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Religion • Society • Polity • Arts

WORLD ORDER

In this issue...

Knowledge Is Power

Editorial

A Review of Making the Crooked Straight:

A Contribution to Bahá’í Apologetics

Seena Fazel

Politics beyond War:

Ulrich Gollmer’s Contribution to Bahá’í Political Thought

Arash Abizadeh

Misuses of History

Firuz Kazemzadeh

The Politics of Delay—

Social Meanings and the Historical Treatment of Bahá’í Law

Roshan Danesh

AfterWord

A Survey of Current Iranian Cinema

Roundtable Discussions of Making the Crooked Straight: Scholarship and Building a World Community

2004

Volume 35, No. 3

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Religion • Society • Polity • Arts

WORLD ORDER

2004 VOLUME 35, NUMBER 3

WORLD ORDER AIMS TO STIMULATE, INSPIRE, AND SERVE ITS READERS IN THEIR SEARCH TO UNDERSTAND THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS AND PHILOSOPHY.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Betty J. Fisher

Arash Abizadeh

Monireh Kazemzadeh

Diane Lotfi

Kevin A. Morrison

Robert H. Stockman

Jim Stokes

CONSULTANT IN POETRY

Herbert Woodward Martin

INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS

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.

Peer review: Submissions to the journal will be subject to external blind peer review if they fall outside the expertise of the editorial board or upon request by the author.

Submissions and other editorial correspondence should be addressed to the Editor, World Order, 7311 Quail Springs Place NE, Albuquerque, NM 87113-1780 or e-mailed to <worldorder@usbnc.org>. Detailed information for contributors may be requested in writing or by e-mail.

Manuscripts may be typewritten or computer generated; manuscripts accepted for publication are requested on computer disk (Microsoft Word or WordPerfect preferred) or by electronic submission. Article and review manuscripts must be double-spaced throughout and prepared in a 12-point Courier font; the footnotes must be at the end of the text and not attached electronically to the text. Each manuscript should list on the first page the article title, the author(s), and the author’(s) addresses, including telephone, fax, and e-mail.

Articles may range in length from some 3,750 to 6,250 words.

Reviews vary in length. Review Notes run from some 125 to 150 words; Mini-Reviews run from some 1,000 to 2,500 words, and Review Essays, from some 3,750 to 6,250 words.

Poems should be single spaced with clearly marked stanza breaks.

World Order is indexed in the Index of American Periodical Verse, the ATLA Religion Database, and The American Humanities Index.

INFORMATION FOR SUBSCRIBERS

Subscription Rates: U.S.A. and surface to all other countries, 1 year, US $25; 2 years, US $48. Airmail to all other countries, 1 year, US $30, 2 years, US $58. Single copies US $7 plus shipping and handling. Make checks or money orders payable to Bahá’í Distribution Service. Send address changes to and order subscriptions from the Bahá’í Distribution Service, 4703 Fulton Industrial Boulevard, Atlanta, GA 30336-2017. Telephone: 1-800-999-9019, United States and Canada; 404-472-9019, all other countries. Or, please e-mail: <subscription@usbnc.org>.

Back issues still in print may be obtained from the Bahá’í Distribution Service at the mailing address above or by email <bds@usbnc.org>. Orders for back issues on microfilm and microfiche Can be obtained from ProQuest Information and Learning, 300 North Zeeb Road, PO. Box 1346, Ann Arbor, MI 48106—1346 USA. Telephone: 1-800—5210600. E-mail: <info@il.proquest.com>.

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2004 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States; all rights reserved. World Order is protected through trademark registration in the U.S. Patent Office. Printed in the U.S.A. ISSN 0043-8804.

ART CREDITS

Cover design by Richard Doering, cover photograph, Copyright © 2004 by Calvin Ng Choon, all rights reserved; pp. 5, 8, 18, photographs, Steve Garrigues; p. 23, photograph, Stan Phillips; pp. 24, 30, photographs, Steve Garrigues; p. 32, photograph, Linsay Carlson; p. 46, photograph, Steve Garrigues.

