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Fall 1985

World Order

Victory over Violence

Christine Hakim-Samandari

The Traditional Navajo Religion

and the Bahá’í Faith

Joseph O. Weixelman

The Continuity of Persecution

Howard Garey

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World Order

VOLUME 20, NUMBER 1 • PUBLISHED QUARTERLY

WORLD ORDER IS INTENDED TO STIMULATE, INSPIRE AND SERVE THINKING PEOPLE IN THEIR SEARCH TO FIND RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS AND PHILOSOPHY

Editorial Board:

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

BETTY J. FISHER

HOWARD GAREY

JAMES D. STOKES

Subscriber Service:

CANDACE MOORE

WORLD ORDER is published quarterly by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, IL 60091. Second class postage paid at Wilmette, IL 60091. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to WORLD ORDER, 536 Sheridan Road, Wilmette, IL 60091.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, or of the Editorial Board. Manuscripts can be typewritten or computer generated. They should be double spaced throughout, with the footnotes at the end. The contributor should send three copies—an original and two legible copies—and should keep a copy. Return postage should be included. Send manuscripts and other editorial correspondence to WORLD ORDER, 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, IL 60091.

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WORLD ORDER is protected through trademark registration in the U.S. Patent Office.

Copyright © 1987, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, All Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.
ISSN 0043-8804

IN THIS ISSUE

2 Breaking the Bonds of Racism

Editorial

4 Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor

9 Victory over Violence: A Personal Testimony

by Christine Hakim-Samandari

31 The Traditional Navajo Religion

and the Bahá’í Faith

by Joseph O. Weixelman

53 The Continuity of Persecution

review by Howard Garey

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Breaking the Bonds of Racism

RACISM is not dead in America. Its noxious fumes still poison the air. It marches down our streets in columns of white-robed men. It blossoms in the profusion of confederate flags in our stadiums. It shouts its hate-filled slogans on college campuses. It hides under the mask of objective research and insinuates itself into scholarly publications. It influences public opinion and shapes policy.

After two decades of progress there is a recession. Of those who fought for civil rights in the past, some have died; other have tired of the struggle, made their compromises, or found new causes to pursue. But legally established rights—civil, political, or economic—are not enough. Charters and constitutions, ordinances and laws must be supported, implemented, and enforced by the conscious moral will of the people. Today that will flags.

Aware of the ravages of racism, the Bahá’ís see in it a spiritual disease, a sickness of the soul, an infection of the mind, a distortion of the spirit. The struggle against racism must, therefore, first and foremost, be waged within the heart. Once the inner conviction of the unity of mankind has been reached and accepted as a religious principle, men and women can dedicate themselves to the elimination of prejudice in all its multifarious manifestations.

Half a century ago, addressing the American Bahá’ís, Shoghi Effendi wrote:

Freedom from racial prejudice, in any of its forms, should, at such a time as this when an increasingly large section of the human race is falling a victim to its devastating ferocity, be adopted as the watchword of the entire body of the American believers, in whichever state they reside, in whatever circles they move, whatever their age, traditions, tastes, and habits. It should be consistently demonstrated in every phase of their activity and life, whether in the Bahá’í community or outside it, in public or in private, formally as well as informally, individually as well as in their official capacity as organized groups, committees and Assemblies. It should be deliberately cultivated through the various and everyday opportunities, no matter how insignificant, that present themselves, whether in their homes, their business offices, their schools and colleges, their social parties and recreation grounds, their Bahá’í meetings, conferences, conventions, summer schools, and Assemblies.

Such is the Bahá’í standard, and such is the Bahá’í commitment.

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Interchange LETTERS FROM AND TO THE EDITOR

VARIETY is a common element in WORLD ORDER, for we are very conscious of the diversity of our readership. But the magazine’s variety is usually the diversity of points of view or of disciplines. In this issue, however, the variety is of a much more personal nature. We are privileged not only to glimpse a small portion of the tremendous variety that characterizes Bahá’í experiences around the world but also to understand something of the common spiritual foundation that unites the diverse Bahá’ís discussed and provides the impetus for their striving for a united, unified, and peaceful world.

In Howard Garey’s review of Muḥammad Labib’s The Seven Martyrs of Hurmuzak we are taken back to 1955 for a brief but painful glimpse of the struggles of six Persian Bahá’í village families to maintain their dignity, their rights, and their lives in the midst of a hostile human environment determined to deprive them of all they had. Seven Bahá’ís were killed, and all suffered physical deprivation. But the force of the Bahá’ís’ spirits and their conviction that their religion offered a model community for all to observe triumphed over the concerted efforts of their tormentors.

In our two articles we are moved forward in time to the early 1980s—to the four-corners region of the U.S. Southwest and to a doctor’s office in Tehran. Joseph O. Weixelman shares with us the results of his 1981 study of several Navajo Bahá’ís working out the dynamics of the Bahá’í Faith vis-à-vis their native Indian culture and their “adopted” white culture and finding, in the process, an all-embracing human culture. Christine Ḥakim-Samandari, through the painful account of her father’s murder in his office in Tehran in 1981, allows us to see, from a daughter’s point of view, the transforming effect of the Bahá’í Faith on her Persian-French family.

In each of the three studies the problems of coping are different. But whether Persian or Navajo; villager, artisan, or doctor; poor or affluent, all are united by a common faith—the Bahá’í Faith—and the conviction that the elimination of religious strife, racism, and ignorance, all major barriers to peace, can lead to a spiritually grounded society that values the diverse elements each one brings to it.

* * *

A CORRECTION: In our Spring/Summer 1985 issue we inadvertently failed to credit a last-minute substitution. The photograph on page 47 was taken by Kurt Hein when he was working at Radio Bahá’í, Otavalo, Ecuador.

* * *

REQUESTS for the new WORLD ORDER style sheet have far exceeded our expectations. The style sheet may be obtained by writing the WORLD ORDER Editorial Board, 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, IL 60091.

[Page 5] To the Editor

THE STATUS OF MEN REVISITED

The article by Linda and John Walbridge on Bahá’í laws on the status of men (Vol. 19, Fall 1984/Winter 1984-85) was surprising to me. I am not a Bahá’í but have become interested in and impressed with your beliefs and philosophy.

This article seems to indicate that men are due special privilege for fulfilling their family responsibilities. Though the family responsibilities of women are just as important and difficult, and they are encouraged to have important work outside the home, women are placed at a disadvantage when the men are given greater power over finances. The treatment of widows—taking away their home and most of their money—seems quite cruel.

The Bahá’ís, so I thought, believe in the equality of women. If there is not economic equality, there is no equality in decision-making. Paternalistic good intentions do not count.

Please comment—is this article the opinion of some, or is this part of the basic, nonevolving belief of the Faith?

PATRICIA L. LORD

Orangeville, California

In response to Patricia Lord’s letter regarding the article “The Status of Men in Bahá’í Law” I first want to make it clear that anything written or said by a Bahá’í regarding the teachings of the Faith is his or her own interpretation. Indeed, there are at least several Bahá’ís who have expressed disagreement with the interpretations that my husband and I suggested in this article.

I would like to emphasize once again that the overriding principle to be remembered is the equality of men and women. It was pointed out in the article, however, that there are a few instances in the Bahá’í writings in which men and women are treated a bit differently. We cite each case of which we are aware, using as our source the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Most Holy Book of Bahá’u’lláh. This book contains the immutable laws of the Bahá’í Faith. However, the main concern Ms. Lord expresses appears to relate specifically to those issues regarding the rights of inheritance. It should be underscored that the system laid down by Bahá’u’lláh regarding the distribution of an estate is only applicable when a person dies intestate. He does not state that a Bahá’í leaving a will must divide up his estate in this manner.

However, the very fact that Bahá’u’lláh suggests this means of distributing property stimulates some questions. It was our intent to try to tie together some common themes that we found in both Islam and the Bahá’í Faith to help give meaning to what we were seeing happening in the world around us. I happen to meet in my work and in my private life many single women who are living at the poverty level where no man is available to give financial support or in any way help raise the children. This had a great impact on my thinking when writing this article. I saw Bahá’u’lláh’s writings as an assistance to women, not as a way to degrade them in any way. I also see these same laws as elevating the position of fatherhood, something that has been seriously eroded in this society and in many others throughout the world.

It was hardly my intent to see “women put in their place” in suggesting these ideas. Indeed, when one really thinks about the notion of “patrilineality,” one will see that there is a large element of female strength assumed in this family structure. The woman is giving the man the right to “father” her children, and she is making some demands that he fulfill his part in the childrearing pattern, especially of the variety we have concocted for ourselves in this society.

LINDA S. WALBRIDGE

Escanaba, Michigan

Your Fall/Winter 1984-85 World Order was excellent —in particular your article “Bahá’í Laws [Page 6] on the Status of Men” by Linda and John Walbridge. Some of the information in the article was surprising and very enlightening and even, may I say, controversial. I use the word surprising because often when you read this and that in the Bahá’í writings from various sources you don’t get the total picture; but the Walbridges have done a good job of putting it all together in an understandable way. I use the word controversial because like a lot of people we don’t think of the Bahá’í Faith as being male centered like so many cultures are today; we read about the equality of women and the great importance of women in the Faith, and our view tends to get distorted, so in reading this essay it appears that a lot of assumptions are wrong. I have given this magazine to several feminist friends with the caveat that they read the conclusion first so that they get a clear idea of what is being said.

What I find very interesting is that this essay and the new compilation on Women from Canada came out at the same time. I strongly recommend that both of these be read at the same time. Together they give a very true picture of what the Bahá’í Faith is attempting to achieve and what the future Bahá’í culture and community life will be. This essay and the compilation really spell out what is meant by equality in the Bahá’í Faith; and if men and women both practice and work hard at this, we will be able to get the “wings of the dove” to move us forward.

I congratulate the Walbridges on their essay. I think so often we forget about men and their status in the Faith; often I think the men forget this, too, or don’t understand it.

VERNE KOCH

San Antonio, Texas

YOU CAN PLEASE SOME OF THE PEOPLE . . .

I have, in one way or another, been a subscriber to WORLD ORDER for fifteen years. I have, for the most part, found it a stimulating journal, although its quality has diminished in recent years. I was extremely disappointed, therefore, to read your subscription letter which arrived today.

I must say, I found it to be the worst piece of crass advertising I have ever seen coming from a Bahá’í body and for it to come from such a distinguished journal as WORLD ORDER is even more disheartening. I find the tone patronizing and the style manipulative, and I sincerely hope that such letters will be withdrawn.

Under the circumstances, I regretfully withdraw my subscription.

GORDON KERR

Oakham, England

As I read the letter from which the enclosed is torn [renewal form], I thought (more or less): “Gosh, what nice people. I wonder if they’re going to include ME in their encomiums. What a nice thing for them to do.” And then a moment later Margaret came running when she heard me whoop with laughter as I got to the part about “Send us your money bud; you’re non compos fiscal around HERE any more!” And as I write this I’m wondering about the reactions of others of those “full professors . . . statesmen . . .” and such ilk to your ploy. If I readdressed this to “Letters . . . ,” would it perchance find expression in print? And as I close this specious charades (yes, that’s plural—only in form) I’m wondering how your vocabulary of archaic words and phrases is (and THAT sounds like Churchill’s “up with which I will not put!”).

Okay—to business: Margaret suggests, and I am moved to concur, that since WORLD ORDER’S articles are so timeless as well as timely, and FEW of them, at least, are of any particular immediacy, that it really (MOST of the time) doesn’t, probably, make that much difference if the issue is four or five months late, and Shoghi Effendi I ain’t! So money being what it is these days (tight!): enclosed please find my check for AM$18.00 for one year by surface mail. So it’ll take a while to get my NEXT one, but then just think—I’ll still be getting my 1987 issues well into 1988! . . .

JAMES WALKER

Brasilia, Brazil

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Victory over Violence: A Personal Testimony

BY CHRISTINE HAKIM-SAMANDARI
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY HOWARD GAREY

Introduction

ON 12 January 1981 Professor Manúchihr Ḥakím, a well-known and much-loved physician specializing in gastroenterology, was murdered in his office in Tehran by an assailant posing as a patient seeking some after-office-hours advice. Dr. Ḥakím’s only “crime” was that he was a member of the Bahá’í Faith, the one religious minority not protected by the constitution of the Islamic regime.

Professor Ḥakím, the son of a notable physician, had studied at the Medical College of Paris, where he distinguished himself in the field of anatomy. He is twice cited in Le Rouviere, a French medical encyclopedia, for his anatomical discoveries. His treatises have been used in textbooks in many medical colleges.

When Professor Ḥakím returned to Iran in 1938, he established a chair of anatomy at the University of Tehran, where his books are still used as texts.

In addition to his work at the University of Tehran and his private practice, Professor Ḥakím served for thirty years (since its inception) as a director of a Bahá’í charitable hospital in Tehran, a hospital that treated everyone irrespective of religious affiliation and cared for the poor free of charge when necessary. He was also a founder of the Bahá’í home for the aged, which accepted people of all religious and racial backgrounds. In 1976 Professor Ḥakím was decorated by the French government with the Legion of Honor for humanitarian services.

For more than twenty-five years Professor Ḥakím served on the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Iran and was several times its chairman. For several months before his assassination he received many threats and anonymous phone calls. In 1980, during a trip to Europe, his friends warned him not to return to Iran. But Professor Ḥakím’s sense of duty and service to people in need made him return, despite his knowledge of the danger to his life.

Professor Ḥakím’s daughter, Christine Hakim-Samandari—a doctor (of sociology) in her own right—had no thought of recording her family’s tragedy. But when she received a letter several days after her father’s assassination proposing that she “write a book about the Bahá’ís, that letter was like a sign from on high.”

The result was Les Bahá’ís: ou victoire sur la violence, the first chapter of which is translated and reproduced below. It was written in less than six months during what Hakim-Samandari describes as “a period of intense pain suffered [Page 10] not only by my family but by the entire Iranian and worldwide Bahá’í community.”

At the end of the first chapter the author writes: “Through this book, and through the hundreds of doors that suddenly open everywhere, my father’s sacrifice and the sacrifice of our coreligionists take on a new meaning. This suffering makes it possible to empty an ocean, to reveal a world of hope and certitude, the world of the Bahá’ís, which, step by step, is conquering the violence that menaces the entire planet.”

The itinerary Christine Hakim-Samandari proposed to trace in her book was “the itinerary of a community of fire and quietude.” The “fire and quietude” shine through in our excerpt from Les Bahá’ís: ou victoire sur la violence.

THE EDITORS

PARIS, 12 January 1981. . . .*

My mother phoned my father today. He is in Tehran.

After a month of separation she would like to rejoin him. As usual, my father’s calm, warm voice asks her to be patient just a little longer. The situation is very bad. She ought to stay with us in Europe for a little while. Before saying good-bye, he adds joyfully: “Now that we’ve talked, I’m going to have a very good day.”

My mother has not entirely lost hope.

As for me, my soul is empty; only my daughter is keeping me alive.

Today, more than on the other days, I can no longer bear the perpetual danger that my father has been exposing himself to by remaining in tormented Iran, and our separation is more intolerable than ever for me. . . .

Tehran, 12 January 1981.

It is 5:15 in the afternoon; the curfew is beginning. After the continual street noises, the capital gradually quiets down.

The secretary leaves the doctor’s office. She hurries into the cold, dry air before night falls. My father is left alone. He is waiting for one last patient who has asked him for an urgent appointment.

Half an hour after the secretary leaves, the servant girl comes back from her errands. Upon finding the house empty, Gulí, deeply attached to our family, is worried. The Professor should have come down from his consulting room; she looks for him in every room. She goes upstairs, does not see him at first, then utters a horrified cry when she finds him lying on the floor behind his desk. . . .

---

* Translated by Howard Garey from the first chapter of the French original by Christine Hakim, Les Bahá’ís: ou victoire sur la violence (Lausanne, Switzerland: Editions Pierre-Marcel Favre, 1982). Copyrights for all languages except German are held by Editions Pierre-Marcel Favre, 1982, Lausanne. Copyright for German translation, Panorama Verlag, 1984, Altstaetten.

[Page 11] Zurich, Switzerland, 12 January 1981.

. . . the livid face of my husband as he learns about this tragic event the very same evening, on the telephone, makes me realize it is true. My father has been killed in the full exercise of his profession, by a cowardly assassin pretending to be a patient.

