be the source of all seeds. In this fabulous Tree of Healing (vispobish) nested the Saena bird, with the head of a dog and the body of a fowl, which from time to time flapped its enormous wings, sending the multifarious seeds of the Saena tree flying over the earth, upon which they landed and from which they grew into the vegetation that covered it. In Islamic mysticism, many elements of this myth were taken over. The Saena bird, for instance, became for Suhrawardi and Faridu'd-Din 'Attar (d. ca. 1230) the "Simurgh" (a contraction of Saena meregh), and they see it as symbol of the soul's mystical unity with God. It is said that its haunt is the mystical mountain of Qaf (a transformation of an Iranian mythic geographical symbol) beyond the world-sea (i.e. Vourukasha). Kazem Tehrani has pointed out that for Suhrawardi, the tree of all seeds is associated with a return of the soul to the "first form" (shakl-i avval), identified with the nest of the Simurgh, a conception that differs slightly from 'Attar's notion of the mythical bird as a mirror in which the soul sees itself. The Iranian idea of the Saena tree was probably mediated to Shaykh Ahmad through writings of such Iranian mystics, and it has for him, as well, connotations of the soul's return to its primal, pure estate.

(Juan R. I. Cole, The World as Text: Cosmologies of Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsa'i, Studia Islamica No. 80 (1994), pp. 145-163 Published By Brill)

Read More

Conservative & Liberal Baha'is

While it is true that conservative Baha'is object to categorising Baha'is as liberals or conservatives, as gentle or hard-line, for a sociologist to suggest that such divisions do not exist in the community is frankly bizarre.

Conservative Baha'is believe it is wrong to criticise the Baha'i institutions publicly. They support the NSA's right to act as it pleases, even arbitrarily. They firmly support the demand that everything written by Baha'is about their religion be subject to in-house censorship ("literature review"). They believe the House of Justice is infallible in all its doings. They believe that women should not be allowed to serve on the Universal House of Justice. They are convinced that civil governments will eventually be supplanted by the Baha'i institutions, which will rule as a theocracy. Shunning heterodox Baha'is or "covenant breakers" is central to their religious identity. They are fiercely anti-intellectual and often consider independent thinking a sign of "covenant breaking". They are scriptural literalists, preferring any statement in the Baha'i scriptures to the findings of scientists or historians.

In contrast, liberal Baha'is believe that the Baha'i institutions are still embryonic and often act immaturely, and that criticising them for the arbitrary exercise of power is good and necessary. They tend to protest when a Baha'i governing body appears to over-reach its scriptural authority. They are uncomfortable with censorship and often quietly decline to cooperate with it. They believe the Universal House of Justice's authority to be limited to legislation, and admit the possibility that women will eventually serve on that body. They see Baha'i institutions as complementary to civil governments, and reject the belief in a future theocracy. They are uncomfortable with the practice of shunning. They admire the intellectual life, and are not afraid to think independently. They believe that where science and scripture are in apparent conflict, science should be preferred, and they generally reject a literalist approach to scripture.

(Juan R. I. Cole)

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1387523

Read More

Short biography of Baha'u'llah

".... Baha'u'llah had by 1873 already been permitted to move out of the Akka prison, and to rent a dwelling in the town. When they arrived in Syria, the Baha'is had been suspected by local Authorities of being nothing but anarchists and criminals. Gradually, Baha'u'llah's uprightness and high ideals changed the minds of officials, and only once, when some of the rougher Baha'is murdered three Azalis who were spying on the Baha'is for the Ottoman state, was this rapprochement interrupted. Baha'u'llah had attempted to instill a Pacifist ethos in the Babi community, and deeply regretted the incident. In 1877, the local Ottoman governor gave him permission to live in a mansion outside Akka, at Mazra'a. In 1879 he moved to another mansion, at Bahji (literally the "small garden," Bagce, in Turkish), where he lived until his passing in 1892. Baha'u'llah married three times, first Asiyih "Nuvvab" Khanum in his youth, then his cousin, Mahd-i 'Ulya, whose family had been martyred; he had a number of children with each of these co-wives, in accordance with Middle Eastern customs of the time. In Baghdad he married Gawhar Khanum (the latter appears to have been a pro forma temporary marriage [mut'ah] of a sort required of Shi'ite law where a man had a live-in maid, and Gawhar Khanum had been brought into the household in the Shi'ite Karkh district in order to serve Asiyih Khanum). He had only one child, a daughter, with Gawhar Khanum). Baha'u'llah's eldest son and vicar, 'Abdu'l-Baha, later Interpreted the Most Holy Book to require monogamy. Baha'u'llah had altogether fourteen children from his three wives, including four daughters. Five of his sons predeceased him. As noted, he appointed his eldest son, 'Abdu'l-Baha, as his successor and the official interpreter of his religion after his death, and he also provided for the election of local houses of justice and a world-wide Universal House of Justice to govern community affairs. Baha'u'llah died of a fever in 'Akka on 29 May 1892, at the age of 74."

