Civilizational Revival and Modernity through the Lens of 'Abdu'l-Bahá: An Examination of 'The Secret of Divine Civilization' (original) (raw)
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Baha’u’llah as “World Reformer” (1991)
BAHA’U’LLAH AS “WORLD REFORMER” (1991) *** Christopher Buck, “Baha’u’llah as ‘World Reformer’.” Journal of Baha’i Studies 3.4 (1991): 23–70 (5.1 (1992): 69–72 [Correction]). *** Award for Excellence in Baha’i Studies. Association for Baha’i Studies, 1991. The original last chapter of the author’s Master’s thesis: Symbolic Quranic Exegesis in Baha’u’llah’s Book of Certitude: The Exegetical Creation of the Baha’i Faith. Master’s Thesis. University of Calgary (Canada), ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing, 1991. [Thesis published (with a new final chapter) in 1995/2004 as Symbol and Secret: Qur’an Commentary in Baha’u’llah’s Kitab-i Iqan.] ABSTRACT Vindicating the mission of the Persian reformer known as the Báb (d. 1850) Bahá’u’lláh’s Book of Certitude (1862) focused on spiritual authority from an Islamic perspective. In this work, a subtext may be discerned, in which Bahá’u’lláh intimates his own mission in the same terms of reference. Later, in his epistles to the monarchs of Europe and West Asia (1866–1869), Bahá’u’lláh exercised that authority and spoke of world reform. This article places Bahá’u’lláh in the context of Islamic reform, with particular reference to the advocacy of constitutional democracy by prominent Iranian secularists. In an ideological ether pervaded by “Westoxication,” Bahá’u’lláh sought to reverse the direction of Western influence. Bahá’u’lláh prosecuted his own reforms in three stages: Bábí reform; Persian reform; and world reform. In the centrifugal sequence, Bahá’u’lláh is shown to have bypassed Islamic reform altogether in his professed role as “World Reformer”: O Queen in London! . . . Consider these days in which He Who is the Ancient Beauty hath come in the Most Great Name, that He may quicken the world and unite its peoples. . . . Were anyone to tell them: “The World Reformer is come,” they would answer and say: “Indeed it is proven that He is a fomenter of discord!” . . . Say: “O people! The Sun of Utterance beameth forth in this day, above the horizon of bounty, and the radiance of the Revelation of Him Who spoke on Sinai flasheth and glisteneth before all religions.” — Bahá’u’lláh, Tablet to Queen Victoria, 1868 Conclusion In this article, The Book of Certitude has been contextualized in three dimensions: (1) historically, within Bábí and Bahá’í history; (2) intellectually, within the rich and multiform Islamic heritage of figurative and symbolic exegesis of the Qur’án; and (3) ideologically, within a reformist context in modern Islam. Though text-centered, this article has not been ideologically reductionist in addressing context. Questions of genetic influence have been left open ended. The study of The Book of Certitude is fundamental to an understanding of the rise of the Bahá’í Faith. An introduction of this significant text to scholarship was the immediate academic need this study tried to fulfill. As The Book of Certitude is used very often in the Bahá’í conversion process, the work continues to produce meaning from the Qur’án as well as the New Testament. And from its exegetical techniques and argumentation, meaning is produced by Bahá’ís from non-Islamic and even non-Western scriptures in the missionary process. Since the Qur’án, as a scriptural authority, is alien to the non-Islamic and so-called primitive forms of spirituality from which the majority of Bahá’í converts the world over have recently come, the exegetical principles in The Book of Certitude are now adapted and universalized in non-Islamic contexts. Islamic thought, of course, informs The Book of Certitude and suffuses it. Yet its ideological departures from Islamic orthodoxy are decisive and irreversible. The text’s discontinuities with Islam probably explain more about what is intrinsic to the Bahá’í Faith than do the ideological carryovers.
An Essay on Bahá'í Philosophy: Expanded with an Additional Section
We do not currently possess an explicit philosophy within the Bahá'í Faith. This is due to the Faith's youthful and evolving nature. Philosophy traditionally emerges in religious traditions as they transition from dynamic developmental phases to scholastic eras. This is not a denial of the Faith's rich philosophical background but an acknowledgment that the development of knowledge in a faith tradition typically follows a process of expansion and consolidation. As faith traditions move beyond periods of heroism and persecution, establishing a foundation of authority, the sense of urgency and mission is replaced by a more serene environment conducive to intellectual discourse. 1 However, this general statement should not be misconstrued as a suggestion that Baha'i's must await a golden age to formulate their philosophical thinking. On the contrary, if philosophy involves engaging in higher reflective considerations, solid reasoning, a sense of inquiry, and the ability to synthesize and integrate, then the need for philosophy is paramount in the present. Care is essential to prevent prematurely identifying any system of thinking with the potential characteristics of a comprehensive model of Bahá'í philosophy destined to fully develop in the future. The Bahai writings underscore the pivotal role of religion in catalyzing positive change in the world, emphasizing a belief in the dynamic nature of existence. According to Abdul Baha, religion is the outer expression of the divine reality and must be living, vitalized, and progressive to reflect the divine life; otherwise, it becomes stagnant and lifeless. 2 This perspective challenges 1 This concept was thoroughly expounded upon by Dr. Alimorad Davoudi, a Baha'i philosophy professor at Tehran University. Following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, he was abducted due to his beliefs and is presumed to have been later murdered. 2 Religion is the outer expression of the divine reality. Therefore, it must be living, vitalized, moving and progressive. If it be without motion and nonprogressive, it is without the divine life; it is dead. The divine institutes are continuously active and evolutionary; therefore, the revelation of them must be progressive and continuous. All things are subject to reformation. This is a century of life and renewal. Sciences and arts, industry and invention have been reformed. Law and ethics have been reconstituted, reorganized. The world of thought has been regenerated. Sciences of former ages and philosophies of the past are useless today. Present exigencies demand new methods of solution; world problems are without precedent. Old ideas and modes of thought are fast becoming obsolete. Ancient laws and
The author places the ideological evolution of the Baha’i faith as a religious doctrine in the context of the social and cultural trends of Western neoliberal ideol¬ogy and globalism. She classifies this reli¬gious teaching, born in Iran in the mid-19th century (1844) out of the Shi‘a-Imamite messianic doctrine and fully developed by 1863, as a neo-universalist religious concept, the moral and ethical values of which did not offer sensational revelations, but followed the religious provisions of other faiths. Her analysis of the phenomenological aspects and quintessence of Baha’ism in the context of historical conditions and the factors that made it possible, the Baha’is religious identity, their relations with the environment, society, and the state reveals the contradictory and utopian nature of this faith. KEYWORDS: Baha’ism, the Bab, Bahá’u’lláh, Abdu’l-Bahá, Shoghi Effendi, globalism, neo-universalist religions, universalism, cosmopolitism, enneagram.