. . . My father, so peace-loving, so fine, so generous—face-to-face with an executioner? Was he made to suffer? Was he subjected to psychological torture? I can no longer bear the horror of these images. After the fear and anguish that have been paralyzing us for almost a year—since the day the Iranian authorities confiscated my father’s passport—the worst has come to pass. . . .

In my half-conscious state, the terrible concern that assails me is for my mother—how will she react? For her, who had shared one soul with my father, this will be a fatal blow. Should I leave Switzerland immediately to join her in France? No doubt others will tell her the cruel news before I can get there. We would rather tell her ourselves. I cannot do it. My husband masters his emotion and telephones Paris. My mother is alone. She is waiting for my brother to come home for dinner. He must have been held up in traffic. Her voice is especially happy because she has just talked to my father on the telephone. I bite my lips to keep from crying out. We cannot say anything until Paul gets back.

A few minutes later I telephone again. On both ends of the line we have utterly collapsed; we can only sob as never before. Someone else has just telephoned and told her the tragic news. Her whole life has changed in the space of a few seconds. This catastrophe has fallen upon her like a thunderbolt. How can one express the feelings of icy darkness, of revolt and outrage that pour into her spirit? I am afraid to leave her alone.

I keep her at the telephone for a whole hour. All we can do is sob.

In her despair she tells me, “If I had been there, surely I could have prevented that murderous act; somehow I could have saved him.”

I am anxious for my brother to arrive so she will not be alone, and yet I could wish that that moment would never come.

I cannot stand the thought of the abyss he will be in soon.

Like a flame, the news of the crime spreads across Iran and the whole world with incredible speed: paid killers have put an end to the life of a being who knew how to bring love to the pitch of perfection. My father was cruelly struck down by two bullets because of his religion: He was a Bahá’í. This murder is not an isolated act; it is part of a general plan for the destruction of the entire Bahá’í community of Iran, a plan that is being fulfilled with giant strides since the coming to power of the Islamic government. What ignominy! How can one still, in the twentieth century, kill human beings for their faith? We are returning, horrified, to the times of the Romans, who threw Christians to the lions, or of the concentration camps where it was enough just to be a Jew to perish in the gas chambers. Is the same insanity, the same tragedy once more running its course?

At Tehran more than six thousand persons of every religion, braving the dangers of the present situation, come from the most distant provinces and villages of the country, to testify to their love at my father’s funeral. Fifty-odd [Page 12] buses and hundreds of automobiles coming from a number of assembly points in the capital are converging, with a weighty silence, a gravity without precedent, on the Bahá’í cemetery of Tehran.

At the cemetery, more anguish: The Revolutionary Guards announce a new danger: “Four bombs are going to explode; those who wish to leave will do so quietly.”

With a unanimous impulse, like a cry from the heart, everyone stands firm. Under the exceptionally balmy winter sun, the silent crowd, meditative, quiet in its profound grief, amid innumerable floral wreaths, accompanies my father for a last homage, singing a religious hymn that tells all of their suffering and hope.

Unlike the international press, which reveals this odious murder, Iran’s press does not report it. The Iranian authorities remain silent, and several days after the assassination they appropriate our house and pillage everything: furniture, clothes, pictures, books, family photos—everything. . . .

After this devastating calamity, our life has to go on. For most people the tragedy that has come upon us has passed, but our suffering remains ever deeper and stronger. My father is no more. We—his children, his wife, his brother— have been violently torn from our most precious loved one. The flood of goodness, of beauty that poured through his many letters, his telephone calls, is abruptly stopped. For the first time in my life I am submerged in inconsolable woe. It seems to me as if since that moment a part of myself has left this world and followed my father to the world beyond.

The First Steps of Terror
under the Islamic Republic

THERE was nothing in our life that could have helped us foresee such a fate. Certainly, no one was expecting trouble. Everyone knows that the worst violence, tragedies of every kind, exist, and deplores the fact; but one always expects to be spared them. They only happen to others. And yet, when violence strikes, it strikes anywhere and anybody—and this time we were its target.

It was odd the way, in 1978, the registration rolls of the members of the Bahá’í community of Iran were stolen from the Bahá’í Administrative Center in Tehran. That was just a few months before the departure of the shah and the installation of the Islamic government.

The year 1979 saw Iran erupt into revolution, with all its passions, hopes, ravages, and suffering. During the social upheaval that has prevailed since the overthrow of the shah, the Bahá’ís, the largest non-Muslim minority in Iran, have once more been chosen, as they have been in every crisis, to be scapegoats to expiate all the ills and travails of the country.

The race toward the annihilation of this peaceful religious community, whose followers come from every social and ethnic background, continues to speed on, faster and faster. Odious acts of sacrilege and terror are but the first steps in an insane plan that threatens to lead to genocide.

What is it that makes authorities to whom a people full of hope has entrusted all power fall into delirium, to begin, in this case, by systematically destroying the economic base of the Bahá’ís, both individually and collectively?

[Page 13] In a stupefying way, an organized program of terror has devastated the life of modest villagers by attacking; pillaging; burning the houses, the crops, the livestock, the shops of the Bahá’ís. Their hearts contracted with fear, the peasants have seen their little plot of land, everything that they have been able to acquire in their lives, reduced to ashes. Dispossessed, a thousand of them sought refuge in tents for months at a time. A father and his son were lynched, their bodies dragged through the streets of Míyán-Du’áb before being burned. Some five hundred houses were looted, razed, or burned at Shiraz and in the province of Azerbaijan. Dismay has filled their spirit; and yet, pressured by the Revolutionary Guards to deny their faith, they have remained stoutly firm in their religion.

With an insatiable thirst for destruction, the unscrupulous authorities seized the legacy of a century of sacred history of this Faith born in Persia, and in the same stroke they took over its charitable institutions. Thus throughout the country the numerous holy places and shrines were desecrated and confiscated, as well as the Bahá’í cemeteries and the administrative centers, the schools, the savings bank, the charitable hospitals, the retirement home from which aged Bahá’ís have been evicted.

The monster has advanced on the cities as it proceeds to the financial strangulation of the Bahá’ís: it has annulled their retirement pensions, blocked their bank accounts, dismissed them from public service and, in the private sector, appropriated their businesses, factories, enterprises, and even refused birth certificates to the newborn of the community.

During this time, in September 1979, my parents came to see us in Paris. Our family ties were strong and united around my parents. We were relieved to have for a little time, far from these events, my father’s warm presence. But he felt drained; he had lived, step by step, the suffering of each Iranian Bahá’í.

Our tranquillity did not last long; bad news continued to pour in: at Shiraz the house of the Báb, a holy place, a place of pilgrimage for Bahá’ís of the whole world, was confiscated. The anguish grew.

From every part of the world, more than a hundred national Bahá’í communities, deeply alarmed for the fate of their Iranian brethren, sent telegrams imploring the Islamic Revolutionary Government to protect the rights of that minority.

The Islamic government coldly declared that it would accord no recognition to the Bahá’í Faith in terms of the new constitution, nor would the fundamental rights of its faithful be protected; thus every insane frenzy against them was legalized.

The telephone did not stop ringing at our house; friends and relatives begged my father not to return to Iran. He could himself be one of the targets of the oppression.

I can still hear his voice answering, “You mustn’t worry about me.”

He knew the respect that his fellow citizens felt for him, even those of the present government. He could still help the oppressed.

His smiling eyes lit up his face as he continued with gentle confidence, “I must get back to Tehran. My patients and my work are waiting for me, and thousands of people are suffering back home.”

[Page 14] My father regained his inner joy when he was in the company of his wife and children. But his thoughts remained in the tumult of Iran, where nearly a half million of his coreligionists have had to face intolerance for more than a century, to face the flouting of their fundamental rights and, intermittently, to pass through periods of severe persecution, such as the present one.

His conscience demanded that he go back home.

The intensity of those moments, decisive for us, were enveloped in the whirlwind of the games and carefree laughter of my little girl.

My parents left once again for Iran. The last year of my father’s life would be the most painful.

On the first of December 1979, with a serene countenance, the one being in the world to whom I am the most deeply attached left for his native land, never to return.

The Past

HOW PAINFUL it is to relive these images of my father, to bring back a past that for me was full of tenderness. My childhood years in Tehran have remained very clear in my memory and are always associated with the feeling of peace near my parents and my brother—no doubt a privilege coming from having been raised in a cocoon of love. I feel that it would be too poignant to return some day to the places where my father, my universe, everything that I have been able to love has disappeared.

My heart stops: I can see us again in our garden in Tehran. My brother and I are so close that it is hard to tell us apart. We are playing with our friends, running around the big pool, hiding behind cypress trees or disguising ourselves, and the games are becoming more and more exciting. My parents, my grandmother, and a few old friends of the family are chatting in the living room. Every season is beautiful in Iran, especially autumn with its pure air and the golden, changing colors of the mountains. Through the large bay windows the sunlight pours into the house. You could say that the light is alive. It plays on the trees, then on the rugs and the furniture; everything sparkles. A discreet, mutual affection radiates from my parents, making of them one of those couples, solid and unified, that nothing can shake in their love.

My parents, although of different religions, respected each other’s faith. My brother and I received Catholic as well as Bahá’í instruction. We regularly attended Catholic services. On Sunday Paul helped to serve the Mass as a choir boy. My parents simply told us that when we grew up we would be able to choose the way that we deemed the best. That would seem perfectly natural to me, for we were surrounded by all denominations. We lived in an Islamic country; the ancestral religion of Iran is the Zoroastrian religion; my father’s family counts Protestants, Bahá’ís, Jews, and Muslims; and my mother’s family, in France, is Catholic.

I cannot remember so much as a word of conflict between my parents on the subject of their respective faiths—quite the contrary, little by little, through the years, my mother increasingly admired the respect that my father manifested for her and the dignity of his acts. By judging him she began to be moved by his religion, and it was much later, after a long personal search, that she became a Bahá’í.

[Page 15] The Inquiry

A PROFESSEUR AGRÉGÉ of the faculties of medicine of France, with Professor Rouvière as his mentor, my father pursued his medical studies in Paris, the city of my mother, a French painter. Their destinies were to be joined on the shores of Normandy.

My grandmother approved wholeheartedly of her daughter’s marriage to this distinguished young Persian, although he professed another religion.

In the Bahá’í religion the faithful may marry members of other faiths. In contrast, the Catholic Church did not at this time yet consent to marry two persons one of whom is not Catholic. Problems arose; the young people had to pass the first obstacle. However, once the archdiocese of Paris learned that the fiancé was of the Bahá’í religion, it opened an inquiry with the archdiocese of Tehran, which proved decisive: The Bahá’í religion was born in the East, like all the great religions, and gravitates around two Central Figures:

The Báb, from 1844 on, in Persia, claimed to be the Precursor of a new era and to prepare the way for the Promised One.

Bahá’u’lláh, in 1863, declared that He was the Promised One Whose mission was to inaugurate the era of peace and justice announced by the Báb and by the previous religions. He proclaimed that He was a Messenger of God on the same basis as the Buddha, Krishna, Zoroaster, Moses, Christ, Muḥammad, and the Báb.

The Bahá’í Faith considers itself part of the cycle of religions all proceeding from the same origin and revealed in the course of the ages in accordance with the evolution of mankind and the needs of each epoch.

The Bahá’í Faith is not a sect, but a new and independent religion, with its own holy writings and laws.

The spiritual, moral, and social teachings reflect three dimensions of this religion: God, man, and society. Its writings present an approach to the knowledge and love of the one God. They also emphasize the values of man, placed in the service of humanity. The goal of belief is to give spiritual impetus back to human beings, to abolish the barriers between peoples, and to build the foundation of the unity of mankind.

This belief has spread throughout the world, and its adherents come from every ethnic group, religious background, and social level.

The archdiocese of Tehran expressed its favorable judgment of this religion and most particularly appreciated the law of monogamy.

Once the dispensation was received from the Pope, the wedding took place in the Catholic Church, followed by the Bahá’í marriage ceremony. Under the fine rain of the Parisian autumn, this day was celebrated with a very special emotion.

My Father

IN SPITE of the many interruptions caused by voyages and sojourns abroad, my parents built their life in Tehran.

[Page 16] My father, Professor Manúchihr Ḥakím, became a well-known physician. He was greatly respected and loved by his fellow citizens as much for his scientific and humanitarian works as for his integrity, his attractive personality, and his moral rectitude. Behind his glasses, his smiling eyes reflected kindness and humility and came to rest upon each person with gentleness. This gaze warmed many wounded hearts. His voice was soft and tender; at the same time strength, equilibrium, and determination emanated from his person.

Every facet of his life reflected his devotion to the healing of suffering humanity. It was essentially from his faith that he derived a strength outside of himself.

In all of Iran his great renown as a specialist in gastroenterology was not limited to the privileged few. He was also the physician of the poor, who held a special place in his heart. He treated the needy without charge up to the last day of his life. Patients arriving from the provinces, from the villages and the outlying tribes, came to consult him. They were his favorite patients. My father spoke of them with feeling. Every day they blessed him and expressed their gratitude through attentions that touched him deeply.

In his office the waiting room was always full. Certain patients, especially those from the provinces, arrived with the dawn. Often my father had tea served to the patients, or cooling drinks during the hot season. He himself left his office, between patients, to come to the house and give us a quick kiss. He kept this habit even when I returned from Europe, a big girl then, to spend my vacations in Tehran. I can still hear his voice calling me joyfully, “Come, Kiki, it’s my play time!”—and we, two accomplices, laughed. Every day, very regularly, almost at the same hour after his private consultation, he took his black leather medical bag and his hat, kissed us, and left. Always true to himself, he had the ability to accomplish an enormous amount of work with serenity and dignity. In the street many people recognized him. With a courteous gesture, which had become characteristic of him, he tipped his hat to them and continued on his way toward a clear and precise goal before him.

One of the activities most dear to his heart was the Bahá’í charity hospital, founded more than thirty years before through the gifts of a Bahá’í philanthropist, Mr. Míthághíyyih. Since that time, my father had always been its director. He worked selflessly for the love of his faith, of the poor, and of science. This social institution was his third child. Day and night he betook himself to the hospital, gave himself to its progress, and watched, with attention to every detail, over the care given to the sick of all religions. The returns from the paying rooms made it possible to give free care to the poor, pay the staff, enlarge and develop the hospital, making it in this way one of the greatest of the capital.

Besides that, my father was the founder of one of the few retirement homes in Tehran, also a Bahá’í social institution open to all. Because of his devotion the French Government conferred upon him the Legion of Honor for his humanitarian and scientific deeds. At the time of the Islamic revolution he was terribly hurt when the authorities confiscated, among other things, the hospital and the retirement home. Every cruel treatment meted out to these charitable institutions wounded him deeply.

[Page 17] As a scientist, he occupied throughout his professional life the chair of anatomy on the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Tehran and the National University. The students were a little afraid of this professor who required of them an honorable level of achievement so that they might some day represent the Iranian medical corps with dignity. But he was also one of the most popular professors and one of the most loved, for all were attracted to him by his highly developed sense of equity.

My father was an impassioned lover of anatomy. He spoke to us of this field as one of the miracles of creation. I do not know how he found the time to write and publish the results of his unceasing research in a score of medical works, the first modern anatomy books written in Persian, always brought up to date with the most recent discoveries of world importance, and illustrated with my mother’s anatomical drawings.

My brother would later find, as a student in Paris, that my father was referred to in the Rouvière medical books as the discoverer of the sacrolumbar ligament that bears his name.

My father lived not only to dedicate himself to human beings, whatever their origins or their beliefs, but also to serve the Bahá’í community. For twenty-five years he was a member, often the chairman, of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of his country. This type of collegial institution exists in every country in which Bahá’ís live. I can still see him, in the evening, three or four times a week, after a day of intense work, going off to the meetings of the Assembly. This was no doubt one of the heaviest responsibilities he assumed: to concern himself, along with eight other persons, with the wellbeing and the problems of a large community of half a million believers in the country, with even more conscientiousness and interest than if it concerned the lives of the Assembly members themselves. Sometimes he returned from these meetings wrung out, his face anxious or sorrowful because of the hardships visited upon the Bahá’ís.

Paradoxically, the Bahá’í community, in spite of its peaceful principles, constitutes, since the origin of its faith in 1844, the most often persecuted group in Iran.

