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Spring 1997

World Order

HISTORY—ILLUSION VS. REALITY
EDITORIAL

TWO WINGS OF A BIRD: THE EQUALITY
OF WOMEN AND MEN
NATIONAL SPIRITUAL ASSEMBLY OF THE BAHÁ’ÍS
OF THE UNITED STATES

CHILDREN, MORAL DEVELOPMENT,
AND GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION
WINSTON E. LANGLEY

FREEDOM OF RELIGION IN THE U.S.
BILL OF RIGHTS: A BAHÁ’Í PERSPECTIVE
WILLIAM P. COLLINS

THE STORY OF JOSEPH IN FIVE
RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS
JIM STOKES

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World Order

VOLUME 28, NUMBER 3

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
ROBERT H. STOCKMAN
JIM STOKES

Consultant in Poetry:
HERBERT WOODWARD MARTIN

Subscriber Service:
LISA CORTES

WORLD ORDER is published quarterly by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, IL 60091. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to WORLD ORDER Subscriber Service, Bahá’í National Center, 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 four copies—an original and three 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. Email: WorldOrder@usbnc.org

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

Copyright © 1997, 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   History—Illusion vs. Reality

Editorial

4   Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor

7   Two Wings of a Bird: The Equality of Women and Men

a statement by the National Spiritual Assembly

of the Bahá’ís of the United States

13   Children, Moral Development, and Global

Transformation

by Winston E. Langley

25   Freedom of Religion in the U.S. Bill of Rights:

A Bahá’í Perspective

by William P. Collins

33   Trilogy for She II: Eva’s Scream

poem by Ijeoma Chinue Thomas

35   The Story of Joseph in Five Religious Traditions

by Jim Stokes

47   The Day of God: One, Four

poems by Michael Banister

Inside Back Cover: Authors & Artists in This Issue

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History—Illusion vs. Reality

THERE IS a largely unconscious view of the place of dinosaurs in the history of life that sees it as a long past phase leading up to the permanent, definitive establishment of the human race. Only recently have popular treatments of paleontology come to stress that the dinosaurs ruled the word for something like sixty million years, a period of time compared to which the existence of recognizable humans is but a fleeting moment.

Yet it is only natural that we perceive ourselves as real, stable, and collectively immortal. The child does not imagine growing old and eventually disappearing from the earth; the adult human being, even in possession of the arithmetic knowledge of the relative spans of dinosaur and mammal (not to mention humans), asks, “What caused the extinction of the dinosaur?” almost complacently, as if to say, “They are extinct, and we are still alive.”

So it is with our perception of history. The British Empire enjoyed and fostered the illusion of a durable reshaping of the world not only for the future but also for the past: for during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it felt as if the Empire has always existed. By now that illusion is pretty well exhausted, and one is beginning to understand that that mighty Empire flourished for somewhat less than two hundred years, less than some of the Asiatic empires of antiquity. But many have yet to shed the illusion that the imposition of the world of “white”— that is to say, European—power and culture will last forever. Even the perception that America is and always will be “white” must be reexamined.

When illusion comes into contact with facts, a radical readjustment is often necessary. What is the reaction of “white” Californians, for example, to the fact of the growing numbers of Asians in their state? Is their reaction to the coming minority status of people of European descent one of horror, of defense? Is the inevitable to be prevented, resisted, or at least delayed as long as possible? To do otherwise may seem to race-conscious individuals a sort of suicide. The alternative seems like a surrender to extinction: race, language, culture all seem at stake in this mighty struggle.

On one level the reaction takes paramilitary, terrotistic forms: skinheads, KKK, and other movements reminiscent of the worst fascism of the second quarter of the twentieth century. On another, more academic, level there is a spirited defense of European culture against the multicultural [Page 3] curriculum promoted by minorities who feel themselves disenfranchised by the neglect approaching blindness that has characterized American education.

The “problem” is largely imaginary. If there is but one human race, there is no conflict between races except that engendered by a tradition based on false premises. Is “Western civilization” in danger? It seems so only to those who believe that it is rooted in the white race and that it is monolithic and unchanging, to those who are unaware of the increasing richness of the world civilization that is developing and to which each culture is making its contribution. The growing interest of the West in the art, the music, the dance of the Orient, the mutual reinforcement of indigenous African music and American jazz, the fine symphony orchestras of Tokyo and Singapore, the sensitive interpretations of the music of Mozart by Mitsuko Uchida, the increasing presence of musicians of all races in the symphony orchestras and on the concert stages of the United States, all these developments should reassure those who fear that the continuing influence of non-Europeans will mark the end of the culture of which Europeans and their descendants are so justly proud.

We can be aware of the authenticity of Asian and African and indigenous American art, thought, religion, and styles of governance without needing to denigrate the unique contributions of the West to the respect for the individual and the community, to literature, philosophy, and art. Those who argue against the multicultural curriculum, in defense of Western moral and aesthetic values, are justified in the pride they take in those values, but they are taking a rigid stand for the unchanging civilization of a world now passing away in which different cultures existed side by side in mutual ignorance of and in isolation one from the other. That situation is no longer possible. The world is fast becoming one. Universal human values are being recognized through the veil of cultural diversity. As Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, has said:

The unity of the human race, as envisaged by Bahá’u’lláh, implies the establishment of a world commonwealth in which all nations, races, creeds and classes are closely and permanently united, and in which the autonomy of its state members and the personal freedom and initiative of the individuals that compose them are definitely and completely safeguarded.

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Interchange LETTERS FROM AND TO THE EDITOR

WE TAKE pleasure and pride in presenting a statement by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States on gender equality. This statement is in the tradition of those that prompted The Promzise of World Peace, issued by the Universal House of Jusrice in 1985; The Vision of Race Unity, issued by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States in 1991; and The Prosperity of Humankind, published by the Bahá’í International Community in 1995.

Two Wings of a Bird: The Equality of Women and Men emphasizes issues beyond those of fairness to women and the necessity of redressing miliennia of subordination of women to the perceived needs of men. A reassessment of the status of women is essential to the development of humanity, socially, politically, and spiritually. The quotations from the Bahá’í writings on which the entire thesis of the statement is based are, though coming to us from a nineteenth-century Middle Eastern country, still far ahead of what this enlightened age, with its honorable tradition of feminist movements, has yet achieved or of which it even conceived.

The first two articles in the Spring 1997 issue of World Order—Winston E. Langley’s “Children, Development, and Global Transformation” and William P. Collins’ “Freedom of Religion in the U.S. Bill of Rights: A Bahá’í‘ Perspective”—develop the ideas that secular arrangements intended to secure justice and equity are based on (usually unspoken) moral underpinnings that must be actualized if legal and administrative structures are to have the desired effect. Since their moral basis in the wording of laws and regulations is only tacit, they have little effect on persons who are indifferent to the moral goals of these laws and who can devise ways to circumvent them. Langley argues that the global transformation that will enable the laws to exert their morally desirable ends will depend on the education of our children, who, when imbued with certain moral values almost universally shared, upon attaining their leadership roles, will act upon them.

Mr. Collins traces the history of the idea of “rights” from the Magna Charta to the present and its tortuous evolution from securing the rights of a hitherto rights-deprived interest group (the barons in their relation to the king) to the notion of the rights of each human being with especial attention to the history of established religions and the American innovation that denies the possibility of a state religion. The emphasis on the individual and on the separation of church and state has led to a situation in which freedom of religion has nearly become freedom from religion and, in turn, neglect of an individual sense of social responsibility.

Jim Stokes’ “The Story of Joseph in Five Religious Traditions” is, in a sense, a history of religious interpretation. In this issue of World Order the author traces the biblical narrative of Joseph from the Hebrew version [Page 5] through to early Christian interpretations, thence to the Qur’án, which devotes a súrih (chapter) to Joseph. In a forthcoming issue Dr. Stokes will discuss the commentary of the Báb, the Forerunner of the Bahá’í Faith, on that súrih, a work that was of crucial importance to the founding of the Bábí and Bahá’í dispensations, and the use of the story of Joseph by Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, as a spiritual metaphor of profound significance in understanding the Manifestation of God and His nurturing relationship with humanity.

* * *

Our consultant in poetry, Dr. Herbert Woodward Martin, has received some additions to the many honors that have been conferred upon him. He has been appointed the first poet-in-residence at the parental home of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar in Dayton, Ohio; is one of the eleven recipients of the 1996 Paul Laurence Dunbar Humanitarian Award; and has received an Opus Award from Culture Works, as well as the Bjornson Humanities Award from the Ohio Humanities Council. But the honor that may well mean the most to Dr. Martin is that of having been selected as Dayton’s Poet Laureate.

A word of explanation about the importance of Paul Laurence Dunbar in the life and work of Dr. Martin: Dunbar (1872-1906), born in Dayton, the first free-born son of former slaves, was one of the first Black writers to gain national prominence. He was so well known for his lyrics in Black dialect that his poems in more conventional language and forms were not as appreciated as they might otherwise have been. Dunbar’s recitals of his works, especially in dialect, brought him a great measure of popularity, enhanced by his deep melodious voice. Dr. Martin has devoted himself to the resurrection of Dunbar’s work and memory by recitals much in the manner of Dunbar—and these reenactments of the poet’s public appearances have aroused the same enthusiasm as the originals.

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Two Wings of a Bird: The
Equality of Women and Men

A STATEMENT BY THE NATIONAL SPIRITUAL ASSEMBLY OF THE BAHÁ’ÍS OF THE UNITED STATES

Copyright © 1997 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States.

THE emancipation of women, the achievement of full equality between the sexes, is essential to human progress and the transformation of society. Inequality retards not only the advancement of women but the progress of civilization itself. The persistent denial of equality to one-half of the world’s population is an affront to human dignity. It promotes destructive attitudes and habits in men and women that pass from the family to the work place, to political life, and, ultimately, to international relations. On no grounds, moral, biological, or traditional, can inequality be justified. The moral and psychological climate necessary to enable our nation to establish social justice and to contribute to global peace will be created only when women attain full partnership with men in all fields of endeavor.

The systematic oppression of women is a conspicuous and tragic fact of history. Restricted to narrow spheres of activity in the life of society, denied educational opportunities and basic human rights, subjected to violence, and frequently treated as less than human, women have been prevented from realizing their true potential. Age-old patterns of subordination, reflected in popular culture, literature and art, law, and even religious scriptures, continue to pervade every aspect of life. Despite the advancement of political and civil rights for women in America and the widespread acceptance of equality in principle, full equality has not been achieved.

The damaging effects of gender prejudice are a fault line beneath the foundation of our national life. The gains for women rest uneasily on unchanged, often unexamined, inherited assumptions. Much remains to be done. The achievement of full equality requires a new understanding of who we are, what is our purpose in life, and how we relate to one another—an understanding that will compel us to reshape our lives and thereby our society.

At no time since the founding of the women’s rights movement in America has the need to focus on this issue been greater. We stand at the threshold of a new century and a new millennium. Their challenges are already upon us, influencing our families, our lifestyles, our nation, our world. In the [Page 8] process of human evolution, the ages of infancy and childhood are past. The turbulence of adolescence is slowly and painfully preparing us for the age of maturity, when prejudice and exploitation will be abolished and unity established. The elements necessary to unify peoples and nations are precisely those needed to bring about equality of the sexes and to improve the relationships between women and men. The effort to overcome the history of inequality requires the full participation of every man, woman, youth, and child.