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2004 VOLUME 35, NUMBER 3

CONTENTS

2 Knowledge Is Power

Editorial

6 Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor

9 Grandeur

a poem by Peter E. Murphy

10 Making the Crooked Straight: An Introduction

11 A Review of Making the Crooked Straight: A Contribution to Bahá’í Apologetics

by Seena Fazel

19 Politics beyond War: Ulrich Gollmer’s Contribution to Bahá’í Political Thought

by Arash Abizadeh

25 Misuses of History

by Firuz Kazemzadeh

31 Jessie

a poem by Heather Nablo Cardin

33 The Politics of Delay—Social Meanings and the Historical Treatment of Bahá’í Law

by Roshan Danesh

45 Ordained

a poem by Barbara Darr

47 AfterWord

A Survey of Current Iranian Cinema

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Editorial

Knowledge Is Power

The dictum that “knowledge is power” contains both a promise and a warning. The promise is clear. Knowledge acquired through the exercise of reason empowers human beings. The warning is equally clear. With empowerment comes power, and with power, The possibility of its abuse. It is not surprising that Bahá’u’lláh, by refusing to establish an institution of clerics for His religion, both extolled the acquisition of knowledge and limited the authority of those who acquire it. Today the power of the ecclesiastics, He declared, “‘hath been seized’” from them. The implicit warning is not to allow individuals to abuse the power that comes from their specialized forms of knowledge. What Bahá’u’lláh sought in His religion, and in society at large, was an educated populace capable of determining their convictions through their own independent investigation rather than a populace obliged blindly to follow the dictates of an elite, authoritative class possessing specialized technical or religious knowledge. The acquisition of knowledge must be open to all human beings. The egalitarian impulse that animates Bahá’u’lláh’s warning helps explain the aspiration to make scholarship, and particularly Bahá’í scholarship, a vocation open to everyone.

The challenge lies in the fact that the very nature of scholarship cuts against the egalitarian impulse. The first defining feature of scholarship as an intellectual practice —the fundamental premise that distinguishes the scholarly pursuit of knowledge from other kinds of intellectual pursuit—is that the scholar must become thoroughly acquainted with what others have already thought and said about the topic being investigated. The practice of scholarship assumes that human knowledge is best advanced by learning from, rather than by ignoring, previous intellectual and scientific achievements. It is quite possible, of course, to write intelligent, creative, and fruitful essays on the question of whether God exists, whether eating animals is wrong, or whether human-made pollution contributes to global warming without knowing what others have said about the matter. Perhaps such essays could even be sources of brilliant, original insight. But they would not be works of scholarship.

Whatever Bahá’í scholarship is, it is a kind of scholarship; and scholarship, by definition, demands an attitude of humility. The scholar cannot assume that he or she is the first human being ever to think about the topic at hand. Therein lies the rub. Because human beings have been thinking about all sorts of questions for thousands of years, to undertake the training and research needed to learn what has gone on before demands a significant investment of time and energy. The challenge is this: The tremendous investment of time and energy that scholarship requires seems to produce classes of individuals with specialized knowledge that has often [Page 3] been used, especially in religious contexts, to claim and abuse power over other individuals.

The warning about abuse should not, however, become an excuse for neglecting the promise of the scholarly vocation. Succumbing to neglect would be all-too-tempting within a cultural context in which simplicity is often equated with goodness. Such an equation of simplicity with goodness—and, by implication, of sophistication with malice or evil—has a long pedigree in Western sources. The Christian image of the simple carpenter who recognized Christ’s station, while sophisticated clerics were blinded by their own acquired knowledge; the Romantic portrait of the noble savage confronting technologically advanced yet morally corrupt civilizations; the nationalist celebration of simple, hard-working farmers toiling the land, representing the authentic soul of the nation against corrupt urban elites; the New World’s democratic-egalitarian ethos, which cast a suspicious eye upon the oppressive social hierarchies across the ocean; even the Greek etymology of the word sophisticated, which betrays a relation to sophistry, and thus to deception—all these currents in Western civilization point to the intellectual roots of the often-noted suspicion of things intellectual in much of Western culture. To be a “sophisticated” intellectual, from this perspective, is to be blind to the simple clarity of moral truths.

It would be a mistake to conflate the Bahá’í attitude toward scholarly and other intellectual pursuits with the equation of simplicity with goodness. “Knowledge,” Bahá’u’lláh has categorically declared, is the “wings to man’s life, and a ladder for his ascent. Its acquisition is incumbent upon everyone.” Bahá’u’lláh has gone so far as to call “the rational faculty” “a sign of the revelation of . . . the sovereign Lord” through which all “names and attributes have been revealed,” while ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has called wisdom and the intellect “the two most luminous lights” possessed by humanity. It is not surprising, then, that the scholarly pursuit of knowledge should have such a high station in the Bahá’í Faith. Far from discouraging the scholarly vocation, far from seeing intellectual and scientific pursuits as a threat to spiritual life, the Bahá’í writings portray them as vital to the moral and spiritual advancement of humanity. Though the Bahá’í writings warn against intellectual arrogance and abuse of power, the warning is indivisibly linked to the promise that such passages in Bahá’í scripture make on behalf of intellectual pursuits.