The first pogrom against the Bahá’ís goes back to the nineteenth century. Under the rule of the Qájárs more than twenty thousand believers were cruelly massacred.

If the reign of the Pahlavís appears to mark a calmer, because less violent, period—except for the cruel persecutions of 1955—it is, nevertheless, true that the marginalization of the Bahá’ís, through legislative and administrative measures, tended to relegate them to the rank of second-class citizens. The only exceptions were made for those Bahá’ís whose abilities far surpassed those of the other Iranians.

Although it constitutes the largest religious minority in Iran, the Bahá’í community was not mentioned in the Iranian Constitution promulgated in 1906, which recognized only the Jewish, Zoroastrian, and Christian minorities. That deliberate omission resulted in the violation of the Bahá’í community’s most fundamental human rights and, at the same time, deprived it of all recourse to legal protest.

[Page 18] But sometimes my father returned from National Spiritual Assembly meetings with his eyes shining with a profound happiness. I would discover the same spark in him when we met in the West at the international conferences that bring together Bahá’ís from all countries.

From those years I particularly recall Friday, the national day of rest. The capital was in repose, the mad traffic noises of the week gave way to the sounds of the real Iran: the cawing of a crow, the gentle breath of the wind in the trees, sometimes the distant voices of the street vendors. Very early in the morning someone would come to see my father to ask his advice or for help with some problems. His wise discernment and his personality ensured that his advice would be heeded. They were many who relied with perfect confidence on this being who was always so calm, so courteous to everyone, who never uttered a rebuke or a tactless word. The only times I ever saw him enraged were when he observed dishonest acts and instances of injustice, especially when they were at the expense of the weak. Such behavior made him suffer enormously, making him quite literally ill. In such moments my mother was his principal confidant and support.

The Soul of Our Home

I CAN still see my mother as the center of our family and the soul of our home. She lived for us, to bring us happiness—and she succeeded. She provided, among other things, enthusiasm and savor for our family life and our abode, the home of an artist where you felt entirely at ease in the harmony of tender colors, the beauty of forms and space. My mother’s gay, luminous canvases resembled her. She loved to paint a beautiful world, most often peopled with flowers. She had the ability to inject spontaneity into every activity in which we joyfully engaged.

Our home was always open to our many friends of all nationalities, the Franco-Iranians being the most numerous. Some of them said, “It is God’s house,” and my father laughed heartily and relaxed. Their faces pass before my eyes as if on a frieze and hold a particular place in my heart.

Our house: I loved it as if I were never to leave it—it was my universe.

It was in Tehran as well, in that same garden of my childhood, on a clear, calm summer evening, under the serene sky, surrounded by a multitude of flowers, that I became engaged. This was the prelude to the happiness of my husband and myself.

Now all that has been wiped out. But my wounds cannot heal so quickly. My heart bleeds; troubling images haunt me. In these same places all I can see now is my father’s murder, the pillage of the house and of everything, everything, even the smallest memories of our life. But perhaps there remains in that place the fragrance of my father’s generous soul—and that, no one will ever be able to destroy.

The Last Year

MY PARENTS left Paris for Tehran toward the end of 1979. The situation was rapidly deteriorating. After the arrests came the political executions; the Islamic tribunals continued their task with new contingents of condemned, among whom were the Bahá’ís.

The monster was advancing step by step in its plan of the destruction of [Page 19] this minority, with even more violence. Almost everywhere in Iran blows rained upon the doors of the houses. Everyone held his breath: yes, it is at our door that they are knocking. Without any explanation, the Revolutionary Guards had come to arrest the head of the household.

The distinctive trait of these arrests is that they fall upon those who have committed no offense; the one thing all the victims have in common is their adherence to the Bahá’í Faith. From now on every family of the community expects from one minute to the next the strident ringing of the doorbell. How can these beings, unprepared psychologically for the terror, survive in these accursed circumstances? Only their firmness in the Faith enables them to resist.

To keep them from leaving Iran, the authorities confiscated the passports of many Bahá’ís. My father had his taken away. At first everyone thought it was a clerical error and wondered: Why me? They received no answer because there was none; but the authorities made them run from bureau to bureau, all the while making vague promises in order to keep them from learning their grim fate.

This moment marked the beginning of a long Calvary for me and my family in Europe. Out of loyalty my father willingly returned to his country, but he was no longer free to leave it again whenever he liked. The nation that he served so well confined him within its borders. The long months of separation, of anguish, weighed upon my heart and numbed my mind. Day after day we waited for him; we kept hoping. I asked nothing else of life except to be once again united with my father.

Iran sank deeper and deeper into disorder. The war with Iraq broke out in September 1980.

My parents continued a semblance of normal living. My father received more and more free patients, some of whom were war wounded. There were few doctors to be found, many of them having left Iran.

By this time the violence perpetrated against the Bahá’ís had lurched into its stage of utter madness, with its kidnappings, executions, and assassinations.

From then on no wife, no mother could ever be assured of seeing her husband or her son again, once he stepped over the threshold of their house. Thus in August 1980 the nine members of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Iran and several other believers were taken away. Since that day their families have been living a tormented existence: no trace, no news was to be had of them. Had they already been secretly executed; were they undergoing the horrors of torture? Even the investigations of the Red Cross were without result. Those who had been arrested passed before the Islamic tribunals; and, after a hasty trial, with false testimonies as charges, whether as “Zionist spies” or as “corrupters on earth,” they were summarily executed.

One wife was required to pay back the price of the bullet that killed her husband. The odious holocaust gripped its innocent victims and trampled the defenseless families.

[Page 20] Defamation

THE TERROR slyly insinuated itself into the lives of my parents through threats made by telephone, by strange visits. Fearing reprisals, my parents did not speak to us about the situation, whether by telephone or by letter. But my mother could no longer stand the cowardice and injustice of men. She could no longer stand the lies, the slanders that were being raised against the religious minorities.

In fact, this plan of terror was accompanied by a vast campaign of defamation against the Bahá’ís that misrepresented the teachings of their religion and twisted them into the grounds of grave accusations.

The Bahá’í principles of the unity of mankind, of loyalty to the government, of nonparticipation in government had already, under previous regimes, been falsely interpreted to make the Bahá’í Faith appear to be a political movement. This accusation has varied with time: Under the Qájár and Pahlaví dynasties the Bahá’ís were called agents of the Russians and the English; and now, under the Islamic government, they are accused of collusion with the shah’s regime, of being agents of American imperialism and of Zionism, and even, according to one Ayatollah quoted by an Iranian newspaper, of being agents simultaneously “of Russia, Israel, and the U.S.A.”

Interview with Ayatollah Khomeini
in the newspaper “Seven Days” of 23 February 1979

“How will the religious minorities be treated under the Islamic Republic, for example, the Sunni Muslims, the Sufis, the Iranian Assyrians, the Christian Armenians, the Jews, the Bahá’ís, etc.?”

“The religious minorities in Iran, under the Islamic Government, will be fully respected. Their rights will be respected and protected. Islam will have humane attitudes and relations with them, and there will be nothing to fear.”

“Will there be religious or political freedom for the Bahá’ís under the Islamic Government?”

“They are a political faction; they are harmful; they will not be accepted.”

“How about their religious freedom, their religious practices?”

“No.”

The defamations continue: Considering that the Bahá’í Faith was established after the religion of Muḥammad, and in spite of the fact that it accepts and respects all the great religions, including Islam, the Bahá’ís are unjustly accused of being enemies of Islam. And again, although the Bahá’í laws on chastity and fidelity in marriage require that the believers follow one of the highest moral codes in existence, their principle of the equality of men and women is grossly distorted, and the believers are accused of prostitution, immorality, and adultery.

For a century this campaign of deliberate and studied defamation has justified in the eyes of the people the most brutal persecutions and deprived the great majority of the Iranians of the right to know the very foundations of this contemporary religion born in their own country. Curiously, most of those Iranians who have an open mind do not seek to know the truth of this phenomenon.

[Page 21] How long would these lies go on, concealing the horror of the persecutions? My mother was near the end of her endurance.

Through the Window Pane

CHRISTMAS was approaching. My father suggested to my mother that she go to Europe to see us. The trip would do her good. But she did not want to leave him alone. Moreover, the air route for travel abroad had been cut; there were only buses running between Tehran and Ankara. The trip across Iran and Turkey could be full of hardship. Yet everything would work out all right.

The day of departure arrived. It was five o’clock in the morning; it was still dark. The travelers gathered in front of a big hotel at the foot of the mountain. MY father was happy; he told my mother: “It is as if I were going to see the children myself.”

Once more they repeated the same gestures and the same words of a closely knit couple of forty years. Through the window pane of the bus, they smiled at each other lovingly. This would be their last gaze, mingling joy and sadness.

My father continued to write us almost every day. His letters were more beautiful than ever. There was so much love in them.

Soon the tragic news would begin to pile up. Toward the end of November 1980 a Bahá’í couple were burned alive by masked men. Then, two days before the sordid murder of my father, the Revolutionary Guards broke into our house. They demanded that my father hand over the list of the Bahá’í medical doctors in Iran. He refused.

On Monday, 12 January 1981, came the fatal hour.

Was it in reprisal? Did they come to renew their demand? No one knows.

Our numerous telegrams to all the personalities in power in Iran have remained forever unanswered. It is obvious that a cowardly assassination is a way of avoiding the wrath of the people.

His last letters reached us after the tragedy. . . .

The Holocaust

EXECUTION followed execution, each more painful than the others, as for example the execution at Hamadan on the fourteenth of June 1981 of seven Bahá’ís who, before dying, had undergone tortures: broken back, slashed thighs, burns.

On the twenty-seventh of December 1981, and then on the fourth of January 1982, eight members of the National Spiritual Assembly of Iran, of whom one was a woman, then six of the nine members of the Tehran assembly—as well as the woman in whose home they were meeting—were summarily executed, without a trial, for having devoted their lives to universal brotherhood.

On 12 May 1983 a Bahá’í woman was executed in the city of Dizfúl after giving birth to a child. The child was carried off by the Muslims, and all trace has been lost.

In June 1983 the authorities at Shiraz executed eighteen Bahá’ís, seven of whom were girls between eighteen and twenty years of age, and three women— some of the victims being members of the same families. All of them had been arrested toward the end of 1982 without charges, and during that time they [Page 22] were subjected to extreme pressures to deny their faith and embrace Islam. When they refused to submit to these demands, as did all the other Bahá’í victims, they were condemned to death without a trial. The executions took place late at night, without any warning being issued to their families.

Human life has no more value. To the present day the Islamic revolutionary tribunals have executed more than one hundred Bahá’ís for refusing to deny their attachment to a peace-loving faith. In addition, hundreds of Bahá’ís have been arrested and risk the same fate. Most of the victims have been members of the local spiritual assemblies of the villages and towns and consequently represent citizens imbued with the highest moral values. It is said that the fundamentalists intend to execute the forty-five hundred elected members of the five hundred Spiritual Assemblies of the Bahá’ís of Iran.

During this time the intimidation of the entire Iranian Bahá’í community gathered speed. Some examples: At Músá Ábád, a village near Tehran, two girls of about fourteen were kidnapped by professors of Muslim education to be converted to Islam. The Yazd radio ordered 150 Bahá’ís to present themselves within eight days; if not, the worst reprisals awaited them. At present the children of Bahá’ís are no longer accepted in the schools. In foreign countries the Iranian consular services have received instructions from Tehran to take away the passports of Iranian Bahá’ís under their jurisdiction and deliver them a pass to return to Iran.

The outrages perpetrated against the Bahá’í holy places have multiplied: at Shiraz the house of the Báb was destroyed, and in May 1981 the authorities announced their intention to raze the holy site and to construct upon it a highway and a public parking lot. This intention is now being carried out. On the fifth of December 1981, by order of the Revolutionary Court, the Bahá’í cemetery of Tehran was seized and its guards arrested. Recently an official announcement appeared in the Tehran newspapers to the effect that the tombstones in Tehran’s Bahá’í cemeteries were being offered for sale. At Tákur on the fifteenth of December 1981 the house of Bahá’u’lláh was destroyed, and the land upon which it had stood was put on sale by the authorities.

On 29 June 1983, 150 Bahá’ís of the village of Ívál, near Sárí, in the province of Mázindarán, were seized and detained in a field. The Bahá’í captives, including women and children, were kept there for three days without receiving [Page 23] any food or water, and during this time they were put under pressure to deny their faith and embrace Islam. As they remained firm in their conviction, the 130 captives were permitted to return to their village. However, that very night, they were attacked and forced to take refuge in a nearby forest.

Responsible figures of the government have inadvertently confirmed that a plan for a systematic campaign of persecution is being directed by the Revolutionary Government against the entire Bahá’í community of Iran, to annihilate it utterly. The plan of extermination was published in such Iranian newspapers as the Keyhan of 1, 2, 5, and 19 November 1981 and Ettelaat of 5 November 1981.

And finally, on 29 August 1983, the government of Iran outlawed the Bahá’í administrative order, forbidding all community activities of the Bahá’í Faith in Iran.

The persecutions carried out against this religious minority that is paying dearly for its ideal of peace have as their purpose the uprooting of their faith in their country. . . .

Condemnation of the Persecutions

PARADOXICALLY, since our tragedy and the sudden sadness that has gripped me, I have derived strength from my own loss. From that moment on my strength was not my own; it existed only to serve others. This strength of soul, this comfort came to me from the sacred Bahá’í writings. There is really a meaning to the sacrifice of martyrs.

In Switzerland, in France, in Canada, we knocked at all doors, the doors of the various commissions of the rights of man, of the personalities of the press, radio, and television. I lived in a second state. I no longer feared anything. For me and for the families of the victims the worst had already happened—but there was still time to save the others. In every country of the world the Bahá’ís took—and still take—the necessary measures. Everywhere marks of sympathy were already bursting forth in resolutions, declarations, and protests condemning the persecutions of the Iranian Bahá’í community, which represents 10 percent of the Bahá’í community of the world.

July 1979: Common declaration of all the Swiss Parliamentarians.

September 1979: Declaration of State of Religious Minorities in Iran by the Federation of Protestant Churches of Switzerland.

July 1980: Resolution of the Canadian House of Commons.

September 1980: Resolution adopted by the United Nations Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.

September 1980: Protest of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities.

September 1980: First resolution adopted by the European Parliament. [Page 24] September 1980: Protest of the Bishopric of Lausanne, Geneva, and Fribourg.

March 1981: Motion adopted by the Australian Senate.

March 1981: Interpellation of the Swiss members of Parliament addressed to the Federal Council.

April 1981: Second resolution of the European Parliament, unanimously adopted.

April 1981: The ten member states of the European Communities drew the attention of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations to the plight of the Bahá’ís in Iran.

June 1981: Resolution of the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany.

September 1981: Second resolution adopted by the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.

April 1981: Telegram from Mme Simone Veil, President of the European Parliament, to the Bahá’í Community of France:

I have been very aware of your new appeal relative to the situation of the Bahá’í community in Iran Stop. I have immediately informed the competent organs of the European Parliament, which adopted on 10 April by emergency vote a new resolution condemning the persecutions of which the Bahá’ís of Iran are victims, and requesting the Governments and Member States of the Community to intervene quickly in their favor with the Iranian Government Stop. A copy of this resolution is being sent to you by post.

Respectfully

Simone Veil, President of

the European Parliament

Following are a few resolutions adopted in favor of the persecuted Bahá’ís:

—By the United Nations:

• Declaration by the General Assembly of the United Nations on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, 25 November 1981.

• Resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations on the Elimination of All Forms of Religious Intolerance, 18 December 1982.

• United Nations Commission on the Rights of Man, 1 March 1982 and 8 March 1983.

• Subcommission of the United Nations on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, 10 September 1980, 9 September 1981, and 8 September 1982. A resolution was also passed on the subject of Religious Intolerance on 10 September 1982.

—By the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe:

• Declaration tabled by its members, 29 September 1980 and 14 May 1981.

• Resolution adopted on 29 January 1982.

—By the European Parliament, 19 September 1980, 10 April 1981, and 10 March 1983.

—By national and provincial governments:

• In Australia, by the Senate, February 1981, and by the House of Representatives, August 1981.

• In Canada, by the House of Commons, July 1980 and July 1981.

• In Fiji, by the Senate, March 1982. [Page 25]

• By the Federal Republic of Germany, June 1981.

• In Spain, by the Human Rights Commission of the Senate, March 1982.