Over a century ago, for the first time in religious history, Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, in announcing God’s purpose for the age, proclaimed the principle of the equality of women and men, saying: “Women and men have been and will always be equal in the sight of God.” The establishment of equal rights and privileges for women and men, Bahá’u’lláh says, is a precondition for the attainment of a wider unity that will ensure the well-being and security of all peoples. The Bahá’í writings state emphatically that, “When all mankind shall receive the same opportunity of education and the equality of men and women be realized, the foundations of war will be utterly destroyed.”

Thus the Bahá’í vision of equality between the sexes rests on the central spiritual principle of the oneness of humankind. The principle of oneness requires that we “regard humanity as a single individual, and one’s own self as a member of that corporeal form” and that we foster an unshakable consciousness that, “if pain or injury afflicts any member of that body, it must inevitably result in suffering for all the rest.”

Bahá’u’lláh teaches that the divine purpose of creation is the achievement of unity among all peoples:

Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust? That no one should exalt himself over the other. Ponder at all times in your hearts how ye were created. Since We have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest.

[Page 9] The full and equal participation of women in all spheres of life is essential to social and economic development, the abolition of war, and the ultimate establishment of a united world. In the Bahá’í scriptures the equality of the sexes is a cornerstone of God’s plan for human development and prosperity:

The world of humanity is possessed of two wings: the male and the female. So long as these two wings are not equivalent in strength, the bird will not fly. Until womankind reaches the same degree as man, until she enjoys the same arena of activity, extraordinary attainment for humanity will not be realized; humanity cannot wing its way to heights of real attainment. When the two wings . . . become equivalent in strength, enjoying the same prerogatives, the flight of man will be exceedingly lofty and extraordinary.

The Bahá’í writings state that to proclaim equality is not to deny that differences in function between women and men exist but rather to affirm the complementary roles men and women fulfill in the home and society at large. Stating that the acquisition of knowledge serves as “a ladder for [human] ascent,” Bahá’u’lláh prescribes identical education for women and men but stipulates that, when resources are limited, first priority should be given to the education of women and girls. The education of girls is particularly important because, although both parents have responsibilities for the rearing of children, it is through educated mothers that the benefits of knowledge can be most effectively diffused throughout society.

Reverence for, and protection of, motherhood have often been used as justification for keeping women socially and economically disadvantaged. It is this discriminatory and injurious result that must change. Great honor and nobility are rightly conferred on the station of motherhood and the importance of training children. Addressing the high station of motherhood, the Bahá’í writings state, “O ye loving mothers, know ye that in God’s sight, the best of all ways to worship Him is to educate the children and train them in all the perfections of humankind. . . .” The great challenge facing society is to make social and economic provisions for the full and equal participation of women in all aspects of life while simultaneously reinforcing the critical functions of motherhood.

Asserting that women and men share similar “station and rank” and “are equally the recipients of powers and endowments from God,” the Bahá’í [Page 10] teachings offer a model of equality based on the concept of partnership. Only when women become full participants in all domains of life and enter the important arenas of decision-making will humanity be prepared to embark on the next stage of its collective development.

Bahá’í scripture emphatically states that women will be the greatest factor in establishing universal peace and international arbitration. “So it will come to pass that when women participate fully and equally in the affairs of the world, when they enter confidently and capably the great arena of laws and politics, war will cease; for woman will he the obstacle and hindrance to it.”

The elimination of discrimination against women is a spiritual and moral imperative that must ultimately reshape existing legal, economic, and social arrangements. Promoting the entry of greater numbers of women into positions of prominence and authority is a necessary but not sufficient step in creating a just social order. Without fundamental changes in the attitudes and values of individuals and in the underlying ethos of social institutions full equality between women and men cannot be achieved. A community based on partnership, a community in which aggression and the use of force are supplanted by cooperation and consultation, requires the transformation of the human heart.

The world in the past has been ruled by force, and man has dominated over woman by reason of his more forceful and aggressive qualities both of body and mind. But the balance is already shifting; force is losing its dominance, and mental alertness, intuition, and the spiritual qualities of love and service, in which woman is strong, are gaining ascendancy. Hence the new age will be an age less masculine and more permeated with the feminine ideals . . . an age in which the masculine and feminine elements of civilization will be more evenly balanced.

Men have an inescapable duty to promote the equality of women. The presumption of superiority by men thwarts the ambition of women and inhibits the creation of an environment in which equality may reign. The destructive effects of inequality prevent men from maturing and developing the qualities necessary to meet the challenges of the new millennium. “As long as women are prevented from attaining their highest possibilities,” the Bahá’í writings state, “so long will men be unable to achieve the greatness which might be theirs.” It is essential that men engage in a careful, deliberate examination [Page 11] of attitudes, feelings, and behavior deeply rooted in cultural habit that block the equal participation of women and stifle the growth of men. The willingness of men to take responsibility for equality will create an optimum environment for progress: “When men own the equality of women there will be no need for them to struggle for their rights!”

The long-standing and deeply rooted condition of inequality must be eliminated. To overcome such a condition requires the exercise of nothing short of “genuine love, extreme patience, true humility, consummate tact, sound initiative, mature wisdom, and deliberate, persistent, and prayerful effort.” Ultimately, Bahá’u’lláh promises, a day will come when men will welcome women in all aspects of life. Now is the time to move decisively toward that promised future.

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Children, Moral Development, and
Global Transformation

BY WINSTON E. LANGLEY

Copyright © 1997 by Winston E. Langley.

IN THE field of international relations children were rarely considered until the end of World War I when the states that formed the League of Nations publicly acknowledged them in 1924 in what has come to be called the Geneva Declaration or, as it is frequently referred to, the Child Welfare Charter. As its name implies, the Charter’s primary focus was to minister to the perceived needs of children, especially to protect them from exploitation. At that time this response was particularly welcomed because it was seen as the continuation of an effort to reverse a history of childhood that was not morally flattering to human adults—a history that until relatively recently was associated with very low levels of child care and that allowed children “to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorized, and sexually abused.”

The rise of political democracy during the nineteenth century brought with it a greater respect for individuals. With that respect, which was part of a broader push for humanitarian reforms in social life, public school education for children become compulsory, children were removed from adult prisons, special schools were created to deal with the handicapped, and even orphanages were founded. In addition, treatment was begun for the mentally ill, and toward the end of the century a number of Western countries began to establish a separate system of legal procedures (including courts) for juvenile justice and, equally important, to create safeguards against child labor. Those reforms made social life for children and for people in general more civil and humane.

The League of Nations’ Child Welfare Charter, therefore, was seen in 1924 as the international extension of determined national reform efforts on behalf of the child. Making children the object of international concern did not, however—except in the most inchoate way—transform them into subjects with rights in international relations. The idea that children are and should be viewed as independent moral and social beings with rights as individuals as well as members of families took longer to unfold. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights advanced the rights of children by its inclusive reference to all persons. In 1959 the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child further advanced the position of children as holders of rights. In 1989, sixty-five years after the Child Welfare Charter, the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child crowned the advances with a victory. Although some references to the international instruments on children’s rights are necessary, of more central concern is an examination of an area to which few scholars in international relations have directed attention —an area that perhaps holds the single [Page 14] most important means by which a humane global order might be fashioned: the moral development of children.

Four claims must be made. The first is that those who formed the United Nations, as well as many of those who have shaped its policy-making efforts since its founding, recognized that a humane world order cannot be created by political means alone. The second is that those founders understood that a moral order must complement whatever political arrangements are devised. The third is that the moral development of children is central to the construction of the moral order. Finally, however admirable the efforts to emphasize the moral development of children have been, the approach has been faulty and must be corrected if a humane global society is to evolve. These claims can be supported by looking sequentially at what the founders of the United Nations and their successors in policy making envisioned as the ingredients for a humane global society, by examining the place of children in that vision, by reviewing two general approaches to moral development and the approach the United Nations system seems to have followed, and, finally, by suggesting an alternative emphasis.

The UN System and the
Ingredients of Global Order

THE United Nations, now representing almost all the peoples of the world, was founded by persons who sought to shift the international system from one of permanent war to one of lasting peace and security. They understood, however, that the use of military and economic force (through the Security Council), the political deliberations of the General Assembly, the administrative work of the Secretariat, and the adjudicative functions of the International Court of Justice, although important, could not, by themselves, assure international peace and security. Indeed, while many have become accustomed to associating the United Nations with the use of force to help resolve international political and military conflicts, the latter role was originally seen as “only a tragic, saddening last resort.” Far more important would be the role of the United Nations in peaceful settlement of disputes (under Chapter VI of the Charter) and the efforts to uproot what was seen as the economic, social, and cultural causes of conflicts.

To ensure that the uprooting and removal of the causes of conflicts would become and remain the principal task of the U.N. system, its founders included as one of its objectives “the economic and social advancement of all peoples.” To give institutional expression to that important objective, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) was created as one of the six principal organs of the United Nations. ECOSOC was vested with the duty of coordinating and formulating, for adoption by the General Assembly, macro economic and social strategies that would lead to the creation of “conditions of stability and wellbeing which are necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among nations.” In addition, ECOSOC was also assigned the responsibility of making “recommendations for the purpose of promoting respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all.”

Improvements in the social and economic conditions of countries and individuals, although contributing to, were not enough to effectuate the removal of the causes of international conflict or to sponsor the desired [Page 15] transformation of the international system. The moral dimension of human behavior, it was understood, would have to be included in the mix of ingredients designed to bring about the desired international order (or what some would today call global society). Nowhere in the structure of the United Nations system is the need for the moral dimension more forcefully stated than in the constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), one of the specialized agencies of the UN that reports to ECOSOC.

The preamble of the UNESCO constitution explicitly states that “since wars begin in the minds” of people, it is in people’s minds that “the defense of peace must be constructed.” Any constructed peace and security, however, if they are to last, must, according to the constitution, be “founded . . . upon the intellectual and moral solidarity of [hu]mankind.” But how is that moral solidarity to be achieved? The preamble of the UNESCO constitution goes on to say that it is through the collective acceptance of the view that the “wide diffusion of culture, and the education of humanity for justice, liberty, and peace are indispensable to the dignity” of human beings and “constitute the sacred duty which all nations must fulfill in a spirit of mutual assistance and concern.”

Nation-states, of course, are juridical entities that discharge duties through the conduct of the people who constitute them. Hence the “sacred duty” of nations is really the “sacred duty” of individuals and of the social and political groups that individuals compose. When the United Nations system was created, people were coming out of a war that was seen to have been caused by minds and cultural orientations that denied human dignity, equality, and mutual respect and that falsely propagated prejudice, inequality, and human abasement. Hence moral solidarity could not have been fully achieved through the people then living. It would have to be constructed out of future generations. It would have to be developed over time.

Moral Solidarity, Moral
Development, and Human Rights

THE cornerstone of the pursuit of moral solidarity, from the standpoint of the United Nations system, is not only moral development but the content of such development and the persons who are to be the principal bearers of that content: children. The content is the body of elementary moral and legal principles that have come to be called human rights. To explore adequately the issue of moral development and children, however, one must define what is meant by human rights. This will be done, not so much in terms of specific rights or even class of rights (although a few will be touched upon), but more so in terms of concepts that are rarely emphasized.

Human rights are moral-legal claims that individuals have by virtue of something they share with other individuals. These rights are said to be inherent because they belong to or are part of the very constitution of a person’s humanity that one individual shares with all other individuals throughout the world. One is human before one is Catholic, Japanese, woman, or poor; as such, rights that are linked to one’s humanity exist independently of one’s rights as an American, a Muslim, or a prisoner. Because the order of one’s moral rights (and responsibilities), according to the human-rights concept, is coextensive with the order of being, even the state—which enjoys so overwhelming a moral status in our lives— cannot morally pursue its national interest at the expense of one’s human rights. The concept of human rights may be looked at in two other ways—from the perspective of international [Page 16] law and the ideology of cosmopolitanism.

