World Order/Series2/Volume 30/Issue 2/Text

←Issue 1

World Order, Series 2 Volume 30 - Issue 2

Issue 3→

Return to PDF view Proofread once

[Page -1]

Winter 1998-99

World Order

THE RESTLESSNESS OF THE BALKANS
EDITORIAL

BAHÁ’Í INTERPRETATION OF BIBLICAL
TIME PROPHECY
WILLIAM P. COLLINS

SHIA ISLAM ENCOUNTERS THE MESSIAH:
THE CASE OF APOSTASY AGAINST THE BÁB
LEILA RASSEKH MILANI AND
KAVIAN SADEGHZADE MILANI

[Page 0]

World Order

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 2

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
JAMES D. STOKES

Consultant in Poetry:
HERBERT WOODWARD MARTIN

WORLD ORDER is published quarterly by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, 536 Sheridan Road, Wilmette, IL 60091-1811. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher or of the Editorial Board. Send manuscripts and other editorial correspondence to WORLD ORDER, 4516 Randolph Road, Apt. 99, Charlotte, NC 28211. E-mail WorldOrder@usbnc.org. Manuscripts can be typewritten or computer generated. They should be double spaced throughout, with the footnotes at the end and not attached electronically to the text. The contributor should retain a copy and send five copies. Return postage should be included.

Subscription rates: U.S.A. and surface to all other countries, 1 year, $19; 2 years, $36; single copies, $5. Airmail to all other countries, 1 year, $24; 2 years, $46. Send address changes to and order subscriptions from Bahá’í Distribution and Subscriber Service, 4703 Fulton Industrial Boulevard, Atlanta, GA 30336-2017. Telephone: 1-800-999-9019; E-mail: subscriptions@usbnc.org.

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

Copyright © 1999, 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   The Restlessness of the Balkans

Editorial

4   Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor

9   Bahá’í Interpretation of Biblical Time Prophecy

by William P. Collins

30   Akka

poem by Julie Badiee

32   in a world not made for it

poem by Diane Huff

35   Shia Islam Encounters the Messiah: The Case of

Apostasy against the Báb

by Leila Rassekh Milani and

Kavian Sadeghzade Milani

46   Border Guard

poem by Anna Stevenson

48   Authors & Artists in This Issue

[Page 1]

[Page 2]

The Restlessness
of the Balkans

SOME eighty-five years ago, writing about the prerequisites for the establishment of world peace, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá penned a brief but prescient statement: “The Balkans will remain discontented. Its restlessness will increase.” Over the years His prediction has proved chillingly true. The end of the Cold War unleashed old ethnic and religious antagonisms, fracturing nations in the Balkans and beyond, from Yugoslavia to the Soviet Union. The transition from state-controlled economies to capitalism has created a new class of extremely wealthy entrepreneurs while large numbers of people have become deeply impoverished. The struggle to establish consultative institutions and the rule of law has been overwhelmed in some countries by economic collapse, lawlessness, and state suppression.

But the Bahá’í writings make it clear that where there is conflict an opportunity for lasting change also exists. The dialectic of crisis and victory, so ably described by Shoghi Effendi, operates in the secular world as well as in Bahá’í history. For example, in 1936 Shoghi Effendi described the decision of the League of Nations to sanction Italy for its invasion of Ethiopia—an action that almost all historians have deemed a failure—as marking “one of the most distinctive milestones on the long and arduous road that must lead to its goal, the stage at which the oneness of the whole body of nations will be made the ruling principle of international life.” He could see the long-term impact of the sanctions imposed by an international institution on political and diplomatic processes. In the intervening years complex mechanisms for establishing and maintaining the rule of law among nations have been created step by halting step.

The resolution of the various Balkan conflicts presents many similar opportunities to clarify and bolster international standards. Nationalism can be a positive ideal when the nation is set in its proper context as one among many nations making up the human family; but when nationalism leads to “ethnic cleansing” or genocide, its excesses must be checked by international law. National sovereignty, similarly, is not absolute; the governments of the world must establish standards under which sanctions, including the use of force, are justified even when violations of such standards are confined to a country’s own territory.

[Page 3] Defining the limits of both nationalism and national sovereignty is fundamental to the creation of an international order that can safeguard justice and foster prosperity for all human beings. Much of the history of the twentieth century can be understood as a succession of crises over the two issues and a progressive series of efforts to resolve them. The eventual result, the Bahá’í writings assure us, will be the Lesser Peace, when the nations of the world will have crafted a mechanism for preventing conflicts among them from ending in war.

The Universal House of Justice, the Bahá’í Faith’s international governing council, has offered the following observation in its statement The Promise of World Peace, which helps set the Balkans’ restlessness in proper perspective:

The Bahá’í Faith regards the current world confusion and calamitous condition in human affairs as a natural phase in an organic process leading ultimately and irresistibly to the unification of the human race in a single social order whose boundaries are those of the planet. The human race, as a distinct, organic unit, has passed through evolutionary stages analogous to the stages of infancy and childhood in the lives of its individual members, and is now in the culminating period of its turbulent adolescence approaching its long-awaited coming of age.

If the terrible suffering in the Balkans accelerates the creation of structures to maintain peace, it will not have been in vain.

[Page 4]

Interchange LETTERS FROM AND TO THE EDITOR

JUST as the Roman god Janus had two faces that enabled him to look at the beginning and the end of things, the Winter 1998-99 issue of World Order contains two articles that consider the past and the future. William Collins’ “Bahá’í Interpretation of Biblical Time Prophecy” explores the interpretation of prophetic texts— found in ancient scriptures—as they relate to the millennium, a future event believed by many to represent the culmination of history. The Fall 1998 issue of World Order contained part one of his essay (“Millennialism, the Millerites, and Historicism”), which examined the history of Christian and Iranian Bahá’í interpretation of biblical prophecy through the nineteenth century.

In part two of his essay Mr. Collins continues the story to the present—the eve of the new millennium. Most Protestants in the nineteenth century accepted a cluster of interpretive principles referred to as historicism, the idea that specific historical events can be matched with biblical prophecies to determine the date of Jesus Christ’s return. When William Miller took the principles of historicism to their natural conclusion and predicted that Christ would return in 1843 or 1844, he set in motion two distinct and parallel processes: the discrediting of historicism as a method of biblical time-prophecy interpretation among Protestants and the confirmation of the success of historicism among American Bahá’ís, whose religion was begun in 1844, precisely during the period Miller predicted.

Collins describes dispensationalism, a system of interpretation of biblical prophecy— adopted by late nineteenth-century Protestants —that avoids date setting and interprets most prophecies as referring to a seven-year period of fulfillment between the Rapture and Christ’s physical descent from heaven on clouds. He explores the tension between dispensationalism and the continued use of a form of the historicist method by American Bahá’ís. In reconstructing the history of American Bahá’í interpretation of biblical prophecy from 1893 to the present, Collins reveals how it has been imaginatively built, author by author, on the ideas found both in historicist and dispensationalist writers and in the Bahá’í writings. Implicit in Collins’ analysis are the challenges and possibilities of a dialogue between Bahá’ís and some Protestants on the form and meaning of Christ’s return. His article is thus a must-read for anyone interested in how Bahá’í biblical interpretation has developed over the last century and the ways in which that method has been used in efforts to provoke interest in the Bahá’í Faith among Protestant Americans. It may exert considerable influence on future Bahá’í interpretation of the Bible.

Leila and Kavian Milani’s article “Shia Islam Encounters the Messiah: The Case of Apostasy against the Báb” has a similar Janus-like quality to it. The essay examines the four Islamic hearings into the claims of the Báb, the Prophet-Forerunner of the Bahá’í Faith, in 1845, 1846, 1848, and 1850 and shows that none of them demonstrated that the Báb was an apostate. The article considers the definition and nature of apostasy (riddah) [Page 5] in Islam and the various understandings of the proper punishment of apostates in Islamic law. The Milanis show that the common understanding that apostates can be killed for their rejection of the Prophet represents an inadequate exegesis of the Koran and the hadith. The article has important implications for the treatment of Iran’s Bahá’ís—who, 150 years after the execution of the Báb, are still often accused of apostasy even if they were never Muslims—because it undermines the entire legal basis for their imprisonment and execution.

* * *

Janus-like, this issue of World Order also looks back at over three decades of accomplishment by two of its founding editors (in its current incarnation) and looks forward to new growth, shaped by their high standards and sense of purpose, under an augmented team of editors. The Editorial Board has reluctantly accepted Firuz Kazemzadeh’s retirement from active membership and Howard Garey‘s resignation.

Firuz Kazemzadeh was a member of the Editorial Board for thirty-three years. But his interest preceded by a number of years the magazine’s reinstitution in 1966. He was deeply committed to reviving what is now known as the first series of World Order, which had been suspended in 1949. The suitable person to help him with the endeavor was Howard Garey, a colleague and office mate at Trumbull College at Yale University. Howard, although curious about his Iranian-Russian office mate and about his religion, was a discontented atheist. The friendship deepened, Howard’s interest in the Bahá’í Faith grew, and in 1964 he became a Bahá’í. In 1965 Firuz proposed to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States that the magazine be revived. In Fall 1966 World Order began publication in a new format and with a new mission. He and Howard Garey were members of the first Editorial Board.

To a person, we who have worked with Firuz have countless times been awed by the vision, perception, and passion that he brought to the Editorial Board’s deliberations. To us he has been a patient mentor, generous with his time, his encyclopedic knowledge, his encouragement—nurturing us, all of whom had full-time jobs, to persevere and publish issue after issue, decade after decade, and changing our lives in the process. A distinguished professor of Russian history at Yale, a father and husband, a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States since 1963, its Chair and Vice-Chair at various times, its Secretary for two years, and, since 1988, its Secretary for External Affairs, Firuz modeled in his own life the achievements, the intellectual rigor, and the uncompromising scholarship that he expected from his fellow Board members. But he always managed to lace the work with laughter and wit, with fascinating digressions and historical notes that informed and expanded our minds and the Board’s deliberations and enriched the collaborative experience of publishing a quarterly magazine. When [Page 6] writer’s block stymied one of us, Firuz was always ready with, “You could say this . . . ,” and if we could write fast enough, we had the outline for an editorial or interchange column.

Firuz’s visible contributions to World Order can also be found in his many unsigned editorials, his occasional interchange columns, his articles, and his book reviews. But his contributions were more pervasive. He demonstrated to us the essence of consultation, for none of our written contributions, least of all his own, belonged to the individual editor; we each had strengths, which he encouraged us to use in shaping the best piece that we could; the end product was “ours,” the Board’s. He insisted on tackling tough issues that make a list of the pieces published in World Order a digest of the history of the last three turbulent decades. That insistence resulted in World Order’s publishing numerous editorials, documents, articles, memoirs, and book reviews documenting the persecution of the Iranian Bahá’ís, even before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, thus providing ongoing coverage of a blatant violation of human rights. When a history of twentieth-century Bahá’í publishing is written, it will be hard to ignore Firuz’s role in setting a standard for nurturing, exploring, and eloquently expressing the intellectual, spiritual, and creative lives of Bahá’ís.

Howard Garey was also a member of the Editorial Board for thirty-three years. He served with distinction, helping to shape editorial policy and the direction of World Order. We, his colleagues, will sorely miss his invaluable contributions. Howard’s instinctive sense of language, sharpened no doubt by his lifelong studies in French and Romance linguistics, subjects he taught at Yale University, made him the unchallenged arbiter whenever disagreements arose about whether a sentence was “good English.” A few trips to dictionaries to check on his elucidations of the meanings of various words made further trips unnecessary, for Howard was always right. His ability to articulate subtle nuances of an argument provided lessons in critical reading and thinking to his fellow editors and helped many authors clarify and strengthen the points they wished to make. No less remarkable was Howard’s erudition in other fields—music, world literature, medieval European history, current events—which he brought to World Order and with which he enriched every meeting of the Editorial Board. Over the last three decades and more Howard has contributed prolifically to the magazine by writing numerous editorials and interchange columns; his articles and reviews are still models and are still being quoted by other authors. We are confident that in the bucolic setting of Vermont, where Howard intends to settle, he will continue to be actively involved in the life of a magazine that he has served so well.

