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MUHAMMAD MUSTAFA
1898—1981 Knight of Bahá’u’lláh
DEEPLY GRIEVED PASSING EMINENT DISTINGUISHED SERVANT BLESSED BEAUTY MEMBER BOARD COUNSELLORS AFRICA KNIGHT BAHAULLAH DEARLY LOVED MUHAMMAD MUSTAFA. HIS LONG RECORD DEDICATED SERVICES IN ADMINISTRATIVE TEACHING FIELDS HIS SELFSACRIFICING AUDACIOUS EFFORTS IN PROMOTION DEFENCE BELOVED FAITH UNFORGETTABLE. CONVEY BEREAVED FAMILY FRIENDS LOVING SYMPATHY. PRAYING HOLY SHRINES FURTHER UNFOLDMENT PROGRESS HIS NOBLE SOUL ABHA KINGDOM.
Universal House of Justice
This most beautiful testimony summarizes vividly the sixty-five years of Bahá’í life of this
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IN MEMORIAM
Muhammad Mustéfd
last remnant of the dedicated band of first Egyptian Bahá’ís. Born in the remote Nile Delta village of E1 @ahriya to a fanatical Muslim father, raised in an entrenched Islami community, tutored in a Quranic village school which provided no more than primary school education. Muhammad Mustafa, a telegraph operator at fifteen, rose, through the creative breath of faith in Bahá’u’lláh Whom he spontaneously and unconditionally accepted at the first hint, to become one of the veteran Bahá’í administrators, an experienced and reliable translator for the beloved Guardian, a defender of the Cause in the heart of the Islamic and Arab world, the subject of concern of both Egyptian Muslim clergy and state officials, a diffuser of the Glad Tidings in Egypt, Sudan and North Africa as well as other African countries, a Knight of Bahá’u’lláh, the rallying point and source of love and encouragement to the valiant Egyptian Bahá’í community deprived of its administrative framework since 1960, and, during the last six years of his life, a member of the Continental Board of Counsellors.
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He first heard the name “Abdu’l-Bahá’ at age sixteen when his friend, ‘Abdu’r-Rahmén Rufldi, who had just accepted the Faith, wisely put a booklet entitled Ten Days in the Light of Acca on his telegraph office table in Etai—El-Baroud, a town midway between Cairo and Alexandria, when Mustafa dropped in casually to keep him company. A third person, an interim railway .station master, picked it up and commented unfavourably on ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and His principles. Muhammad Mustafa’s reaction was spontaneous: ‘A Person with such principles and so many followers cannot but be True. I am one of His followers!’ Some time later, he was taken to a meeting by Rushdi. The subject of the signs of the advent of the Promised One were discreetly approached by the experienced Bahá’í teacher and friends. Muhammad Mustafa, to the astonishment of all present, suddenly exclaimed, ‘He has come and His name is ‘Abdu’l-Bahá . . .’ And Mustafa joined the ranks of the faithful.
Transferred to Tanta, he later went to Port Said where he shared with the other believers the persecutions of 1919 and 1920, He was not physically harmed, but he was among the frontline defenders of the Faith. He wrote to the Master and received three loving Tablets bearing the salutations, O thou who art turning thy face towards God], O thou who art attracted by the fragrances of God! and O brave friend!
In the service of the beloved Guardian he was privileged to visit the Holy Shrines almost yearly up to 1933. Every moment he spent with his beloved remained imprinted in his mind and heart. The beloved Guardian once admitted him to his office when he was ill in bed and told him that even though ill and unable to move he had to carry on, so great was the volume of work before him. Mustafa learnt then the need for the friends to intensify their efforts to assist the Guardian with his overwhelming load. Shoghi Effendi relied upon Mustafa for a number of English and Arabic translations; till the end of his life, he devoted himself to translating into Arabic the Guardian’s messages and incomparable prose. ‘My dear and precious fellow-worker,’ the Guardian once addressed a postscript to him,‘ ‘ . Your perseverance, your utter devotion, your sublime faith, your selfless
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labours are all graven upon my heart.’ And in another, Shoghi Effendi wrote, ‘Your translation of the document will be of great service and assistance to the Cause. You should rejoice and be happy and thankful. I assure you of my prayers for your success and spiritual advancement. I will never forget you.’ In two other communications the Guardian addressed him as ‘O beloved of the hearts of the friends’ and ‘O faithful friend’.
The first Local Spiritual Assemblies and the first National Spiritual Assembly of Egypt saw Muhammad Mustafa an active member; for many years he was national secretary—an office he discharged most ably—and later chairman. Until he pioneered in 1953 he served on the national and on local assemblies. His life contained a series of ‘firsts’ for the Egyptian Bahá’í community. He was the first to marry in an exclusively Bahá’í ceremony without the customary traditional Muslim rites (his bride, Farida Naimi, was privileged on the morrow to attain the cordial and loving presence of the Greatest Holy Leaf); the first to register his children as Bahá’ís at birth; the first to be appointed Auxiliary Board member and, later, Counsellor from amongst the Egyptian believers.