The international law of the pre-1945 world did acknowledge individuals. But because of that world’s state-centric focus (states were the basic units of international life, and their interests were the uncontested standards by which the moral appropriateness of international conduct was determined), individuals, like ships or rivers, were but objects. That is, they were entities to which international law applied, but they were not subjects having rights of their own. The human-rights regime of the post-1945 world recognized individuals as enjoying the status of subjects under international law, thus politically and legally acknowledging them as having rights independent of the state of which they may or may not be citizens. Complementing the evolution of international law (and certainly influencing its evolution) is the ideology of cosmopolitanism.

The cosmopolitan ideology sees the world as a universal society or cosmopolis in which individuals (not states) are the basic units. Further, the community of individuals is morally prior to the association of states, which is but the particular historical form through which human beings have elected to organize themselves politically. If the community of individuals (the human family) is morally prior to the association of states, the moral propriety of any international course of conduct is not the extent to which it corresponds to any self-defined national interest but, instead, the degree to which it comports with and accommodates the concerns of humanity. It is this moral priority to which states commit themselves when they ratify human-rights treaties. Thus each state is morally obligated to support the protection of human rights of individuals throughout the world, whether or not the individual human being happens to be a citizen. It is within the context of viewing humanity as one family, of accepting the moral priority of that family over the association of nation-states, and of recognizing the individual as a subject of international law that one must grapple with the issue of moral solidarity and moral development.

How was moral solidarity, from the point of view of the United Nations’ founders, to have been gained, especially in the light of the then (or even currently) reigning outlook that was overwhelmingly state-centered? As indicated in a quotation from UNESCO’s constitution, it would be brought about through education. The curriculum would be centered around human rights, and its specific principles and rules would be mandated through international legislative and quasilegislative efforts. Hence, beginning with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the prohibition of genocide in 1948 and continuing with the subsequent prescriptions against racial, religious, gender, occupational, minority, and other discrimination, as well as the elaboration of other human-rights norms in the civil, political, economic, social, and cultural areas, one finds an impressive body of international standard-setting instruments. Among those instruments are the previously mentioned 1959 Declaration on the Rights of the Child and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. These last two instruments not only give a sense of the range (however limited range) of the curriculum of education for moral development but also indicate that by the late 1950s children were no longer seen as merely objects to be protected by international law but as subjects with rights as other human beings. It had to be so, because—among other things—children [Page 17] were going to be the principal means of moral development, the chief agent of change, and the vehicle for global transformation.

Children, Moral Development,
and Moral Solidarity

THE moral solidarity envisioned by the creators of the United Nations system could not be realized at the time of its coming into being. Most people living then did not have the moral orientation and development to assure its realization. Hence the desired moral development and solidarity would have to come from future generations who would understand that children’s roles are critical.

Although the human-rights principles and norms have embodied much of the intended curricular focus of education for moral development and solidarity, not all human-rights instruments are of equal importance for that focus. In its emphasis on the education of children, no human-rights instrument is more important than the little-discussed Declaration on the Promotion Among Youth of the Ideals of Peace, Mutual Respect and Understanding Between Peoples (DYPMRU), which was adopted by the United Nations in 1965. To underline the centrality and historical continuity of this instrument (as is the case of other human-rights instruments of comparable standing), its authors reviewed and reaffirmed all previous international commitments to the role of human rights in defining the nature of humankind’s common future. In particular, DYPMRU recalls the commitments to the pursuit of moral solidarity— from the United Nations Charter to many of the instruments earlier mentioned, including the Declaration on the Rights of the Child. Of special significance is its reference to the work of UNESCO in promoting collaboration among nations through education and culture. It then moves to focus on children.

Echoing William Wordsworth’s assertion that the “child is father of the man,” the preamble of the DYPMRU expresses the view that children are “destined to guide the fortunes of [hu]mankind.” With the DYPMRU’s statement as a starting point, it is safe to say that there can be no moral solidarity unless those who guide human fortunes are morally oriented to help cultivate that solidarity. To ensure that orientation, DYPMRU seeks to give education a direction that is consonant with the stated role of children. Hence it aims to “develop all their [the children’s] faculties and train them to acquire higher moral qualities, to be deeply attached to the noble ideals of peace, liberty, and the dignity and equality” of all human beings. But there must be a link between the ideals taught, the roles to be assumed, and the psychological capacity to discharge that role in accordance with the ideals. Thus the education should also enable children to “become conscious of their responsibilities in the world they will be called upon [in varying capacities] to manage and [through which they] should be inspired with confidence in the future happiness of all [hu]mankind.” Finally, all children should be “brought up in the spirit of peace, justice, freedom, mutual respect and understanding in order to promote the equal rights of all human beings and all nations, economic and social progress, disarmament and the maintenance of international peace and security.” To the ideals that should shape children through education, Article 28 of the Convention on the Rights of Children adds the spirit of tolerance, equality of the sexes, and “friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national, and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin,” as well as “development of respect for the natural environment.”

[Page 18] An examination of the DYPMRU makes several things evident. First, there is no reference to the use of force to deal with conflicts. Second, the emphasis is on values of “mutual respect and understanding,” equal rights for all human beings and nations, human dignity, and freedom, justice, and peace, among others. Third, there is no focus on children, from the various positions they may come to occupy in life, guiding the fortunes of nations or the happiness of states. Rather, the focus is on humankind, including its social and economic progress. Those references and emphases are consistent with the type of person who, through education, has reached the desired level of moral development and now embodies the ideals and confidence needed to enable him or her to pursue disarmament and the peaceful settlements of disputes—through mediation, conciliation, arbitration, and adjudication, for example. Those are also the persons who will accept as a “sacred duty” the moral priority of humanity over the current claims of nation-states and who, in addition, will seek to bring into being the type of institutional organs that will recognize the common citizenship of all human beings within global society. After all, what less than a system of common citizenship within human society (the human family) could properly serve the fact of humankind’s moral unity?

A close look at the salutary effort of the United Nations system to promote the moral development of children as a means to give institutional expression to human moral solidarity makes it clear that the approach chosen by nation-states to implement their pledge to the U.N. to pursue moral development is defective. Further clarity can he obtained by reviewing the two fundamental approaches that human beings have followed in the area of moral education: one may be called the social-habit approach, and the other, the formal- or abstract-reflection approach.

Approaches To Moral Development

IN the abstract-reflection approach one partakes in moral development and pursues the moral life (as well as moral solidarity) by consciously applying oneself to a body of ideals and rules. Phrased somewhat differently, in this approach development of the moral life results from choices among rationally weighed alternatives, with the specific alternative at any given time or in any defined circumstance chosen on grounds of considered consequences. There is, therefore, always a decisional space between reflected-on, learned ideals or rules of conduct and one’s actual moral behavior. The social-habit approach to moral development is not the product of explicit ideals or a body of rules; neither is it something reflectively learned and then put into practice upon consideration of alternative rules and likely consequences. Rather, as is the case of a child learning a language, it is the acquisition of certain habits of conduct through one’s association with particular patterns of social behavior, with people who behave in a certain manner. In the social-habit approach, [Page 19] very much as in language behavior (and morality is the language of conscience), one does not consider another pattern of speaking in saying what one has learned by habit to say. There is no space between conduct and thought, just as there is no space between the observation of social conduct and the effort to put that conduct into practice by imitation. Further, especially for the child, the imitation of certain levels of moral conduct will precede the life of reflection.

The two approaches may be said to be ideal types because each society, in some degree, has an overlap of each as part of what informs the moral life. But in every society one approach will, by varying degrees, enjoy greater or lesser emphasis. In the United States, for example, greater stress is placed on the abstract-reflection approach; in Japan the social-habit approach receives the weightier emphasis. The United Nations system, following the dominant preference of societies since the time of the Enlightenment, has chosen to emphasize, through its explicitly stated ideals and bodies of detailed rules of conduct, the abstract- or formal-reflection approach. This approach, however, has some very serious defects that, if not corrected, will not yield the desirable results the United Nations founders and all humanity seek.

First, the formal-reflection approach tends to see moral education and development as somewhat specialized rather than something that is all-pervading, spreading, and assimilated into all areas of one’s life. Second, by virtue of its specialized and abstract nature, the approach rarely induces one to see the relationship between moral values and the broader human condition. Indeed, one can know very well the formal ideals and rules and yet never understand their application to ambient life. For example, many leaders and countries—as in the case of the problems between the United States and Singapore concerning the Michael Fay case—do not react to the violations of human rights wherever and whenever those violations take place. They only react to the violations of the rights of humans who happen to be their nationals. They do not understand that human means human. Their moral solidarity is with nationality, not humanity. Third, and perhaps most important under the formal-reflection approach, when one behaves morally, when one leads the moral life, one does so because one feels obligated to comply with an ideal or a code of rules, not because one’s very identity is implicated. The religions that do not confuse the religious life with adherence to abstract dogma have much to teach us. The Bahá’í Faith, for example, urges one not so much to do but to be:

Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity. Be worthy of the trust of thy neighbor, and look upon him with a bright and friendly face. Be a treasure to the poor, an admonisher to the rich, an answerer to the cry of the needy. . . . Be a home to the stranger, a balm to the suffering. . . .

[Page 20] Here one is dealing not with rules to be learned but with the nurturing of a disposition, a way of life, a state of being, an identity. An approach to moral development that gives greater emphasis to social habit seeks to shape identity and is, therefore, apt to be more successful in forging moral solidarity because there is a correspondence between being and doing. (To be is to do; and to do is to be.) This emphasis on being does not mean that one should forego abstract ideals, especially when those ideals are placed within the larger framework of the social and moral contexts that gave birth to them. It simply means that a greater balance between the two approaches should be struck so that an alternative to the current focus on the formal and its associated weaknesses can be put into being.

Moral Development and
Global Transformation

THE United Nations system, as earlier pointed out, has sought moral development as part of a broader plan to effect global transformation. That development would become part of the basis for human moral solidarity, with the human-rights regime serving as the substantive outlines of the values of that solidarity. In elaborating the norms of human rights, the world—through the United Nations— has reaffirmed its interest in that transformation as well as its accompanying moral solidarity. Likewise, nation-states, in ratifying the human-rights instruments, have also indicated a public inclination to carry out part of their human-rights obligations under the United Nations Charter—that of engaging in “teaching and education to promote” universal recognition, respect for, and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms as a common standard forall people. In discharging that obligation to the United Nations, however, states have followed the world organization in its approach to moral education—that of abstract reflection.

In a world that is as culturally and otherwise various as it is at present, it is important to have a core of values on which all societies can agree. Likewise, it is desirable to have those values explicitly stated in the form of principles and norms so that the cultural diversity of humankind does not obscure its moral oneness. To the extent, therefore, that the United Nations has elaborated an impressive body of human-rights principles and norms and has gained the pledges of states to teach and educate people, especially children, within their borders to respect and observe human rights, its achievements have been very significant. And yet those achievements have not brought with them either the hoped-for fruits of socioeconomic progress for all, international peace and security, or human solidarity. The principal reasons for this unfulfilled expectation are the weaknesses in the abstract-reflection approach to moral development. An example illustrates the claim.