* * *

World Order has received a telephone call that piqued the editors’ interest. A retired architect in New York City is looking for issues of World Unity magazine because six covers in volume 5 (October 1929 through March 1930) were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, a preeminent American architect. We have done a little sleuthing and find that World Unity, which was aimed at a general audience, began publication in October 1927. It was edited by Horace Holley, a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada from 1923 to 1948 and of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States from [Page 7] 1948 to 1959. When the magazine ceased publication in March 1935, it was given to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada and was succeeded by the old series of World Order (April 1935 through March 1949).

Horace Holley and Frank Lloyd Wright were friends, probably through their involvement with St. Mark’s of the Bowery, an Episcopal Church on Second Avenue in New York City where Holley served as a junior warden for a number of years. (Bahá’ís were not asked to give up membership in churches until the 1930s.) In 1926 St. Mark’s rector, the Reverend William Norman Guthrie, commissioned Wright to design an enormous cathedral that would hold one million people; it was never built. In 1929 Rev. Guthrie commissioned Wright to design one and possibly four apartment towers to be built around St. Mark’s and its graveyard. Wright considered the design for St. Mark’s Towers, as the project came to be called, to be one of his best. But on 29 October 1929 the stock market crashed, and the apartment towers were never begun, though in the 1950s the design was revised for Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

If anyone has copies of World Unity and would be Willing to sell them, please get in touch with the World Order Editorial Board (WorldOrder@usbnc.org). World Order is also interested in learning more about the relationship between Horace Holley and Frank Lloyd Wright. Holley was a published author and poet and in the second decade of the century founded and directed the Ashur Gallery of Modern Art in Paris. When he settled in Greenwich Village in New York City in 1914, he continued to move in the artistic and literary circles he had frequented in Europe. Perhaps the most talented author the American Bahá’ís have yet produced, Holley began publishing Bahá’í books in 1913 and later edited volumes of Bahá’í scripture. He contributed his talents not only to World Unity but to Star of the West, Bahá’í News, and the first series of World Order magazine. He proposed the idea for The Bahá’í World volumes and wrote many articles for it.

The National Bahá’í Archives has three letters between Holley and Wright relating to the St. Mark’s Towers project: a 15 March 1928 letter from Holley to Wright; an undated letter, obviously written in March of the same year in Arizona, from Wright to Holley; and a 27 March 1928 letter from Holley to Wright. The Archives also has a brief note from Wright to Holley (“So glad to hear from you. Come up and see us sometime?”) dated 26 October 1945, suggesting that the friendship continued over the years and that Wright was proposing that Holley, who then lived in Wilmette, Illinois, visit him at Taliesen in Wisconsin.

To the Editor

SCIENCE AND WOMEN: HITS THE MARK
WITH BUDDING SCHOLAR

I am writing to thank World Order magazine for its publication of the article “Science in the Hands of Women” by Rhea Harmsen. For young women pursuing academic careers, such perspectives are invaluable. In school we are constantly encouraged to develop our analytical skills, but rarely do our other capacities, such as empathy and intuition, enter the pictures. They are seen as largely irrelevant and as such are relegated to the “non-academic” aspects of our lives.

Ms. Harmsen’s article is a refreshing departure from this trend, inviting us to draw upon all our natural abilities, giving depth and fullness to our studies and enriching our outlook in all areas of life.

LEANNA K. ROSSER

Senior, anthropology and history major

Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota

[Page 8]

[Page 9]

Bahá’í Interpretation of
Biblical Time Prophecy

BY WILLIAM P. COLLINS

Copyright © 1999 by William P. Collins. The first installment of this essay. “Millennialism, the Millerites, and Historicism,” appeared in World Order, 30.1 (Fall 1998): 9-26.

Introduction

MILLENNIALISM—the urgent expectation of events that will overthrow the present order of things and create a new society that minimizes poverty and suffering—originates in a demarcation of time that was given to the Christian world by the Bible and that represents the Christian expectation that Jesus Christ will return bodily from heaven and reign for a millennium (one thousand years). The millennialist phenomenon goes beyond the confines of either the Christian or religious worlds. It possesses both historical and sociological meanings. In Jewish and Christian scriptures other time periods also hold special significance as either marking events in sacred history or perhaps the future: 1,260 days, 1,290 days, 1,335 days, 2,300 days, and 2,520 days. Surrounded by mystique, such numbers in sacred texts have given rise to many attempts to decode their meaning.

Historicism, a prominent method used in the nineteenth century for decoding Bible passages, emerged from a belief that for each time prophecy in the Bible there was a corresponding event, past or future, that believers could reliably date, if they had the proper key. Thus the interpretation of such dates in sacred texts and traditions became an important tool in defending prophetic claims, establishing theological chronologies, and constructing scenarios of the consummation of history. Protestant Christianity, in particular, has bred several schools of time-prophetic interpretation, reaching the apogee of calendrical specificity in William Miller’s historicist method, which prophesied Jesus’ literal return in 1843 or 1844. The perceived failure of Miller’s prediction led to what came to be known among Millerites and Seventh-day Adventists as the Great Disappointment and to a dismissal of the historicist method Miller and his contemporaries espoused. Miller’s claims, however, resonated with early American Bahá’ís, who saw in the birth of their religion the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

The controversy surrounding time-prophecy interpretation within Protestant Christianity and the perceived abject failure of the predictions of Miller and other historicists have resulted in the general abandonment of historicism and the widespread acceptance of a methodology called futurist dispensationalism. Dispensationalism is a millennialist position developed in England by John Nelson Darby (1800-82) and popularized by Darby’s American follower Cyrus I. Scofield (1843-1921), whose edition of the Bible has been one of the most popular. Dispensationalism views history as a sequence of periods or dispensations in each of which God’s method of salvation differed. The dispensationalists hold that the prophetic clock stopped with Jesus’ ascension and that Bible prophecy is silent about the present “Church Age.” All [Page 10] unfulfilled time prophecies will be fulfilled only at an unspecified date in the future. The clock will start again with a so-called Rapture, in which saved Christians will be removed from the earth and spared the prophesied Tribulation that will engulf the world for a literal seven-year (2,520 day) period of violence. At the end of the so-called Tribulation Christ will return. In the historicist position, one day in prophecy equals a historical year, and both past and future events can be correctly dated by this method. This made possible William Miller’s calculation of the exact time of Christ’s return. In the futurist dispensational position, the future time prophecies are counted by literal twenty-four-hour days that will be fulfilled only at some indeterminate time in the future when the time-prophetic countdown recommences. A majority of mainstream American Protestants now believe that Jesus’ statement “But of that day and hour knoweth no man” (Matt. 24:36) makes it impossible to set exact fulfillment dates for any future time prophecies until the so-called Rapture begins.

The development of a Bahá’í approach to biblical time prophecy, which combined Miller’s methodology with insights drawn from Bahá’í sacred texts, consumed early American Bahá’ís from the introduction of the Bahá’í Faith to North America in 1892 into the second decade of the twentieth century. As the twentieth century moves to a close, and millennial expectations have reawakened Americans’ interest in biblical prophecy, American Bahá’ís, too, have once again sought to call attention to the Bahá’í Faith and to particular moments in its short history as fulfilling such prophecies. How does the Bahá’í approach speak to the American Protestant today? Does it communicate successfully to the majority of evangelical Protestants in America who are futurist dispensationalists? What, in particular, reawakened Bahá’í interest in this topic and stimulated new efforts to decode the mysterious dates and passages in the Bible? Chief among the mid-twentieth century efforts was William Sears’ Thief in the Night, which added a fresh geometry of thought to the Bahá’í understanding of biblical time prophecy and led to renewed interest among Bahá’ís in the topic. Consideration of these new efforts at the twentieth century’s turn necessitates an investigation of their intellectual history, particularly the ways in which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá—appointed by His father, Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, to be the head of the Faith after Bahá’u’lláh’s death—encouraged the development of biblical time-prophecy interpretation while simultaneously discouraging Christian prophecy fulfillment as the only proof of the legitimacy of the new religion.

Ibrahim Kheiralla, the Bible,
and the Millerites

WHEN the Bahá’í Faith reached American shores in late 1892, it was promulgated in a largely Protestant environment but one in which various forms of Protestant interpretation of prophecy had influence. It also arrived in the shadow of the Great Disappointment that Millerite historicism had generated after 1844, the year that Miller had prophesied as the time for the return of Christ.

The Bahá’í Faith was brought to the United States by Ibrahim G. Kheiralla (1849-1929) and Anton Haddad (1862-1924), Lebanese Christian converts to the new faith. Of the two, Kheiralla is the more significant historically, because he developed a method for attracting large numbers of American Protestant [Page 11] Christians to the Bahá’í community. Kheiralla was born of Orthodox Melkite parents in Bhamdoun, east of Beirut. In December 1866 he enrolled in the newly opened Syrian Protestant College, later to become the American University of Beirut. Kheiralla’s experience at the Syrian Protestant College provided a basis for his methods of teaching the Bahá’í Faith to Americans three decades later.

The Syrian Protestant College was founded to provide evangelical Protestant education. All students at the college were required to attend daily prayer services and weekly chapel and Bible study. The cultural and religious assumptions that underlay this education were the central place of the Bible and its “rational consistency with science.” The missionaries’ educational focus informed Kheiralla’s later writing and teaching, which centered on the Bible and its rational interpretation.

Kheiralla was in the first graduating class of the college in 1870. He immediately sought employment in Egypt, where he spent a year teaching at an American Protestant academy in Cairo before becoming self-employed. In 1889 Kheiralla and his friend Anton Haddad met ‘Abdu’l-Karím Ṭihrání, an Iranian Bahá’í who had migrated to Egypt in the wake of Bahá’u’lláh’s exile to Turkish Palestine in 1868. For two years Ṭihrání instructed Kheiralla about the Bahá’í teachings. Haddad recorded that Ṭihrání interpreted to Kheiralla “‘many obscure passages of the Bible, notably the miracles, prophecies and signs.’”

Kheiralla, a native Arabic speaker, knew no Persian. Hence he developed his knowledge of the Bahá’í Faith primarily from oral transmission since almost none of Bahá’u’lláh’s Arabic-language works had been published. Kheiralla’s description of his conversion reflected the American Protestant point of view he had absorbed at the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut:

In Cairo, Egypt, where I lived twenty-one years, I met my teacher, Abd-el-Karim Effendi Teharani, who delivered to me the message of this great truth and proved it from the Mohammedan standpoint, which is not sufficient to convince one grounded as I was in the Christian doctrine and belief. His earnestness, however, commanded my deepest attention and respect. After receiving from him the announcement of the Manifestation of God, I commenced studying this question from a scientific and biblical standpoint, at the same time praying fervently to God for enlightenment and guidance to the truth.

Within two years of Kheiralla’s arrival in New York in 1892, he began a series of private lessons to acquaint Americans with the Bahá’í Faith. Kheiralla’s method of instruction was ingenious and highly effective. He gave public lectures and in 1896 published an English-language book entitled Za-Ti-Et Al-lah: The Identity and the Personality of God, in which certain public teachings were given about the nature of God and various Christian doctrines. He also initiated a series of private lessons, some twelve or thirteen in number, for true seekers rather than for the masses.

The final three lessons of Kheiraila’s series were termed the “pith” of his teachings. They were the lessons in which the truth-seeker became a truth-knower through learning [Page 12] about the new religion. Kheiralla’s lessons led the student from a study of common-sense notions about God and theology to the superiority of Protestant Christianity in preparing for the coming kingdom and, finally, to the study of prophecies and the signs of the times. By assigning the study of several prophetic passages from the Bible at the end of lesson nine, Kheiralla readied the students to receive what he called the pith of his message, which was to be delivered in lessons eleven through thirteen. He devoted lesson ten to prophecies about the coming of a Manifestation of God. In lesson eleven Kheiralla introduced his students to the drama of the Millerites, their predictions about 1844, and their method for determining that 1844 was a year of biblical fulfillment. At the completion of the class, the students, having figured out that Jesus Christ had returned, were matriculated into the final classes, where Kheiralla gave them explicit information about the Bahá’í Faith.