• In the United States, by the Senate June 1982, by the House of Representatives September 1982, and by a number of State Senates and Houses of Representatives.

—Throughout the world there have been numerous declarations or protests by various organizations; for example, in Switzerland:

• Common declaration of all the Swiss Parliamentarians, July 1979.

• The Federation of Protestant Churches of Switzerland, September 1979.

• Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities, September 1980.

• Diocese of Lausanne, Geneva, and Fribourg, September 1980.

• Appeal by the members of the Swiss Parliament to the Federal Council, Spring 1981.

—In many countries there have been appeals by such persons as

• King Leopold of Belgium, 1981

• President François Mitterand of France, 1981

• President Ronald Reagan, United States, 1983.

Testimonies

IN THE face of aggression and cruelty, here are two letters, received from Bahá’ís of Iran, which are testimonies like so many others of the reaction of the Bahá’í community of Iran.

Before I begin the description of some of what I saw, I wish to relate an incident involving Mr. [Yúsuf] Subḥání. About two months before the revolution I had a meeting with Mr. Subḥání in Ṭihrán. In the course of discussions I suggested to him that in view of difficulties that he might face it would be prudent for him to leave Iran for a while. He summed up his response by saying: “You know, in ordinary times everyone is ready to serve, but it is in such sensitive times that we must redouble our efforts, not fear anything, and not abandon the ramparts. The most that can happen is that I will be killed; but I will have done my duty for the Cause.”

On Monday [9 June 1980] I was in Ṭihrán. At 4 p.m. I went to the airport to fly to Iṣfahán, but was not able to obtain a seat on the 6 p.m. [Page 26] flight. Instead I booked a seat on the 8:15 flight. As we had considerable time on our hands, we returned home, together with Mr. Subḥání’s son, who was with me. I passed the time reading at home until about 7:30. We were about to return to the airport when the telephone rang. There was no one in the house except myself and Gulshan Subḥání. He picked up the phone and spoke for a few moments. When he put the phone down, with an ashen face and agitated voice he said to me: “It was from Ivín prison. They asked for the family of Mr. Subḥání to come for a face-to-face meeting.” Knowing something about the procedures, I knew what “face-to-face” meeting meant—it was the last visit. For a few minutes I was unable to think; I was stunned. Finally, after some ten minutes I was able to gain control over my nerves with the help of prayers and concentration. I asked Gulshan to contact Ivín prison, as I found it difficult to believe this news, and thought that some mischief makers might have made the call. Try as we did, we could not get in touch with the Ivín prison; so we called one of the relatives who lived near the Subḥání house to go and inform Mrs. Subḥání and the rest of the family and have them ready at the house, until notice from us. I went with Gulshan to the Ivín prison, contacted the authorities and realized that the phone call had been authentic. These were extremely fearful and anxious moments for us. At the same time we were worried about how we would face Mr. Subḥání. We were trying to visualize our meeting, and preparing ourselves to face him in such a way that would not cause him grief and weaken his morale.

From outside the prison we called home and asked the family to come. . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . There were other groups of families who were there before us for “face-to-face” visits, but, except for the immediate family members, none were admitted. In our case also they insisted on permitting only the next of kin, and upon presentation of official identification, but upon entreaties and persistence on our part they allowed all of us to go in.

All eighteen of us were ushered into a waiting room that is normally used for visits with the prisoners. . . . I positioned myself in such a way as to be able to watch the prison courtyard through the shutters of a window. I saw Mr. Subḥání approaching with several guards. He was walking with firm and long strides—as he always did on his long hikes—and the guards had difficulty keeping up with him. They were half running to keep pace. This was, of course, a brief image, and in a few moments he was in the room with such an extraordinary aspect—accompanied by eighteen guards and officials—that is hard for me to describe. It was an air of joy, courage, and spirituality mixed with a boldness that was filled with total sacrifice.

First, he kissed everyone with warmth and delight. After these greetings he turned with an authoritative air, raised his right hand, and with his finger pointing to the guards and officials who were present, these were the first words he uttered: “I declare to you all, know it, and tell your other friends who are not present here now that I am being killed for my belief alone, and I am proud of that and it is my highest wish. I stated this at the [Page 27] Revolutionary Court, too. One or two people came and gave false testimony. Soon God will give them the retribution of their deeds.”

There were enough chairs in the room, and we all sat down. Mr. Subḥání was indescribably joyful. When we saw him in that state and compared it with the condition we were in before we saw him—thinking of ways of giving him courage—we were filled with shame. He had such a spirit that gave us all new power and fortitude. The sorrow that had existed was completely gone. He was constantly joking and laughing with the members of the family. Not for a moment did a smile leave his lips. He gave necessary instructions to all the members of his family. To his wife he said, “Absolutely do not weep and grieve for me; it will disturb my soul. None of you must wear black.” To his wife he said, “Tomorrow I wish you would come to Gulistan-i-Jávíd [the Bahá’í cemetery} in this same dress [she had a very cheerful dress on]. If you knew how happy I am, you would hold a feast for me.”

Then he said: “For four days now my communication with Bahá’u’lláh is direct, and I am counting seconds for the special appointment. Were it not contrary to God’s commandment I would will that in place of commemorative meetings they would hold a party of joy for me. If these gentlemen (pointing to the guards and officials) would permit, I shall go dancing to the gallows, and distribute sweets to all of them.”

At this point the meeting developed such an atmosphere that all the guards and officials except for one left the room, and signs of sorrow were visible in their faces. As they were leaving, they were saying to each other: “Pity, a man like that!” “What a man!”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . He raised his arm and flexed his biceps and said, “Do you see, Ḥájí Áqá? Ḥájí Áqá, tell your men to shoot hard so I can feel the pain.” Then laughing, he said: “Ḥájí Áqá, do you see this breast, it is full of love of Bahá’u’lláh. Ordinary bullets will not hurt it. Tell them to shoot hard. Ḥájí Áqá, I myself will give the command to fire, OK?” Ḥájí Áqá said, “Mr. Subḥání, whatever you say.” Mr. Subḥání had spoken those words with such a feeling that Ḥájí Áqá lowered his head and for a few minutes left the room, muttering to himself, “What a man!”

This visit lasted about three quarters of an hour. It was all passion and joy and heroic epic. Not for a moment did he stop laughing or smiling. He was constantly urging everyone to be brave and persevering. He was saying that if we were not to encounter these difficulties the Cause would not progress. These problems have to be faced.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

As the time drew to a close, one of the guards came in and with politeness and respect said, “Mr. Subḥání, the time for the visit is over.” He again kissed everyone warmly and said farewell. Outside the room he kissed each one of the guards also and said, “I am grateful to all of you. You all showed me kindness.” He also kissed Ḥájí Áqá Sálihí and thanked him.

As I was saying good-bye to him, while I was embracing him and my hand was still in his hand, he said jokingly, “They are killing me, why are [Page 28] your hands so cold? Feel how warm my hand is!”

At this point we were all standing outside the room watching him going away. Every few steps he would turn around and, like people about to start on the most joyous journey of their life, he would raise both arms and wave with enthusiasm. . . .

. . . This happiness and spiritual force truly amazed all of the guards present. In addition to the original eighteen, there were a number of them eating supper in the courtyard, and they were left stunned and motionless for some time.

This is how our last visit ended. Of course, what I have recorded is just a glimmering of this moving and sobering experience. I now understand and fully attest that if I read the account of one of the martyrs of the Faith, I can boldly say that the recorder of the history, no matter how expressive and skillful he may be with his pen, could not depict the true spiritual state of the martyrs of the Cause, because much of what one witnesses cannot be put in any words. How can I, without any learning and writing skill depict such a spiritual scene that cannot be anything but the creation of Bahá’u’lláh? . . .

And, finally, this letter, coming from Iran:

The glorious history of our Faith is being repeated once again. Our heroes are the same as those of the first days of the Faith. I can imagine nothing stronger, more unshakable, and more loving than these heroic souls that we see today among the Bahá’ís of Iran.

The prayers of the friends of the entire world have a great influence on our renascent community.

We need your prayers so that God will grant so much love and power to our hearts, which encounter hatred, cruelty, hostility, that we shall be capable of replacing them with love, kindness, and eternal brotherhood.

The persecution undergone by the Bahá’ís of Iran not only fails to extinguish their faith but on the contrary is like a stream of air on glowing embers: It only increases the ardor and courage of these men and women served up to their executioners. They have the conviction that their sacrifice and their martyrdom will not be without effect.

The World Bahá’í Community

THOSE who are carrying out this plan of destruction do not know that they are making a monumental error in their reasoning: They have forgotten the lesson drawn from the history of religion that tells us that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church, and they cannot conceive that their effort to suppress the Bahá’í Faith through cruelty causes it to bloom still further in the hearts of men.

So it is that a stupefying contrast exists, on the one hand, between the somber tragedy in which the Bahá’í community is living in Iran, cradle of a contemporary religion, and, on the other, the expansion and the appreciation of the high ideals of the Bahá’í Faith and its teachings throughout the five continents of the world.

In 1982 the Bahá’í Faith offers the example of a universal religion constructing [Page 29] the foundation of the unity of mankind and numbering one hundred thousand separate communities scattered among 165 independent countries. Its literature has been translated into nearly one thousand languages and dialects, and its several millions of believers come from two thousand ethnic groups, of all nationalities, social classes, and religious backgrounds.

These faithful believe that, in the dark period of destruction, of suffering, of tension undergone not only by Iran, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, El Salvador, Namibia, Poland, Ireland, but by the entire planet, contemporary society is being made, through these convulsions, to undergo a radical mutation. The Bahá’ís of the world work with certitude to temper violence and above all to create an organic system that will serve as a foundation for a world of justice and love. They are convinced that the pitch-dark night in which so many human beings are suffering will be brightened by a transformation of the consciousness as well as of the behavior of humanity, a transformation that will lead to its unity. . . .

Professor Manúchihr Ḥakím’s funeral in Tehran in January 1980 that was attended by some four thousand people.

[Page 30]

[Page 31]

The Traditional Navajo Religion
and the Bahá’í Faith

BY JOSEPH O. WEIXELMAN

Copyright © 1987 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States.

Introduction

ANTHROPOLOGISTS tell us that the Navajos are relatively recent immigrants into the Four Corners region of the Southwest, having arrived there about 1000 A.D. However, according to the Navajos they have always lived in the land guarded by the four sacred mountains —Mount Elaine in the east, Mount Taylor in the south, the San Francisco Peaks in the west, and San Juan Mountain in the north— that mark its borders. Whatever the truth is, they were well established in the region when the first Spanish explorers probed northward from Mexico in the sixteenth century. Once the Southwest fell under Spanish rule, the Navajos, along with the neighboring Apaches, became known for their constant raiding of the Pueblo Indian and European settlements. These raids did not cease until the region came under American jurisdiction after the Mexican War of 1846-48. It was the legendary American hero Kit Carson who began subduing the Navajos in 1863 at the direction of the United States government. With the assistance of other Indians he marched into Navajo country, “burned cornfields, slaughtered livestock, [and] cut down peach trees,” starving the Navajos into submission. In 1863-64 the Navajos were taken to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, away from their homeland, the four sacred mountains, and all they represented. The journey away from their homeland was made on foot and was so difficult that in Navajo tradition it is referred to as the “Long Walk.”

After four years the Navajos were allowed to return to their native land, and in 1868 the United States government set aside as a reservation for the Navajo people three million acres, only a fraction of the land they once held, in what is today northeastern Arizona. Gradually over the next hundred years the Navajos were able to regain large tracts of land they had previously occupied, create an economy based on sheep herding and agriculture, and blend, somewhat successfully, the elements of their traditional culture with various elements of the dominant European culture. Although they had been reduced to a population of eight thousand in 1865, Navajos today make up the largest Native American population in the United States, with approximately two hundred thousand living on and off the reservation.

The Navajo environment is a dry desert land, making agriculture difficult except in the few valleys where there is a dependable water source. It is a land of magnificent sandstone buttes and spectacular scenery where sheep, considered essential for a prosperous Navajo family, can graze on a variety of desert shrubs. Sheepherding provides mutton to eat and wool for sale. Many Navajo women have become excellent weavers of wool blankets, which are famous throughout the United States. Many families also herd some cattle, and most families still have a few horses, even [Page 32] though the pickup truck has taken over as the preferred mode of transportation. Some Navajo men excel in the art of working silver, which has also strengthened the Navajo economy.

The Navajos have a matrilineal society, and for a long time the homestead was the major feature of Navajo social structure. The homestead consists of several buildings, reasonably close together, where the mother and the families of her daughters live. It also consists of all their livestock and any garden land they possess. This unit has existed to the present day, but more and more the Navajos are leaving it to live, on or off the reservation, in the growing urban centers that are organized like most European towns. Window Rock is one of these emerging towns on the reservation. It is here that the Navajo tribal government has its headquarters; the Tribal Council meets; and the many Navajo departments, such as the Department of Education and the Department of Health, have their offices. Most tribal offices now employ many more Navajos than whites. In the small towns scattered over the reservation, schools often appear to be the reason for the existence of the town. There are also Navajo colleges established in Ganado, Tsaile, and Ship Rock.

Into this land moved a part black, part Cherokee school teacher named Amoz Gibson, who taught at Piñon on the reservation in the 1950s. He and his wife were both Bahá’ís. Whenever they had the opportunity, they spoke of their religion to the Navajos, and little by little Indians began to listen. Then, in the latter part of the decade, Sadie Jo, a Navajo woman from Lukachukai, declared her belief that Bahá’u’lláh was God’s messenger for this age and thus became the first Navajo Bahá’í.

During the 1950s two young Navajo brothers, Franklin and Chester Kahn, were also studying the Bahá’í Faith in the southern part of the reservation. Their father and grandfathers were medicine men, and they were both very knowledgeable in the traditional way. After much research and meditation, Franklin and Chester both declared their belief in Bahá’u’lláh during March 1962. Later that spring they held a meeting at the home of their parents in Pine Springs to tell their family about the Bahá’í Faith. The meeting was bigger than anyone had expected; twelve hundred people showed up. Eight hundred of them were Bahá’ís, including Amoz Gibson and Zikrulláh Khadem, a prominent Iranian Bahá’í; close to four hundred people were Navajos who had only recently heard of the Bahá’í Faith. During this meeting two hundred Navajos chose to be identified with the Bahá’í movement. All of the Kahn family became Bahá’ís.

There had been other Bahá’ís and other Bahá’í teachers among the Navajos, but the 1962 meeting changed the direction the Bahá’í Faith was to take on the reservation. Now there were Navajo Bahá’ís teaching other Navajos about the Bahá’í Faith and even going off the reservation to teach American Indians elsewhere. Many of the early non-Indian Bahá’ís left, but others came to teach school, work in the government agencies, and lecture at the colleges. The Bahá’í community on the Navajo reservation remained a mixture of races and cultures.

Today nearly four hundred Navajo Bahá’ís live on the reservation and many others off the reservation. Some of the Navajos who became Bahá’ís in 1962 are now dead, but others have arisen to embrace the new religion. Navajo Bahá’ís maintain close contact with the traditional Navajo religion as well as promote the Bahá’í Faith in their day-to-day life. Navajo Bahá’ís include medicine men in the traditional religion, Road Chiefs in the Native American Church, and respected elders. Some now serve in high positions within the Bahá’í administrative structure (described below), including one member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, many local spiritual assembly members, and assistants to the Auxiliary Board of the Continental Board of Counselors. [Page 33] Thus Navajo Bahá’ís occupy respected positions in both religious systems.

But what attracts Navajo Indians to the Bahá’í Faith? And how do the two religions maintain harmony? To answer these intriguing questions I went to the Navajo Bahá’ís themselves. In a series of four interviews I sought their answers about how they viewed the relationship between the two religions. What follows is a description of what I learned.

Being a Bahá’í myself, I and they had the advantage of a common terminology. However, there were still many differences between our cultures, making some of their analogies hard for me to understand and rendering some of my questions almost meaningless to them. In the end, however, they were able to give me a fairly clear picture of their lives as Navajo Bahá’ís. But to appreciate and understand what follows a basic knowledge of the Navajo religion is first needed.