To guard against the abuse of specialized knowledge, the Bahá’í writings make three recommendations. First, a Bahá’í approach places a great deal of emphasis upon a second defining characteristic of the scholarly enterprise: the capacity for critical thought—that is, the capacity to unearth and evaluate critically the tacit assumptions underlying the learning that one has acquired. Bahá’u’lláh has forbidden His followers blindly to imitate their forebears in their beliefs. Hence, while scholars must [Page 4] approach their subject matter with enough humility to acquaint themselves with the knowledge inherited from thousands of years of intellectual pursuit, they must also be capable of casting a critical eye on that heritage and on their own most cherished assumptions. No scholar can achieve a neutral, “objective” point of view; the scholar must, instead, be capable of making his or her assumptions as explicit as possible so that others may make their own judgment.

Furthermore, while Bahá’u’lláh has encouraged His followers to develop independently their own beliefs, views, and interpretations of scripture, and even to try to persuade others of those views through open and rational debate, He has forbidden anyone, including scholars, from claiming for their own views or interpretations a special authority that could justify compelling others’ acquiescence. There is a great deal of spiritual insight to be had from the learning that scholarship provides; but no scholar has the right to make claims to authoritative interpretation. Not just the scholar, but everyone must recognize the fallibility of the scholarly enterprise—no one can expect a scholar to produce revelation. Mistakes are inevitable; they ought to be expected, tolerated, and, ultimately, corrected.

Finally, a Bahá’í approach provides scholarship with a third defining characteristic beyond acquired learning and critical thought: Bahá’í scholarship must be defined in relation to fundamental ethical and spiritual principles. The purpose of scholarship must be, as Bahá’u’lláh puts it, knowledge that “can profit the peoples of the earth” and not knowledge that simply “begin[s] with words and end[s] with words.” Bahá’u’lláh is not claiming that only the applied sciences, directly related to advances in the material world, are worthy of pursuit, and that fields linked to humanity’s intellectual, cultural, and spiritual life are fruitless. He is not ruling out the study of literature, philosophy, theology, or history. Nor is He claiming that knowledge is not to be pursued for its own sake. He is, instead, identifying ethical and spiritual principles for how one must conduct scholarship, whether in the natural sciences, social sciences, or the humanities. Scholars must approach their subject matter with sincerity, good faith, and enough humility and detachment to be capable of recognizing the truth even if that truth should challenge all of their acquired learning.

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Interchange

Letters from and to the Editor

Normally The Editors begin Interchange with comments about the issue—what we are publishing and why. But The background of this issue, which is primarily devoted to the important book Making the Crooked Straight: A Contribution to Bahá’í Apologetics and to ideas arising from it, may be found in a short introduction to the roundtable on pages 9 and 10.

The Editorial “Knowledge Is Power” deserves a special mention. Longer than editorials generally run, it raises not only some important questions about the nature and purpose of scholarship but about the universal right, and obligation, to acquire knowledge—an opportunity that in its breadth is unique to this age.

Rounding out the issue is a survey of current Iranian cinema, which continues the discussion of global cinema found in our last two issues—Volume 35, Nos. 1 and 2. Our thirty-fifth volume continues to break new ground.

Patricia Locke (1928-2001), the first American Indian woman to be elected a member and an officer of the national governing body of the Bahá’ís of the United States, is one of ten women who will be inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, in October 2005. Locke helped found seventeen tribally run colleges in the United States, worked for decades to preserve American Indian languages, and was an advocate for passing federal laws increasing Indian tribes’ autonomy in educating their children. In 1990 she was given a MacArthur Fellowship for her lifelong work to save dying tribal languages. In 1993 she was elected to the national governing body of the Bahá’ís of the United States and in 2001 was elected Vice-Chair of the same governing body.

The National Women’s Hall of Fame was established in 1969 in Seneca Falls, New York (the birthplace in 1848 of women’s rights in the United States) to give the contributions of women a home. The Hall of Fame’s mission is “to honor in perpetuity these women, citizens of the United States of America whose contributions to the arts, athletics, business, education, government, the humanities, philanthropy and science, have been the greatest value for the development of their country.”

The nine other women being inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame include Florence Ellinwood Allen (1844-1966), a judge and legal pioneer who broke barriers for women in law; Ruth Fulton [Page 7] Benedict (1887-1948), a major influence in the field of cultural anthropology; Betty Bumpers (1925- ), a former first lady of Arkansas who dedicated herself to world peace and health initiatives in the United States; U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (1947- ), who, with U.S. Representative Louise Slaughter, introduced legislation establishing the Votes for Women History Trail that will recognize places in New York central to the development of women’s rights; Dr. Rita Rossi Colwell (1934- ), the first woman and the first biologist to head the U.S. National Science Foundation and to emphasize science and mathematics education for girls, women, and minorities from kindergarten through graduate school; Mother Marianne Cope (1838-1918), who helped found St. Joseph’s Hospital in Syracuse, New York, and spent thirty years in Hawaii ministering to those with leprosy; Maya Lin (1959- ), who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.; Blanche Burnette Scott (1889-1970), the first woman to fly solo and to drive an automobile across the United States; and Mary Burnett Talbert (1888-1923), a civil-rights activist, the first African-American high school principal in Arkansas, and a founder of the Niagara Movement, a forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The ten inductees will join 207 women the Women’s Hall of Fame has already honored and celebrated for their achievements.