Kheiralla’s elaborations and interpretations of Miller’s complicated methods for calculating the downfall of the papacy in 1798 and Christ’s return in 1843 or 1844 C.E. from the biblical prophecies of 1,260 days, 42 months, and 3½ times became part of a specifically Bahá’í exegesis of biblical time prophecy. Kheiralla followed his explanations of prophecy with a description of Bahá’u’lláh’s life in dramatic and biblical terms. Bahá’u’lláh’s birth in Iran and His exiles to Baghdad, Constantinople, Edirne, and, finally, Acre in Palestine lent an aura of Christ-like being to the history. The vast majority of those who took the lessons became Bahá’ís. By 1900 there were as many as fifteen hundred Bahá’ís in the United States, concentrated in Chicago; Kenosha and Racine, Wisconsin; New York City; North Hudson County, New Jersey; Cincinnati, Ohio; San Francisco; Philadelphia; and a number of metropolitan areas in the northeast where the “truth-knower” lessons were being offered.

Those taking Kheiralla’s classes had grown to maturity during a period in which the Millerite movement was remembered. He thus made strategically significant decisions about how to reach Americans, appearing to have reasoned that, for the Bahá’í message to have meaning for his pupils, he needed to prove the new religion in a way that Protestant Americans would understand and to tie the millennial promises to events in American history. This was necessary if he was to reach through their inherent American and Protestant chauvinism. According to Robert H. Stockman, a historian of the early North American Bahá’ís,

the early American Bahá’í community had a love affair with the Bible. . . . In the nineteenth century, before Bahá’í scriptures [Page 13] were translated into English, the books of Isaiah, Revelation, Ezekiel, and Daniel served virtually as the scripture of American Bahá’ís. . . . To this day, interpretation of biblical passages, and allusions to biblical texts, remain important features of the American Bahá’í community. . . .

Hence from the earliest days of the North American Bahá’í community in 1894, the Millerite movement became an icon of Bahá’í belief. Since that time many Bahá’ís have viewed the Millerites as forerunners of their religion, the most important American contributors to a worldwide expectation in the 1840s C.E.

The Millerite approach to Bible study, like that of other American Protestants, accepts certain assumptions as facts: truth is unchanging or immutable (therefore, modern Christian, and particularly Protestant, truth is assumed to be the same as that of primitive Christians); and truth is perspicuous and can be easily recognized by the common person without special education. Truth, being self-evident, is thus accessible in both scripture and the natural world. An attitude toward the Bible is echoed, therefore, in an attitude toward nature and science. Human beings also possess a faculty of common sense whereby truth can be recognized. If the average person has common sense, independent study of the Bible without creed or priestly interpreter is a duty. Perspicuity and common sense signify that the meaning of the Bible is plain for all; it is not obscure or spiritualized but literal. This American Protestant hermeneutic also favors a single meaning for any given passage, rather than multiple meanings.

The first American Bahá’ís were immersed in the received wisdom of their Protestant backgrounds. Their views of the Bible were based on largely unquestioned assumptions about the immutability and perspicuity of truth as revealed in the Bible. These views were soon to be tempered by the principles of their new-found belief as they began to read biblical interpretations found in Bahá’í scriptures. Yet the American Bahá’ís retained a generally Protestant approach to biblical matters.

Kheiralla’s introduction of the Millerites, and reference to them by later Bahá’í authors, speak in passing of Millerism’s failure and the consequences of the Great Disappointment. The primary Bahá’í focus, however, has always been on the Millerites’ having the correct date (and, by implication, a partially correct exegetical method) coupled with an incorrect understanding of the manner of the Lord’s reappearance. Millerism was the most visible, successful, and influential of many Christian movements in the early nineteenth century that predicted Christ’s return in the 1840s C.E. The Millerites’ choice of 21 March 1844 C.E. as one of the dates for fulfillment coincides with the beginning of the Bahá’í calendar, serving as a demarcation between the age of expectation and the age of fulfillment. For Bahá’ís, William Miller’s calculation of 1843 or 1844 C.E. made him right about the one thing for which he was [Page 14] most soundly criticized—setting a specific time. Since Bahá’ís reject any notion of the bodily return of Jesus Christ, and yet do believe that the prophesied return of Christ was fulfilled by Bahá’u’lláh’s coming, Bahá’ís thus believe that Miller was mistaken about a literal return but right about the date. If the date was correct, as Bahá’ís believe, the calculations reached through a historicist methodology may be used as a proof that the coming of the Báb, the founder of the Bábí Faith and the forerunner of Bahá’u’lláh, and Bahá’u’lláh Himself fulfilled Christian expectation of Jesus’ return to establish His millennial kingdom.

Early Bahá’í Use of Historicism

A SURVEY of how several Bahá’í authors and speakers have handled the prophetic passages that led to Miller’s settling on 1843 or 1844 C.E. for the second advent reveals the way in which one Protestant method continued to be transformed into a distinctively Bahá’í approach to biblical time prophecy. Miller based his calculations on a long-standing traditional belief in Protestant Christianity that a symbolic day in prophecy represents a year (according to Num. 14:34 and Ezek. 4:6). This exegetical principle—one of the bases of historicism—was also used by all early Bahá’í authors.

Miller used a number of historically convoluted methods for reaching the years 1843 or 1844 C.E. for the Parousia, or Second Coming of Christ. His numerological system was also based on certain cultural assumptions of his Protestant milieu, such as the papacy as the seat of evil. This did not prevent Ibrahim Kheiralla and his colleagues in the American Bahá’í community from using a similar historicist methodology for proving, through time-prophetic exegesis, that the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh are the fulfillment of the Parousia.

Ibrahim Kheiralla’s approach to prophecy was, like Miller’s, that of the autodidact. He studied several popular contemporary volumes on prophecy and used them as the basis for his own approach to proving to Protestant Americans that Bahá’u’lláh fulfilled Christian prophecies. A large part of Kheiralla’s published interpretations focused on [Page 15] Jesus’ Olivet Discourse/Synoptic Apocalypse (Matthew 24), with additional quotations from Daniel, Revelation, and other books giving specific time prophecies. He referred to the year 1844 C.E. as being equivalent to A.H. 1260 and associated it with Rev. 12:6. However, he also interpreted the 1,260 days as being completed in 1867 C.E. (1,260 years after the “assumption of absolute authority by the Church of Rome” in 607 C.E.), an interpretation borrowed from John Cumming’s The Great Tribulation; or, Things Coming on the Earth. From the same book Kheiralla borrowed his interpretation of the 2,300 days of Dan. 8:13-14, which Cumming calculated from the cleansing of the sanctuary under Nehemiah in 433 B.C.E. and ending in 1867 C.E. The date 1867 C.E., in Kheiralla’s words, was “the date of the Manifestation by Beha’U’llah to the world”—the date He proclaimed from Edirne His mission to the world’s kings and rulers.

However, there are two points in Millerite prophecies that were missing from Kheiralla’s equations. First, Kheiralla quoted from authors who were writing under the shadow of the Millerite Great Disappointment, authors who appear to have studiously avoided using 457 B.C.E. (when Artaxerxes issued his decree to rebuild the temple—Ezra 7) as the starting point for calculations, which would invariably have led to an ending point of 1843 or 1844 C.E. Hence he made no reference to 457 B.C.E. as a starting point, except in a quotation where Cumming discounted it in favor of 433 B.C.E. Second, Kheiralla referred to 1844 C.E. as a proof date only in his equation of 1844 C.E. with A.H. 1260. His other time-prophetic exegeses, borrowed from contemporary authors, gave dates within the range of 1867 C.E. to 1917 C.E. It is, therefore, safe to accept that, despite the iconographic significance of the Millerites in Kheiralla’s teaching, he was not borrowing specifically Millerite interpretations to prove the truth of the Bahá’í Faith. He was, however, using elements of historicist methodology. His intent appears to have been to make the Millerite movement a native forerunner of the message being delivered in the “truth-seeker” classes and to use contemporary Protestant writers on time prophecy to create an aura of fulfillment within the lifetime of Bahá’u’lláh and, by extension, within the lifetime of those taking the lessons. Thus Kheiralla discovered 1867 C.E. (the date of Bahá’u’lláh’s public proclamation to the rulers of his day) and 1892 C.E. (the date of Bahá’u’lláh’s passing) as proof dates.

It is interesting that Kheiralla made no reference to Henry Grattan Guinness (1835-1910) —a popular late-nineteenth-century English evangelical Christian author and dispensationalist—who equated A.H. 1260 with 1844 C.E. through Daniel’s prophecies of 2,300 days and 3½ times and St. John’s prophecies of 3½ times/42 months/1,260 days. Guinness wrote a work entitled The [Page 16] Approaching End of the Age, which saw eight editions between 1878 and 1882 in England, as well as at least one United States edition. Guinness, like most interpreters of biblical prophecy in the late nineteenth century, was caught between futurist dispensationalism— belief that the return of Christ would take place at some indeterminate time in the future (“But of that day and hour knoweth no man”)—and the remnants of a discredited historicism. He, therefore, continued to use historicist techniques to show that biblical prophecy sketched a time line of historical events pointing to the last days or end of the age. In The Approaching End of the Age Guinness interpreted Dan. 8:13-14 in the typical historicist manner and with the same result as the Millerites. Unlike the Millerites, he saw the 3½ times/42 months/1,260 days as referring to the Islamic calendar and completing a 1,260 year period in 1844 C.E.:

B.C. 457 2300 years to the cleansing of the sanctuary A.D. 1844

Let it be remembered that all great movements have almost imperceptible commencements. . . . Israel’s restoration and the destruction of Mohammedan rule, i.e. “The cleansing of the sanctuary,” are not events to be accomplished in a day or in a year. . . . Let the “seventy weeks,” and with them the prophetic time period and astronomic cycle of two thousand three hundred years, be reckoned from B.C. 457, then will the end of the 2,300 years coincide, not only with the 1,260th year of the Mohammedan era, but also with the prophetic “day, month, and year” period of the Ottoman Empire. . . . From A.D. 622 to A.D. 1844-5 are 1,222 solar years, and therefore 1,260 lunar years. . . . Thus, from the overthrow of the throne of David, B.C. 602, to the Mohammedan Edict of Toleration in 1844, there is an interval of “seven times” lunar years, and this period is bisected by the rise of the Mohammedan power—“time, times, and half a time,” extending to the Hegira date, A.D. 622; and “time, times, and half a time,” from that date to the Edict of Toleration of 1844; which later date is that of the termination of the 2,300 years from the commencement of the “seventy weeks,” B.C. 457.

While Guinness considered Islam the Gentile power that would tread the Holy Land under foot until the “cleansing of the sanctuary,” yet he brought together in a Christian time-prophetic exegesis the Christian and Islamic calendars as tools for interpreting the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. The logical conclusion of Guinness’s interpretation could have been that Christ returned in 1844, but Guinness, like his premillennialist predecessors, was limited by the manner in which he expected Christ’s return to occur.

Another striking element in Guinness’s work was the terminology he used to describe the dispensationalist view of salvation. He termed God’s work in history “Progressive Revelation,” a phrase he used as the title of his first chapter. The Bahá’í use of this term for the ongoing unfoldment of God’s faith through the great founders of world religions is thus a creative use of a phrase that was being applied in Protestant dispensationalism but only in relation to the different eras in Judeo-Christian history.

While Kheiralla did not directly quote from Guinness’s work, Guinness represents a transition from historicism to dispensationalism in Protestant interpretation. His ideas coincide with two important Bahá’í approaches to the Bible that are represented in Kheiralla and later Bahá’í authors. One is the use of [Page 17] historicist interpretation for time prophecy. The other is the dispensationalist sweep of history as a series of progressive revelations of God’s will, which coincides with a fundamental principle that is present in the writings of Bahá’u’lláh Himself.

One of Kheiralla’s pupils, Paul K. Dealy (1848-1937), was a Bahá’í with strong Protestant biblicist ideas. As the number of truth-seekers grew, Kheiralla charged Dealy with conducting the private lessons in several cities. Dealy published the results in a book that saw three editions between 1903 and 1908. He recorded his approach in the first chapter of his book:

The substance or pith of the Bible, when rightly understood, is a clear revelation of events which are transpiring in this present day; and the diligent seeker of divine knowledge who studies its contents in the spirit of honest research, will find that, throughout the entire book, the hand on the dial of its sacred pages invariably points to the great day in which we live.

Dealy’s work was an adaptation of Kheiralla’s lessons but included some innovations of his own. It is doubtful that Dealy’s explanations and innovations were significantly influenced by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, for Dealy moved to Fairhope, Alabama, in 1899 and was thereafter somewhat isolated from developments in the North American Bahá’í community.