The Traditional Navajo Religion

ANTHROPOLOGISTS have found that the traditional Navajo religion conceives of two types of personal forces in the world, the Earth Surface People and the Holy People. The Earth Surface People are ordinary human beings, but they also include ghosts and witches, both greatly feared by the Navajos. “A ghost,” according to anthropologists Clyde Kluckhohn and Dorothea Leighton, “is a malignant part of a dead person. It returns to avenge some neglect or offense.” Witchcraft is practiced by evil women and men and produces illness or death in those to whom it is directed. Witches are also feared for their practice of incest and other acts abhorrent to the Navajos. The Holy People, on the contrary, belong to the sacred as opposed to the profane world: “They travel about on sunbeams, on the rainbow, on the lightnings. They have great powers to aid or to harm Earth Surface People.” The Holy People can also be controlled and coerced, and they are not always all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good, for they can make errors and act with malice. The Holy People are major figures in Navajo origin myths and are credited with creating many aspects of Navajo culture.

The origin myths of the Navajos offer explanations for the many elements of the Navajo universe, justify the use of the curing ceremonies and rituals, and provide the Navajos with a sense of history and purpose. Changing Woman, who helped with the creation of the Earth Surface People and with teaching them how to control their environment, is a prominent figure in such myths. She is seen by anthropologists as the most beneficent of the Holy People. Some Navajos say that she had a sister, White Shell Woman, but others say that sister is but another name for Changing Woman, as are Turquoise Woman and Salt Woman.

Changing Woman had twin sons, Enemy Slayer and Born of the Water, who were responsible for destroying most of the monsters, the Yei Giants, then tyrannizing the Navajo world and killing the people. The twins journeyed to the house of their father, the Sun, to learn how they could destroy the monsters. The journey continually tested their resolve. When they returned, they slew all the monsters except “Hunger, Poverty, Old Age, and Dirt,” who managed to survive. The legend of the Hero Twins provides much of the material for the myths, presents an ideal of behavior for Navajo men, and accounts for many of the natural features of the Navajo homeland. The Sun, the father of the Hero [Page 34] Twins, is also an important force and aids man in controlling the dangerous elements of the Navajo world.

Changing Woman, Enemy Slayer, Born of the Water, and the Sun are the principal mythic entities of the Navajos, but there are others like Dark Wind, Talking God, First Man, First Woman, White Corn Boy, Abalone Girl, and Pollen Boy. The complete list is quite long and often includes male and female counterparts for the same element. The rest of these Holy People appear in the origin myths from time to time and may be in charge of a particular aspect of the Navajo universe. The basic origin myth relates the lives of the Holy People and describes how they were forced to move to higher worlds at various times and under various circumstances until they finally emerged into this world. The myths explain the creation of Earth Surface People and their culture in this world and relate the legend of the Hero Twins.

The origin myths of the Navajos are the source of the great Navajo ceremonials, which are used to cure illnesses, and to prevent illnesses and disasters. First a diagnosis, usually involving some sort of divination, determines the nature of the illness. The theory is that the patient has caused the disease by doing something he or she should not have done, thereby disrupting the balance of the universe. One might, for example, have looked at an animal that was killed by lightning, or eaten a forbidden food, or performed an act in an improper way. The list of activities, like cooking, weaving, and basket making, that have to be done in a traditional way is large. Witches and ghosts can also cause disease. Once an illness is diagnosed, the proper ceremonial to correct the infraction can be selected and plans for the ceremonial begin. A medicine man, or singer, is acquired; then all the family (or community depending upon the ceremonial) assembles. The ceremony can last from one to nine days and nights. Rituals may include long chants and songs memorized by the medicine man; elaborate and beautiful sandpaintings portraying a part of a myth; herbal teas; the making of prayer-sticks and offering of bundles; and, in the case of the large ceremonies, public dances. The Squaw Dance is the best known of these dances; some of the better known ceremonials are Blessingway, Shootingway, Mountainway, Windway, Enemyway, and Ghostway.

Of all the elements in the ceremony, the chants and songs are perhaps the most important. They form the prayers relating the holy stories of the myths pertaining to that ceremonial and beseeching the Holy People to intervene and restore the order disrupted by the patient. When the disease is believed to have been caused by a “deity,” the “deity” is asked to remove the spell. The language is demanding because Navajos believe that if the ritual acts are performed properly the gods must answer the prayer. Verses often describe the patient as healed, using a present tense. The units of the chants are often repeated over and over with only slight modifications.

The curing ceremonies form the core of the traditional Navajo religious expression. They strengthen the bonds of the family, educate the Navajos in the myths and traditions they share, and provide a means for individual and collective religious expression. Other aspects of the traditional religion are seen in the prayers many Navajos offer with sacred corn pollen to begin the day, in the semisacred songs they sing while they work, and in the attention they pay to omens. The sweatbath is also used by the Navajos as a religious ritual. As often as once a week men may take a sweatbath in which heated rocks are brought inside a small, almost airtight semisubterranean structure. Inside, prayers are sung in groups of four and in cycles of four, eight, sixteen, or more depending on how much heat the participants can endure. Women take sweatbaths after the men, using the same rocks, but generally less often and with less ritual content.

Much of the Navajo religion is based upon the natural world. There are many holy places in the land of the Navajos where various holy beings are said to live. These places are often rocky sandstone buttes and spires. Gemstones are also important to the Navajos, and wearing [Page 35] turquoise is quite often a way of identifying oneself as a Navajo. The natural world is a sacred place where man lives with the gods, and the harmony of this world has to be preserved. Not to do so is to court disaster. The earth and everything on the earth is respected by the Navajos, for as one informant said, “It teaches us.”

Clyde Kluckhohn, an anthropologist who has studied the Navajos, sees eight essential elements underlying Navajo philosophical thought:

1. The universe is orderly; all events are caused and interrelated.

a. Knowledge is power.

b. The basic quest is for harmony.

c. Harmony can be restored by orderly procedures.

d. One price of disorder is illness.

2. The universe tends to be personalized; causation is identifiable in personalized terms.

3. The universe is full of dangers.

4. Evil and good are complementary and ever present.

5. Experience is a continuum differentiated only by sense data.

6. Morality is conceived in traditionalistic and situational terms rather than in abstract absolutes.

7. Human relations are premised upon familistic individualism.

8. Events, not actors or qualities, are important.

Such, then, is the traditional Navajo world view as best put together by white anthropologists. It is a religious view concerned with nature, harmony, and curing and based on an elaborate and beautiful mythology preserved for centuries by medicine men as an oral history. It is a religion quite different in many aspects from the Bahá’í Faith but not necessarily antithetical to it.

The Teachings of the Bahá’í Faith

ALL Bahá’ís recognize Bahá’u’lláh and the Báb as Manifestations of God, inspired messengers Who reveal to man God’s will. Both Manifestations are greatly revered, as are all things associated with them. Bahá’ís believe them to be the ultimate infallible authority. Bahá’ís also believe that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’u’lláh’s son, was His chosen successor. He is revered as being an example of the highest spiritual station that a person can reach. The writings of Bahá’u’lláh, the Báb, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá constitute Bahá’í scripture. The basic teachings of the Bahá’í Faith all find their source in their words.

The basic principles of the Bahá’í Faith are a belief in the unity of God, a belief in the unity of religion, and a belief in the unity of humankind. The Bahá’í Faith, like the Abrahamic tradition from which it springs, believes in one God, Who is the Creator and Mover of all that exists. God cannot be known in His essence but can be known indirectly through His attributes, which include such qualities as wisdom, justice, knowledge, love, and kindness. Each person can acquire these attributes and in so doing is brought closer to God. However, Bahá’ís believe that no human can ever know God or reach the absolute quality of any attribute, for God is conceived as infinite.

To a Bahá’í a Manifestation of God is the [Page 36] answer to the problem of not being able to know God because of His infinite nature. A Manifestation exists in the physical form of the human body, but His spirit is of God. His body is the mirror in which we can see the reflection of God. Such Messengers appear to humankind whenever the teachings of the last Manifestation have been corrupted to the point where it is not possible to find God through them. The Bahá’í conception of history, then, is one of a cycle in which a Manifestation comes, His teachings are gradually grasped and comprehended by a large group of followers who finally corrupt the teachings through their own dogmas and idle contentions, and another Manifestation comes to renew the cycle with a set of teachings specifically applicable to the new age.

A Manifestation is of the spiritual realm. He is born of a woman, but His spirit is not of the physical realm of exiStence. His station is higher than that of humans and is a state of perfection and infallibility. All Manifestations are in their essence the same being. The physical form will change from age to age, but the indwelling spirit is believed to be the same. However, their specific teachings will differ with the level and type of culture among the people to whom they appear. Thus laws and teachings will change through time as humanity’s capacity for spiritual knowledge grows. The conflicts that religions experience are due to distortions that are introduced into a religion and to the inability to perceive that the religions are different because the cultures and hence the teachings are different. Bahá’ís believe that Abraham, Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha, Christ, and Muḥammad were all Manifestations of God and thus one and the same being. They also believe that Bahá’u’lláh and the Báb are the most recent Manifestations. Some Bahá’ís point to the fact that there are two Manifestations in this day to show the greatness of the era we have begun. The Báb Himself declared that Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings would have a much greater impact than His own. Bahá’ís believe that another Manifestation will come in no less than a thousand years.

A belief in the unity of mankind is at the center of all Bahá’í action. Because of the Bahá’í teachings on the nature of the Manifestations, Bahá’ís believe in the unity of all religions. Although a particular religion might have acquired many manmade superstitions, Bahá’ís nevertheless believe that there is a core of truth to it. Bahá’ís shun religious prejudice, for they are directed by Bahá’u’lláh to consort with the followers of all religions in a spirit of fellowship and harmony. “Ye are the fruits of one tree, the leaves of one branch,” Bahá’u’lláh wrote.

The principle of the unity of mankind extends itself not only to the elimination of religious prejudice but to the elimination of all other prejudices as well. Bahá’ís believe racial, ethnic, and national intolerance harmful to humankind. Similarly, the Bahá’ís condemn all wars and violence because they ignore this unity. The Bahá’ís extend the principle of unity to include the equality of men and women. In the Bahá’í texts men and women are compared to the wings of one bird—until the wings work in harmony the bird cannot fly. Extremes of poverty and wealth, other manifestations of the lack of unity, Bahá’ís also believe to be wrong.

To put such principles of unity into practice Bahá’ís advocate the establishment of a world government, which would end all wars and establish universal peace. Disputes would be settled by an international tribunal, and laws would be passed and enforced by an international legislature and executive. Bahá’ís also believe that a world language must be chosen to be learned by all people along with their native tongue to facilitate world communication and understanding. Moreover, Bahá’ís believe that a solution to the economic problems that plague mankind can be reached through a meeting of open and honest consultation by all parties.

The Bahá’í conception of unity does not [Page 37] mean uniformity. Bahá’ís believe that all cultures can learn to cooperate; that all cultures can guide their internal affairs in the ways they consider best without being forced to do things in the way an outside culture, believing its system to be superior, may wish them to; and that all can cooperate on all intercultural problems. Bahá’ís also believe that all cultures have something to offer; the aim is to create unity while maintaining diversity.

Another important Bahá’í belief is that religion and science are in fundamental harmony. The Bahá’í writings make it clear that science is the agency by which men and women explore material civilization and that superstitions should be abandoned. They also point out that a society based on science alone would create rampant materialism and would be unable to fulfill man’s spiritual needs. Bahá’ís believe that harmony between science and religion is an essential prerequisite for the progression of civilization.

Bahá’ís also believe that religion must be the source of fellowship among all people. It should create unity and not animosity. If it becomes a source of conflict, it is better to abandon it.

In addition, Bahá’ís believe that education is essential for all human beings. The fruits of the human race cannot be discovered until everyone is allowed to discover the potentials of his or her own being.

One of the most important beliefs of the Bahá’ís is that all persons must seek out the truth for themselves. Bahá’ís can share ideas, but one cannot force his or her opinions on another. Bahá’ís are supposed to teach their Faith to others but only if the other party is willing to listen. A Bahá’í teacher should be courteous and avoid arguments about religion. Bahá’ís do not believe religion should be spread by the sword.

Bahá’í worship consists of prayer, meditation, and fasting. Bahá’ís are obligated to pray daily and should read from the writings every day as well. Bahá’ís are also obligated to fast for nineteen days a year, abstaining from food and drink during the daylight hours. The Bahá’í Faith has no priesthood.

Instead, everyone is expected to be his own priest.

Bahá’u’lláh revealed specific spiritual laws that Bahá’ís must obey. Although they often have a physical side to them, it is the spiritual effect of obeying them that is important. Bahá’í laws prohibit alcohol and mind-altering drugs, as well as backbiting, gossip, and gambling. Marriage is ordained as a sacred institution; and although divorce is allowed, it is discouraged.

The Bahá’í Faith upholds the following universal principles, most of which have already been discussed but are worth repeating by way of a summation:

1. Oneness of the world of humanity

2 Independent investigation of truth

3. The fundamental unity of all religions

4. The necessity of religion’s being the cause of unity

5. The harmony of religion, science, and reason

6. The equality of men and women

7. The abandonment of all prejudices

8. Universal peace

9. Universal education

10. A spiritual solution to the economic problem

11. A universal language

12. An international tribunal

The Bahá’í Faith, then, conceives of a larger unity than anything the world has yet known. It advocates a world government to prevent wars, believes in the equality of all peoples, and seeks the elimination of all prejudices. It sees all religions as deriving from the same source. It believes in one God, Who can be understood in a multitude of ways. Its beliefs are universalistic, and its goal is to harmonize all cultures in such a way that all will be respected.

The Structure of the Bahá’í Faith

THE major features of the Bahá’í administrative structure include elected spiritual assemblies on the local and national levels and a Universal House of Justice, also elected, which has the power to legislate on administrative matters not expressly addressed by [Page 38] Bahá’u’lláh, and which is the supreme institution of the Bahá’í world.

Every spiritual assembly is composed of nine persons, elected in a spiritual and prayerful meeting by secret ballot. No campaigning or nominations are allowed. These institutions administer the affairs of the Faith in their localities. Their responsibilities include the education of children; planning and coordinating activities for Bahá’í holy days; conducting marriages and granting divorces, in accordance with Bahá’í law; holding property for the community; upholding Bahá’í laws; propagating the Faith; providing a place of consultation for community members when problems arise; maintaining harmony and preventing dissension within the community.

The first Universal House of Justice was elected in 1963, the centenary of Bahá’u’lláh’s proclamation of His mission. The first national spiritual assemblies were formed in the 1920s; local spiritual assemblies were formed even earlier. There are at present 148 national spiritual assemblies and more than 32,800 local spiritual assemblies in the world. In the United States there are over 1,700 local spiritual assemblies. Amoz Gibson, who taught the Bahá’í Faith to the Navajos, was a member of the Universal House of Justice until his death in May 1982.

The National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States is elected during the annual convention at the end of April each year. The country is divided into districts, and each district sends one or more delegates to the National Convention, depending on the size of the district’s population.

The National Spiritual Assembly appoints committees to oversee the various aspects of the Faith, such as the education of children, the publishing of books, and the maintenance of Bahá’í properties. One national committee is the National Teaching Committee, which appoints a District Teaching Committee for each district to assist with the teaching effort in their region.

Alongside the administrative structure stands the Continental Board of Counselors, whose members are appointed by the Universal House of Justice to help protect the Faith from persecution and division and to offer its advice and assistance in teaching efforts. This board is advisory and has no power to command action. However, its suggestions are highly respected. The Continental Board of Counselors appoints Bahá’ís to its Auxiliary Board, whose members in turn appoint assistants. Thus the institution functions on the local level. Its members are used as resources to activate and encourage the local spiritual assemblies, to encourage local communities to meet for the nineteen day feasts and holy days, to help deepen their fellow believers’ understanding of the teachings, and to assist the Auxiliary Board members in the discharge of their duties.

The work of teaching the Bahá’í Faith is carried out by any and all of the administrative and appointive institutions as well as by individuals who teach by example as well as by words. In modern countries, radio and newspapers are often used to proclaim the Faith and to announce meetings where more can be learned.

Because of the emphasis on example the Bahá’í Faith has been spread to many new regions by Bahá’ís moving into areas where no Bahá’ís reside, taking up work there, speaking of the Faith when possible, and most important, living the Bahá’í life. This is called “pioneering” by Bahá’ís and is the process that brought the Bahá’í Faith to the Navajo reservation: Amoz Gibson and his wife were Bahá’í pioneers. Teaching the Faith through example does something else: it makes one more aware of his or her acts and causes the internalization of many of the ideas that might otherwise be merely verbalized.