"A Brief Biography of Baha'u'llah" Juan R.I. Cole, Department of History, University of Michigan

https://bahai-library.com/wwwboard/messages03/665.html

Read More

Denis MacEoin did not withdraw from the faith, he was chased out by powerful Baha'i fundamentalists

Denis MacEoin did not withdraw from the faith, he was chased out by powerful Baha'i fundamentalists who were deeply threatened by the implications of his historical work. Denis became a Baha'i in North Ireland around 1965 and quickly emerged as a Baha'i youth leader. He was chosen to come to Haifa to commemorate the 1968 anniversary of Baha'u'llah's Letters to the Kings.

He then wrote the House saying he did not know whether to serve the Faith by becoming an academic scholar of the Middle East or by going pioneering. They wrote back that either path would be praiseworthy. (They later stabbed him in the back about this). He therefore entered graduate school at Edinburgh in Middle East Studies, then went on to Cambridge University for his Ph.D. He was the first academic to study the Babi movement with all the tools of modern scholarship, and his findings were groundbreaking.

Denis made the mistake of continuing to be an active Baha'i. Since the community is so heavily dominated by aggressive fundamentalist fanatics, if a genuine academic wants to be a Baha'i s/he has to keep a low profile. Denis did not. He gave summer school talks. He was once viciously attacked by Abu al-Qasim Faizi. His new ideas were upsetting the conservative British community. He objected when the Baha'i authorities supported dictators like Pinochet and Bokassa. He corresponded with the Los Angeles Study Class and some of his letters were published in their newsletter (a newsletter that the Baha'i authorities later closed down, for all the world like Tehran ayatollahs pulling a publishing license).

Around 1980, fundamentalist UHJ members Ian Semple and David Hoffman called Denis to a meeting and told him he would have to fall silent (rather as the Vatican did to Leonardo Boff). Hoffman was especially harsh. Denis declined to fall silent, and ultimately withdrew from the Faith. He was pushed out by anti-intellectual bigots who had risen high in the Baha'i hierarchy and become Infallible. Denis's works on the Babi and Baha'i movements are some of the few pieces of solid scholarship that exist. Instead of being grateful to him for sacrificing all those years living in penury as a graduate student, studying Arabic and Persian, traveling to a dangerous Middle East, all for the service of Baha'u'llah, the community could think of nothing better to do than viciously attack him and throw him in the gutter of infamy.

Denis's story is the story of most thinking people who have anything serious to do with the Baha'i faith. Either they adopt a cult-like mindset of true believers and covenant breakers, in which case they gradually cease being thinking persons, or they get chased out by the wild-eyed. A few people manage to avoid either fate by not drawing attention to themselves. The Baha'i Extreme Orthodox are like the Borg in Star Trek. They want to assimilate you, but might leave you alone if you stay quiet.

cheers

Juan Cole

Source : https://fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/MacEoin.htm

Read More

Authoritarian Organization

Fundamentalist Baha’is have an authoritarian view of how the Baha'i “administrative order” should function. They insist on obedience, and forbid criticizing Baha’i officials or institutions. The typical logic of Baha'i fundamentalists roots obedience in the legitimacy of authority, disallowing a rational examination of the substance of a command or an inquiry into whether the body giving the command has the “constitutional” prerogative to give it. In this way, arbitrary commands by Baha'i bodies or officials are made to be an either-or proposition. If one accepts Baha’u’llah, one accepts his administrative order, and must obey whatever it orders one to do, whether one agrees in conscience or no. Rejection of the command, ipso facto, represents a rejection of Baha’u’llah (Semple 1991, McMullen 2000:66-71). Thus, fundamentalist Baha’is secretly consider liberals and some moderates “not Baha’is” at all because they do not demonstrate sufficient compliance in immersing their wills in the authority of the Baha'i administration. Kazemzadeh expressed the fundamentalist philosophy on obedience when he visited a Baha'i study class in Los Angeles in 1979 to caution its members about the tone of their discussions, which were being published in a small-circulation newsletter. A class participant suggested that tone was not the real issue, saying “Dissent seems more the issue... Every time a Baha'i criticizes or disagrees with a policy of the NSA, is his commitment to the Covenant to be questioned and his Baha'i status threatened?” Kazemzadeh said that no one questioned the right of the Baha’is to gather for discussions, “but the word dissent implies separating oneself from the activities of the group and putting oneself outside the mainstream of the community, and that is contrary to Baha'i practice” (Kazemzadeh in Los Angeles Baha’i Study Class 1979:4). The National Assembly subsequently demanded the right to censor the newsletter, which had a circulation of about 120.