Millerism as an icon of Bahá’í history was pronounced in Dealy’s work. His explanation is worth quoting in full:

In that same year [1844] a very notable event occurred in this country which is well remembered by many that are living today, and many of whom participated in it. About that time, there was in this country a religious sect known as the “Millerites,” whose peculiar views and remarkable interpretations of Scriptural Prophecy won for them no little notoriety, but whose mistaken predictions and disappointed hopes (in the year 1844) were the cause of much ridicule and derision, joking among the witty ones, and pity, commiseration and sorrow among the tolerant, self-satisfied ones. In fact, through the failure of their dearly cherished faith and expectation, they became the laughingstock of the whole country. They had figured on the literal coming of the Lord, as described by Paul in 1st Thess., Chap. 4, had set the year and day of His coming, announced it publicly, and waited patiently for Him. The anxiously awaited day came, but the Lord they looked for did not come, and so they became the butt and ridicule of the scornful throughout this country. But in this day these people have the respect and sympathy of those who know. While they erred in judgment, they at the same time furnished convincing evidence that what had transpired in Persia was the appointed prelude to the Great Event, which they were looking for and expecting to take place in this country. They overlooked The Messenger who was first to come before the great and dreadful day of the Lord, mistaking the time referring to the appearance of the forerunner for that alluding to the day of the Lord (or rather the coming of Christ). Though in the eyes of the world their predictions apparently failed, nevertheless it was no mere speculation on their part, for God had certainly revealed unto them in part that which was surely going to take place . . . These people were godly people, and no doubt used, by Him, for a purpose, as you will clearly understand when you receive the Message in full. The fact that they looked [Page 18] for His coming in 1844 A.D. should carry conviction to the mind of every honest investigator in this country that what occurred in Persia in that year was a complete fulfillment of prophecy. . . .

Dealy’s two references to the Millerites in his book formed a bracket around the presentation of the pith of the teachings—the identity of the three Central Figures of the Bahá’í Faith, the Báb, Bahá’u’lláh, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Dealy worked out his prophetic timetable from Daniel’s references to 2,300 days, 3½ times, 1,290 days, and 1,335 days (Dan. 12:7, 11-12), based on Jesus’ references to Daniel in the Synoptic Apocalypse (Matt. 24:15). Dealy, unlike Kheiralla, clearly equated both the 2,300 days and the 3½ times/1,260 days/42 months with A.H. 1260 or 1844 C.E. Apparently for the first time, a Bahá’í author went on record adopting 457 B.C.E. as the starting point for the 2,300 days (2,300 prophetic years) referred to in Dan. 8:13-14 —a calculation that had been fairly common in the Protestant and Millerite time-prophetic milieu since the first part of Daniel’s prophecy was widely taken to refer to Christ’s first appearance and crucifixion. To calculate His “cutting off” (crucifixion) as 33 C.E. one must add the 70 weeks of Dan. 9:24-27 (70 x 7 = 490 days = 490 years) to 457 B.C.E.

Dealy calculated the fulfillment of the 1,290 days as occurring in 1888 C.E. at which time, according to Dealy, Bahá’u’lláh was given freedom to go outside the city wall of Acre. Dealy explained that the 1,335 days referred to A.H. 1335 or 1917 C.E., when “the opposers of this Great Truth shall find themselves in the minority; then the laws and ordinances of God shall prevail to guide, rule and govern the nations of the world.” Bahá’ís anticipated that the date would occur during the life of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, fulfilling their mistaken belief that He would be the returned Christ to a worldwide peaceful millennial kingdom.

In 1903, the year that Dealy’s book appeared, Isabella D. Brittingham (1852-1924) published a book she had completed in 1902. It was called The Revelation of Bahä-ulläh in a Sequence of Four Lessons. Brittingham downplayed the kind of rationalism exhibited in the writings of Kheiralla and Dealy and gave very little interpretation of time prophecy. Nevertheless, she seems to be responsible for a new interpretation of the [Page 19] biblical references to 1,290 days. The 1,290 days were interpreted as 1,290 lunar years from the date of Muhammad’s proclamation of His mission to the date of Bahá’u’lláh’s proclamation of His mission. Muhammad’s proclamation was 10 lunar years before the beginning of the Islamic calendar. Therefore, the completion date was A.H. 1280 or 1863 C.E., when Bahá’u’lláh announced His mission in Baghdad. Thus one of the few remaining cryptic dates in Daniel (12:11) was found to have been fulfilled in the new religion —an understanding on which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá would elaborate in the context of the Bahá’í concept of progressive revelation.

Authoritative Exegesis by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

AS THE American Bahá’ís came increasingly in contact with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, they asked Him questions about biblical matters, thereby eliciting His authoritative responses. During the period between 1904 and 1906, when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was confined within the walls of Acre by the Turkish authorities, an American Bahá’í—Laura Clifford Barney (1879-1974) —spent many hours asking questions that were of particular moment to the early North American Bahá’ís. Barney and the secretaries of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá meticulously recorded these questions and their replies. The responses were published in an English translation in 1908 as Some Answered Questions. Barney elicited from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá a set of authoritative interpretations on a number of issues important to believers in the West. Paramount among these was the relationship of Christianity to Islam and the Bahá’í Faith. An important subtopic of this discussion was the time prophecies of Daniel and Revelation.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá set the entire discussion within the context of progressive revelation. He provided a number of proofs and methodologies for demonstrating the succession of God’s Messengers, the spiritual and social evolution of the human race, the powers of the Manifestations, the origins and conditions of humanity, and other philosophical and theological subjects. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s explanation named four types of proof: those of the senses, those of the intellect or reason, those of tradition or scripture, and those of inspiration. None is sufficient unto itself, He said, for demonstrating the truth of an assertion. This is an essential context for the traditional scriptural proofs set forth by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Some Answered Questions, since they must be seen as part of a larger process of doctrinal and group definition for which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was responsible.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s interpretations of Daniel and Revelation are considered both divinely inspired and as the norm for Bahá’í exegesis of the time prophecies. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s resolution of the prophecies was basically one of simplification. He focused attention primarily on the coincidence of the prophecies of 2,300 days, 3½ times, 42 months, and 1,260 days with the year 1844 C.E. when the Bahá’í era began. The equivalence of A.H. 1260 and 1844 C.E. also became a demonstration of [Page 20] the truth of Muhammad and Islam. In His explanation of Revelation 11, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explained—as had Mírzá Abu’l-Faḍl Gulpáygání and Ḥájí Mírzá Ḥaydar-‘Alí, two prominent Iranian Bahá’í scholars—that the two witnesses of Rev. 11:4 were Muhammad and His rightful successor ‘Alí. The beast of Rev. 11:7 that warred against the witnesses was the Umayyad dynasty, which, Shiites believe, martyred the early imams and thus usurped true Islam from the lineal descendants of Muhammad, who were His rightful successors.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s explanations fortuitously removed two problems in any adaptation of evangelical Protestant exegesis to Bahá’í belief. The first was that of the papal antichrist. Such an interpretation became totally discounted through its omission. A by-product was that Bahá’ís were able to teach their Faith to Catholics without the specter of Protestant anti-Catholicism undermining the argument. The second problem was that of identifying Islam itself as either the beast of Revelation or as the abomination of desolation. Although William Miller’s references to Islam were few, the milieu of time-prophetic exegesis had, nevertheless, been poisoned with the equation of Islam to these two negative symbols. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, however, identifies Islam with the witnesses of Rev. 11:4 and uses the Islamic calendar as the basis for the prophecies of 1,260 days/42 months/3½ times. By implication, if the Bible prophets used the Islamic calendar to calculate the Second Coming, Islam is a true religion. The beast, then, was whoever had undermined the true faith of Islam. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá identifies the Umayyad dynasty as the beast, for at the behest of the Umayyads the second and third imams, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn, had been martyred. The Umayyads were the persecutors of Muhammad’s descendants, whose claim to authority was the basis for Shiism. With one deft stroke ‘Abdu’l-Bahá eliminates from Bahá’í time-prophetic exegesis the specifically Protestant Christian limitations of historicism. Offense to Catholics or Muslims from the Bahá’í interpretation was, therefore, minimized, increasing the possibilities of conversion.

In Some Answered Questions (and in later tablets) ‘Abdu’l-Bahá also provides interpretations of the 1,290 days of Dan. 12:11— thus confirming the explanation given by Isabella Brittingham in her 1903 book—of the 1,335 days of Dan. 12:12. These He calculates as 1863 C.E. and 1963 C.E., respectively. The 1,335 days are interpreted as 1,335 solar years from the full establishment of the highest Islamic institutions in Arabia in 628 C.E. to the establishment of the highest level Bahá’í institution in 1963 C.E. Both calculations were meant to make important events in Bahá’í history parallel to events in Islamic history: 1,290 years after the proclamation of Muhammad, Bahá’u’lláh proclaimed His mission; 1,335 years after Muhammad’s emigration to Medina and His assumption of administration of that city, Bahá’u’lláh’s administrative order was crowned with the election of the Universal House of Justice, the supreme governing and legislative body of the Bahá’í Faith. Indeed, from the Bahá’í perspective it is logical that a sacred scripture would couch its prophetic timetable in relation to comparable events in the opening stages of two earlier religious dispensations. In accord with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s process of simplifying biblical time prophecies to coincide with easily recognizable events in Bahá’í history, He focuses fulfillment on the proclamation of the Báb’s mission in 1844 C.E., the public proclamation of Bahá’u’lláh’s mission in 1863 C.E., and the election of the crowning institution of Bahá’í governance in [Page 21] 1963 C.E. By implication all biblical time prophecy is fulfilled by 1963 C.E.; there is no more date setting possible from the Bible.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s simplification of some interpretations and His introduction of innovative explanations of biblical passages serve to remove the problematical aspects of historicist exegesis. He thus disarms the incorrect early expectation that a Bahá’í millennial kingdom would be established in 1917 C.E. and redirects prophetic exegesis toward coherence with progressive revelation, an explicit function of which is to validate Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Bahá’í Faith as aspects of a single progressively revealed religion.

In later writings ‘Abdu’l-Bahá reaffirms His interpretations recorded in Some Answered Questions. Even while responding to the Bahá’ís’ need for explanations of biblical time prophecies, He downplays prophecy-fulfillment as proof. The context in which He revealed His biblical exegesis was, therefore, one in which prophecy in and of itself could only be seen as a partial and inadequate proof of a greater reality.

Mid-Century Bahá’í Authors

AMERICAN Bahá’ís used Paul Dealy’s and Isabella Brittingham’s books well into the 1920s, when they ceased to be an important part of Bahá’í literature. By that time the Bahá’ís had changed the focus of their attention from biblical accounts to Bahá’í teachings on social reform and then to the construction of the Bahá’í organizational system. As a result, aside from occasional articles and pamphlets, Bahá’ís published no major works on time prophecy until 1961. In that year British publisher George Ronald brought out what was to become one of the most widely read Bible prophecy books among Bahá’ís: William Sears’ Thief in the Night. The book has become a staple of the George Ronald list of publications and may be considered a bestseller among secondary Bahá’í sources. William Sears (1911-92) was an American television personality and former Roman Catholic. Sears framed his explanation of the Bible as a mystery, in which his own search of scripture for the solution to prophetic time was fulfilled in the recognition of Bahá’u’lláh as the return of Christ. The work was written in an unabashedly popular style, published in paperback, inexpensive to buy and easy to give to inquirers.

The volume’s publication was timely, for it appeared on the threshold of the turbulent social upheaval of the 1960s when there was a great deal of worry over the possibility of nuclear annihilation. Sears made Millerism a central theme of his book, treating it as the most visible among the many expressions of millennialism that had appeared throughout the world in the early nineteenth century. Sears’ method, based on the authoritative interpretations of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, still bore the influence of Protestant historicism. Sears used as his framework the Olivet Discourse/Synoptic Apocalypse (Matthew 24), in which Jesus made three promises that would signify the last days: one, the Gospel would be preached throughout the world; two, the times of the Gentiles would be fulfilled and the Jews would return to Israel; and, three, all humanity would see the abomination of desolation referred to in Dan. 11:31 and 12:11 (cf. Matt. 24:15, Mark 13:14). With these as a guide, Sears built a case focused on seven [Page 22] main proofs: the new name by which Jesus Christ would be known at His return; the geographical location in which He would appear; the date of the advent of His era; the natural signs and heavenly portents that would accompany His appearance; the sufferings He would endure; the fruits that would distinguish His truth from the claims of false prophets; and the challenging choice facing humanity.