By emphasizing the teaching of abstract rules and principles, states—as well as other organs of society and individuals—have often been able to bypass the need to act, actually to behave as human-rights norms require. In short, they have not felt the need to embody in themselves the values that the rights represent. Hence a violation of human rights has not been a violation of an individual’s or any state’s identity; it has been the violation of “distant” rules—the rules that exist in the space between reflection and action. Parents, on whose shoulders so much of early moral training depends, have been able to do likewise: while they, too, have spoken of human rights to their children, many have had the freedom to have their sons and daughters prepare for the slaughter of other parents’ sons and daughters. Nation-states have even [Page 21] been able—in the midst of their instruction about human rights—to teach their respective nationals that the latter’s collective national identity is defined in terms of how they differ from other people. Furthermore, they even teach that those supposed differences bespeak fundamental and natural divisions among human beings.

Yet, if the social-habit approach to moral development were followed—at least if it were brought more centrally into an alliance with its abstract-reflection counterpart—individuals would have the norms and principles more fully integrated in their sense of self, and nation-states, by extension, in their sense of national self. Parents also—and the family is one of the organs of society (actually the “natural and fundamental group unit of society” that are to lead in the process of human-rights education—would find that they would have to embody the human-rights norms they seek to teach their children. In this sense children will lead not only by way of various roles they will play in society as they become adults, having been taught through social habit certain norms of moral conduct, but also by means of the reciprocal impact they will have on their parents who are initially their teachers. Liv Ullmann, the Norwegian actress who for a number of years has represented the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), has said all of this movingly, in narrating some of her experiences with children:

The most profound experiences I have had in terms of giving and being given have been from very underprivileged parts of the world. These are the touch, the smells, and the kindness that I seem to remember from childhood and somehow did not find in adult life. . . . During travels for UNICEF I always spend time with children. When I am holding them, something opens up in me that has only been half-open in the life I have had as an adult, a place of reality, truth, and tenderness. . . .As a parent, if I sit with a mother and her child who is dying of measles because this child did not have vaccination or health care the way my child has, the little one is suddenly precious to me as my own. Parenthood now, to me, involves all children.

Many meanings are contained in Ullmann’s statement. But underlying all of them is the idea that she discovered that in giving, in ministering to the needs of children, she received; she discovered that things opened up in her, that she is the parent of all children, a part of one human family. In ministering to a child’s moral development, in being part of the social-habit approach, a parent—as in the case of Ullmann—will come to discover that “something opens up” in him or her. That something is nothing less than his or her moral and spiritual constitution. In the process of engaging in morally praiseworthy conduct (on behalf of children, for example), one “mirrors back” oneself through that which is produced—a form of self-recognition through an externalized other, that, actually, is oneself. The reach and reverberations of such an experience is almost unlimited.

The focus on moral development and moral solidarity by the United Nations system should, therefore, encourage an alliance between the social-habit and the abstract-reflection approaches to moral development. As a result, children and their parents will become the principal agents for global transformation. (One should recall that, apart from the influence children can have on their parents, children become parents in their turn.) Apart from what has been said before, the [Page 22] alliance between the two approaches offers potential contributions in several areas that should help in the process of global transformation, originally sought in 1945. The areas of likely contributions include the relationship between the state and values, the economic and social alterations that were seen as necessary concomitants of moral development, historical time lines, and the “sacred duty” with which this discussion of moral development and global transformation began.

The idea of committing states and transnational institutions such as the United Nations system to promote a body of common values is always going to invite disagreement because many societies implicitly or otherwise accept the notion of humanistic relativism. Such disagreements can be largely overcome, however, because parents are going to be so significantly involved in the efforts being suggested that there will not be the sense of a central government imposing a system of values. Rather, the complementarity between what parents seek to do and what a state encourages to meet its obligation to the United Nations will be considerable. Likewise, because of the greater emphasis on actual conduct and moral identity—instead of only statements of abstract moral principles— people will feel less threatened by these “values”; they will begin to see these very values in the form of admirable conduct and persons, not some monolithic body of ideas. Equally important, individuals will come to appreciate that political activities are really ethical choices exercised at the level of national governments and international organizations.

In the area of economic and social alterations, it has already been noted that those who created the post-1945 world order saw the “economic and social advancement of all peoples” as one of the means by which the causes of war could be removed and international peace and security ensured. It was hoped that the process of moral development would affirmatively interact with the social and economic alterations that would sponsor economic advancement. Emphasis on the abstract-reflection approach to moral development, however, has not been able to help effect the type of changes required, the adoption of large numbers of international human-rights instruments in the social and economic fields, notwithstanding. Indeed, the social and economic conditions between and within nations are getting worse, as indicated by the following: In 1989 the richest fifth of humankind had 82.7 percent of the world’s GNP, 81.2 percent of its trade, 94.4 percent of its lending, 80.6 percent of its domestic savings, and 80.5 percent of its domestic investment. The figures for the poorest fifth were 1.4 percent of the world’s GNP, 1.0 percent of its trade, 0.2 percent of its lending, 1.0 percent of its domestic savings, and 1.3 percent of its domestic investment.

Children who are born to the poorest fifth (and it should be noted that what is left for the other three-fifths of humanity is not much either), will find it difficult to be “inspired with confidence in the future happiness of all [hu]mankind,” to be persuaded that the principle of justice is applicable to their lives, or to believe in the idea of equality of opportunity [Page 23] for all. The alliance will permit more of the social-habit approach to demonstrate grounds for belief in future social and economic transformation, which brings up the importance of timeliness.

The ideal of human unity is making its way to the front of general human consciousness. In former generations much of this consciousness was shared by great religious teachers and exceptional thinkers in ethics, as well as some of their followers, but never the general public. The rise and flowering of nationalism, in particular, nurtured the view that human beings are naturally divided into exclusive cultural communities called nations, a view that the nation-states themselves reinforced. But now the nation-state is in decline. Along with that decline is not only the increased social and economic dislocation of people but the opening of many more points of moral articulation. The alliance between the abstract-reflection and social-habit approaches to moral development will help to remove some of the more aggressive edges (the type of hand-to-hand and mouth-to-mouth legal combat that often characterizes abstract debates about human rights, for example) associated with a primary focus on the abstract-reflection approach, thus facilitating the diffusion of human-rights values across cultural frontiers. Most important, the need to embody the moral values espoused will offer a timely moral clarity, as different cultures seek to deal with their increased consciousness of human unity. The final contribution resides with the area of “sacred duty” called for in the preamble to UNESCO’s constitution.

The “sacred duty” of all nations (under the United Nations system)—a duty that each nation must fulfill—is the “wide diffusion of culture, and the education of humanity for justice and liberty and peace.” This difiusion and education have been seen, likewise, as “indispensable to the dignity” of all human beings. With the decline of the nation-state’s sovereign status, and, therefore, the corresponding decline in its felt need to seek exclusivist claims to its identity, it will be better able to discharge its duty to help educate humanity. The moral content of the education outlined for children, together with the recommended approach to that moral education, should conduce, significantly, to the fulfillment of that duty.

[Page 24]

[Page 25]

Freedom of Religion in the
U.S. Bill of Rights: A Bahá’í
Perspective

BY WILLIAM P. COLLINS

Copyright © 1997 by William P. Collins. This essay is adapted from a talk given on 14 December 1991 on the occasion of the bicentennial of the U.S. Bill of Rights.

TWO hundred years after the adoption of the U.S. Bill of Rights, we still understand only inadequately the foundations of our constitutional life. After the United States’ declaration of independence in 1776, the nation’s constitutional framework under the Articles of Confederation was found to be inadequate to the needs of a large nation. The result was a lengthy debate about the proper constitution for such a union of states. A new document was crafted in a constitutional convention and officially adopted by most states in 1789, in part due to the persuasive advocacy of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in The Federalist Papers. Despite the creation of an acceptable document, there were objections to the absence of a specific guarantee of rights to American citizens. This was remedied in 1791 by the ratification of the first ten amendments to the Constitution, collectively known as the Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights is everyone’s text. It is a text that evolves as we daily discover new meanings and applications for our individual and collective experience. It is also part of a great movement in the historical development of international human rights, as the United States takes its inevitable place in the forums of world civilization and international accord. There are significant questions this document should lead us to ponder as we move into the twenty-first century: Can we act in an ethical manner if the moral dimension supplied by religion is missing? Are we prepared to make principled choices about social and governmental change? Does the Bill of Rights speak to our obligations in the community as well as to our personal freedoms? Is it not timely to introduce a Bahá’í perspective in discussions of the religious liberty clauses of the Bill of Rights and of the interdependence of rights and obligations?

[Page 26] Three main areas will be examined: first, the sources and influences of the American Bill of Rights and its religious liberty clauses; second, the effect of first amendment guarantees of freedom of religion on the recent history of Bahá’ís in Iran; and, finally, a Bahá’í view of individual rights and obligations.

Sources of Religious Liberty Clauses

THE United States Bill of Rights evolved from earlier documents and from a body of social and political philosophy and expression. In 1215 the British barons forced King John to sign the Magna Charta to limit the monarch's ability to increase his income and power through taxation; by so doing they protected and increased their own power. But the Archbishop of Canterbury influenced the inclusion of two clauses that protected freemen against imprisonment, exile, and other forms of royal pressure without lawful judgment by peers or by the law of the land (no. 39) and that swore the king not to “sell, deny or delay right of justice” (no. 40). The British Bill of Rights of 1689 was the product of a long struggle with Stuart kings over the prerogatives of the sovereign versus those of parliament, a struggle that ended with the Glorious Revolution and the installation of William of Orange as king and Mary as co-ruler. Parliament’s powers, obtained at the expense of the British monarch, now made it possible for that body to impose its own arbitrary rule on British subjects. A central motivation for the British Bill of Rights was Parliament’s fear that the birth of James II’s son by his Catholic queen would lead to further attempts by the monarch to impose Catholicism on a predominantly Anglican realm.

Some conclusions can be drawn from British history. The Magna Charta and British Bill of Rights were not primarily intended to promote the general diffusion of individual rights but were attempts to limit the powers of absolute monarchs so that privileged groups—barons or parliament—would have their powers and rights protected from arbitrary infringement. Religion was a positive factor in the inclusion of human rights in the Magna Charta but was a problematical motivation in the 1689 Bill of Rights because of the historic struggle of Catholic and Anglican monarchs in Britain. Indeed, in 1694 Parliament excluded Catholics from the English throne and fully established the Church of England as the state church.

Nor were the British colonies in North America up to the 1776 Revolution always a haven for religious liberty as we have come to understand it. Religious communities such as the Puritans, who came to America seeking their own liberty, frequently exercised that liberty by denying it to others. In 1624 The colony of Virginia had established the Church of England as the state church, with clergy having to come from England and serve under the control of the Virginia Assembly. These historical antecedents contributed to an appreciation on the part of our nation’s founders of the social benefits of religious faith, while filling them with a legitimate fear of religious orthodoxy as an instrument of state policy.

[Page 27] The Christian founders of the United States were also classically educated and well-read individuals who created a constitution based on the models outlined by Aristotle in his Politics. They were also thoroughly familiar with two great English philosophers, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, who argued that the state originates in a social contract among citizens whereby they give up the freedom that exists in the state of nature in return for certain services provided by the state. Locke stated that citizens had certain fundamental rights such as preservation of life and property and freedom of thought, speech, and worship; what citizens give up to the state is the right to judge and punish others. When the founding fathers framed a guarantee of rights, they turned to British history and to Hobbes and Locke, from whose philosophies they formulated the following clause in the first amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . .” This was not a guarantee of rights to a select class or group of people as had been the case with the Magna Charta and the British Bill of Rights, nor did it undermine or deny religion. Rather, it made possible the expression of individual and communal belief and worship, unhindered by arbitrary authority or by state-supported and controlled denominations. More important, it implicitly recognized the diversity of human religious expression and its collective value for a free society.