The Guardian’s announcement of the Ten Year Crusade made him restless. With meagre resources he pioneered to the desolate Spanish Sahara for which service he was named a Knight of Bahá’u’lláh. Denied residence, he resettled for a year in Benghazi, Libya. The ascension of the beloved Guardian caught him ill in bed in his home in Cairo. So great was the shock that it could be said to have endangered his life. Yet he managed to write to his fellow members of the Regional Spiritual Assembly of North-West Africa exhorting them to turn to the World Centre and the Hands of the Cause.
Between 1954 and 1960 he travelled in north, east and west Africa helping, amongst other activities, in the erection of the Regional Spiritual Assembly of North-West Africa in 1956. Wherever he went he was a source of happiness and encouragement to the friends and he assisted them in their teaching efforts through his knowledge of the Scriptures and Writings.
In 1958 he returned to Egypt. Clouds of opposition were collecting. A presidential
THE Bahá’í’ WORLD
decree, in 1960, disbanded all Bahá’í assemblies in Egypt and the believers there flocked around their two Auxiliary Board members, Muhammad Mustafé and ‘Abdu’r—Rahim Yazdi.
In 1965 a number of Bahá’ís were summarily incarcerated under serious false accusations and risked simple disappearance; Muhammad Mustafa was at the head of the list. Without hesitation he took full responsibility and requested, in vain, that the other believers be set free. Released under bail, he and the other victims remained subject to restraint until June 1967 when he and an even larger number of friends were thrown into a concentration camp. Auxiliary Board member ‘Abdu’rRahim Yazdi’ was expelled from the country leaving Mustafa as the only reference for the loved ones in Egypt. Released after six months. these believers, and the Bahá’í community as a whole, continued to suffer even greater restrictions. In March 1972 Mustafa and ninety-two believers ranging in age from two to seventy-five years, including thirty-three women and two children, were imprisoned in Tanta and publicly accused in the mass media of treason, espionage and misconduct. Miraculously released under bail after forty days of suffering, those loved ones and the whole community gathered round Muhammad Mustafzi who became their comforter and adviser. His long experience in the administrative and teaching fields, his relatively wide travels, and his calm and percipient spirit were the basis of the guidance emanating from him to the friends. A deeply loving heart, eyes that saw no evil, and a mind enriched with memories of the beloved Guardian brought him so close to the hearts of the believers in Egypt that for them he was a father or a brother. His modest home was the haven for all, and despite meagre resources his wife somehow accommodated everyone who approached their everopen door. The friends simply loved to come and sit with them both, and quickly enveloped the couple with such love and attention that any visitor could not help but notice and marvel.
As the older generation in Egypt slowly left
this world, Muhammad Mustafa, guided by
the instructions of the beloved Universal
House of Justice, literally reared the younger
generation, moulding it into a loving, united
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and active community.
By 1978, when he was eighty, age and longsuffering and hardship showed clearly their effects, but he continued travelling. comforting and visiting in Egypt. The loss of his wife in October 1979 was a staggering blow; she had been his mainstay for fifty-three years and her self-sacrifice and self—effacement had permitted him to dedicate his life to the Faith. Two of her three sons and her only daughter had pioneered outside Egypt in 1952, 1954 and 1956 and she had suffered terribly during the periods when her husband was pioneering, travelling or in prison. Yet so encompassing was her love that to neighbours and friends, Bahá’ís and non-Bahá’í’s, she was the living example of the mother for the New Day. A letter of condolence received from the Universal House of Justice seemed to call forth from Mustafa a final concerted effort to serve the loved ones. Towards the end of 1980 his health seemed to deteriorate rapidly; in 1981 he often intimated that his end had come and prayed tearfully that ‘the House of J ustice be content with me’. Just two days before he passed away he painfully walked up to a rear door in his room and waved goodbye to the few flowers and trees he loved in his small garden; and as the friends tried to give him his medicine he would refuse it saying, ‘You are only trying to delay the longed-for encounter.”
Thus ended the life of Muhammad Mustafa who was dedicated to the Master. the beloved Guardian and the Universal House of Justice; who served on four local and two national Spiritual Assemblies and as Auxiliary Board member and Counsellor; who taught and travelled for the Faith in many African countries; who translated dozens of messages and documents and wrote two most significant booklets in Arabic, a book of proofs in English and a similar but more elaborate one in Arabic; who was three times imprisoned for the Faith yet defended it before clergy, in the press, and from Covenant-breakers; who was loved by the friends; who was loving, humble, and ever—encouraging; whose home was a haven for everyone who cared to come in; and whose numerous gifts in his beautiful handwriting of Tablets, prayers and the Kitáb-iAqdas will constitute a touching and educating remembrance for his grandchildren and for generations to come.
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Before his death, on 15 August 1981, he had asked that his grave be the simplest, and placed lower than all others at the Bahá’í cemetery in Cairo. His loved ones obeyed his wish; but in their hearts the memory of Muhammad Mustafa is a monument highly Cherished and remembered.
ROWSHAN MusIAFA