Sears based his argument on the principle of progressive revelation and the commentaries of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, while borrowing from Millerite and other sources to further confirm the dates. Sears added to the repertoire of Bahá’í interpretations William Miller’s explanation of Leviticus 26: the “seven times” that the Jews would be chastised equals 2,520 years that, when added to the date of the first captivity (677 B.C.E.), yields 1843 or 1844 C.E. This interpretation was acknowledged by Sears to have come from Miller, although Sears did not list the specific work from which it was taken. Sears also cited a nineteenth-century interpretation of Rev. 9: 15: “And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.” This was taken as a time prophecy dated from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 C.E., when one-third of Christendom was supposedly cut off. The day, month, and year mentioned in the verse were calculated as 1 + 30 + 360 = 391 years. The 391 years were then added to 1453 C.E. to arrive at 1844 C.E. Sears quoted Dealy’s list of calamitous events and also entered into an extended portent analysis.

In 1966 Elena Maria Marsella (1913- ), in The Quest for Eden, approached millennial expectation as a search for the restoration of an Edenic Golden Age. The millennial kingdom, she felt, was the recovery of the first garden after a long period of lost innocence. She followed the pattern of humanity’s spiritual development by examining the symbolic forms through which the human longing for Eden had been expressed. One of the symbolic forms was what Marsella termed “The Magic and Mystery of Numbers.” She referred to a number of biblical time prophecies for support of her thesis that Bahá’u’lláh and His message fulfilled the expectations of a consummation of the Adamic promises enshrined in the Edenic myth.

In developing her thesis Marsella devoted half a dozen pages of her work to the Millerites. Within the context of the Millerite exegesis, Marsella interpreted the 70 weeks (7 weeks + 62 weeks + 1 week) of Dan. 9:24-27 and the 2,300 days of Dan. 8:13-14. She accepted directly from Millerite sources the starting point of 457 B.C.E. Her solution for the first prophecy concerning Christ was no earlier than 27 C.E. for His crucifixion, which she noted was in accord with scholarly findings that Christ’s birth was actually as early as 6 B.C.E. However, she acknowledged that the prophecy could make Christ’s death as late as 30 C.E. (in the “midst” of the last “week” of the prophecy), with the entire prophecy completed by 33 C.E. Marsella then interpreted the 2,300 days in accord with accepted Millerite and Bahá’í solutions: 2,300 years from 457 B.C.E. would be 1844 C.E. Marsella’s solution of the 1,260 days (3½ times, 42 months) was in keeping with the Bahá’í equation of the prophecy with the year 1260 of the Islamic calendar (1844 C.E.).

[Page 23] Marsella introduced an innovative interpretation of an obscure numerical reference in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream recorded in Dan. 4:16-17 and particularly Dan. 4:23:

And whereas the king saw a watcher and an holy one coming down from heaven, and saying, Hew the tree down, and destroy it; yet leave the stump of the roots thereof in the earth, even with a band of iron and brass, in the tender grass of the field; and let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts of the field, till seven times pass over him.

The seven times were 2,520 lunar years or 2,444 solar years (1 time = 1 prophetic year = 360 days; 7 x 360 = 2,520) from the time of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign circa 600 B.C.E. The terminus for the seven times would thus be circa 600 B.C.E. plus 2,444 or circa 1844 C.E. The 2,520 was important symbolically because it was twice 1,260. Marsella used this doubling of 1,260 to demonstrate that the first completion of 1,260 lunar years (1,222 solar years) was in 622 C.E. with the revelation of Islam through the Prophet Muhammad. The second completion was in 1844 C.E. with the beginning of the Bábí-Bahá’í dispensation. Thus another innovative Bahá’í interpretation of a biblical time prophecy not only demonstrated the date for the Bahá’í fulfillment but also confirmed the truth of Islam.

Bahá’í Authors in the 1970s and 1980s

THE 1970s and 1980s added two more volumes to the discussion of biblical topics, but both are primarily concerned with the interpretation of the symbols of the Book of Revelation rather than with time-prophetic exegesis. New Keys to the Book of Revelation (1977, 1980) by Ruth J. Moffett (1880-1978) focused solely on the Book of Revelation. Hence she did not address the time prophecies of Daniel, but she did use the 42 months of Rev. 11:2, as did ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, to demonstrate the coming of Islam and the Bahá’í Faith. Robert F. Riggs (1926- ), in The Apocalypse Unsealed (1981), built his thesis not only on allegorical methods of interpreting symbols but also on the esotericism of numerology, geometry, and astrology. He injected time prophecy into a larger cabalistic and hermetic argument, including references to verses in the book of Daniel in his interpretations. He also reintroduced Sears’ calculation, based on Rev. 9:15, in which a third of humankind is “killed.” This prophecy, symbolically interpreted as meaning that a third of Christianity’s domains would fall under the domination of a non-Christian power, was determined to be 391 years from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 C.E., completed in 1844 C.E.

Bahá’í Authors in the 1990s

THE approaching completion of Christianity’s second thousand years and the end of a tumultuous century of social and technological change have coincided with new growth among evangelical Protestant churches. Mainstream bookstores carry significant numbers of books about prophecy. For Bahá’ís to convince an essentially Protestant culture of the truth of Bahá’u’lláh’s claims requires tools for connecting to the assumptions of that culture. It is, therefore, not surprising that the 1990s have witnessed an increase in Bahá’í publications on biblical time prophecy.

Michael Sours (1958- ), in The Prophecies of Jesus, an extended commentary on Jesus’ Olivet Discourse/Synoptic Apocalypse published in 1991, follows the explanations given [Page 24] by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, elaborating on them with additional resources from many historical and exegetical works on prophecy. Sours’ purpose remains that of convincing the Christian (Protestant) reader that Bible prophecies have been fulfilled in the Bahá’í Faith. Included in the volume is an appendix entitled “A Brief History of Christian Millennial Views,” which deals extensively with William Miller and his prophecies. Sours’ conclusion in this appendix is that there had been no movement among Christians that understood that the Second Advent predicted for 1844 C.E. may actually have occurred in a historical manner. The Seventh-day Adventists retain their belief in the future literal descent of Jesus from the visible skies. For them, what took place in 1844 C.E. was an other-worldly movement of Jesus into a heavenly second chamber in preparation for His descent to earth at some indeterminate moment. The Bahá’ís alone have adopted the view that the Second Advent, indeed, occurred in 1844 C.E., within history, not as the expected miraculous descent, but as the assumption of a mission by an obscure prophet in Iran whose fulfillment of prophecies was literal in time and symbolic in form. Christ literally returned, not as Jesus but as the latest of God’s “Christs.” Bahá’ís believe that all the Manifestations of God are one and preexistent. Each, therefore, is the appearance or return of the qualities or attributes of those Manifestations who have appeared before.

Thomas Tai-Seale (1953- ), in Thy Kingdom Come, published in 1992, relates adventist prophetic interpretation of Daniel to the Bahá’í proofs, correcting and revising the adventists’ understanding by invoking the Bahá’í explanations. Where he deals with time prophecy —for example, in his chapter called “The Days of Daniel”—Tai-Seale generally follows the interpretations of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, with one exception. Tai-Seale appears to have borrowed Marsella’s interpretation of the seven times of Dan. 4:23, which he believes to have closed in 1842 or 1843 C.E., if one adds 2,520 lunar years to the date of 602 B.C.E. when Nebuchadnezzar may have had his dream. Tai-Seale places ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s explanation within a schema of three “advents” or dispensations: those of Muhammad, the Báb, and Bahá’u’lláh. The author situates his time-prophetic interpretation explicitly within progressive revelation, logically demonstrating the appearance of three messengers since the time of Jesus Christ.

Hushidar Motlagh (1934- ), in I Shall Come Again, also published in 1992, and projected to be five volumes when completed, returns to a popular style. Motlagh writes fully within the confines of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s exegesis and makes the Olivet discourse the cornerstone of his book. Yet Motlagh goes considerably beyond previous authors in accumulating historical information about adventism and millennialist expectation. The first volume includes a lengthy explanation of Millerism, tables of prominent figures who proclaimed the second advent for the 1840s C.E., and an appendix directed toward Seventh-day Adventists to explain the meaning of their belief about the cleansing of the sanctuary. For the first time a Bahá’í expounds a direct explanation for Seventh-day Adventists of why there was neither a Great Disappointment in 1844 C.E. nor a heavenly, spiritualized cleansing of the sanctuary. [Page 25] Motlagh’s response is that, although the sanctuary was originally in a Jewish temple that no longer existed physically, the symbolic reality of the act of cleansing should not have led to the conclusion that such an act was outside of earth-bound history. Motlagh links the sanctuary, tabernacle, and millennial temple with prophetic verses that mention the “glory of God” (translated in Arabic as Bahá’u’lláh). The sanctuary of the temple is God’s one eternal religion revealed anew by Bahá’u’lláh, the “glory of God,” Who lives in that temple.

While Motlagh includes prophecies from other religions, he primarily creates an interpretive work to reach literalist Protestant Christians susceptible to proofs based on time prophecy, especially the Seventh-day Adventists, who had retreated From the histoticism of their spiritual mentor, William Miller.

Gary L. Matthews (1949- ), in He Cometh with Clouds (1996), takes a broader approach to prophecy that combines a historicist approach to time prophecy and a redefinition of symbolic language. He examines biblical criteria by which one can recognize Christ’s return and on what scriptural basis a Christian believer can test claims of divine revelation. Matthews bases his explanations on Bahá’u’lláh’s metaphorical and symbolic analyses from the Kitáb-i-Íqán and other authoritative Bahá’í texts. Following the exegetical style of Bahá’u’lláh, Matthews uses textual juxtaposition, analysis of symbolic language, and the power of mythic metaphor to demonstrate Bahá’u’lláh’s claim to fulfill the promise of a second advent of Jesus Christ. He eschews time prophecy as a satisfactory proof, repeating ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s caution that the Manifestation himself is sufficient proof.

Matthews, nevertheless, includes one time prophecy, which he attributes to William Miller, interpreting the 2,300 days of Daniel 8. Matthews upholds the logic of the time-prophetic interpretation on the basis of the prophecy’s two-pronged prediction of the first and second advents of the Messiah/Christ-figure:

The only logical way to deny that 1844 represents the culmination of the 2300-year cycle is to deny that 457 B.C. is its starting point. If we do this, however, we must also deny that the latter date is the starting point of the 490-year interval that encompasses the various prophecies about the Messiah’s first advent. We cannot do this without throwing these latter prophecies out of sync with known historical facts. Small wonder the Bahá’í teachings state that “there could be no clearer prophecy for a manifestation than this.”

It is not surprising that Matthews chooses the Daniel prophecy of 2,300 days/years not only because of its venerable tradition in the historicist milieu but also because it specifically confirms both the first advent of Jesus and the beginning of the Bahá’í era. The prophecy was invested with a meaning that bridged the two most important religious worlds of Western Bahá’ís—the emerging Bahá’í community and the largely Protestant Christian cultural milieu from which it has sought converts.

[Page 26] Contrasting with Matthews’ cautious approach to time prophecy, Robert F. Riggs returns to a fully historicist approach to time prophecy in his manuscript entitled “I, Daniel,” which became available in electronic form in 1996. It was the first time a Bahá’í author had prepared an interpretation of the book of Daniel as a complete historicist chronology of Daniel’s prophecies. Riggs retains ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s authoritative interpretations recorded in Some Answered Questions in 1908. But he adds a full identification and dating of the rulers, empires, and religions symbolized in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the great image of gold, silver, bronze, iron, and iron mixed with clay (Daniel 2); the various beasts (Daniel 7); and the kingdoms of north, south, and east (Daniel 11). An examination of Riggs’ bibliography suggests that his identifications are clearly based on his own general historical research and knowledge of Bahá’í approaches. The result is a complete chronology from the time of Nebuchadnezzar to the completion of the structure of the Bahá’í Faith—a span of more than twenty-five centuries. This level of detail was not previously found in any study of time prophecy by any Bahá’í author.