The fundamental human right of freedom of worship is now incorporated in most national constitutions. Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, and signed by most of the world’s nations, states that “everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

Freedom of Religion and the Bahá’ís in Iran

THE protection for religious liberty enshrined in the United States Constitution is of special interest to Bahá’ís. The Bahá’í Faith is a religion that, because of its recent origin, its rapid growth, and its universalizing teachings, has been subject to restriction and persecution in some countries in the Islamic Middle East and Indonesia, in communist states, and in some one-party states in Africa that have state religions or arbitrary governments. The Bahá’í community in Iran is the largest religious minority in that country, with some three [Page 28] hundred thousand members. In 1979 Iran’s monarchy was replaced by a Revolutionary Islamic regime under the guidance of Ayatollah Khomeini. Though the Qur’án, a scripture sacred to both Muslims and Bahá’ís, says “Let there be no compulsion in religion” (2:257), and though Iran is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the new regime imposed a constitution recognizing only Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism as legal religions, thus entitling their believers to passports, ration cards, education, and protection under the law. For Ayatollah Khomeini there could be no religion after Islam, no Prophet after Muḥammad. Thus he had to deny the Bahá’í Faith the status of a religion and redefine it as a political, subversive movement. The Islamic Revolutionary government considered the historic existence of the Bahá’í World Center in Haifa, Israel, as proof of conspiracy with Zionism, though that World Center had been established in Palestine during Ottoman Turkish rule. It deemed the presence of a long-time Bahá’í community in the United States as evidence that Bahá’ís were American agents. It saw the offer of asylum extended by the Russian government in the nineteenth century to persecuted Bahá’ís as confirmation that the Bahá’í religion was an invention of Russian imperialism.

In the absence of protections for the Bahá’í community like those in the U.S. constitution Iran’s government was thus able to seize all Bahá’í assets and property, expel Bahá’í students from schools and universities, fire all Bahá’ís who were government employees with the demand that they repay their salaries, deprive Bahá’ís of ration cards and passports, and declare their marriages illegal. It unleashed a wave of persecution that rendered thousands homeless, forced tens of thousands of families to flee Iran, and resulted in the execution of over two hundred Bahá’ís on trumped-up political charges that would be dropped if only the accused would recant his or her belief.

The actions of the Iranian regime were an attack not only on the religion but on the Bahá’ís as a people. The Bahá’í Faith has no clergy; all Bahá’í institutions are lay institutions, composed of individuals who are elected by the community annually. All adult Bahá’ís are electors, and all adult Bahá’ís are candidates. Three times in less than a decade the entire National Spiritual Assembly, the governing body of the Bahá’í community, was seized and most members executed; entire local Bahá’í governing bodies were imprisoned, tortured, and killed; and in one celebrated case, Muná Maḥmúdnizhád, a seventeen-year-old guilty of teaching Bahá’í children’s classes, was hanged with several other Bahá’í women. Parents destined for the firing squad’s bullets would scratch loving messages to their families on biscuit tins minutes before their executions. Children were forcibly taken from their parents and forced to marry Muslims or were placed in Muslim families. Many times children were brought before the mullahs to be grilled about their religious beliefs. One of these children was forced to appear before a row of bearded and stern clerics who asked him, “‘Do you have any business?’” His reply, delivered in a remarkably unchildlike manner, was, “‘No, you have business with me.’” They let [Page 29] him go. The Bahá’ís are no longer able to practice their religion openly in that troubled and repressive nation.

The Iranian authorities, in launching their campaign to “decapitate” the Bahá’í community, not only made a morally unconscionable decision; they also committed a serious error in judgment. The Bahá’í Faith is established in every country and territory of the globe, with 175 national bodies and some 17,000 local governing bodies. It is also a nongovernmental organization long recognized by the United Nations and a respected faith in countries the constitutions and governments of which uphold religious liberty in deed. After seeking and failing to obtain redress directly from the Iranian government, the Bahá’í community publicly broached its case with the United Nations and national governments. Parliaments, human-rights organizations, and supranational bodies investigated and began to issue formal resolutions and to exert diplomatic pressure on Iran. The Bahá’í case was frequently mentioned on the floor of the United States Congress, resulting in joint resolutions that have been issued every two years for the last fourteen years calling upon Iran to cease its persecution and to abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Of immediate and life-saving importance for a large number of Iranian Bahá’ís was the fact that the United States granted many of them asylum. The ability of the international community to exert moral leverage that somewhat mitigated the suffering of the Iranian Bahá’ís was the result of a long historical effort to establish freedom of religion, a process in which the U.S. Bill of Rights has been a watershed moral document.

Bahá’í View of Rights and Obligations

THE gratitude felt by Bahá’ís for the Bill of Rights’ guarantee of religious liberty and nonestablishment is not blind. Whatever one’s theoretical position regarding the nature of law and rights, there are two contemporary trends that are hard to deny. First, much of the world is approaching general agreement on the principles of fundamental personal human rights and is testifying to that fact through the breathtaking changes overtaking totalitarian regimes. Second, the United States and much of the rest of the world are undergoing a crisis of understanding as extreme expressions of individual rights begin to undermine the rule of law, personal liberty, and community cohesion. The statement that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” was not, in the eyes of Bahá’ís, a call to remove the influence of morality and religion from the social fabric. Nor was the Bill of Rights intended to exalt the individual over society [Page 30] and encourage antisocial or seditious behavior. A constructive view of freedom implies limits, moderation, and wisdom; rights must be coupled with social obligations. If this were not so, freedom of speech and the press would not be limited by laws against slander and libel, laws that are frequently ignored or even denounced now. No system of law, no categorization of rights, can protect the liberty of the human being and provide maximum benefit to one’s country unless there is a moral underpinning to the society that claims those rights giving the moral foundation and the rationale necessary for social cohesion. Bahá’u’lláh calls upon the leaders and people of the world to have due regard for the station and influence of religion as an “instrument for the establishment of order in the world and of tranquillity amongst its peoples.” Religion is intended “to establish unity and concord amongst the peoples of the world” and not to be “the cause of dissension and strife.” He even goes so far as to argue that when religion is used as an instrument to generate disunity it is better to do without that religion.

Hence Bahá’u’lláh cautions humanity about its fascination with personal freedoms granted in a moral vacuum:

Consider the pettiness of men’s minds. They ask for that which injureth them, and cast away the thing that profiteth them. . . . We find some men desiring liberty, and priding themselves therein. . . .

. . . That which beseemeth man is submission unto such restraints as will protect him from his own ignorance, and guard him against the harm of the mischief-maker. . . .

. . . We approve of liberty in certain circumstances, and refuse to sanction it in others. . . .

Say: True liberty consisteth in man’s submission unto My commandments, little as ye know it. Were men to observe that which We have sent down unto them from the Heaven of Revelation, they would, of a certainty, attain unto perfect liberty. . . . Say: The liberty that profiteth you is to be found nowhere except in complete servitude unto God, the Eternal Truth. Whoso hath tasted of its sweetness will refuse to barter it for all the dominion of earth and heaven.

When Bahá’ís feel gratitude to the United States for the religious freedom enshrined in its Bill of Rights and for its hospitality to and defense of their dispossessed Iranian brethren, that gratitude stems from the Bahá’ís’ moral commitment to religion as the foundation of social cohesion. This same moral [Page 31] commitment sustains Bahá’ís who remain in Iran. The Bahá’í’s in Iran are not asserting and fighting for their rights with weapons, harsh words, political subversion, or immoral actions. Rather, they are seeking those rights on the moral basis that God-given rights are inherent in one’s person (as affirmed in the Bible, the Qur’án, the Bahá’í writings—and the U.S. Bill of Rights), and that bearing all with dignity and courage will promote the respect that will lead to ultimate recognition.

The United States Bill of Rights, now two hundred years old, is more than a mere code of rights. Every one of the legal rights delineated in that document can only take its true social life when nourished by principled moral conditions. Freedom of speech is technically the license to say almost anything; the right to bear arms can be taken to mean the unrestricted right to own and to use any weapon no matter how dangerous to ourselves and our families and communities; the right to trial by jury in certain suits can become an extreme in which the most petty of disputes enter the courts. When the Bill of Rights is supported by the moral foundation that religious liberty protects, speech can be tempered by wisdom, the guarantee of freedom does not have to be measured by the power and size of one’s arsenal, and disputes are less likely to become litigation. The relationship between law and morality is something that our country’s founders seem to have understood but that has become blurred in an age of unrestrained individualism.

The particulars of the American Bill of Rights evolved from the Magna Charta and the British Bill of Rights in which privileged classes were protected from arbitrary exercise of kingly prerogatives. Religion played both positive and negative roles in those earlier charters. The United States’ First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty freed people from arbitrary monarchical, parliamentary, and sectarian powers; it recognized the diversity of human spiritual expression; and it implied the moral requirements of good citizenship that can ensure the safety of human rights. The Bahá’í community has special reason to be grateful for American religious freedom because that freedom has nourished a healthy and successful American Bahá’í community since its establishment in 1894 and because that freedom has come to the aid of today’s oppressed Iranian Bahá’ís. For all Bahá’ís, the social role of religion is to promote harmony, understanding, and social cohesion as well as personal development. This is the moral foundation without which a code of rights is simply a set of words without meaning, a body without a soul. The world moves on toward a universal recognition and application of our God-given rights, but that journey is beset by the dangers of divorcing individual rights from social responsibility. Bahá’ís have great faith that the depth of the principles of religious freedom enshrined in the Bill of Rights will ultimately create a growing spiritual partnership determined to forge a world free of nationalist rivalry, racial prejudice, and religious bigotry. The past and future role of the United States as a moral exemplar and defender of human rights in that noble process is highly extolled in the Bahá’í writings:

[Page 32]

the continent of America is, in the eyes of the one true God, the land wherein the splendors of His light shall be revealed, where the mysteries of His Faith shall be unveiled, where the righteous will abide and the free assemble.

May this American democracy be the first nation to establish the foundation of international agreement. May it be the first nation to proclaim the unity of mankind. . . .

[Page 33]

Trilogy for She II: Eva’s Scream

She

did what we all needed

was the oldest and knew something of pain.

Sitting there

in black

serviceable shoes

worn leather bag. Her hands big. Bare.

Money tied up in a white handkerchief tight in her bosom

close to her heart. Safe.

Gone.

Her son was not supposed to die before she did.

Here was the question.

Her eyes were dry.

It had rained that day.

The earth was soft and raw.

In the car

silence was everywhere suffocating.

The scream was no surprise,

was fitting. A tight embrace of sound.

We could breathe again.

Riding on toward home.

—Ijeoma Chinue Thomas

Copyright © 1997 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States

[Page 34]

[Page 35]

The Story of Joseph
in Five Religious Traditions

BY JIM STOKES

Copyright © 1997 by Jim Stokes.

THE story of Joseph is one of the oldest and most enduring stories in the world’s religious and secular literature. It has been told and retold, and variously interpreted, serving as an endless reservoir of spiritual meaning for diverse cultures and religions. Most people in the West know the story from the book of Genesis in the Old Testament where it is generally recognized as “a masterpiece of biblical narrative” and the most sustained narrative in the Old Testament. But it holds a no less significant place in the literature and teachings of Christianity, Islam, the Bábí religion, and the Bahá’í Faith; and it had analogues in ancient Egyptian literature and Zoroastrian texts as well. What is so important about this particular narrative that the Manifestation of God Muḥammad Himself was moved to call it “the fairest of stories?” Why, thirteen hundred years after Muḥammad’s statement, would the Báb, the Founder of the Bábí religion in nineteenth-century Persia, choose to announce His prophetic identity and mission to the first of His followers by composing in that person’s presence (as His main proof) the first chapter of a commentary on the Súrih of Joseph from the Qur’án?