Bahá’u’lláh as “World Reformer”
The Journal of Baha’i Studies
Vindicating the mission of the Persian reformer known as the Báb (d. 1850) Bahá’u’lláh’s Book of Certitude (1862) focused on spiritual authority from an Islamic perspective. In this work, a subtext may be discerned, in which Bahá’u’lláh intimates his own mission in the same terms of reference. Later, in his epistles to the monarchs of Europe and West Asia (1866–1869), Bahá’u’lláh exercised that authority and spoke of world reform. This article places Bahá’u’lláh in the context of Islamic reform, with particular reference to the advocacy of constitutional democracy by prominent Iranian secularists. In an ideological ether pervaded by “Westoxication,” Bahá’u’lláh sought to reverse the direction of Western influence. Bahá’u’lláh prosecuted his own reforms in three stages: Bábí reform; Persian reform; and world reform. In the centrifugal sequence, Bahá’u’lláh is shown to have bypassed Islamic reform altogether in his professed role as “World Reformer.”
“The Eschatology of Globalization: Baha’u’llah’s Multiple-Messiahship Revisited” (2004)
Studies in Modern Religions, Religious Movements and the Babi-Baha’i Faiths, 2004
Buck, Christopher. “The Eschatology of Globalization: Baha’u’llah’s Multiple-Messiahship Revisited.” Studies in Modern Religions, Religious Movements and the Babi-Baha’i Faiths. Edited by Moshe Sharon. Numen Book Series: Studies in the History of Religions, 104. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2004. Pp. 143–178. ABSTRACT Globalization refers to “both the compression of the world and intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole” and as “both concrete global interdependence and consciousness of the global whole” (Robertson 1992: 8). It is further defined as “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa” (Giddens 1990: 64). Ethical responses to globalization are essentially world order issues (Lerche 1998), in a search for values of egalitarianism, equity, and sustainability a worldview that some have called “globalism” (Ritchie 1996). As a response to globalization, globalism may be viewed as a reflex or extension of Kantian cosmopolitanism as the “moral universalism of international relations” (Robinson 1996: 4). Bahā’īs often assert that, since Bahā’u’llāh anticipated modernity, then he must have been a prime mover of it. Historically, it can be observed that Bahā’u’llāh was a sudden sparkle of the nineteenth-century a flash of visionary brilliance. And it may be safe to say that Bahā’u’llāh and modernity are dynamically coincidental and, apart from directions of influence, that Bahā’u’llāh was engaged in dialectic with modernity. Regarding Bahā’u’llāh’s world reforms and their historical significance, ‘Abdu’l-Bahā observed: “These precepts were proclaimed by Bahā’u’llāh many years ago. He was the first to create them in the hearts as moral laws. Writing to the sovereigns of the world, he summoned them to universal brotherhood, proclaiming that the hour for unity had struck unity between countries, unity between religions” (DP 85). This sympathetic appraisal of the historical significance of Bahā’u’llāh’s international peace mission reinforces our hypothesis: viz., that Bahā’u’llāh’s signal contribution to globalization was to ethicize and sacralize it. Bahā’u’llāh’s “multiple-messiahship” furnished the divine authority necessary if ever his world reforms were to be taken seriously. This is Bahā’u’llāh’s eschatology of globalization.
Blackballed Ideology: Understanding how Baha’i doctrine was rejected from mainstream thought in Iran
My attempt in this paper is to illustrate the historical, socio- political and religious causes that have boycotted Baha’i doctrine in Iran, moreover poisoned academia mainly with the toxicant of ignorance and prejudice. This paper tries to show that modernization of Iran brought radical changes in the economical, political, traditional culture and intellectual discourse when Pahlavi dynasty got power after Qajar dynasty. This along the enormous global changes that happened in the beginning of 19century, and particularly with the deceleration of Bab in 1844 as the promised one of all the religions of the world, it seems these changes were a huge shock for the religious and patriarchal society of Iran. Also imbalance between the speed of modernity that naturally demands for social and political reforms and slow changes in Iranian culture which is religiously based could be factors which are considerable with special regard to new religious ideological framework which questioned foundation of Islam. The aim of this engagement is not to prove an ideology or accuse anybody but to show how intellectual discourses could divest, deny and disregard a new ideology which could bring a different color and taste to existing discourses, without any accurate reasons. This paper tries to argue how power structures could shape academia and people to get disconnected from reality and nature of an ideology.