The minuteness of Riggs’ attempt to decipher the coded language of Daniel confirmed the Bahá’í reading by constructing a broader foundation for belief in the ultimate reliability of Daniel as a prophetic foreteller of future events, reinforcing assurance in the accuracy of Bahá’í interpretations of verses in Daniel that were believed to signal the year 1844 C.E. It also gave a definite meaning to the entire Daniel puzzle, thus providing Bahá’ís with an alternative time line to those offered by current dispensationalist Protestant Christian interpreters of prophecy who have attempted to fit contemporary world events into Daniel’s symbology. Riggs’ chronological table appears to close Daniel’s time prophecies at 1963 C.E., with the possible exception of a suggestive passage in Dan. 7:12, which, according to Riggs, describes events after 1963 C.E.

In 1997 Michael Sours added another volume to the growing corpus of his writings on biblical interpretation from a Bahá’í perspective. In Understanding Biblical Prophecy, volume 3, of his series Preparing for a Bahá’í/Christian Dialogue, Sours sets prophecy and its symbolisms in the broader context of Bahá’u’lláh’s Kitáb-i-Íqán. By placing time prophecy within the matrix of Bahá’u’lláh’s larger symbolic interpretations, Sours creates an integrated structure of symbols and themes within which time prophecy is simply a tangential element among many elements. Sours addresses such topics as the Tribulation, the Rapture, Christ’s returning in the clouds, the Battle of Armageddon, and other themes that are central to modern Protestant futurist dispensationalism. He also engages in a broad study of symbolic terminology that Bahá’ís believe refers to Bahá’u’lláh—for example, “the glory of God” or “the glory of the Lord,” “the Lord of hosts,” “the Comforter,” and the “new name.” Sours ably articulates one of the theses of his study: that the Bahá’í approach to prophecy does not rest on time-prophetic exegesis per se; rather, time prophecy rests on a larger framework of symbol, allegory, and metaphor that is absolutely essential to the understanding of a broadly conceived cosmology articulated by Bahá’u’lláh and His successors in their works. Thus Sours reiterates Gary L. Matthews’ caveat about the limits of prophecy: “These points have been discussed to show that generally prophecy is neither conclusive evidence nor a necessary proof of a Manifestation’s reality. A Manifestation’s [Page 27] greatest proofs are His life, teachings and influence on the world.”

Conclusion

THE RHYTHMS of belief in prophecy have had their effect on the Bahá’í Faith and on the creation of the American Bahá’í community, which grew up in a Protestant culture. Such belief has had a history and organic integrity all its own, rooted in the apocalyptic writings of a past age:

The prophetic beliefs that influenced the worldview of millions of Americans . . . were grounded in the sacred texts of a far-distant era. . . . a genre of visionary writing that flowered from the middle of the second century B.C. to the end of the first century A.D., and whose roots go back much further, shaped countless believers’ views of what lay ahead for humankind.

This belief in prophecy, or divine prediction, has influenced political and social ideology, bringing about a course of events that may in part have created conditions conducive for implanting the Bahá’í religious tradition in the American Protestant environment.

American Bahá’ís, from the beginning of the Bahá’í Faith in North America in the 1890s, interconnected the millennial visions of the Millerites and of the Shiite and Bábí precursors of the Bahá’í Faith within their own sacred drama. Historicism, the primary method accepted during the early nineteenth century, was successfully used by the Millerites, according to Bahá’ís, to predict the date of Christ’s return in the person of the Báb in 1844 C.E. It was a natural method for American Bahá’ís to use in their exegesis of time prophecy, precisely because of the confluence of dates in Millerite and Shiite expectation.

While the seeming failure of Wiliiam Miller’s principles in predicting a specific date for Christ’s return resulted in the widespread discrediting of his historicist exegetical methodology, nearly every English-language introduction to the Bahá’í Faith mentions the Millerites or refers to them indirectly. The Millerites have served as a potent icon for American Bahá’ís, representing the transmutation of historicism (which the American Protestant mainstream had discredited as an extreme idea) into a tool for converting Protestant Christians to the Bahá’í Faith.

However, Bahá’ís appear to have assumed, mistakenly, that the methodology for interpreting biblical time prophecy is uniform among evangelical Protestants and that the Bahá’í adaptation of historicism will enable them to communicate successfully with all Protestants. The Great Disappointment engendered by the Millerites’ apparent failure in 1844 paved the way for dispensationalism, which is now widely accepted by Protestants. While dispensationalism accepts the historicist methodology for predicting events up to Christ’s crucifixion (that is, the 70 weeks of Dan. 9:24-27), it believes that the prophetic timetable stopped running until such time when the so-called Rapture occurs. Dispensationalism thus denies the date-setting logic of historicism that resulted in Miller’s teaching that the future fulfillment dates of time [Page 28] prophecies could be calculated, including the astounding and apparently failed prediction of Christ’s return in 1843 or 1844. Dispensationalism’s contribution, however, is in providing tools by which its believers can understand that God’s method of salvation changes over time as human needs evolve— “Progressive Revelation,” as the concept was called by one Christian dispensationalist author, Henry Grattan Guinness. The three primary challenges for Bahá’ís are to help dispensationalist Protestant Christians connect progressive revelation with spiritual history outside of Christianity; obtain a symbolic interpretation of the so-called Rapture, Tribulation, Battle of Armageddon, and so on; and reassess the notion that historicist time-prophecy interpretations work only for dates up to the crucifixion of Jesus. Both historicists and dispensationalists have useful insights, but they have reacted to the wrong idea—that Jesus did not literally descend from the skies on 21 March 1844.

The Bahá’ís’ emphasis on social teachings and on organization that became predominant in the American community during the second decade of the twentieth century has often submerged many Bahá’ís’ interest in pietism and evangelism. Occasional instances of large-scale enrollments among populations of committed Christians have called on a cadre of individuals who have made biblical proofs the basis of their teaching methods. The absence of a Bahá’í clergy places responsibility on individual members to become knowledgeable and confident that Bible-based teaching, particularly in the realm of time prophecy, will today be crowned with success.

A strong impetus to use biblical prophecy as a means for bringing in new members is provided by the internal dynamic of the religious community and its members. Millerism and the Bahá’í Faith share important internal factors. These factors help to explain the reason that Millerism became America’s most successful millennialist movement and why it is seen by Bahá’ís as an important forerunner of their Faith. A Seventh-day Adventist historian has characterized the impetus for Millerite millennialism in a way that invites comparison with the enduring millennialist motif in the Bahá’í Faith:

The vital internal dynamic that thrust the Millerites into the flow of history was a deep certainty, based upon concentrated study of the apocalyptic prophecies of Daniel and the Revelation, that Christ was coming soon and an impelling conviction of personal responsibility to warn the world of that good yet fearful news. In short, the Millerites were mission driven because they saw themselves as a prophetic peaple with a message that the world desperately needed to hear. [Emphasis in original]

The Millerites saw the world as irreparable save through the literal return of Jesus at a specific time, and they believed this with a definiteness that was scorned by non-Millerites and that resulted in disappointment. Bahá’ís see the world as a sick patient in need of a remedy that can only be supplied by a new Messenger from God. Bahá’u’lláh states that a knowledge of the operation of God’s will in history creates a condition in the understanding mind that He calls certitude. [Page 29] It arises from contemplation of the perennial appearance of Messengers Who are initially rejected but Who in the long term remake human society. Each religious dispensation recapitulates the same sacred drama, an understanding of which makes possible both the certainty of recurring fulfillment and a condition of certitude in the pattern by which the divine operates in the human world. Bahá’u’lláh offers certitude as one of the conditions believers can attain through recognition of each Manifestation of God in His own time through adherence to His teachings. Thus the Bahá’í Faith has an internal dynamic of fulfillment, coupled with the Bahá’ís’ sense of a personal responsibility to shorten humanity’s suffering by bringing more people into the Bahá’í Faith, thereby hastening the time of the millennial “Most Great Peace.” Two periods of rapid growth in the American Bahá’í community—in 1897-1900 in cities composed primarily of European-Americans and in 1969-71 in the rural South composed mostly of African-Americans— relied heavily on Bahá’ís who had a sense of mission and who made the connection with the Protestant biblical roots of the potential converts.

Since the early decades of the twentieth century, American Bahá’ís as a group have, for the most part, not pursued a concerted campaign to teach the committed Protestant, particularly those of evangelical, fundamentalist, or adventist bent. This reticence may spring from a focus on social principles, the Bahá’í commitment to unity that emphasizes avoiding argumentation and hairsplitting, and a limited knowledge of the Bible among the growing number of Bahá’ís who either were born into families who are members of the Bahá’í Faith or who have converted from a nonreligious background. To some degree this underscores the importance of the works of Bahá’í prophetic exegesis that have been published: they are the basis For Bahá’ís to make a connection with the Protestant assumptions that still form the basis of American culture, even among those Americans who have no outward religious commitments.

It is important to note the increase in the number of Bahá’í books on prophecy, and of Bahá’í prophecy pages on the World Wide Web, during the final decade of the twentieth century when many Americans are focusing on biblical prophecy. The underlying importance of proving the definite time of fulfillment, and the calling of a Protestant American public to the source of that fulfillment, outweighs any attempt that might be made to downplay time-prophetic exegesis based on ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s statements that it is insufficient proof.

It is, therefore, not surprising that the authoritative statements of ‘Abdu'i-Bahá confirmed interpretations made by Bahá’ís that were in some cases original and in some cases ingested from a wide literature of American and English Protestant authors who were themselves responsible for the historicist premillennial tradition and its transition into dispensationalism. How else, indeed, might ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and other Bahá’í teachers have reached the Americans who awaited Christ’s return? The function of prophetic date-setting thus became one of evangelizing American Protestants by convincing them that the event they awaited had already taken place and that the One Whom they sought was Bahá’u’lláh.

[Page 30]

Akka

Rolling

Curling

Crashing

Sighing

The waves advance eagerly to that fortress

Impregnable shore

The boats slide precariously in the waves

As disapproving arms lifted

Such a precious burden

To the Sea Gate.

Oh what a number had already come to this shore

Phoenicians, Egyptians, Crusaders,

Mustachioed Turks

And scowling English lords

Their skin gently parboiled in that unaccustomed Sun.

Were they impelled by some instinct or design

To place their footsteps where His would be?

Rolling

Curling

Crashing

Sighing

The Words emanated from the

Prison room

Nothing could contain them

They slipped out

Through the prison bars, above the window sills

Through the cracks in the walls

Under the door.

They seeped out of the ceiling

Leaked through the floor

Like the waves of the sea.

They were unstoppable, relentless,

Transforming, sculpting

Shaping.

[Page 31]

Salted, sacred water, like tears

So sad to touch that shore

Beneath the stone fortress

Empty now

Desperate without Him

Nabil jumps in

Did he want so badly to be

Immersed in that other ocean

Now that the waves of the Words

Were stilled?

Then multitudes come.

They surround the fortress city

Circumambulating

Like stars in their celestial Path.

And in far-away

Saigon

Teheran

Dijon

Taiwan

We cling like fish in a father’s dream

To the wave-soaked Words

The locks of the Promised One.

—Julie Badiee

Copyright © 1999 by Julie Badiee

[Page 32]

in a world not made for it

“refresh and gladden my spirit”
—‘Abdu’l-Bahá
Bahá’í Prayers

when Diogenes took up his lamp

and wandered seeking the honest man,

his task was not as hard as yours.

when the Bible says—

easier the rope may pass through

the eye of the needle—

this task is not as hard as yours.

in a world not made for it,

you struggle to sight that elusive bird,

joy,

and learn to follow its free flight

through whatever storm may seek to mar

its rain-bright wing.

—Diane Huff

Copyright © 1999 by Diane Huff

[Page 33]

[Page 34]

[Page 35]

Shia Islam Encounters the Messiah:
The Case of Apostasy against the Báb

BY LEILA RASSEKH MILANI AND KAVIAN SADEGHZADE MILANI

Copyright © 1999 by Leila Rassekh Milani and Kavian Sadeghzade Milani.

Introduction

THE study of the history of religions indicates that often, when a Manifestation of God appears, the religious establishment assails the founder and adherents of the newly founded religion. Frequently a political charge is disguised as a theological one to justify the attacks. That is what happened with the Bábí Faith and its founder, Sayyid ‘Alí-Muḥammad, known as the Báb.