[Page 39] A Comparison of the Navajo and
Bahá’í Religions

ALTHOUGH at first glance the Navajo and the Bahá’í world views seem to be very different, a closer inspection reveals that they are not mutually exclusive and that to hold the one view does not mean that one must cease to recognize the truths within the other view. The Bahá’í Faith has the ability to accommodate other religions, such as the traditional religion of the Navajos, whereas other western religions seem unable to do so. It must be emphasized here that the Bahá’í Faith recognizes the legitimacy of all other religions, not just the Navajo, and that it acknowledges those areas where its teachings resemble or sometimes correspond to those of other religions.

The Bahá’í Faith, by its belief in the unity of religions, can admit that there is truth in the Navajo way while also implying that it may contain some accumulated superstitions. Similarly, the Navajo religion can conceivably be very accommodating to other religions, provided those religions do not label the Navajo religion a “heathen belief.” There is nothing in the traditional way that says their way is the only way. Provided that there is a reason for the other religion to be adopted, it is conceivable that it can be.

There are points of difference in the two religions. Most notable is the difference between the one God of the Bahá’í Faith and the many deities of the Navajo religion. Unfortunately, I received no clear answer on this point. My questions did not make sense to my informants, and I was reluctant to push the point. However, their assumptions could be guessed at and are reviewed later on.

Other differences between the two religions include the seemingly unreal qualities in the Navajo origin myths—the talk of monsters, journeys to the sun, and other such fabulous components—as contrasted to the historical accuracy surrounding the history of the Bahá’í Faith; the emphasis the Bahá’ís place on teaching their faith to others, which appears to be absent from the Navajo religion; the fact that while Bahá’í principles are easily formulated, one has to generally look for Navajo principles within their entire framework of belief; and where the Bahá’í Faith has a clear administrative structure, the traditional Navajo religion is family oriented and lacks an administrative framework.

There are similarities as well. Foremost among these is the emphasis on prayer. Both religions stress the role that the prophets, or messengers from God, have in helping mankind to understand the spiritual world. Both religions stress moral behavior, conceive of supernatural sanctions, and believe in an orderly universe.

The two religions could also be said to mention each other. To the Navajo Bahá’ís the many prophecies recorded in their myths and concerning a future age have been fulfilled by Bahá’u’lláh and His religion. A few of these prophecies were mentioned in the course of the interviews, but they were constantly alluded to and will be related later on. In other sources I learned that some of these Navajo prophecies can be found in the Navajo Beauty Chant and Unity Chant.

In the Bahá’í writings ‘Abdu’l-Bahá speaks of the American Indians as being capable of illuminating the world once they become aware of the Bahá’í Faith:

You must attach great importance to the Indians, the original inhabitants of America. For these souls may be likened unto the ancient inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula, who, prior to the Revelation of Muḥammad, were like savages. When the Muḥammadan Light shone forth in their midst, they became so enkindled that they shed illumination upon the world. Likewise, should these Indians be educated and properly guided, there can be no doubt that through the Divine teachings they will become so enlightened that the whole earth [Page 40] will be illumined.

Shoghi Effendi, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s grandson and the appointed Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, speaks of the American Indian in similar terms. He also speaks, in a letter written on his behalf, of primitive cultures in general:

It is a great mistake to believe that because people are illiterate or live primitive lives, they are lacking in either intelligence or sensibility. On the contrary, they may well look on us, with the evils of our civilization, with its moral corruption, its ruinous wars, its hypocrisy and conceit, as people who merit watching with both suspicion and contempt. We should meet them as equals, well-wishers, people who admire and respect their ancient descent, and who feel that they will be interested, as we are, in a living religion and not in the dead forms of present-day churches.

These quotations help demonstrate the tremendous respect Bahá’ís have for Native American cultures, including that of the Navajo.

The Interviews

HOW and why would Navajos who were raised within their ancient traditional religion become Bahá’ís? What reasons do they give for choosing to live in two religious systems? How do they participate in traditional practices within the Navajo religion once they have become Bahá’ís?

It was with these questions in mind that I went to the reservation hoping to interview some of the more noted Navajo Bahá’ís— particularly those who have high positions in the traditional religion or in the Bahá’í Faith. I met with mixed success but did come away with four interviews. Two were short, but the other two were quite lengthy. Combined, they give a fairly clear picture of the way that at least one section of the Navajo Bahá’í population views its religious relationships.

Three of the four Navajos interviewed came from the Kahn family—well respected in both Navajo and Bahá’í circles and living on the southeastern part of the reservation. They were Franklin Kahn, a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States from 1969 to 1981; Chester Kahn, a former member of the Auxiliary Board of the Continental Board of Counselors of the Americas and now a member of the National Spiritual Assembly; and Ben Kahn, a member of the Spiritual Assembly of Fort Defiance. Frank is a silversmith, artist, and sign painter living in Flagstaff. Chester is also a silversmith and an artist who lives in Houck on the reservation. Ben Kahn is a partner in an alternative energy business and lives in Fort Defiance on the reservation.

The entire Kahn family, including their father, Jack, became Bahá’ís in 1962. Jack Kahn remained a medicine man, a singer in the traditional Navajo ceremonies, until he passed away in September 1980. I was not able to learn the names of the ceremonies he could perform, but The American Bahá’í, a monthly publication, reports that he chanted the Blessingway under a tent that had been set up behind the National Bahá’í Center during the National Bahá’í Convention of 1978. He was a guest at several other national conventions as well. Jack Kahn’s father was also a medicine man, as were an uncle and his wife’s father. The children grew up learning the traditional religion from these elders and from their mother. When Jack Kahn became a Bahá’í, he encouraged his children to serve the new Faith.

[Page 41] The Kahn family also includes two other younger brothers and three sisters who are all Bahá’ís but who were not interviewed. Most of their families are Bahá’ís as well. One of the sisters, Eva Castillo, is an assistant to the Auxiliary Board of the Continental Board of Counselors and has published some of her poetry in World Order. I also met their mother, Alta Kahn, who was very kind to me but who spoke only a little English, thus precluding an interview.

The last Navajo Bahá’í whom I interviewed was Henry Bainbridge, who lives near Red Mesa in the northeastern part of the reservation. He and his wife had then been Bahá’ís for nearly two years, and he is a fervent teacher of the Faith among Indians. Brought up in the Navajo religion, he knows a great many of its traditions, prayers, and prophecies. He also performs Native American Church ceremonies on the reservation. Henry Bainbridge has tried hard to learn all he can of the old way and emphasizes the importance of the elders for the knowledge they possess. He has also learned many of the beliefs of other American Indian tribes and often combines them with Navajo traditions to make a point.

To prepare for the interviews I formulated ten questions concerning the religious background of the interviewees; the way in which they became Bahá’ís, and why; their view, as Bahá’ís, of the traditional Navajo religion; and their sense of how the Bahá’í Faith benefits them in particular and the Navajos in general. However, I ran into problems in that these questions were often nearly meaningless to the Navajos since they were designed with European concepts and categories in mind. Sometimes the most important questions were left unanswered or answered only vaguely. Yet in the end there emerged a rather clear picture of how the Navajo and Bahá’í world views coexist.

The evening I met the Kahn family they were preparing for a Blessingway ceremony, a one-day chant to be sung over Frank Kahn, the eldest brother. This particular ceremony is used not to cure illness but to prevent disease and to bless the affairs of one’s life. That same night at sunset the Bahá’í month of fasting came to an end and the Bahá’í New Year began. Therefore, there was special cause for celebration. I was invited to participate in the preparation ceremonies for the Blessingway that would continue throughout the night and next day.

Later that evening, during a pause in the ritual activity, Chester and Ben Kahn explained the chants and prayers that were being performed. The next day Chester found time to give me a long and detailed interview. For the most part I simply recorded what he related because he was answering most of my questions without my asking them specifically. I was invited to stay for the Blessingway ceremony itself that night, but due to a previous engagement I was unable to attend.

My interview with Frank Kahn took place three days later while he was still in a four-day period of rest and a ritual state of purification following the Blessingway ceremony. I was enjoined to observe similar restrictions myself including avoidance of anger, gossip, and bad thoughts; and I understood that this period of prayer, meditation, and reflection would be a good time for my questions concerning spiritual activities. Frank and I talked for almost two hours in the hogan where the ceremony had taken place two nights earlier. This, my second long interview, was the only one I was able to record.

The night before I left the reservation Ben Kahn, though tired, consented to answer my questions at his home in Fort Defiance. His information supplemented information provided by his two older brothers.

I talked with Henry Bainbridge following the celebration of the Bahá’í Feast of Bahá at his home. A traditional ceremony had also been performed over him during the weekend; thus he too was in a state of purification. [Page 42] His interview added a completely different perspective to the information previously collected but did not conflict with anything the Kahns had said.

It is worthwhile to note the qualifications of other Navajo Bahá’ís whom I was not able to interview, but who also reflect a harmonious accommodation of the two religions in their lives. Flora Stevens, who lives in Red Lake, Arizona, is a medicine woman much in demand. Chee Dan Yazzie is a Bahá’í medicine man specializing in crystal gazing, psychological problems, and heart trouble. Hasteen Many Beads, another Bahá’í medicine woman, had died the year before at 104 years of age. Her son, Moses Nakai, is treasurer of the Bahá’í District Teaching Committee and a member of the Spiritual Assembly of Ship Rock. Doc Whitesinger, a Navajo Bahá’í for many years, had served on the spiritual assembly and had attended the national convention. He was once described by anthropologist Sam Gill as “an old man knowledgeable in the traditions and ways of Navajo religion.” He has since died. Mrs. Waldine Yazzie and her sister are the mainstays of the Spiritual Assembly of Hard Rock Chapter, an all-Navajo Assembly, which is known for its smooth functioning. Howard McKinley is a respected elder and a Bahá’í who works for the Navajo Department of Education. He is known for his outspokenness and for a method of teaching the Bahá’í Faith that uses analogies with the natural world. Nellie Terry, a Bahá’í and medicine woman, lives in the Fort Defiance Chapter and serves on the Spiritual Assembly there.

The Data from the Interviews

THE FOLLOWING four sections describe the information I received. Admittedly, the categories reflect a European way of thinking and probably do not reflect the way a Navajo would divide the data; however, the information within them does provide insight into the Navajo-Bahá’í religious experience.

The Navajos’ Reasons for Becoming Bahá’ís. Chester Kahn gave me the most complete description of how he became a Bahá’í. He was brought up in Pine Springs and had a great deal of contact with both his grandfathers. When old enough, he was forced to attend the Catholic mission school at Houck, where he was baptized without his consent and received catechism instruction, which taught that it was sinful to go to another church. He described the method of teaching there as “fear.” In order to train them in the Catholic way, teachers instilled fear of the devil in the children. Looking back, he feels all the Christian mission schools were engaged in a kind of brainwashing.

When he went off the reservation to the Stuart Boarding School in Nevada, he was required to state his religious preference, which had to be a Christian denomination; his traditional Navajo religion was not acceptable. When he entered the boarding school at twelve years of age, one thousand miles from his home, the school’s aim, he said, was to assimilate the Indians and make them into white men. He identified this time as one of the biggest changes in his life. He was at the school for five years, returning to the reservation in the summers but leaving his parents without his much-needed help in the winter. Thus his absence was a shock to his family, too. At boarding school Chester continued to receive Catholic instruction and eventually was confirmed. With the Church teaching him fear and the avowed policy of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) being to destroy the Indian culture, he felt that he stood no chance there. Neither his parents nor the Navajo leaders knew what was going on. The law required that he go to school, and everyone felt that education would be a good thing. For five years he lived in a dormitory with no opportunity to explore the religion of his parents and grandparents. Instead, he grew up in a tightly regimented BIA culture, which he compared to a military camp.

Chester’s deepest complaint concerning the school was that he had no family there, [Page 43] though all of Navajo culture is rooted in the family. The roles of grandparents, uncles, and other relatives—central to the Navajo ideal of the extended family—could not be learned or experienced in a boarding school. In a Navajo home everyone lives in unity, “every activity, every member has a role in decision making.” The elders are highly respected and even babies are brought into this spiritual unity. The elders have always been religious instructors who educate the young. Using the Blessingway ceremony as an example throughout, he explained that the Navajos have a holistic approach to life in which religion, work, education, and social life are not divided up but are one. Then he explained how he saw this system damaged, often unintentionally, by the BIA. The government was paternalistic and took over the functions of the family. Social services were brought onto the reservation, and a money economy made people more individualistic. Children were removed from families and the Navajos became dependent on government handouts. Whereas before there was pride and dignity among the Navajos, he saw this spirit die while he was growing up; he was saddened by it.

After leaving school, Chester Kahn stayed in Nevada for a time and worked in Reno where he became acquainted with two Bahá’ís. Because of their actions and attitudes toward all things, both human and worldly, he felt very close to them even though they were not Indians. Through talking with them he learned the importance of understanding your “roots”—your own culture and religion. They encouraged him to return to the reservation and learn his culture. He was confused because the school had taught him not to return, that the Indian way was no good—yet here were two whites telling him it was! Soon afterward he decided to return and do what they advised him, and began to live life in the Bahá’í and the Indian way. In 1962, when he was twenty-six years old, he declared his belief in Bahá’u’lláh.

Chester became a Bahá’í for a number of reasons. It encouraged him to study his traditional religion, and he thinks that in order to understand the Bahá’í Faith you must first understand your roots. He sees the Faith as teaching the same spiritual way as do all religions, and he stresses the fact that one must understand the unity of God’s purpose for man if harmony is to be restored between nature, man, and spirit. He was also attracted to the Bahá’í Faith by the examples of the Bahá’ís.

Frank Kahn’s story was similar in content, but emotionally different. He also grew up in a Catholic environment but rather than being angry at what the Church had done on the reservation, he feels that he understands the core of Christianity and that it is not antithetical to the Navajo or the Bahá’í religion. Emphasizing the way that Bahá’u’lláh has reexplained and affirmed the teachings of Christ and the other prophets, he feels that he is a true Christian. As Bahá’ís, “we follow the rest of religions and creation. It is not ending. . . . it is reinforcing [the] spirit of all religion.” Though the Church and the United States government had created difficulties for the old way, he expressed his conviction that they did so unintentionally.

Of his Catholic schooling, Frank said he had enjoyed learning catechism and acting as an altar boy. He felt that he had served the Catholic Faith and told me how he had lived with a Catholic Father who taught him “many things; many fine, fine things that are wonderful.” It was only after five years of study, experience, research, firesides (Bahá’í discussions on the Faith with non-Bahá’ís), and investigation into his roots—the native religion and Catholicism—that he became a Bahá’í. He was taught about the Bahá’í Faith by Charlotte Nelson, now ninety-three years old and living in California. He described her as his “spiritual mother” and “a really wonderful lady,” who taught his whole family. Since becoming Bahá’ís, they have, once again, been practicing religion together as a family.

[Page 44] Frank was attracted to the Bahá’í Faith by its “spirit.” He also liked what it had to say about the role of science and the Bahá’í concept of progressive revelation (the belief that new Manifestations appear periodically and build upon the teachings of earlier Manifestations). He was particularly interested in what the Bahá’í Faith says about materialism and how it affects men and women. He felt that our greatest challenge as people was to learn moderation and pointed to our mistreatment of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms (often discussed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá) as evidence of our transgression of the bounds of moderation, which excesses Bahá’u’lláh warned us would create problems. He remarked, “We are going at it in our own Enemyway.” He also emphasized the Bahá’í belief in unity and stressed that “we must think that every race, every religion, every country” is one. He said that the Navajos already know that the earth is a “home in a home.” He became a Bahá’í because in his way of thinking, “it [the Bahá’í Faith] is a Blessingway.”

Ben Kahn did not talk much about the personal experience of becoming a Bahá’í. He, too, attended a BIA school but found the values taught there unsatisfactory. As an Indian he knew that he was being placed low on the social scale by the dominant white culture. The Bahá’í teachings, however, did just the opposite, giving him incentives to study the Navajo way of life and to look for the meanings in the traditional prayers and chants. Thus his story appears to be more like Chester’s than Frank’s. However, he went to a local BIA school that was not a mission school or a boarding school; hence his situation is also unique. He says he became a Bahá’í because he believed that all of Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings were for this day and age. He also liked the Bahá’í concept of unity in diversity, but most important the Bahá’í Faith helped him find his identity again.