Tracing the story through its appearance and treatment in five of the world’s religions that span a period of three millennia not only offers insights into the nature of the tale but also into the common literary and spiritual heritage of these several religions. To their founders and leaders, the story has always had significance lifting it above mere literary narrative. As Muḥammad revealed: “it is not a tale forged [made by men] but a confirmation.” From that perspective the story also offers insights into the various modes by which five religiously inspired cultures and civilizations have sought to define and interpret reality—a process that continues to the present day. Above all, their respective responses to the story illustrate the ways in which each of the five religions understand the nature and role of the Manifestations of God themselves, those great and mysterious Beings at the center of each of the religions.

The Old Testament

IN THE Old Testament the story of Joseph occupies the final lengthy section (chapters 37-50) of Genesis, the first book of the Pentateuch—the five books traditionally known as the books of Moses. The story of [Page 36] Joseph follows and completes the story of his father, Jacob, grandson of Abraham, and precedes Exodus, the story of Moses, the second book of the Bible. From a literary point of view the Genesis version of the story belongs to what literary scholars call the narrative genre of romance, especially as the form was used in the Middle Ages. That is, it is the story of a great life, episodically told, incorporating elements of adventure, mistaken identity, miraculous escapes, mysterious interventions, reunions, movement between geographically diverse settings, and, ultimately, the success and vindication of the hero. But in religious texts the story is also invested with deeper significance; it encapsulates the unique shape and meaning of the life of a Manifestation of God.

In barest summary, the principal events of the story in Genesis are as follows. Joseph was the second youngest of the twelve sons of Jacob. His mother, and the mother of his younger brother, Benjamin, was Rachel. When young Joseph incurred the wrath of his brothers by telling them, with innocent honesty, of two symbolic dreams portraying his eventual dominion over them, they conspired to kill “this dreamer” (Gen. 37:19-20) and to discredit his dreams by murdering him. His brother Ruben persuaded them, instead, to cast him into a well. Eventually they sold Joseph to traveling merchants who brought him into Egypt where they, in turn, sold him to Potiphar, the Captain of the Pharaoh’s guard. Through Joseph’s virtues and gifts he eventually rose to a position of great favor and responsibility; but, when Potiphar’s wife, having failed in her efforts to seduce him, claimed that it was he who had tried to seduce her, Joseph was cast into prison. Even there, however, through his innate capacities, he rose to a position of favor (Gen. 39-41).

Then begins a sequence of two sets of twin dreams that Joseph successfully interpreted. In the first set, the Pharaoh’s butler and baker, having been cast into prison, sought Joseph’s interpretation of their respective dreams. He complied, telling them that the butler would live and be restored to the Pharaoh’s household but that the baker would die, both of which predictions came to pass. In the second set of dreams the Pharaoh dreamed first of seven fat kine and seven lean kine that came out of the river, then of seven good ears of corn that consumed seven bad ears. Joseph interpreted both dreams as a single imminent prophecy warning of the approach of seven years of plenty to be followed by seven years of famine. He counseled the Pharaoh to take steps to prepare for these events. For these feats Joseph was made overseer of all the Pharaoh’s land and goods (Gen. 39-41).

The next episode—the central one of the tale—relates Joseph’s forgiveness of his brothers when they came to Egypt seeking relief from the famine and Joseph’s eventual reunion with his family. Through a series of stratagems he compelled the brothers, in stages and by degrees, to see the errors of their ways. He ordered them to return to Canaan and bring to Egypt their entire family (the eventual tribes of Israel), including their father. Before the brothers’ returned to Egypt with their father after this second trip into Canaan God spoke to Jacob in a dream, assuring him that he had nothing to fear and counseling him to go into Egypt as bidden by Joseph (Gen. 42-47). The episode illustrates Joseph’s true purpose—to awaken remorse in his brothers for their earlier misdeeds, and it dramatizes the forgiveness, generosity, compassion, and love that Joseph shows to his brothers, standing in transcendent contrast to their own earlier actions against him.

To someone for whom the story is a symbolic dramatization of the life and mission of a Manifestation of God, leaving out any detail in summarizing it is potentially problematic. But it seems safe to say that two motifs— dreams and garments—seem to be more important than others as symbols because of [Page 37] the way they recur, unify the story, and illustrate the station of Joseph. It is Joseph’s own dreams and his ability to interpret dreams that sets him apart, whether his clear vision of his own eventual ascendancy or his ability to interpret the dreams of the prisoners and the Pharaoh. Further, the dream motif also demonstrates Jacob’s spiritual station when God, in a dream, reassures Jacob and tells him to go as bidden into Egypt (Gen. 46:2-3); and though not a dream, Jacob’s final act—a ceremony in which he places his hand on Ephraim, the younger of Joseph’s two sons, thereby selecting him for ascendancy over Joseph’s first born son, Manassah, contravening the principle of primogeniture on behalf of innate worthiness—seems a mystically informed act (Gen. 48:13-20). Obviously the dream motif illustrates a superior knowledge based on mystical union with God. Joseph is the source of guidance and protection for everyone he encounters, even when separated from everyone while he was in the darkness of the well or in the prison where he has been cast. In Jacob’s dying words, he lauded Joseph’s having received “blessings of heaven above” and “blessings of the deep that lieth under” and blessings of the womb (Gen. 49:25), seeming thereby to be saying that Joseph’s knowledge transcends all place and time.

The second major motif—garments—also seems to symbolize the rank of a Manifestation of God or divinely inspired teacher and His suffering. At the beginning of the story it is Joseph’s coat of many colors (emblematic of his special rank) that his brothers strip from him and dip into the blood of a freshly slaughtered goat, telling Jacob that it is the blood of Joseph. Chapter 38, a digression that tells the story of Judah, the brother most bent on killing Joseph, seems to be about those who would usurp the Prophet’s station. It uses imagery of garments as a negative symbol, specifically when Tamar, wife of Judah’s deceased son put off her widow’s garments and replaced them with those of a harlot to entrap Judah, by which means she conceived twins. In Egypt, when Joseph is summoned back from prison to interpret the Pharaoh’s two dreams, he first changed his “raiment,” and when the Pharaoh, in gratitude, elevated Joseph to a position second only to that of his own son, Pharaoh “arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain around his neck” (Gen. 41:14, 42). Finally, Joseph was described by his dying father as “a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall” (Gen. 49:22). Though not an overt image of garments, the bough can be seen as a metaphor related to the garments treated throughout as emblematic of blessings. All these images, like the dreams, seem designed as ways of repeatedly defining Joseph in terms of a spiritual ruler.

On a literary level, the story of Joseph can be interpreted in many ways: as a tale of the separation of a lost child miraculously protected and eventually found; as a story of reunion; or as a story of forgiveness and reconciliation. As a religious text, each of these aspects can also be seen as metaphors illustrating the healing mission of a Manifestation of God. Whether viewed in literary or religious terms, Joseph is presented in The Old Testament as a chosen soul, gifted with special powers. His bond with the higher source of these gifts is never seriously threatened or questioned by Joseph or by the narrator. It is simply manifested in stages that successively and increasingly reveal his wisdom and love and the unquestionable primacy of his station. Moreover, he is the link in the chain of authority between Jacob and Moses. It is the other characters who suffer and grow in more traditional human ways, relative to their treatment of and attitudes toward Joseph. They are redeemed by him in spite of themselves.

The traditional modes of interpreting the significance of the story within Judaism are [Page 38] too richly various and complex to present adequately, even if the author were able to do so. But several of the typical traditional approaches can he noted. One approach sees the biblical story as a form of evidence about Jewish history. Scholars generally agree that numerous details in the story resonate convincingly with what is known of Egyptian culture during the early to mid-second millennium B.C.E.—from the trafficking in slaves, to Egyptian names in the story, to the structure of Egyptian bureaucracy and the forms of titles, to the famine cycle, to details of clothing. The biblical story, scholars say, seems clearly to be rooted in memory of an actual historical encounter by the Hebrews with the Egyptian empire. Even some motifs in the story have analogues in contemporaneous Egyptian stories, notably one known as the “Tale of the Two Brothers,” built on the core incident of a wife’s attempt to seduce her brother-in-law, though the purpose, focus, tone, and moral climate of the two stories are thought to be so utterly different as to preclude direct influence. But from an historical perspective, scholars have convincingly shown that the biblical author seems to be drawing brilliantly on the cultural matrix of his time to recast the material into a transcendent story exemplifying God’s mysterious but benevolent design for the Jewish nation, a design that God chose to unfold through the interpretive powers of His chosen human vessel, Joseph, and the device of the dream.

Earlier rabbinical commentators were generally less interested in pinning down historical details. Instead, they tended to view Joseph as an exemplar, an idealized model of human conduct who combined physical beauty and moral excellence. The incredibly rich Jewish tradition of midrash (interpretation) mines every detail of the story for “object lessons in rabbinic homiletics” concerning “various social, religious and political aspects of life,” sometimes critical of actions by Joseph and Jacob, more often filled with praise for his wisdom, righteousness, and loyalty. In fact, after Genesis Joseph quickly fades from view in the Bible and is but fleetingly mentioned in the Old Testament, though he remains a symbol of righteousness. The beginning of his decline seems to have coincided with the fall of the Northern Kingdom (associated with the descendants of Joseph) to the Assyrians in the eighth century B.C.E. And the subsequent story of Moses, which tends to overshadow Joseph, is an overwhelming saga of liberation. Whatever the reason, in Jewish midrash Joseph, generally speaking, evolved into a permanent symbol of the wise man rather than remaining a clear and sustained symbol of a Manifestation of God.

Finally, because the biblical version of the story is a uniquely articulated masterpiece of narrative, many modern Old Testament scholars want to see much of the story’s meaning in the shape and features of the story itself. They search for redactions, analogues, and borrowings from folk traditions. Such features as the parallel dreams and the disappearance into the well and the prison lend themselves to symbolic interpretations. The classic collection of midrash by Louis Ginsberg, includes many symbolic and mystical interpretations for parts of the story. For example, when the wolf who is blamed for the supposed death of Joseph is brought before [Page 39] Jacob, God causes it to speak and deny the killing of Joseph. Jacob’s grieving for the loss of Joseph becomes a rumination about the loss of the Covenant with God; in fact, the underlying theme of God’s plan for Israel recurs as an interpretation throughout the midtash. Most striking is the treatment of the dreams in which Joseph consistently finds dual levels of meaning and prophecies—those concerning the fate of the dreamer and those bearing a message about the destiny of Israel, which only he perceives. But in spite of this unifying recurrent symbolism, the effect of the midrash is not to interpret the story of Joseph as a perfectly articulated divine allegory but as a combination of historical narrative and religiously charged canonical text the ultimate signification of which remains mysterious and inchoate but spiritually attractive to many.

Christianity

WHILE the story of Joseph was a major part of Genesis in the Old Testament, it is mentioned only three times in the New Testament (Mark 14:51-52, which may echo the episode of the cloak and Potiphar’s wife in Genesis 39:11-12); Acts 7:9-17, which summarizes his career; and Hebrews 11:22, which lists him as a hero of faith. Yet the story had a prominent place in the development of early Christian theology as a symbol for the Christian Savior, and it continues to be both spiritually significant in Christianity and a rich imaginative source for artists.