In the mid-nineteenth century Iran witnessed the rise of the Bábí movement the roots of which can be found in the fervid messianic expectations of Shia Islam. The Bábís proved to be a force with which it was difficult to reckon. The Báb and His followers encountered harsh opposition, both from the Muslim ecclesiastics and from the Iranian government. The Báb was eventually executed in Tabriz in July 1850, the official religious charge against Him being that of apostasy (riddah). However, the charge of apostasy, when examined dispassionately in the light of Koranic and Islamic traditions, proves to be unfounded, for the harsh treatment of the Báb and the Bábís is inconsistent with the established Islamic guidelines for apostasy (riddah) and is more consistent with the treatment of rebel and insurrectionary forces. Apostasy, therefore, appears to have represented the formal religious justification for a politically expedient decision.

The Word “Apostasy”

CRITICAL to a study of the charge of apostasy against the Báb is an understanding of the word apostasy, which itself poses a difficulty, for it is an English and Christian word used to translate the Arabic words riddah and irtidád (withdrawal, renunciation, desertion; apostasy). Apostasy, as Christianity defines it, is an act that “occurs in public and not in private; apostates abandon an exclusive and institutionalized religion for another. In this sense apostasy is subject to specific historical conditions. It occurs when different religions compete with each other in one public arena.” An example found in early Christianity is recorded in Acts 21:21, where Paul is said to teach apostasy. Apostasis (αποστασισ) is defined as a “defection from truth” and “falling away, forsake.” Apostasy (αποστασια) as used in 2 Thess. 2:3 denotes abandonment and rebellion in a religious sense. By [Page 36] the third century C.E. apostasy was defined as the act of abandoning Christianity for another religion.

Abdulaziz Sachedina, a contemporary Shiite scholar, has suggested that the Islamic word riddah may best be rendered in English as secession. However, the Islamic legal writings of the Classical Period (ninth and tenth centuries C.E.) eventually defined riddah as the rejection of Islam by word, deed, or omission. Sachedina elaborates on this definition:

Rejection of Islam by word meant to deny God’s existence and other doctrines of Islamic faith, including any part of the Qur’án or its main tenets such as prayer and almsgiving (zakát); rejection of Islam by deed meant acting contrary to its teachings; and rejection by omission meant refraining from performance of an act required by the Qur’án.

Although one should keep in mind the subtleties of nomenclature, for this study the more familiar term apostasy is used to translate riddah.

Apostasy in Islam

THE Islamic Sharí‘a (legal code) prohibits certain acts that violate the “right” or “claim” of God (ḥaqq Alláh). Such acts are ḥudúd offenses, for which, according to the jurists, or Islamic legal scholars, the Koran has established the appropriate penalties intended to preserve the security and stability of society. Jurists differ about which acts are ḥudúd offenses. Some say there are seven: highway robbery (ḥaraba), adultery (ziná), slander (qadhf), drinking alcohol (shurb al-khamr), rebellion (baghy) , and apostasy (riddah). Some jurists, however, omit rebellion, and others restrict the list to the first four crimes. Those who belong to this latter group characterize drinking and apostasy as ta‘zír (chastisement) offenses.

The treatment of apostates in Islam is found in both the Koran and the hadith, which must be considered together. Most Islamic jurists who advocate capital punishment for apostasy rely on the hadith as their primary source. Jurists who leave the punishment for apostasy to God rely on the Koran, which anticipates the natural death of the apostate and the subsequent punishment by God. Shaikh Abdur Rahman, retired chief [Page 37] justice of Pakistan, concerned that some Muslim scholars have neglected the humanitarian nature of Islam, quotes a verse from the Koran to show that God in the afterlife, not human beings in this life, imposes the penalties for apostasy:

Let there be no compulsion in religion. Now is the right way made distinct from error. Whoever therefore shall deny false deities and believe in God—he will have taken hold on a strong handle that shall not be broken: And God is He who Heareth, Knoweth. (Koran 2:257)

Rahman calls this verse “the charter of freedom of conscience” in Islam.

Rahman also maintains that all the applicable koranic verses contemplate the natural death of the apostate and punishment in the afterlife, not in the physical world. For example, he quotes the following verse from the Koran 2:218:

They will not cease to fight against you until they turn you from your religion, if they are able: and whoever of you shall turn from his religion and die an infidel, their works shall be fruitless in the world, and in the next: they shall be consigned to the fire; therein to abide forever.

He asserts that two additional Koranic verses contemplate the natural death of the apostate and a punishment that will be imposed in the hereafter, not during the apostate’s physical life:

How shall God guide a people who, after they had believed and borne witness that the Messenger was true, and after that clear proofs of His mission had reached them, disbelieved? God guideth not the people who transgress. These! Their recompense, that the curse of God, and of angels, and of all men is on them. (Koran 2:87-88)

As for those who are infidels and die infidels, from no one of them shall as much gold as the earth could contain be accepted, though he should offer it in ransom. These! A grievous punishment awaiteth them; and they shall have none to help them. (Koran 2:92)

Finally, relying on additional verses from the Koran, Rahman asserts that, although violence is permitted Muslims, it is only against those who fight or persecute them or who spread disorder in the land. He maintains that, if a change of faith is done in a peaceful manner, such acts are not actionable at all.

When Rahman examines the hadith pertaining [Page 38] to apostasy, he concludes that the hadith evidence in support of capital punishment for the apostate does not stand up when subjected to critical examination. He states that the principal hadith upon which capital punishment is based is one recited by Ibn-‘Abbás, a well-known narrator and transmitter of the hadith: “Whosoever changes his religion (dín) slay him.” However, according to Rahman, the full tradition states: “Whosoever changes his faith, slay him. Verily Allah does not accept repentance from His servant who has adopted disbelief after having accepted Islam.” Rahman further suggests that, since the latter part of this version contradicts the koranic verses, it must be unreliable. In this he follows the principle that the commandments contained in the Koran can only be abrogated by another verse of the Koran and that any other lower authority will not be sufficient. He asserts that the hadith is itself subject to the Book of God with respect to all clear and well-defined Koranic texts (nuṣúṣ). Although many jurists have accepted the hadith quoted by Ibn-‘Abbás, Rahman asserts that there is ample difference among them about its meaning.

Modern scholarship has suggested that the harsh language and the interpretation of the hadith was developed in the times of Abú-Bakr, the first Sunni caliph (632-34 C.E.). Early in his short reign he faced a significant challenge from many Arab tribes who refused to pay the religious tax (zakát), claiming they had no obligation to send any further zakát to Medina after the death of Muhammad. This was seen not as a rejection of Islam but rather as an understanding of Islam as a personal relationship with God. Abú-Bakr, however, interpreted the Islamic ummah (people) as bound by a compact that did not cease with the death of the Prophet. He insisted that this compact required the Arab tribes to continue to be under the rule of the Caliphate, and thus he strictly enforced the collection of zakát. He declared the tribes that refused to pay the religious tax renegades from religion; his wars on these tribes are known as Wars of Apostasy [Page 39] (riddah). Islamic scholars have pointed out that Abú-Bakr’s interpretation of the refusal to pay the religious tax resulted in the earliest case of apostasy in Islam. Abú-Bakr’s action has also provided the traditional and historical material that jurists eventually used in their own interpretation. But Sachedina has pointed out that citing Abú-Bakr’s campaign against the rebel tribes as a precedent for the punishment of apostasy has no justification as it does not involve a case of apostasy. He concludes that,

From the evidence presented, it appears that the use of Abú-Bakr’s campaign against the Arab tribes as a precedent in support of the sanction against apostasy is unwarranted. Moreover, I believe that it was the inclusion of this precedent as evidence which led to apostasy being the only religious crime for which capital punishment was assigned in the penal law.

. . . However, there is no hard evidence to show that Abú-Bakr in his campaigns against the tribes made any religious claims—at least to justify his severe measures. This latter point further corroborates my contention regarding the doubtful status of the episode as a precedent for the punishment of apostasy in the penal law.

Thus one can conclude that the Koranic evidence does not support capital punishment for the crime of apostasy. An examination of the hadith evidence also suggests that the often-cited tradition narrated by Muḥammad ibn Ismá‘íl Bukhárí (d. 870 C.E.), a well-known collector and compiler of the oral sayings of Muhammad, does not concern itself with the religious crime of apostasy at all. However, it does deal with a case of perceived disobedience and rebellion against the Islamic political state. The charge of apostasy brought against the Báb also served a similar function: it provided religious justification for a political decision.

The Báb and the Bábí Message

WHEN the Báb burst on the scene in Iran in 1844, claiming to be the return of the Twelfth Imam, or the Promised Qá’im, it was inevitable that a charge of apostasy (riddah) would be brought against Him and the Bábí movement. The Bábí religion emerged in nineteenth-century Iran from the Shaykhi School within Twelver Shia Islam. Shaykhism, founded by Shaykh Aḥmad Aḥsá’í, was a school that “contained the seeds” for the “religious, revolutionary, messianic, and charismatic movement” known as Bábism. The eschatological and ontological teachings of this school provided the impetus for the development of the Bábí movement. Shaykh Aḥmad died in 1826 and was succeeded by Sayyid Káẓim Rashtí, who continued his [Page 40] mentor’s teachings and philosophies but also emphasized the imminent advent of the Qá’im (the Promised One of Shia Islam). By the time Sayyid Káẓim died in 1844, Shaykhism had become largely a movement of messianic expectation.

After Sayyid Káẓim’s death the Shaykhi community was effectively divided into two divergent entities. One group followed a path that would eventually converge with mainstream Shia thought; among its members were prominent Shaykhis who were possible contenders for the leadership, such as Mírzá Muḥíṭ Kirmání and Mírzá Ḥasan Gawhar in Karbala, Muḥammad Karím Khán Kirmání in Kirmán, and Mírzá Shafí the Thiqatu’l-Islám, in Tabríz. Another group followed the eschatological teachings of the late Sayyid Káẓim and found the object of their search in the Báb. On 23 May 1844 Mullah Ḥusayn Bushrú’í was the first to find the Báb and to accept Him as the Promised Qá’im. On that night the Báb began to compose His Commentary on the Sura of Joseph (Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’) in Mullah Ḥusayn’s presence. Not long after that night seventeen other individuals, independently of Mullah Ḥusayn, discovered the Báb and accepted Him as the Promised One. The Báb, who called the eighteen individuals the “Letters of the Living,” sent them throughout Iran and the adjoining regions to spread the new message.

During the next few years the Bábí Faith spread rapidly in Iran. Inevitably, the Iranian government and the Shiite clergy united against the new religion and waged campaigns of persecution against the Báb and the Bábís. Four times panels of Muslim scholars and jurists examined the claims of the Báb directly or indirectly: in Baghdad in absentia in 1845 (according to the Báb’s writings); in Isfahan in 1846; in Tabriz in 1848; and a second, and last, time in Tabriz in 1850.

The Fatwá in Baghdad

THE Báb gave Mullah ‘Alí Basṭámí, one of His original eighteen disciples, the mission of returning to Karbala, the heartland of Shaykhism, to proclaim the new message. However, Mullah ‘Alí Basṭámí was not to divulge the Báb’s identity. Upon his arrival in Iraq in August 1844 he produced and circulated copies of the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’ to prove the validity of the new religion. In Najaf he entered the assembly of the Shaykh Muḥammad-Ḥasan Najafí (d. 1850) and announced the advent of the anticipated messiah. In describing the Báb, Mullah ‘Alí stated that

His proof is His Word; His testimony, none other than the testimony with which Islam seeks to vindicate its truth. From the pen of this unschooled Háshimite Youth of Persia there have streamed, within the space of forty-eight hours, as great a number of verses, of prayers, of homilies, and scientific treatises, as would equal in volume the whole of the Qur’án, which it took Muḥammad, the Prophet of God, twenty-three years to reveal!

After the distribution of the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’ and the public pronouncements of Mullah ‘Alí, he was arrested and eventually imprisoned in Baghdad in 1844. The authorities assembled a panel of Sunni and Shia ecclesiastics who in 1845 tried Mullah ‘Alí according to the Islamic Sharí‘á. Mullah ‘Alí’s trial began in January 1845 and ended with the imposition of a religious edict (fatwá), which condemned the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’ as a heresy (kufr) and its unknown author and his followers as heretics (káfir) deserving capital [Page 41] punishment. The fatwá was signed by every one of the judges present at the trial.