Juan Cole, Review of Religious Research, Vol. 43, no. 3 (March, 2002)

Read More

Fundamentalist Baha'is

Others view election to high Baha’i office as a sign of divine selection of that individual for a “high station,” though some Baha’is object to such differentiation. Some fundamentalist Baha’is speak of being a Baha'i as a status that bestows special spiritual privileges. One wrote on SRB, “Donating to the Bahai Cause is a privilege that only Bahais, who have not lost their voting rights, are granted.” When challenged as to why the Baha’is do not do more philanthropy than they do, they will often reply that others can carry out such charity work, whereas only Baha’is can build the foundation of the New World Order. Attending the regular Baha'i worship and community business meeting, the “nineteen-day feast,” is also often called a “privilege” pertaining to being a Baha'i, from which non-Baha’is are excluded (SRB 15 Aug 1997). As for boundaries, as we have seen, in the past decade fundamentalist Baha’is have begun drawing sharper boundaries between themselves and “humanist” or “materialist” liberal Baha’is as well as between their beliefs and mainstream U.S. values.

Juan Cole, Review of Religious Research, Vol. 43, no. 3 (March, 2002)

Read More

Baha'u'llah is the Godhead who had sent the other prophets.

One faction of Iranian emigrants to the U.K. in the 1980s and early 1990s led by a Cambridge-trained Iranian scholar even developed a doctrine that Baha'u'llah was the Godhead who had sent the other prophets.

Juan Cole, Review of Religious Research, Vol. 43, no. 3 (March, 2002)

Read More

The Baha'i administration has increasingly come under the control of fundamentalists

In his book Modernity and the Millennium, published by Columbia University Press in 1998, Professor Cole observes the Baha'i administration has increasingly come under the control of fundamentalists, "stressing scriptural literalism... theocracy, censorship, intellectual intolerance, and denying key democratic values (196)."

Similarly, Karen Bacquet has written an insightful article on Baha'i fundamentalism: "Enemies Within: Conflict and Control in the Baha'i Community," which was published in the American Family Foundation's Cultic Studies Journal, Volume 18, 2001, pp.109-140:

https://www.angelfire.com/ca3/bigquestions/enemies.html 

Read More

Bahaism is a chameleon changing its colour to suit its environment.

Bahaism is a chameleon changing its colour to suit its environment.

(Jalal S.Azal)


The Babi-Baha'i movements underwent an odyssey from militancy in the 1840s to pacifist, liberal globalism under Baha'u'llah and thence in the twentieth century to two contending emphases: a liberal stream that maintains a universalist and tolerant outlook and a conservative one that dreams of theocratic domination and insistence on scriptural literalism. The movement thus defies any easy teleology of modernity, and in many ways parallels the major reformist intellectual currents of modern Iran Shi'ite majority.

(Cole, Juan R. I. 1999. The Genesis of the Baha’i in Middle Eastern Modernity. ISIM Newsletter. 2/99: 9)

Read More

Udo Schaefer & Peter Khan about Baha'i Scholarship and why "a number of very capable and sincere people severed their connection with the Faith"

I know only too well whereof I speak. Over a period of five decades, I have had repeated, painful experiences with the anti-intellectualism in our community.

This is obviously a world-wide phenomenon in Baha'i communities. Peter Khan writes "... I saw around me ... in both Australia and the United States, a number of very capable and sincere people who severed their connection with the Faith because of their exposure to this narrow line of thinking. Even here in the Holy Land, one does occasionally see this line of thinking appearing in disguise from time to time ... We must always be on our guard against this crypto fundamentalist thinking, which can lead us into error through a narrow approach to the writings and to the centrality of the Creative word" ("Some Aspects of Baha 'i Scholarship", in The Journal of Baha'i Studies 9.4, December 1999, p. 47).

... there are Baha'is who regard the engagement in Baha'i studies as something more or less unspiritual. Sometimes those who do this work are told to "get down off their high horse". This is unacceptable.

When one reads appeals in Baha'i news magazines for the believers to “teach from the heart, to be inflamed”— as if all one has to do is to make up one’s mind and push a button — it means in plain language that we do not want discourse and rational, systematic teaching, but rather an emotional sharing of the message that appeals to feelings alone. Strangely enough, it is called “teaching work.” “What do you feel,” an institute facilitator asked the participants of a study group, after texts of Baha’u’llah had been read. She seemed to be searching for “feelings,” reminiscent of some foaming jacuzzi of emotions, into which one can let oneself drop in a state of utter relaxation, instead of thinking, which can be strenuous and exhausting. In some circles, critical thinking is equated with lacking faith, with being spiritually weak. Critical discourse is misinterpreted as “idle disputation.”

... how the Faith can be defended against criticism and attacks, when rational thinking and argument are treated with contempt.

-Loyalty to the Covenant and Critical Thought - A Commentary by Udo Schaefer

Read More