Henry Bainbridge also attended a Catholic primary school. He became a Bahá’í because he felt that the Manifestation of Bahá’u’lláh had been promised in the songs and legends of the Navajos and that nothing in the Bahá’í Faith went against the Navajo religion; instead, the Faith helped him understand the traditional way more thoroughly. He believed that if you translated the Navajo religious sayings into English, they would sound like the Bahá’í writings. He said that the two religions share more mutual understanding than others he had known. Repeatedly, he emphasized that the two were closely related. Henry became a Bahá’í because it made his religious beliefs more universal, not because it changed his beliefs.

For none of these four people did the religions seem to conflict. For two of them, being a Bahá’í increased their knowledge in the traditional religion. For all of them the Bahá’í teachings renewed their appreciation of the traditional ways. Some listed specific parts of the Bahá’í Faith that attracted them; others liked the Faith for all its teachings. When they were asked about which Bahá’í books or prayers they liked most, two of them replied all of them; the answers of the other two were similar to answers one might get from Bahá’ís of other backgrounds. For Henry Bainbridge the brief verses in Bahá’u’lláh’s Hidden Words are much like Navajo prayers. To all four the overwhelming reason for being a Bahá’í was that it made them better Navajos.

The Navajos’ Lives as Bahá’ís and as Practitioners of the Traditional Religion. The four Navajo Bahá’ís with whom I spoke all continue to practice certain of their traditional Navajo spiritual customs. For example, while I was on the reservation the Blessingway ceremony was performed for Frank Kahn, then a member of the National Spiritual Assembly.

Chester Kahn felt that he was probably more active in the traditional ceremonies now that he is a Bahá’í, for he said twice that his better understanding of the ceremonials and prayers has enhanced his interest in the traditional way. He does not see the Bahá’í Faith as independent from other religions but as inseparable from the past and as evolving and bringing together all Indian values. As a Bahá’í, he has traveled through North America teaching the Bahá’í Faith to the Sioux, [Page 45] the Omaha, the Iroquois, and other Native American tribes. He has taught the Faith in Alaska and Canada, among the Indians of Oklahoma, and on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. He was also a member of the Trail-of-Light Teaching Team in 1980, an all-Indian Bahá’í group devoted to teaching the Bahá’í Faith to Indian peoples. He has been a delegate to the National Bahá’í Convention that elects the National Spiritual Assembly; has been an assistant to the Auxiliary Board of the Continental Board of Counselors; and has served on the Spiritual Assembly of Oak Springs Chapter and is now a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. His life as a Navajo Bahá’í, therefore, has been an active one in both religions.

Concerning involvement in traditional ways, Frank Kahn said only one thing: “Since becoming a Bahá’í I think I am more active [in the traditional religion]. I try to gain an understanding as well as being more active in the Faith, too, and that’s the life, you know, I live.” As a Bahá’í, he is known throughout the United States for being a member of the National Spiritual Assembly, a high honor requiring a deep understanding of the Faith. He has represented the Bahá’í Faith at a White House prayer breakfast in Washington, D.C., and represented the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States to the Universal House of Justice in Haifa, Israel. He has also taught the Bahá’í Faith extensively to non-Bahá’ís.

Ben Kahn participates in some traditional practices such as a ceremony for a close relative or a request for his assistance; otherwise, he involves himself in Bahá’í activities. He observed that many of the traditional activities are being debased because people do not do them right; alcohol is brought into ceremonies, and there are other such signs of disrespect. He expressed concern that some younger Navajos, in particular, did not see the real meanings and values expressed in the traditional practices. As a Bahá’í, he has been a delegate to the National Bahá’í Convention and is at present an assistant to the Auxiliary Board member for the area. He is a member of the Navajo-Hopi task force, organized for the purpose of teaching the Bahá’í Faith on the reservation, and a member of the Spiritual Assembly of Fort Defiance Chapter. He was also chairman of the District Teaching Committee for a few years.

Henry Bainbridge maintains an interest in three religions: the traditional Navajo way, the Native American Church, and the Bahá’í Faith. In addition to his understanding of Navajo ceremonies, he also knows a great many traditional prayers and legends and is constantly trying to learn more. He conducts ceremonies for the Native American Church, but as a Bahá’í abstains from peyote. He has been a Bahá’í teacher in Nevada; in Saskatchewan, Canada; and among the Pueblos. I was told that when he was at Santo Domingo Pueblo in New Mexico he was picked up by the tribal police and taken before the tribal council for his missionizing activities. The tribal council asked him to present the slide show he had with him, but when they realized he was teaching them the Faith, they asked him to be quiet and just show the slides. After the show they asked him many questions that allowed him to say what he wanted about the Bahá’í Faith anyway. When their questioning was over, he received permission to teach the Faith in their pueblo. He has been the delegate to the Bahá’í national convention for his area. Though his formal learning stopped after the eighth grade, he reads Bahá’í literature, including difficult compilations of Bahá’u’lláh’s and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s writings.

All the Navajo Bahá’ís whom I encountered apparently have no difficulties in integrating the two religions, whether as medicine men and women (who are much in demand on the reservation) or as members of the eleven spiritual assemblies on the reservation. In fact, the harmony and compatibility of the two systems has made some Navajo Bahá’ís more active in the traditional way.

The Navajos’ Understanding of the Traditional Religion. By far the most interesting responses concerned the meaning of the origin [Page 46] myths. All four responses were generally the same and are treated here as a single response. The unanimity of understanding is not really surprising in that all four people know each other and probably have often talked about the traditional myths and legends.

First, the four stressed that the Navajo origin myths should be taken figuratively and not literally. The origin myths of the Navajos and particularly the story of the Hero Twins are comparable to creation stories in the Bible; both sets of creation stories, in the Bahá’í view, should be read symbolically. The four Navajo Bahá’ís explained that if the stories (and those in the Bible) were understood literally, they would disagree with science and would, therefore, be of little benefit to humanity, whose true nature is spiritual and rational. It is the spiritual teachings within the stories that benefit humankind, though they are often expressed in material symbols in order to overcome limitations of language and thought.

The Navajo emergence story, for example, relates not to other physical worlds that exist below the ground but to levels of existence, levels of culture, that people have passed through in order to reach the level at which they live today. Chester Kahn emphasized that these other worlds of the Navajo myths symbolize the “progression of human civilization.” He stressed that the significant point of the story is that each conflict between the people of the lower world precipitates their move to a higher world and that in the higher world a new beginning is always made.

Similarly, the monsters destroyed by the Hero Twins, if taken literally, are creatures that reason tells us could never have existed. As symbols, however, they represent manmade evils. The people, Chester explained, had declined in their level of culture and “were living like monsters.” The tyrants among them were the monsters and enemies against whom the Hero Twins had to fight. Chester added that today there is great concern that humans are again becoming dehumanized because few believe in the Holy Spirit. All the spiritual laws have been ignored and broken. Humankind has lost direction and believes that it has the power that controls the universe. This confusion has caused hardships, conflicts, frustrations, poverty, human suffering, wars, and racial prejudice; it is the reason why elders are being put into institutions, and the extended family is disappearing; it is even the reason why there is no rain. These derangements are the monsters of today, Chester explained. Finally, Ben Kahn explained that the Navajo myth of the creation of man also expresses a kind of an evolutionary sense in which all animals contribute to human form but that humankind also needs the breath of heaven in order to stand.

All four believed that the Hero Twins— Enemy Slayer and Born of the Water—could be considered Manifestations of God. To a Bahá’í, this interpretation places them in the same rank as Christ and Buddha, the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh. When I asked if both brothers should be viewed as being Manifestations or if one occupied a station more akin to that of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Frank Kahn said he thought that both were Manifestations. Chester Kahn gave me the most complete story of these two Navajo Manifestations, his interpretation of which is repeated here. All analogies are his unless otherwise stated.

When the Navajos reached their present level of culture, two babies were born to the same mother, Changing Woman, somewhere in the area of what is now Gallup, New Mexico. Their names were Enemy Slayer and Born of the Water. Their purpose in life was in the spiritual realm; their station was such that no human being could understand it. They were given spiritual understanding at birth and kept it throughout their lives. Their lives, in turn, lay in the hands of the Great Spirit. The station of their mother, Changing Woman, was comparable to that of the Virgin Mary in Christianity; thus the Navajos hold her in great reverence. Similarly, Chester explained, the babies’ father is seen as the Great Spirit Himself, in this case symbolized by the sun, which exemplifies all life in the universe as [Page 47] well as on earth.

When the twins were young adults, they desired to know who their Father was (I understood this to be symbolic of their desire to know God, His attributes and His essence). The twins were told by the Great Spirit that this was possible for them; hence they prepared themselves for the long journey to His presence. Their journey has analogical similarity to similar mystical and symbolic journeys in the human realm. They encountered many obstacles but managed to overcome them. One of the obstacles was a big canyon that they did not know how to cross. They were instructed to say certain prayers and chants, and when they did, a way was provided by a rainbow. Chester compared these prayers to the “Tablet of Aḥmad,” a prayer that Bahá’ís believe to be particularly powerful in helping them to overcome difficulties. Chester appeared to be saying that the importance of the twins’ journey lay in its symbolism. Coming to know God is not easy; it requires an upright and holy attitude on the part of the “traveler.” The twins, being born of God, could understand the instructions (prayers) given by the Great Spirit. Many of those prayers are used today by the Navajos in their ceremonies.

The Twin Manifestations’ purpose in journeying to know God was that they wished to save the people of the earth, who had become weakened by tyrants and by their own evil inclinations. In this condition the people were vulnerable to attack by the monsters described above, and only the “Sun” could save them from destruction. When the Twin Manifestations arrived at their Father’s house, He (God) tested them again, with wealth and other distractions. Once their sincerity had been proved, the Great Spirit gave them a “Spiritual Arrow,” a symbol for the teachings that could destroy the monsters. The twins returned to earth (the physical as opposed to the spiritual realm) and began their task of eliminating the monsters.

In their struggle to destroy the monsters and enemies of the people, Enemy Slayer was the leader, and Born of the Water was his assistant. My informants repeatedly observed that the many legends in this part of the myth, as well as in the journey to the Sun, were comparable to similar stories in the Bible. When the twins had finally killed all the monsters, they performed the first Squaw Dance, to eliminate the evil spirits that had been overcome. The Squaw Dance is still performed today to keep away evil spirits.

The story of the two Navajo Manifestations goes on to say that, when the monsters were destroyed, the monsters told the Manifestations that the whole process would eventually repeat itself and that the monsters would return some time in the future. The Twins gave various signs and prophecies indicating when the events would recur; then the Twins disappeared in the west. Some stories say that they will return when the monsters return, and Navajo legends talk of a coming new era. Today, many medicine men agree that the monsters of war, poverty, and human suffering have returned and are generating renewed interest in prophecies concerning the reappearance of the Hero Twins.

One of the prophecies related by Chester Kahn said that when the Navajos were removed from their homeland that is surrounded by the four sacred mountains, the new age would begin. He believes that this prophecy was fulfilled in 1863 when Kit Carson began rounding up the Navajos and removing them to Fort Sumner—the same year in which Bahá’u’lláh publicly proclaimed His mission. This dual event was one of the proofs that convinced Chester of the authenticity of Bahá’u’lláh’s claim.

Frank Kahn and Henry Bainbridge both spoke of the prophecy of a nine-pointed star that was to come in the new era. The nine-pointed star is also a symbol used by Bahá’ís to represent their Faith. Henry said that the Navajos have a nine-day ceremony representing the nine-pointed star, as well as various nine-day chants, nine-prayer sets, and a nine-road song. Frank explained that to him the number nine, as the highest number, is a symbol of the highest point of understanding. The four also spoke of other Bahá’í features [Page 48] that appear to match Navajo teachings. Henry said that there is a phrase in Navajo meaning “The Glory of God,” which is what the name Bahá’u’lláh means, as well as a prophecy that a new light will come from the east. The Navajo religion also speaks of a day when the world will have one religion and one language, and when everyone will be one people. Henry expressed the belief that all these prophecies refer to the Bahá’í Faith. Henry also spoke of other Navajo prophecies that foretell the appearance of Europeans, Negroes, and Chinese, and even of Christ and other ManifeStations.

While to the Navajo Bahá’ís these prophecies from the traditional religion foretell the coming of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh—the promised return of the Hero Twins—to Navajo non-Bahá’ís these prophecies foretell a sudden day of reckoning. According to Chester, many Navajos choose to interpret the prophecies literally just as many Christians choose to interpret Revelations literally. They believe that the new age will begin with sudden destruction. But Chester, as do all Bahá’ís, sees the creation of the new world as a slowly evolving process. He believes that the prophecies are being fulfilled and that the Hero Twins have returned, but that these prophecies have not occurred in the way that some Navajos expected.

My informants also discussed their understanding of three additional features of the traditional religion: the nature of the traditional gods, the question of conflicts between traditional beliefs and Bahá’í interpretations, and the feeling among them that parts of what is considered traditional religion might just be manmade superstitions and imaginings.

No one talked directly about the many “gods” of the legends as opposed to the one God of the Bahá’í Faith. In fact, their comments appeared to presume a Navajo belief in one God. They spoke of the Great Spirit, or of God, or of the “Sun” as a symbol for a specific quality of God; they always spoke as if there were only one supreme supernatural power. There appear to be two explanations for the apparently contradictory existence of “gods” and God in the traditional way. The first is that the various “deities” symbolize specific qualities of the Great Spirit as used in various myths to express concepts. The “Sun” in the Hero Twins legend is a good example of such a symbol. The mythic entities, then, could all refer to the one supernatural Essence, Who is unknowable by man but Whose signs and powers are visible in many forms. The second is that various Holy People are just that—people who because of their character can be considered holy. Thus Changing Woman, like Mary, is exalted. These Holy People appear to be similar to the early heroes of the Bahá’í Faith and other religions—seen as holy people and even described as angels by Bahá’u’lláh, but who actually lived mortal lives on earth. Both of these explanations, though unauthoritative, seem to be compatible with the information given me.

Henry Bainbridge explained that various traditional beliefs are similar to teachings in the Bahá’í Faith. Thus he explained that the Navajos have spiritual laws or restrictions that correspond to some of the injunctions and prohibitions found in the Bahá’í Faith concerning personal and social behavior. Henry also spoke of the similarity between Navajo and Bahá’í concepts. Bahá’u’lláh, for example, said that we could learn of God’s will by observing nature; the Navajos have a similar belief. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explained that each of the three natural kingdoms—mineral, plant, and animal—had positions of perfection within the kingdom. Thus the gemstone is seen as the perfection of the mineral kingdom. By analogy, these laws apply to man; if in a state of spiritual perfection, humans are capable of mirroring God’s attributes. According to Henry, this hierarchy of perfections corresponds nicely with the Navajo view [Page 49] of the natural kingdoms.

To Frank Kahn teachings on nature were also an example of the harmony of the two religions. Bahá’u’lláh spoke of the gemlike qualities in men; the Navajos use gems as expressions of religiousness in their ceremonies and as symbols for the people. To Frank, gems such as turquoise used in his silver work are symbols of the Great Spirit; the rock buttes in his paintings are signs of the solidarity of God; and the plastics and glass of modern civilization demonstrate man’s refusal to live either within the bounds of moderation or in harmony with his environment. To the Navajo, I was told, the world is a place to learn; thus respect for the earth is of utmost importance. Both ideas lose none of their potency in the Bahá’í Faith. Other Navajo beliefs concerning the spiritual importance of nature also have counterparts in the Bahá’í Faith, confirming the surprising degree of harmony between the two world views.

Of course, some teachings in the two religions do conflict. The traditional way, for example, accepts the notion that we should fear ghosts and witches; the Bahá’í Faith does not. However, the feeling among the four Navajo Bahá’ís was that in the Navajo religion, as in other religions, superstition and a certain amount of “false-playing” can and does develop. Frank Kahn commented, “I think that we as Bahá’ís going back to the Navajo . . . we can distinguish and understand that there are false beliefs and that there are superstitions that are unnecessary doings, and I see this in other religions.” Ben Kahn further elaborated, saying that because the stories were not written down, some that were meant to be understood literally might, in the course of time, come to be understood symbolically, and vice versa. Further, some that were meant for a specific time might have persisted down to the present day past their time of usefulness. However, such inconsistencies, they observed, were fewer than the similarities, and comparable to those between other religions and the Bahá’í Faith. Hence for these Navajo Bahá’ís the Bahá’í Faith provides a framework that enables them to approach and reinterpret their traditional religion in a way that rediscovers its truths and makes it more relevant to life.