Based solely on the text of the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’, the panel of Sunni and Shia scholars unanimously declared that the Báb had claimed divine revelation. The case was built primarily on the use of such words as awḥá (revealed) and anzala (sent down) and other phrases, which were understood to imply that the Báb was claiming a station equal to Muhammad. The objections of the panel can be summarized as follows:

1. The Báb had produced a book that resembled the Koran in its format, with suras (chapters), áyát (verses), and disconnected letters.
2. The Báb had taken liberties with the text of the Koran by adding, subtracting, and interpolating.
3. The Báb had claimed divine revelation.
4. The Báb had exaggerated concerning some of the Holy Family.
5. The Báb had tended to make light of Islam and Sharí‘a.

An examination of the text of the decree indicates that kufr (disbelief) was the main charge against the Báb, but there is no indication in the text of the fatwá that the panel of ulama found Mullah ‘Alí guilty of riddah (apostasy).

Abbas Amanat, a historian of modern Iran, cites one source that suggests apostasy was the main charge against Mullah ‘Alí Basṭámí; however, this isolated source is not supported by the evidence. In fact, the fatwá is silent about the fate of the Báb’s emissary. After the fatwá was issued, the panel of jurists did proceed to decide Mullah ‘Alí Basṭámí’s fate. Most primary sources state that there were disagreements among the Sunni and Shia panelists and that there were also significant political tensions between the Iranian and Ottoman governments, both of which claimed jurisdiction over the matter. Eventually, by order of the Sublime Porte, Mullah ‘Alí was transferred to Constantinople and condemned to hard labor in the Ottoman docks. It is likely that he died shortly thereafter.

The Fatwá in Isfahan

BY 1846 the Bábís had developed into a formidable entity, and the fame of the Báb had spread through Iran. His four-month stay in Isfahan, the last period of relative rest and quiet in His tumultuous life, ended with the death of Manúchihr Khán, the governor of the city. Before the Báb arrived in Isfahan, He had written to Manúchihr Khán, a Georgian and a Christian by birth, informing him of His arrival and asking for lodgings. Manúchihr Khán arranged for the Báb to stay with the Imam Jum‘ih (the cleric who leads the Friday prayers). Because of the Báb’s popularity, the ulama of Isfahan felt that His influence was “invading the stronghold of orthodoxy and subverting” the “foundations” of the spiritual and social order. Accordingly, in 1846 they summoned a gathering, the purpose of which was to issue a written document, signed and sealed by all the ecclesiastical leaders of the city, condemning the Báb to death. It appears that apostasy was not a formal charge against the Báb in this decree.

[Page 42]

The First Trial in Tabriz, 1848

EVEN before Manúchihr Khán died in 1847, Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí, the Iranian prime minister, a Sufi, and a possible Shaykhi sympathizer, had begun to fear that Muḥammad Shah had become one of the Báb’s sympathizers. Hence the prime minister gave orders for the Báb’s transfer to and imprisonment in Mákú, where He remained for nine months until He won the admiration of His jailers and the residents of the area. In 1848 Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí had the Báb transferred to an even more remote prison at Chiríq. In that same year the ulama of Tabríz summoned the Báb from Chiríq to Tabriz to face yet another trial. This was the most rigorous and systematic inquisition by the ulama during the Báb’s short ministry. The government and clergy intended for the trial to “discredit and humiliate the Báb in the eyes of the public.” The proceedings of the trial as reported by the sources indicate that, after the Báb’s emphatic declaration of being the Mahdi (Messiah), the meeting was reduced to a set of sarcastic and inappropriate questions and answers intended to embarrass the Báb.

A survey of the available sources indicates that apostasy was not a charge against the Báb during the trial. Apostasy was also not mentioned in any of the official reports of the examination. In the aftermath of the trial, however, one finds the public charge of apostasy raised against the Báb from certain quarters. It is first pronounced jointly by ‘Alí Aṣghar Shaykhu’l-Islám and his nephew Abú’l-Qásim in a public religious decree addressed to Sayyid ‘Alí-Muḥammad Shírází, the Báb. The fatwá issued by the two clerics accuses the Báb of apostasy based on the proceedings of the trial and concludes that

The repentance of an incorrigible apostate is not accepted, and the only thing which has caused the postponement of thy execution is a doubt as to thy sanity of mind. Should this doubt be removed, the sentence of an incorrigible apostate would without hesitation be executed upon thee.

Despite the accusation of apostasy from isolated quarters, the Báb was not formally charged at that time. He was, however, subjected to severe corporal punishment (ta‘zír) after the examination.

The Final Fatwá in Tabriz, 1850

AFTER the Báb’s trial in Tabriz in 1848, he was sent back to the prison at Chiríq. Shortly thereafter Muḥammad Shah died, and his son Náṣiri’d-Dín Shah ascended to the throne. [Page 43] His prime minister, Mírzá Taqí Khán, Amír Kabír, quickly adopted a policy of suppressing the Bábí movement. Bábí defensive positions at Shaykh Ṭabarsí, Nayríz, and Zanján were harshly attacked and violently suppressed by numerically superior and continuously reinforced government forces despite the Bábís’ legendary heroism. Amír Kabír clearly perceived the Bábí movement as a serious military and political threat to the state. By 1850 the premier had decided that the execution of the Báb was “the most efficacious means for the recovery” of Iran and for “‘safeguarding the unity of the State.’” The minister’s counselors resisted the idea. However, for Amír Kabír the main issue at stake was political expediency.

Once Amír Kabír had resolved to impose capital punishment on the Báb, he was required to justify this decision politically and religiously. In 1850 he, therefore, summoned the Báb back to Tabriz, where He was presented to a panel of prominent clerics of that city who were induced “to ratify the death penalty.” There was no doubt about the outcome. All three prominent chief mujtahids recommended capital punishment. The decrees were issued on grounds of apostasy. Mullah Muḥammad Mamaqání, for example, is noted to have said to the Báb:

So long as you remain adamant on these refuted claims and these corrupt beliefs which are reasons for your apostasy, according to the glorious shari‘a your death is imperative. But since I recognize the repentance of the inherent apostate, if you express repentance, I would save you from death.

Interpretation versus Apostasy

THE crime of apostasy signifies rejection of Islam by word, deed, or omission. By such a definition the Báb does not meet the criteria for apostasy. There is no doubt that the Báb promulgated a new ta‘wíl (interpretation) of Islamic scripture. But a new or even radical interpretation does not qualify one as an apostate. The following two examples, at the risk of oversimplification, may be instructive in delineating the difference between an interpretation and apostasy. The Báb, for example, had a particular interpretation on the question of the occultation of the Twelfth Imam. His particular interpretation was not a rejection of Islam by word, deed, or omission, much as the Ismá‘ílí understanding of [Page 44] the Imamate is not grounds for their apostasy. The clerics also found the Báb’s claim of revealing verses especially uncomfortable and unsettling. In fact, confirmation of such revelation by the Báb was what moved Mullah Muḥammad Mamaqání to issue his decree. In making such claims the Báb was merely fulfilling messianic expectation. The Shia tradition teaches that the Promised One will appear with “a new revelation and a new book.” The revelation of verses is, therefore, anticipated by both the Koran and hadith. How is it, then, that the Báb was faulted on grounds of revelation of verses? The question is, “Does the revelation of verses about messianic expectations meet the criteria for apostasy?” It is the opinion of the authors that the evidence suggests that the actions of the Báb did not meet such criteria. To have found the Báb guilty on grounds of apostasy the panelists should have examined the claims and writings of the Báb in the context of Shia messianic thought. It appears, however, that the judges who examined the Báb and issued the death sentence on grounds of apostasy did not distinguish between a rejection of Islam (apostasy) and the particular interpretation that the Báb advanced.

Conclusion

THE Báb was executed by a firing squad on 9 July 1850 only a few days after the ulama issued their decrees on grounds of apostasy. A close reading of the Koran and the hadith raises a number of issues about the charge. First, the Koran itself does not endorse capital punishment for apostasy. Second, the Báb did not meet established criteria for apostasy. This is not to deny that the Báb had a unique (or perhaps radical) interpretation. However, an interpretation is not grounds for capital punishment. Third, Amír Kabír viewed the Báb and the Bábí movement as political insurgencies that he intended to eradicate. In his political maneuvers to justify such actions the clerics were asked to pronounce capital punishment against the Báb on the religious charge of apostasy. Modern scholarship has traced the historical precedent for such a rationalization to the actions of the first Sunni caliph, Abú-Bakr, and his suppression of the Arab tribes in 632-34 C.E. for political reasons.

Before the Báb’s final trial in Tabriz in 1850, He had been subjected to at least two thorough trials—one in absentia in Baghdad in 1845 and one in Tabriz in 1848—and a cursory examination in Isfahan in 1846. While the panelists had disagreed with the Báb in 1845, 1846, and 1848 and were not convinced of His claim, the decrees in Baghdad and Isfahan and the first decree in Tabriz did not suggest the charge of apostasy. The religious crime of apostasy was only raised when the government and clerics had to justify the capital punishment deemed necessary by the political climate. Hence the same panel of clerics that in 1848 had chosen not to pass judgment on the Báb chose in 1850 to justify His death sentence on the grounds of apostasy.

[Page 45]

[Page 46]

Border Guard

I.

An AP photo in the morning news—

no story given and the caption terse—

shows a small boy of Palestine

who reaches up for shaking hands

with an Israeli border guard.

The soldier’s face is indistinct

in shadowy newsprint haze

yet seems amused and smiling.

What happens next?

That’s left to us who watch—

and all of us are there.

I see the tall man hunker down

to take the eager hand

and at eye level look into

the FUTURE’S eyes.

They share some words they know,

both smile and nod,

then the child scampers away

rich with a new-found friend.

II.

The soldier’s name is NOW

He rests his gun, eases the helmet

from his sweaty hair;

he shivers in the sudden breeze that lifts

the deadened air, that sifts

the desert dust across his feet.

[Page 47]

This is the heavy PAST he knows—

this desolated strip, this narrow land

weighed down with heritage of fears

ghastly injustices and human sacrifice;

Weighed down with hopes and promises—

what sort of holiness, he wonders,

excludes, denies,

sets guards and armaments against

humanity?

III.

When was a border made secure, he ponders,

except by reaching wide across

to ask, to touch, listen and learn

until boundaries become tree-lined streets

of mutual understanding?

—Anna Stevenson

Copyright © 1999 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States

[Page 48]

Authors & Artists

JULIE BADIEE is a professor of art history and chair of the Department of Art and Art History at Western Maryland College and an affiliate professor in the School of Graduate Studies at Landegg Academy, Wienacht, Switzerland.

WILLLAM P. COLLINS, a frequent contributor to World Order and other Bahá’í journals, is Chief of the Cataloguing Division of the United States Copyright Office at the Library of Congress. He holds master’s degrees from Syracuse University in library science and in social science. His Bibliography of English-Language Works on the Bábí and Bahá’í Faiths, 1844-1985 was published by George Ronald in 1990. Mr. Collins’ interests include Mormonism, Judeo-Christian-Islamic history and doctrine, and millennialist movements.

DIANE HUFF is an editor of English and Spanish for CTB/McGraw-Hill. Her interests include community literacy projects, sustainable development, desktop publishing, and web design.

KAVIAN SADEGHZADE MILANI is a medical doctor in family practice. He has coauthored “Bahá’í Bioethics” and “Bahá’í-Muslim and Bahá’í-Christian Studies” with his wife, Leila Milani, and has two forthcoming articles on Bahá’í topics.

LEIIA RASSEKH MILANI is the national NGO liaison for women’s issues for the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. She holds a bachelor’s degree in criminology from Auburn University, a law degree from Wake Forest University School of Law, and a master’s degree in bioethics from the School of Religion at the University of Virginia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She has coauthored articles on “Bahá’í Bioethics” and on “Bahá’í-Muslim and Bahá’í-Christian Studies” with her husband, Kavian Milani.

ANNA STEVENSON is a painter and writer and a frequent contributor to World Order.

ART CREDITS: Cover design by John Solarz, cover photograph, Steve Garrigues; p. 1, photograph, Steve Garrigues; p. 8, photograph, Glenford E. Mitchell; p. 33, photograph, Steve Garrigues; p. 34, photograph, Allegra Kazemzadeh; p. 45, photograph, Steve Garrigues.

[Page 49]

[Page 50]