To understand the early Christian response to the story of Joseph it is necessary to understand something of the way in which the theology of early Christianity developed. During its formative stages, the Christian Faith was faced with two great issues (among others) for which it needed to develop responses. The first was the need to explain the relationship of the New Testament to the Old Testament. Was the earlier Jewish text wrong, or was it now superseded by the Christian Gospels? Or did the two instead share a continuing interrelated life of sustained and spiritual significance as divinely revealed texts? Implicit in that question was the more urgent one: How was Christ to be understood in relation to spiritual figures who had come before him? The answer would determine Christians’ understanding of the shape and meaning of history. The second of these issues arose out of the encounter of the early Church with the Neoplatonism of Greek Hellenism, the dominant culture within which early Christianity developed. Was the Church to agree with the Platonist view that this physical, temporal world is little more than illusory, an insubstantial shadow without reality? Or does the world, though admittedly lower than the higher spiritual kingdom of which Christianity teaches, somehow partake to some extent in the larger reality?

The answer, the early Church fathers held, must be found within the New Testament, the portion of the Bible considered most important by Christians since it arose immediately from the life and teachings of Jesus. But both the New Testament and the Old Testament contained material that was by turns obscure, contradictory, at cultural odds with the emerging Christian culture, or otherwise confounding to those turning to it for guidance. The method of the early Church fathers in making sense of the Bible was to define it as an occult text—that is, a text in which the real meaning (or at least important parts of that meaning) lay beneath the surface [Page 40] of the mere letters and words themselves and which was, therefore, in need of interpretation.

The technique developed by the Church Fathers was a complex form of allegorical interpretation. Allegory itself—the interpretation of episode-within-text as elaborately articulated mystical metaphors standing for something else—was a legacy of the ancient world, but their biblical source was St. Paul, who interpreted several biblical cruxes in allegorical terms. For example, in explaining the significance of the two sons of Abraham in Galatians (4:21-31), Paul said unequivocally that the two sons “are an allegory” standing for the two covenants associated with Abraham (4:24). From that foundation there developed a system for interpreting divine text allegorically that has come to be known as the fourfold exegetical method.

Essentially the method argues that religious texts have four equipresent levels of meaning. The first is the literal or historical. The next three are allegorical meanings of several kinds: the typological, the moral or tropological (from the word trope or figure of speech), and the metaphysical or anagogical. In the first of these three allegorical meanings —the typological—the thing described prefigures or stands for something else. This level gave Christianity the means to reinterpret everything in the Old Testament as a kind of prefiguring or rehearsal of events in the coming theophany of Christ. The tropological level interprets the event as a moral teaching directed toward improving the spiritual life of the individual Christian. In the anagogical or metaphysical level the event stands for a corresponding reality in a higher spiritual realm (which reflects aspects of Platonism). This fourfold scheme accounts for past, present, and future; for individual and institutional spirituality; for the relation of the physical and the nonphysical worlds; and for the relationship between successive religious dispensations.

For example, the word “Jerusalem,” literally and historically, could mean the city itself; typologicaliy it could signify the Church of Christ (the New Jerusalem); tropologically it could signify the human soul made new in Christ; anagogically it could signify the heaveniy City of God. The fourfold method could be endlessly replicated and applied to every story and every detail in the Bible, allegorically knitting the Old Testament to the New Testament.

The story of Joseph was interpreted by the early Church fathers in terms of the exegetical method as a way of better appreciating Christ as Savior. Of all the Church Fathers, St. Ambrose—described by St. Bernard as one of “the two pillars of the Church”— endeavored in the fourth century to articulate the fourfold exegetical method in its greatest detail, and he was the one “to popularize the allegorical method in the West.” Allegorical allusions to Joseph occur in a number of his letters, but it is his exegetical treatise on Joseph that systematically presents a comprehensive allegorical interpretation of the entire story. To Ambrose, Joseph, the model of purity and chastity, was a typological [Page 41] figure representing Christ. In him “the resurrection of the Lord Jesus that was to come was revealed.” Ambrose then meticulously shows that every incident and detail in the Old Testament life of Joseph prefigures a corresponding episode in the life of Christ. For example, the significance of Jacob’s sending Joseph to inquire of his brothers whether the sheep were well is that of God sending His son, Christ, to inquire after the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Joseph was sold for a number of pieces of silver; the same was done to Christ. Joseph was stripped of his garment and cast into a dark, dry pit as if dead; in like manner Christ was stripped of His mortal flesh and cast into hell, but nothing in that attempt to destroy Him and His message could kill His divinity and immortal life. Ambrose likens the dryness of the pit to the dryness of the Jews who had “abandoned the fountain of living water.” It must be noted that in this comment can be seen a strand of the incipient antisemitism in early Christianity that, unfortunately, endured into much later times. Ambrose was the master of the fourfold allegorical method, and some of his interpretations are elegant. Indeed, he quotes from some biblical passages that, in the context he gives them, seem veiled allusions to the story of Joseph—for example, in Psalms 88:6: “Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps.”

Of the famine in Egypt that Joseph foresaw, Ambrose says that it signifies Christ “taking pity on the hungers of the world” by opening the granaries of divine mysteries that would nourish mankind. When Joseph saw his brothers again and spoke mildly to them, it was the Hebrews being seen by Christ, “who is the true Joseph,” teaching them lovingly. When Joseph told his brothers not to grieve but to go to their father and report that Joseph had been made master of Egypt, it is the resurrected Christ directing His followers to go into Galilee where they shall see Him. When the brothers did so, they were like the apostles entering the synagogue and preaching of Christ to the Jews. In the living Joseph reunited with his father is the resurrected Christ, “the interpreter of the Godhead.” This sampling illustrates but a small part of the meticulous working out of typological relationships, some of them much more subtle and ingenious than these. It was a method that won the European West with a rhetoric based on allegory.

Joseph is one of seven topics chosen by Ambrose as subjects of his major exegetical works, thus reinvesting the story with a significance that it seems to have lost in later Jewish midrash. While not the central story of Christianity (that could obviously only be the story of Christ Himself), it was allegorically made to mirror that story. And it has continued to be explored by Christian mystics, philosophers, and artists into the twentieth century. As one source says, “Few biblical figures have inspired more extensive and more universal literary treatment than Joseph.” Notable among them are twelve English plays before 1560 and many continental dramas, Thomas Mann’s novel cycle Joseph and His Brothers (1934-44), paintings by Rembrandt and other artists, and the 1968 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Joseph and the Technicolored Dreamcoat. To appreciate the importance of the story of Joseph is to appreciate the particular contribution of Christianity by way of its spiritually inspired interpretive model of reality and to understand [Page 42] the nature and role of Christ as Christianity’s universal Savior.

Islam

WITH the advent of Islam in 622 C.E. the story of Joseph moves once again from the periphery to the center of religious text in a most extraordinary way—by the words of God as revealed by the Manifestation of God Muḥammad. In the Qur’án, the holy book of Islam, Muḥammad signals the importance of the story of Joseph with words variously translated as “the fairest” or “the best” or “the most wonderful” of stories. To appreciate the profound significance of that appellation, it is necessary to understand something of the nature of the Qur’án itself.

The Qur’án is divided into 114 súrihs or chapters variously revealed to Muḥammad in either Mecca or Medina (and so identified in each case), arranged by length, and each given a name related to a motif within the chapter. The Qur’án’s most striking feature is the dramatic nature of the súrihs. In form they are dialogues between Muḥammad and the Voice of God or, more properly, monologues by God as reported by Muḥammad, along with His own responses, in which God delivers guidance via Muḥammad to the world— guidance ranging from laws and injunctions, to interpretations, to warnings, to consolations. In short, for Muslims (and for Bahá’ís) the Qur’án is nothing less than the authentic Voice of God cutting through a contemporary welter of confusions and corruption with an uncompromising and healing message of renewal to humankind. As such, the Voice of God in the Qur’án is rhetorically intense, decisive, clear, and commanding.

Hence in the Qur’án the story of Joseph is framed by the Voice of God speaking to Muḥammad. That Voice defines the story’s nature and meaning. It opens by affirming that the Arabic Qur’án is itself but a sign of “the Manifest Book” (that is, it reflects a timeless original that is in Heaven) and that Joseph is the fairest of stories within that book (12:254). Just as impressively, the súrih closes with the emphatic reiteration that the story is not “a tale forged” (that is, a human fable) but “a confirmation . . . a distinguishing . . . a guidance. . . a mercy. . . .” sent again here as it has been before (12:264). At the end of the súrih, speaking again to Muḥammad, God once more affirms that the story is meant as a gift to bring understanding. Thus the Voice of God bestows on the story an emblematic, inherently symbolic status, making it a spiritual template of the first order and thereby giving it an enduring literary and spiritual significance in Islam. In fact, His words give narrative itself, and the symbolic mode, significance too. Above all, the Qur’án appears to say that the story signifies the nearly despairing experience not only of earlier messengers of God but of Muḥammad Himself, to Whose teachings His people were not yet listening. In that sense, the Qur’án seems to be saying that Joseph is to be understood as a model for Muḥammad in a way that is reminiscent of the earlier Christian typology that interpreted Joseph as a type of Christ (although Islam does not follow the fourfold exegetical model of early Christianity).

As was the case in the Old Testament, the story of Joseph is the most detailed, narratively coherent episode in the Qur’án. But while the essential incidents of the story are the same in both holy texts, the presentation, the emphases, and the effect in the Qur’án are utterly different based on differences in the nature of the book itself. A Western reader expecting to encounter a mirror of the biblical narrative may initially be shocked, even [Page 43] a little disappointed by the differences and by the lack of concern in the Qur’án for traditional Western literary devices and signposts. But seen on its own terms, the Qur’anic story is a masterpiece of reinterpretation of Jewish and Christian law comparable to that of Christ’s reinterpretation of Jewish law in the Gospel of Matthew and part of a text so spiritually potent that it generated a new religion and civilization.

In literary terms, the Qur’anic version of the story of Joseph strips away those elements of the Old Testament story that gave it a Hebraic focus, presenting it, instead, as a universal “tidings of the Unseen” (12:265) meant to quicken and awaken the hearts of all human beings and bring them to the straight path of belief. Aside from the names Jacob and Joseph and references to Egypt, the story is presented in the Qur’án as a kind of drama, a contest unfolding on a universal stage devoid of specificities that would tie it to one culture. Even the brothers of Joseph are never named; that would detract from the point of the story and from its focus on Joseph himself.

In the Qur’anic version, the need to teach monotheism to the polytheistic peoples of Arabia (and to acknowledge and accept Muḥammad as their Guide in this process) is the structural principle underlying the story. Each incident that is retained is shaped to illustrate that grand theme; every action by Joseph is intended to demonstrate the unwavering fidelity to the one true God that not only Joseph but Muḥammad Himself and His followers must maintain in the face of the perfidies of Joseph’s brothers (themselves seemingly symbolic of all unbelieving peoples—the universal “brotherhood” of humanity in its response to the Manifestation of God). A brief example will illustrate this unique focus in the Qur’án. When Joseph is imprisoned and two young fellow prisoners relate to him their dreams and ask him to interpret their meaning, Joseph does so (as in the Old Testament). But the incident becomes an opportunity for him to teach them about monotheism: “I have forsaken the creed of a people who believe not in God. . . . And I have followed the creed of my fathers. . . . Say, which is better, my fellow-prisoners—many gods at variance, or God the One, the Omnipotent” (12:258). His “sermon” to them continues, condemning the errors of judgment leading to polytheism. The meaning of the two prisoners’ dreams of food, in the Qur’án, is that the one prisoner has chosen life-giving spiritual sustenance (by following the command to serve only one God) while the other prisoner has chosen spiritual death (the result of polytheism). The ultimate meaning of the dreams of the Pharaoh, and of Joseph’s dealings with his own brothers, is interpreted in the same way—to illustrate the primacy of Joseph’s knowledge and God’s guiding hand. Awareness of this kind of reinterpretation helps one to appreciate the bold originality of Muḥammad’s thought.