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World Order’s poetry editor Herbert Woodward Martin is always busy teaching at Dayton University in Dayton, Ohio; writing prize-winning poetry, plays, and librettos for operas; and acting and performing, especially the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar. But 2004 has been extraordinary for him: Kent State University has published Herbert Woodward Martin and the African American Tradition in Poetry, a biography by Ronald Primeau examining Martin’s multidisciplinary contributions to the arts, and Martin himself has published, as part of the Penguin Edition Series, Paul Laurence Dunbar: Selected Poems. In addition, Martin has received (along with nine other poets) a grant from the Ohio Arts Council to write poetry as well as writing award from the Montgomery County, Ohio, Arts Association. In 2005 Kent State University will publish a volume of Martin’s new and selected poems and Bottom Dog Press will bring out a volume of his new poems. In 2005 [Page 8] Martin will also see the premier of a new cantata “Crispus Attucks,” with his text and music by Adolphus Hailstork. Our congratulations to our colleague.

To the Editor

THE CELLULOID CONTRIBUTIONS OF PHIL LUCAS

I have read . . . [VOL 35, No. 1]. I find it informative, comforting, and quite timely, from a Native American Bahá’í perspective, to see the pattern of consistent effort to educate the greater population while trying to bring healing through this powerful medium.

CELESTE DIXON

Germantown, Maryland

GLOBAL CINEMA

I read one of your global cinema issues, and I liked it very much. Congratulations.

MICHAEL FITZGERALD

Winchester, Virginia

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Grandeur

for Charles Lynch

I have been thinking how a man gets made—

This one whirls out of the flames.

This one dallies in the smoke above the glow.

This one slumbers among the coals.

This one unearths a word,

drudges himself out of the ashes

of flesh and blood to lead

the Procession of Nations

at the World Congress, to hold

the tribes together as they climb

the huge stage in colorful costumes.

His portrait hangs on a wall

in this quiet museum.

Brother who writes.

Brother who sings.

Brother who has learned how to pray.

—PETER E. MURPHY

Copyright © 2004 by Peter E. Murphy

PETER E. MURPHY, a poet and a teacher of English and creative writing in Atlantic City, New Jersey, is a consultant to the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation’s poetry program and has been an educational adviser to five PBS television series on poetry. He is the founder and director of the annual Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway (www.wintergetaway.com).

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Making the Crooked Straight: An Introduction

It is not immediately obvious why Making the Crooked Straight: A Contribution to Bahá’í Apologetics—a work originally published in German 1995 in response to a shallow polemical book attacking the Bahá’í Faith—should be of interest to anyone beyond the borders of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Nor is it immediately obvious why the Bahá’í response should have been translated into and published in English. Even less obvious is World Order’s reason for providing a forum for several authors in this issue and subsequent issues to respond to the book.

However, even a cursory survey of the contents of Making the Crooked Straight serves to lay the mystery to rest. Although the book’s immediate purpose was to provide a response to Francesco Ficicchia’s anti-Bahá’í polemic—an occasion that dictated the structure and much of the content of the book—its authors have produced a work the substance and significance of which goes well beyond its original context. That such an attack of such poor scholarly quality could have deceived so many in Germany’s intellectual, religious, and political circles about the true nature of the Bahá’í Faith was made possible only by the dearth of scholarship on the Bahá’í Faith available in 1995, particularly in German. Had a scholarly corpus existed, it would have provided a background against which the academic deficiencies of Ficicchia’s attack would have been immediately visible to its German-speaking readers.

The authors of Making the Crooked Straight— Udo Schaefer, Nicola Towfigh, and Ulrich Gollmer—have not only responded to the attack in Ficicchia’s polemic. They have also produced a massive volume almost nine hundred pages in length that brings together the most recent scholarship on the Bahá’í Faith in several languages and makes numerous original contributions to Bahá’í thought in its own right. Drawing on their varied fields of expertise, the authors not only treat methodological questions but also contribute to Bahá’í scholarship in the fields, among others, of theology, jurisprudence and law, political theory, history, textual interpretation, and sociology. The book has served the Bahá’í community by defending it against attack as well as by enriching its intellectual life, helping to lay the foundations for a prolific program of Bahá’í scholarship. Against this background, it is not surprising that the book would merit a rare mention in the annual letter of the Universal House of Justice to the Bahá’í world community.