The Navajos’ Expectations for the Future. Where do the Navajo Bahá’ís see the Bahá’í Faith taking them, and, conversely, what contributions can the Navajo presence make to the Bahá’í community? If all cultures have their strong points, where do the Navajos see theirs in relation to the Bahá’í Faith?

In their view of their future, the responses of the Navajo Bahá’ís were much alike. Most mentioned the obvious benefits of living in a world at peace where human rights would be respected. In relation to Navajo society, they felt that the Bahá’í Faith had much to offer. It could strengthen the family again and help prevent divorce. It could resolve other social problems in education and reduce violence. To Frank Kahn the Bahá’í Faith could make a tremendous difference on the reservation. To Ben Kahn it could bring the Navajo to a higher plane of existence because of its emphasis on a positive attitude and way of life. Most of all, Chester observed, it could create an understanding of the necessity of cooperating with people all over the world.

In relation to the traditional Navajo religion, according to Chester Kahn, the Bahá’í Faith could clear up many misunderstandings and misconceptions of the traditional way. It could allow the spiritual principles of the old religion to shine forth with greater clarity, and it could clarify the relationship of the traditional religion to Christianity among the Navajos. In the traditional religion, Frank said, it is hard to define some things because the meanings and rhythms have changed over the years. He feels that the Bahá’í Faith can address these difficulties and offer a solution. He is currently working on a project to translate Bahá’í prayers into Navajo, using the traditional Navajo rhythm, rhyme, and mood.

Concerning the world around them, Frank Kahn believes that, among other things, the American Indians have the ability to bring the white man back into harmony with nature. He feels that Bahá’ís in particular will listen and that, as the Bahá’í Faith grows, it [Page 50] will have an increasingly beneficial effect on the environment. He believes this neglected harmony and understanding of moderation to be one of the key requirements for the regeneration of society in the present age.

Chester Kahn feels that the Navajo Bahá’ís can also offer the Bahá’ís fresh insights into the consultative process that is to be used by all spiritual assemblies. A culture that is used to competition and fighting can learn much from people like the Navajos, who traditionally make decisions as a group. Because consultation is so central a value and practice in the Bahá’í Faith, helping to refine its use within the Bahá’í community could by extension enable the Navajos to help illumine the world.

After patiently undergoing my questioning, Ben Kahn suggested jokingly that the Navajos could teach the whites how to live with silence. Then he added, in a more serious tone, that he believed the Navajos could teach qualities of sincerity and devotion to other Bahá’ís. These qualities in turn would show the true essence of the Faith to the world and offer the world an incentive to bring about universal peace. The Bahá’í Faith could also solve many problems that assail the Indians on the reservation today. Thus the Navajo Bahá’ís see a hope in the Bahá’í Faith both for the future of the Indian people and for all people everywhere.

A Symbiotic Relationship

SUCH were the opinions expressed to me by four Navajo Bahá’ís about the nature of their dual religious perspective. These are the stories of how and why they became Bahá’ís and how, as Bahá’ís, they can continue to be involved with the traditional way. These are their understandings of the old religion now that they are part of a new religion. To these Navajo Bahá’ís the old religion has been revitalized and now can in turn affect the religion that has revitalized it.

On the surface it would appear that the traditional religion works within a traditional setting while the Bahá’í Faith operates in the modern world. That is to say, the traditional religion finds expression in the family, in the community, and in solitude. It finds expression in the “Navajoness” of the individual. It is his “roots,” his position on the circle of life. It is the starting point, the base level, the part that is in contact with the earth. On the contrary, the Bahá’í Faith appears to look outward, finding expression among cultures and among peoples who are not Navajo. It allows Navajo Bahá’ís to be part of the modern world yet makes no demands that they leave their culture behind. It forms the goal for the future and is the part that is in contact with the sky, with the dreams of a better future.

However, such a view is much too simplified. The traditional religion is also in touch with the future through its prophecies and through its concern with the universal good. The Bahá’í Faith cares for its community by means of spiritual assemblies and is concerned with the collective well-being of Bahá’í families and communities, however small or isolated. The two religions, then, overlap, though their emphases lie in somewhat divergent directions. They support each other when they enter each other’s domain but are distinct enough that they do not endanger each other’s existence. They form one view of the world while being two separable systems of belief. They are not mutually exclusive but mutually inclusive. They live together in a symbiotic relationship.

Though different and distinct, neither religion, apparently, has anything that precludes the truth of the other. Both are incorporative in nature. The closest threats to this symbiotic relationship were the origin myths and the polytheistic description of the traditional Navajo religion as opposed to the strict monotheism of the Bahá’í Faith. But both of these, when properly understood in their mythic and symbolic context, were shown by the Navajo informants to be reconcilable. Other discrepancies, such as the Navajo belief in witches, appear to be superstitions that do not form part of the original Indian religion.

What the Bahá’í Faith does require of the [Page 51] Navajo is a commitment to a new Manifestation, Bahá’u’lláh. Since His teachings by their nature confirm the truths inherent within the traditional way, the Navajo Bahá’ís with whom I spoke had no difficulty in accepting this commitment, for the Bahá’í Faith and the traditional Navajo religion have much more in common than it would appear at first. The fact that both religions have an ennobling vision of God, humankind, nature, and society makes it possible for the two faiths, while remaining distinct, to be mutually sympathetic and supportive and to create a union that is unique between religions.

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The Continuity of Persecution

A REVIEW OF MUḤAMMAD LABIB’S The Seven Martyrs of Hurmuzak (OXFORD; GEORGE RONALD, 1981), XXI + 63 PAGES

BY HOWARD GAREY

Copyright © 1987 by Howard Garey.

SOME OF US remember the persecution of the Bahá’ís under the shahs as recently as 1955. Now the Islamic Republic claims, as one of its accusations against the Bahá’ís, that they were favored by the shah and are thus enemies of the Revolution. Here in Muḥammad Labib’s little book The Seven Martyrs of Hurmuzak we have a factual, simple, and eloquently sincere account of the harassment in 1955 of six Bahá’í families by their neighbors and, in some cases, even their Muslim relatives—harassment that, spurred on by religious authorities and encouraged by the studied indifference of the government, culminated in the brutal murder of seven Bahá’ís.

Muḥammad Labib was asked by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Iran to go to Hurmuzak immediately after the massacre in order to prepare a report based on interviews with Bahá’í survivors and with other inhabitants of the region. He illustrated his report with photographs that he took, before the debris could be cleared away, of the ruins of the village. He also managed to obtain a photograph of each victim and to arrange them on a single sheet that he included in the report and that is reproduced in the book as a frontispiece. The individual portraits are also spaced through the book at appropriate passages of the text. Toward the beginning, just after Moojan Momen’s foreword, a family tree is provided, showing the relationship of the martyrs, all of whom were kin of various degree. This reader referred again and again to the family tree and to the photographs of the victims and came to feel personally acquainted with all of them before he finished the book. A page of maps of the region is also an important aid to the comprehension of these events.

The troubles started with the bloodthirsty exhortations of a popular radio preacher, Áqá Falsafí, during the month of Ramaḍán, in July 1955. The headman of the neighboring village of Sakhvíd immediately met with a prominent landowner to plan the campaign against the Bahá’ís. Starting with the diversion of irrigation water to cause the drying up of the Bahá’í fields, they then brought their sheep to graze in those fields. They also prevented the Bahá’ís from going to a neighboring hamlet to use the baths, of which the Bahá’ís had half ownership. Then they sat back to see what effect these actions would have. When they saw that the gendarmes, far from protecting these innocent citizens of Iran, commandeered the sitting room of one of them and forced the family to live in the damp cellar of the house, they realized that any crime against the Bahá’ís would go unpunished —or rather would more likely be rewarded. The gendarmes then entered other Bahá’í houses, took books and other objects related to the Faith, and also anything of material value, and bore them all off to the house [Page 54] they had taken over. This confiscation, as they coolly explained to the inhabitants of the house, was to keep everything of value in a central place so that, after the inevitable massacre, it would be easier “to take possession of [the things belonging to the Bahá’ís]. . . . and get them out of the village.”

There is a subtle difference between the government of Iran as it was in 1955 and as it is under the Islamic Republic, as far as treatment of the Bahá’ís is concerned. The former regime made a minimal attempt to observe the rules generally accepted in the world concerning civil rights—the rights of persecuted citizens or members of minority groups to appeal to the government for protection from harassment and for redress of wrongs. Whereas the villagers who persecuted Bahá’ís found it quite reasonable to explain their acts in terms such as these: “What crime can be greater than that you have abandoned the true faith of Islam and become Bahá’ís and are seeking to convert others and lead them astray? Because of this you deserve any injury that comes your way,” the religious leader, the ákhúnd, found it prudent to deny that any orders to persecute the Bahá’ís had emanated from him. In response to their appeal for help he told them that they had “every right to turn to the gendarmerie and ask for justice.”

The gendarmes, in turn, recognized that the Bahá’ís needed protection and had a right to it—but on condition that each of the seven families give them one thousand túmáns (seven thousand in all), so that “a way of resolving the problems could be found.” Since the material wealth of these people consisted almost entirely of land, water, and farming equipment, they could offer only a few hundred túmáns. After taking the money, the gendarmes replied, with the feigned regret of gangsters demanding “protection money,”

Unfortunately, with this amount, we can be of no assistance to you nor prevent the people from attacking, plundering and killing you. You must try and obtain the sum that we have asked for and pay it to us. For the time being, we are going away so that we can consider the question of your problems.

They then sent a further message to the effect that the Bahá’ís of Hurmuzak “must remain exposed to mortal danger from the populace. Your only chance is to comply with our request, or otherwise we are excused.”

Thus the persecutions were compounded by the hypocrisy of the authorities who, while profiting materially from the plight of the Bahá’ís, worked to absolve themselves of the legitimate responsibilities of their office. This progression of buck-passing, while taking an increasing share of profit from the misfortunes of the Bahá’ís, was repeated from one level of authority to the next, from the village headman to the religious leader, to the gendarmerie, and on up nearly to the highest levels of government—but not before seven Bahá’ís had been martyred, their families driven into hiding, their possessions stolen or destroyed, and their village razed. At each stage there is the half-recognition of the rights of the oppressed, along with a determination to allow the persecutions full sway while pocketing whatever gain offered itself in the process. When the case finally reached the court at Yazd, the Public Prosecutor apparently made an honest effort to present the case against those who had attacked, pillaged, and killed the Bahá’ís of Hurmuzak and to demand their punishment in accordance with existing law—law that applied equally to all Iranians. The sentences were, in view of the atrocities, rather lenient: a number of the accused were dismissed; others, though convicted, were considered to have served their time while awaiting trial; still others were sentenced to three years, two years, or several months of imprisonment under varying conditions of solitary confinement, of hard labor, or in a less rigorous correctional facility. Whatever the sentence, however, the principle was recognized that violence, theft, murder, even though directed against the Bahá’ís, are, in law, criminal acts. This principle, however poorly defended in the previous regime, existed—and that is more than can be said for the rights of religious minorities in the [Page 55] Islamic Republic of Iran, which is in no way restrained by concern for world opinion, particularly by its image in the West.

But the lesson to be learned from The Seven Martyrs of Hurmuzak has not so much to do with the atrocities, the violence, the savagery, or the hypocrisy of the persecutors as with the forbearance of their victims, their adherence to Bahá’í principles of nonviolence, of charity toward enemies, of obedience to law. We have had abundant evidence, from all over the world, of how much evil people are capable of; the spectacle of virtue, so much rarer, is the more impressive. Again and again, people from the neighboring village were sent to Hurmuzak to revile the Bahá’ís and to insult their religion—anything to provoke angry retorts, even violent reactions, in order to justify savage attacks with clubs, rocks, farming tools, swords. But the Bahá’ís remained silent in spite of the provocations. The more short-tempered of them were protected from the temptation of angry response by the cooler heads. And yet the Bahá’ís did not fail to defend their Faith when it was appropriate to do so. When the police surgeon, who had been treating the wounds of the surviving victims of the attack that finally occurred in spite of the victims’ forbearance, declared to Áqá Ja‘far that the Bahá’ís were to blame for having “turned away from the true religion of Islam” and that it was necessary for them to “take refuge in Islam and become Muslims, that you may be secure and protected from every misfortune and be saved both in this world and in the next,” Áqá Ja‘far replied with bluntness and courage:

Are you asking me to become a Muslim so that I too can kill people and pillage them, steal from them, violate their homes and families, and attack defenceless people with weapons by night? For as long as you can remember, has there ever been the slightest transgression of the law or lack of respect for an individual from any of the Bahá’ís, despite all the opposition and injury they have received? Our only actions have been those of helpfulness and co-operation. This is our religious obligation. Where in the Holy Qur’án does it command that you should kill people in such a disgraceful manner? Certainly in the Qur’án it says “Kill the polytheists” [Qur’án 9:5]. But the Bahá’ís acknowledge and believe in the oneness of God Almighty. We also recognize the truth of all the Prophets from Adam to Muḥammad as well as the holy Imáms. The only difference between Bahá’ís and Muslims is that Bahá’ís believe that the Promised One of Islam has appeared and they can establish the truth of this with firm proof and evidence. . . . In the same way as the Jews and Christians, through blind imitation of their religious leaders, came to deny the truth of Islam, today the followers of Islam have fallen prey to blind imitation under the leadership of their religious leaders and have denied and opposed the Bahá’í religion. The Bahá’í Faith is a divine religion. Its law-giver has . . . completed the proof for the Muslims and . . . has brought forth a tolerant and just set of laws and established a community. If Muslims would strive for the truth of the matter they would be convinced of the claims of the Bahá’ís and would assert that we Bahá’ís do, in truth, believe in God and all the Prophets, and neither have had, nor now do have, any purpose other than the good of all men.

In the ensuing silence no word was proffered in reply. Thus the teaching effort never ceased, the courage never failed, of this man who had lost his dearest relatives; whose Muslim nephew had betrayed his Bahá’í relatives in the hope of gaining a larger inheritance from those in whose murder he had connived; who had seen the blood of his loved ones, inhaled the smoke of their blazing, gasoline-soaked bodies; and who now replied with the steadfastness of his martyred brethren to the facile reasoning of the establishment.

This book has moments of lyric beauty. The vigil, on the eve of the massacre, of the Bahá’ís gathered around the village pool, singing, praying, recounting their dreams of [Page 56] the night before (many of them explicitly predictive of the terror soon to befall them), giving each other comfort and sharing the joy of their coming martyrs’ glory, is recounted with unforgettable simplicity.

As we read the Seven Martyrs of Hurmuzak with the memory of our current martyrs’ accounts fresh in our imaginations and recollect the saga of the Bábí and Bahá’í martyrs of the nineteenth century, we feel the continuity that has united Bahá’ís from the beginnings of their Faith to the present.

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Authors & Artists

CHRISTINE HAKIM-SAMANDARI, whose Les Bahá’ís: ou victoire sur la violence was published in 1982, is a sociologist and anthropologist with two advanced degrees from Paris University. Following in her father’s footsteps of service to a national Bahá’í community, Hakim-Samandari is a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Switzerland.

HOWARD GAREY, a past-president Of the International Linguistic Association, is a professor of French and Romance philology at Yale University. His publications include The Mellon Chansonnier, published by Yale University Press; a number of articles on the relationship of words and music in fifteenth-century French chanson; and articles and book reviews in World Order.

JOSEPH O. WEIXELMAN, who holds a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Colorado, is the program director for September School, a private alternative high school in Boulder, and head of its Social Studies Department.

ART CREDITS: Cover design by John Solarz; photograph by Glenford E. Mitchell; p. 1, photograph by Mark Sadan; p. 3, photograph by Steve Garrigues; p. 7, photograph by Axel Anders; p. 8, photograph by Glenford E. Mitchell; p. 29, photograph, courtesy of the Bahá’í Periodicals Office, Wilmette, Illinois; p. 30, photograph by Mark Sadan; p. 52, photograph by Michael Winger-Bearskin; p. 53, photograph by Brad G. Burch.

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