The metaphors of dreams and of garments are still present in the Qur’anic version, but are no longer the central metaphors of the story. Instead, the Qur’anic version emphasizes the unity of understanding and purpose shared by God, Jacob, Joseph, and his unnamed younger brother, in opposition to the other, also unnamed, brothers and the assorted Egyptians. Jacob, though still a figure of great suffering, has mystical insight throughout, similar to but more limited in its application than the mystical knowledge of Joseph. He understands the meaning of Joseph’s childhood dream; he sees through the lies of the brothers who have sold Joseph into slavery. When the brothers return to Egypt as hidden by Joseph, Jacob counsels them to enter by separate gates, and the Voice of God comments that “he [Jacob] was possessed of a knowledge for that we had taught him” (12:262). When the brothers berate Jacob for grieving so deeply after the [Page 44] loss of Joseph and his younger brother, Jacob responds, “I know from God that you know not” (12:263) and sends them out to search for the two lost brothers. At the moment when Joseph in Egypt gives his shirt to his brothers and instructs them to cast it over Jacob to restore his sight, Jacob (far away in Canaan) says, “Surely I perceive Joseph’s scent” (12:264), signifying his own mystical union with Joseph. Once reunited with his parents (in this version his mother is still living), Joseph explains to Jacob the meaning of the childhood dream and affirms that the author of his powers of understanding and interpretation was God (12:265). In the Qur’anic version it is not the literary symmetry of the succession of dreams that counts. Rather, the story is a drama of the testing of one’s spiritual character and insight and one’s ability to remain firm and united with God, Who here assumes the role of Teacher, Narrator, Supreme Interpreter. The Qur’anic version brings a major change to the story. Before the Qur’án, the value and meaning of the story could be variously understood—as fascinating tale, as veiled religious symbolism, as historical narrative. But its primary message—to Muslims —was now fixed and clear: It represents the Manifestation of God and His most urgent teachings.

Because Muḥammad gave such obvious signals of its importance, the story of Joseph subsequently assumed great importance in both the literature and the religious history of Islam. The literature of Islam is vast, enoompassing numerous languages and cultures and developing in stages that mirror the growth and expansion of Islam itself. Floating on this vast sea of Islamic literature, like so many ships, are innumerable works exploring, retelling, or interpreting the story of Joseph. “Persian and Turkish literatures alone have produced close to a hundred” versions of the story, fifty by Persian poets, twenty-eight in Ottoman Turkish, and six in India. The story of Síyávush from Zoroastrian sacred texts, told in a work entitled The Books of Kings, by the Persian epic poet Firdowsí (c. 940-1020 C.E.) was seen to parallel the Story of Joseph in the motif of “the Chaste Youth and the Lustful Stepmother with a philosophical worldview which transcends the individual and is directed toward the future.” The great Sufi poet Jámí, drawing on this earlier epic, wrote the most important of the literary retellings of Joseph, the long mystical romance, Joseph and Zulaykhá (1484 C.E.). It was the first to so thoroughly interpret the story allegorically as a contest between uncontrollable human passion and idolatry (symbolized by Zulaykhá, the wife fof Potiphar) and divine or mystical love (symbolized by Joseph) and to dramatize how the two are resolved and eventually harmonized in perfect union. He also treated the story as symbolically parallel to the mystical story of Majnún and Laylí. From this seminal work by Jámí sprang “an impressive number of imitators” exploring this new theme.

Many of the works associated Joseph not only with Muḥammad but with John the Baptist and, more important, with Imám Ḥusayn, the martyred grandson of Muḥammad. The Joseph story more than any other has also crossed and recrossed religious and cultural boundaries in recent centuries as Jewish and Islamic commentators have studied it, drawing on each other’s traditions. For millennial Muslims, the motif of return [Page 45] has been an inescapable component—and the most compelling one—of the diverse associations generated by the story, making it “the most popular of the biblical stories in Muslim Persia.” The inclination of the storytellers within that tradition is commonly to identify with Jacob, whose heart was lost in sorrow, seeking reunion with his Joseph, his Muḥammad, his Ḥusayn, and often to turn the story back into a romance (in the medieval literary sense). It stands at the very core of Islamic literary heritage.

On the theological level, the story of Joseph has been particularly important in the eschatology (the branch of theology dealing with last things) of Shi‘ah Islam, where the religious significance has remained close in spirit to that given it by Muḥammad, and where it eventually culminated in historic events played out in the towns and countryside of nineteenth-century Iran. Soon after the death of Muḥammad, Islam spilt into what eventually became two branches of the Faith—Sunni and Shi‘ah, which arose out of controversy concerning questions of succession and authority. Both groups accepted the spiritual authority of the Qur’án and collections of Ḥadith (the body of the sacred traditions of the Muslims), but Sunnis also accepted the authority of the Caliph, a temporal ruler chosen by other Muslim leaders but lacking prophetic or spiritual status, while Shi‘ah Muslims believed that legitimate spiritual authority resided in ‘Alí, nephew and son-in-law of Muḥammad, known to them as the first Imam (spiritual leader), and subsequently in the hands of his chosen descendants. After ‘Alí was assassinated in 40 A.H./660 C.E., eleven further Imams chosen from ‘Alí’s immediate descendants successively assumed the mantle of spiritual leadership within Shi‘ah Islam. Eventually Shi‘ism became centered in Iran, first as an underground movement running counter to the ruling Sunni dynasty of the Abbasids, and eventually as the dominant sect of Islam within Iran.

The basic tenets of Shi‘ah Islam took shape during the tenure of the twelve Imams. It is an article of Shi‘ah belief that each of the first eleven Imams were murdered, and that, to escape being murdered, the twelfth Imam (known at various times as The Mahdí or The Qá’im or The Awaited One, or The Lord of the Age) went into “occultation”— a state of being alive but veiled from the world and “miraculously prolonged until the day when he will manifest himself again by God’s permission.” Thus, inherent in Shi‘ah Islam is a millennial dimension similar to that in some branches of Christianity and other religions, a belief that at the time of the end or Judgment Day, the Savior (in this case the Mahdí or Twelfth Imam) will return to assert His rightful authority, thereby returning God’s justice onto the earth. Based on the words of Muḥammad in the Súrih of Adoration, Shi‘ah scholars reckoned that time as the year 1260 A.H. or 1844 C.E. Indeed, a great wave of millennial expectation, especially within the Shaykhí School founded by Shaykh Aḥmad-i-Aḥsá’í, pervaded some elements of Shi‘ah Islam during the first half of the nineteenth century.

In the context of Shi‘ih beliefs and expectations, it is obvious why, after more than a thousand years of literary, philosophical, and [Page 46] theological influence in Islam, the story of Joseph would assume special urgency and significance in the 1840s within the millennial communities of Shi‘ah Islam. Muḥammad had clearly designated the story a key, if not the key, repository of spiritual mystery; Joseph’s lengthy disappearance into Egypt in the face of mortal danger could be interpreted as an occultation in its own right; the chief threat to Joseph, as it was with Muḥammad and the Imams, was from envious members of his own family. Though he was the youngest of the brothers (the Twelfth Imam, too, was a child), Joseph was the one mysteriously anointed with intuitive, higher spiritual knowledge; and his return had harmonized spiritual and temporal power and authority just as would the return of the Mahdí. Yet the operative historical meaning and ultimate significance of the story remained a mystery that defied definitive interpretation. It is reported that, when Siyyid Káẓim-i-Rashtí, the successor of Shaykh Aḥmad, was asked sometime before 1844 to write a commentary on the Súrih of Joseph, he declined, saying, “‘This is, verily, beyond me. He, that great One, who comes after me will, unasked, reveal it for you. That commentary will constitute one of the weightiest testimonies of His truth, and one of the cleareSt evidences of the loftiness of His position.’” Thus he linked the story of Joseph to the appearance of a new religion, thereby clearly indicating the importance the story held for members of that element within Islam but also its difficult mysteries.

Shortly thereafter, in 1844, the Bábí religion arose in Persia, followed nineteen years later by the Bahá’í Faith, together ushering in perhaps the most tumultuous religious episode of the nineteenth century. From the moment of the inception of the Bábí religion, the story of Joseph held central importance in it and, in fact, became part of its historical development. The story has no less importance in the Bahá’í Faith that followed. The role of the story in both those religions, and what makes it spiritually significant in our own times, is explored in the second part of this study.

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Day of God

One

Anointed,

raised up in prison,

You had an audience with the Luminous Maid.

What is it,

what does it mean,

to be told who You are?

And before the Anointing,

had You no inkling,

no guess?

Did not Your father,

Mírzá Buzurg,

tell You his dream of Your holiness?

Did You feel anything

when the Gate opened and closed?

Did the passing

of the Shirazi Youth

brush against You?

Did You awaken

during the Night Season,

dreaming Someone else’s dreams?

Four

And before that time,

when the Word came out of Egypt,

did not Your syster Miriam know

that You were in her mother’s womb?

Did she not know Your name to mean,

“I brought Him forth”?

What of the courtesans

of Egypt’s royal rooms,

not to mention the Queen herself?

Did they not suspect the holiness

of the Child found in the reeds?

—Michael Banister

Copyright © 1997 by Michael Banister

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Authors & Artists

MICHAEL BANISTER, an adjunct professor in the Golden Gate University Law School in San Francisco, is the Deputy Attorney General in the Criminal Division of the California Department of Justice.

WILLIAM P. COLLINS is chief of the Copyright Cataloging Division of the Library of Congress. A frequent contributor of articles and book reviews to World Order, Journal of Bahá’í Studies, and other periodicals, he holds a Master’s degree in library science from Syracuse University and has recently completed a Master’s in social science from the same university. His Bibliography of English Language Works on the Bábí and Bahá’í Faiths: 1844-1985 was published in 1990. He is currently working on a book based on his Master’s thesis “The Final Consummation: The Millerites and Biblical Time Prophecy in the American Bahá’í Community.”

WINSTON E. LANGLEY is a professor of political science and international relations at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. His interests include alternative models of world order, international human rights (especially as they affect women and children), international law (particularly the environment and disarmament), global political economy, and transnational organizations. He is currently working on an “Encyclopedia of Human Rights.”

JIM STOKES is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. In 1996 the University of Toronto Press published his Somerset, a two-volume work including records of early English drama. In preparation are Lincolnshire, records of early English drama (also with the University of Toronto Press) and “The Effects of the Reformation on Traditional Culture in Somerset, 1532-1642.” His examination of the story of Joseph grew, in part, from teaching comparative literature and literature of the ancient world.

IJEOMA CHINUE THOMAS is a language arts consultant in the Oakland, California, public schools and a member of the music unit Positive Knowledge. In 1997 she was the Bay Area Artist in Residence at Headlands Center for the Arts.

ART CREDITS: Cover design by John Solarz, cover photograph, Glenford E. Mitchell; p. 1, photograph, Hans J. Knospe; pp. 6, 12, 24, photographs, Steve Garrigues; p. 32, photograph, Gayle Morrison; p. 34, photograph, Allegra Bosio; p. 48, photograph, Steve Garrigues.

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