When World Order’s Editorial Board first contemplated soliciting a review of Making the Crooked Straight, we were struck by how difficult it would be for one person alone to assess adequately a volume written by three authors whose fields of expertise range from jurisprudence and oriental studies to political science, history, and literature. Accordingly, the Board decided to try, however modestly, to build on the foundation the book has laid by inviting several authors to respond to specific aspects of the book’s content in ways that take them beyond the boundaries usually followed by reviews. With the exception of Seena Fazel, we have not asked our contributors to write a “book review” in the traditional sense. Instead, we have asked them to respond to specific substantive questions in Bahá’í scholarship by engaging with the contributions made by Making the Crooked Straight. We are happy to share with you an overview of an extraordinary book and essays exploring some of the deeper meanings of concepts necessary for bringing into being a new world community and a new order.

—THE EDITORS

[Page 11]

SEENA FAZEL

'A Review of Making the Crooked Straight: A Contribution to Bahá’í Apologetics

Since its inception, The Bahá’í Faith has been attacked from various quarters, the most vociferous attacks having originated in Protestant Christianity and Islam. The major Christian opponents were former American and British Protestant missionaries to Iran, who were relatively few in number—Presbyterians Samuel Graham Wilson and William McElwee Miller and Anglicans J. R. Richards and Robert P. Richardson. These missions garnered few converts in Iran. In contrast, the Bahá’ís continued to increase numerically in the early twentieth century and were, therefore, perceived as rivals. These four men were consumed with exposing to people in the West the alleged falsehood of the Bahá’í Faith. Their writings focused on the Faith’s “supposed theological inferiority to Christianity in the areas of sin and salvation, alleged immoral action on the part of Bahá’í founders, accusations of Bahá’í distortion of their history and Bahá’í misuse of Christian scriptures” so that the religion would be more palatable to potential converts.

The impact of the early Protestant opposition is hard to estimate, although Miller’s introductory book on the Bahá’í Faith—The Bahá’í Faith: Its History and Teachings—was the most influential publication to come out of the period and has not yet been adequately refuted. Since the publication of Miller’s book in 1974, there has been in America a trickle of anti-Bahá’í literature from Protestant evangelical churches, which has not been well-informed or particularly extensive. Such works resort to formulaic attacks on the Bahá’í Faith because it does not share beliefs

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Copyright © 2004 by Seena Fazel.

SEENA FAZEL

is a Senior Research Fellow in psychiatry at the University of Oxford and a consulting forensic psychiatrist with Oxfordshire Mental Healthcare NHS Trust. He has coedited Reason and Revelation: New Directions in Bahá’í Thought (Kalimát Press, 2002) and Search for Values: Ethics In Bahá’í’ Thought (Kalimát Press, 2004) and coauthored The Bahá’í Faith in Words and Images (Oneworld, forthcoming).

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[Page 12] about the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and the exclusivity of the Christian path to salvation. In addition, they draw on Miller’s presentation of Bahá’í history. In Europe, works attacking the Faith have been less prominent, probably reflecting the lack of strength of evangelical Christianity and the small numbers of Bahá’ís throughout the continent. There is, however, one country—Germany—where anti-Bahá’í literature has made a significant impact.

In 1981 the German Evangelische Zentralstrelle für Weltanschauungsfragen (hereafter EZW)—the Central Office of the Protestant Church for Questions of Ideology, which supplies information to church administration, its theologians, and church workers who have been charged as “Sektenbeauftragte” (commissionaires for sects, non-Christian religions and religious movements)—published a monograph on the Bahá’í Faith by a former Bahá’í, Francesco Ficicchia. Ficicchia’s work was marketed by EZW as a standard Introduction to the Bahá’í Faith and was reviewed positively in some German academic journals. It presented a jumble of polemical materials against the Faith, mostly derived from Miller’s work. The material in Ficicchia’s book ranged from attacking the personal integrity of the Central Figures of the Bahá’í Faith to highlighting problems in successorship, and to criticizing the Faith’s doctrines and the policies of its current leadership. It gave the impression that the religion is a confused, fundamentalist Islamic cult that has rewritten its history, distorted its origins, and made imperialist claims on the world.

The material in Ficicchia’s book found its way into German encyclopedias of comparative religion and has been used as the basis for decisions taken by certain governmental agencies. For example, the Bahá’í community of Berlin was refused a public-information stand because of the perceived danger of Bahá’í beliefs to young people. In 1995, fourteen years after Ficicchia’s book appeared, a response was published—Desinformation als Methode (Hildesheim, Germany: Georgs Olms Verlag BmbH), of which the book reviewed here is an English translation.

The response, which bears the English title Making the Crooked Straight, is [Page 13] coauthored by three individuals—Udo Schaefer, Nicola Towfigh, and Ulrich Gollmer. Udo Schaefer, a jurist, discusses methodology; questions of law, ethics, and the doctrine of infallibility of the Universal House of Justice; and Ficicchia’s portrayal of the Bahá’í community. Ulrich Gollmer, a political scientist, writes on Bahá’í political thought and the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (a document that Ficicchia alleges was a fake). Nicola Towfigh, who has a doctorate in Middle East studies, deals with aspects of early Bahá’í history including the key historical sources that Ficcichia uses (Kitáb-i-Nuqṭatu’l-Káf—The Book of the Point of the Letter “K”—and Táríkh-i-Jadíd—The New History), the relationship between Edward Granville Browne and the Bahá’ís, the evolving claims of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, and the early attempts to provoke schism in the Bahá’í community.

Overall, Making the Crooked Straight is a brilliant work that responds point by point to Ficicchia’s attacks on the Bahá’í Faith. Schaefer in his conclusion to the book describes the impact that the German edition of Making the Crooked Straight had on the EZW. A somewhat favorable review of Desinformation als Methode appeared in its periodical, giving the impression that EZW was trying to distance itself from Ficicchia. The reviewer commends the authors for their meticulous research, “wealth of knowledge,” and “‘erudition.’” Other tangible effects are the dropping of Ficicchia as an author for an updated edition of a German Catholic encyclopedia and the increasing presence of Bahá’ís in a range of interreligious activities. It came as no surprise that the Universal House of Justice, in its 2000 annual message to the Bahá’ís of the world, highlighted Making the Crooked Straight as “a signal victory for the German Bahá’í community.” I know of no other secondary publication to be highlighted in such a way.

Making the Crooked Straight is divided into three sections. The first, “Methodology,” discusses the sources on which Ficicchia draws and how he uses them. The next section, “Community and Doctrine,” examines Ficicchia’s portrait of the Bahá’í community and his presentation of Bahá’í doctrines, law, and political thought. The final section, “Historical Issues,” analyzes Ficicchia’s key sources in more detail as [Page 14] well as aspects of Babí and Bahá’í history on which anti-Bahá’í works have tended to focus, in particular the schismatic attempts at the time of the deaths of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

Throughout the book the authors criticize Ficicchia on a number of fronts. They demonstrate that his methodology is seriously flawed, which is not entirely surprising because he has no academic training, and show that his presentation of the Bahá’í Faith is skewed, being based almost entirely on Miller and other anti-Bahá’í sources. They also show that Ficicchia makes scant reference to Bahá’í literature; and what Bahá’í sources he does use, he often uses erroneously—such as claiming that Bahá’í authorities have intentionally concealed copies of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Most Holy Book, whereas, in fact, many Bahá’ís throughout the world possessed copies in the original Arabic as early as the late nineteenth century. Using examples in Schaefer’s doctoral work on Bahá’í law, the authors of Making the Crooked Straight provide many cases of Ficicchia’s misquotes and distortions. They go on to show how Ficicchia’s lack of any knowledge of Persian or Arabic is problematic when he deals with early Bahá’í history and sources. Moreover, the authors note that Ficicchia’s having left the religion disaffected after four years and subsequently writing to the Bahá’í institutions declaring that he was an “‘embittered enemy’” does not necessarily make him well qualified to write an authoritative book on the Bahá’ís. When he blames the Iranian Bahá’ís for their persecution, he loses any semblance of credibility. He states that Bahá’í’s were “‘advocates and supporters of the imperial state doctrine’” and suspects them of “‘conspiracy with the throne.’” This is grossly inaccurate, and independent human-rights organizations including agencies of the United Nations report that Bahá’ís were intermittently persecuted by the Pahlavi regime, even though some individual Bahá’ís were associated with the government. Gollmer makes the chilling comparison with the ways in which Nazi Germany justified the genocide of the Jews and concludes, quite rightly, that, “it is a scandal that such things should be propagated by official publications of Christian churches.”

But Making the Crooked Straight is more than a rebuttal of Ficicchia’s book. It presents new material on the Bahá’í approach to the concepts of grace, liberty, religious exclusivity, and politics that is discussed clearly and thoughtfully. For [Page 15] example, the section on religious exclusivity develops the important idea that the Bahá’í concept of the relativity of religious truth does not mean that the spiritual teachings of other religions are obsolete—rather, it is their social laws that are outdated. The truths of their scriptures and spiritual teachings remain. Moreover, it has been argued that religious teachings across ages and places fulfill each other.

The material on liberty explains how the term “ḥurriyyah” in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, translated as “liberty” or “freedom,” more accurately refers to libertinism (or permissiveness) rather than democratic liberties and freedoms. Gollmer argues, as do other authors elsewhere, that the context of the French Revolution is important to understanding fully the implications of Bahá’u’lláh’s writings on liberty. He concludes the section with an insightful discussion on the limits to liberty from a Bahá’í perspective. Gollmer suggests that these limits are not set merely at the point where the rights of others are infringed upon. The limits of liberty lie “in structures that are determined by normative premises—the image of man—and by metaphysical postulates”—that is, the limits are determined by laws that preserve human dignity. “Hence,” he argues,

many of Bahá’u’lláh’s laws are determined by the goal of protecting man from establishing structures that are contrary to his divine purpose, his exalted station as ‘the noblest and most perfect of all created things’, as God’s image and trustee. . . .

Thus, liberty is the individual’s own self-determined moral adherence to the ordinances of God. God’s commandments are voluntarily fulfilled by the believer, who is responsible to God alone. True liberty is, paradoxically, the liberty that results from obedience to the will of God as manifested in the law. It is liberty in submission to God.”

Gollmer’s discussion of the background and response to the attack on Shoghi Effendi, the then head of the Bahá’í Faith, by Hermmann Zimmer, a lapsed Bahá’í who had been expelled from the Bahá’í community, is the first published rebuttal. Zimmer wrote a monograph attacking the authority of Shoghi Effendi, which he published in 1973, distributing thirty-five thousand copies worldwide (including to many libraries). Gollmer convincingly shows that Zimmer’s attack on Shoghi Effendi is based on inaccurate sources and historical errors.

Schaefer’s material on the infallibility Of the Universal House of Justice is an important beginning for understanding this subject. He suggests that infallibility [Page 16] is limited to legislation alone, which he has argued elsewhere, and has only been exercised on seven occasions since the institution’s establishment in 1963. To suggest, as some may do, that this careful and foundational work on infallibility is intended to render the concept palatable to Western audiences is not consistent with Schaefer’s discussions of Bahá’í law and penal provisions that are presented elsewhere in the book. Making the Crooked Straight also draws extensively on research into the historical origins of the Bábí and Bahá’í religions by Abbas Amanat, H. M. Balyuzi, Christopher Buck, Juan Ricardo I. Cole, Stephen Lambden, B. Todd Lawson, Denis MacEoin, Moojan Momen, Peter Smith, and others, demonstrating the relevance of Middle East studies to apologetics.

One wonders on reading such an excellent work why it took fourteen years to publish a rebuttal, for the delay is remarkable in its tardiness. In the introduction Schaefer explains that the decision not to respond was partly due to the view of some Bahá’í’s that Ficicchia’s material was unworthy of such attention. Schaefer also speculates that another possible reason is that religious and nonreligious people are tired of hearing about religious controversies. Yet, as Schaefer points out by citing the following passage from the writings of Bahá’u’lláh, apologetic concerns need no justification from a Bahá’í perspective:

If any man were to arise to defend, in his writings, the Cause of God against its assailants, such a man, however inconsiderable his share, shall be so honored in the world to come that the Concourse on high would envy his glory. No pen can depict the loftiness of his station, neither can any tongue describe its splendor.”

The delay in replying to the attacks by Ficicchia may also be attributable to the lack of a scholarly tradition in the German-speaking Bahá’í community. Had there been a stronger culture of scholarship, academic monographs on the Bahá’í Faith in German would have been available (there were none at the time that Ficicchia’s book [Page 17] was published) so that the effect of a single work like Ficicchia’s would have been diluted. Making the Crooked Straight demonstrates the need for developing further a culture of scholarship and the benefits that accrue in stimulating academic research on the Bahá’í Faith’s history and teachings.

Were the publishers to consider an updated edition, the following suggestions might be helpful. Criticisms of the EZW for its publication of Ficicchia’s book from the perspective of interreligious dialogue appear unconvincing. Dialogue assumes that both partners are interested in an exchange of views, which is not the case here. The repetitive way in which Ficicchia is criticized comes across as awkward for English readers—the material in Making the Crooked Straight is itself sufficient to indicate the problems with Ficicchia’s book, and tighter editing would remove the need to end each section with a version of “this proves again what a terrible book Ficicchia has written.” Finally, an abbreviated section on Hermann Römer, a Protestant theologian who in 1911 published an anti-Bahá’í book, which has had little influence outside Germany, would be appropriate for non-German speaking audiences. These minor quibbles aside, Bahá’ís throughout the world would benefit greatly from reading this work to deepen further their understanding of their own religion and to increase their ability to explain it intelligently to others. In addition, Bahá’ís and others will gain from reading how it systematically addresses misconceptions about the Bahá’í Faith.

In terms of the development of Bahá’í thought, Making the Crooked Straight stimulates reflection on the possible nature of future attacks on and misrepresentations of the Bahá’í Faith and on effective ways to respond. Yet such attacks are, ultimately, difficult to predict. For example, in the United Kingdom in 2003, the Bahá’í community had to respond to the mistaken view presented in some national newspapers that the Bahá’í Faith condones suicide, something that would have been difficult to predict from prior misrepresentations on the Faith. What Making the Crooked Straight illustrates is that the best anticipatory response to future attacks is to continue to develop grounded academic scholarship on some of the key issues in Bahá’í studies—the religion’s history, theology, and philosophy.

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[Page 19]

ARASH ABIZADEH

Politics beyond War: Ulrich Gollmer’s Contribution to Bahá’í Political Thought

In chapter 6 of Making the Crooked Straight: A Contribution To Bahá’í Apologetics, Ulrich Gollmer uses the immediate occasion of responding to on anti-Bahá’í polemic to provide a survey of Bahá’í political Thought. While Gollmer’s survey touches on numerous issues, one in particular stands out—one in which he makes an important and original contribution to Bahá’í discussions of the nature of politics.

There is a long-standing tradition in the history of political thought that views politics essentially as a form of war. That the image of politics as war is to be found in a figure like Machiavelli is, of course, to be expected, for, according to Machiavelli, republican liberty is safeguarded by agonistic clashes between classes who prevent each other from usurping power. It is more surprising to find the image at the heart of liberal political philosophy, which places a premium on the role of reason in politics. Yet the image is also to be found in the writings of John Locke, shaping the political theory of one of liberalism’s founding fathers: despite conceiving of human nature as essentially reasonable, Locke viewed politics as a form of combat— between opposing social forces that must safeguard the rights owed to each person by ultimate appeal to the threat of violence. By the twentieth century the conception of politics as a form of war found its most notorious exponent in one of liberalism’s

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Copyright © 2004 by Arash Abizadeh.

ARASH ABIZADEH

is an assistant professor at McGill University in Montreal, where he teaches political theory and the history of political philosophy. He received his M.Phil. from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 1994 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2001. He has published in The Journal of Political Philosophy, Political Theory, Review of Metaphysics, American Political Science Review, and Nations and Nationalism.

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[Page 20] most sophisticated critics: the German legal theorist Carl Schmitt, according to whom the defining characteristic of “the political” realm is the distinction “between friend and enemy.” The political, according to Schmitt, necessarily presupposes the existence of an “enemy”; without enemies, the political ceases to exist. And this “enemy exists only with an at least potentially—i.e the real possibility of a— fighting collectivity of people confronting a similar collectivity.”

The most original contribution that Gollmer makes in Making the Crooked Straight is to clarify the Bahá’í conception of politics by relating it, albeit implicitly, to the tradition in the history of political thought that insists on politics as a form of war. Gollmer’s contribution is especially significant because the question of what constitutes politics is a vexed one in Bahá’í thought. On the one hand, the Bahá’í writings claim that the Bahá’í Faith is nonpolitical and, indeed, require Bahá’ís to abstain from politics. (To this day, many Bahá’ís become rather squeamish when the terms “Bahá’í” and “politics” are paired.) On the other hand, as Gollmer notes, the Bahá’í writings advocate a series of measures, principles, and institutions that are quite straightforwardly political.

To make sense of the apparent contradiction, previous students of Bahá’í political thought have distinguished between different senses of “politics,” suggesting that the Bahá’í writings condemn politics in the restricted sense of “partisan” politics but not politics in other senses, such as collective decision making. Gollmer draws a similar distinction, but he takes the analysis a step further. Making a clear allusion to Schmitt, Gollmer argues that, according to the Bahá’í writings, “politics should not be conducted on the basis of a categorization into ‘friends’ and ‘foes.’” He next draws attention to a passage in which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explicitly expresses the hope that the form of “ancient politics whose foundation is war be discarded and modern [Page 21] politics founded on peace raise the standard of victory.” Gollmer then argues that, “When the scripture states that Bahá’ís should not engage in politics, it is this type of political activity that is meant.”

By thus identifying the negative sense of the term “politics” with the tradition that views politics as a form of war, Gollmer does three things at once. First, he draws our attention to the philosophical background of the Bahá’í prohibition against involvement “in the partisan, antagonistic forms of political activity.”

Second, by referring to the philosophical background, Gollmer deepens our understanding of the nature, content, and tone of the Bahá’í critique of contemporary forms of politics. In the light of that background, the Bahá’í critique appears to ask about the consequences of thinking of politics as a form of war or combat. Thinking of politics in this way is, after all, a way of thinking about politics—it is an ideology— and it is an ideology with real consequences. Could it be, for example, that institutionalizing combat as the essence of parliamentary procedure—through parties the role of which is to oppose the policies of other parties no matter how valid the others’ views may be—compromises the capacity of parliaments to deliberate genuinely and reasonably about matters of public policy? Could it also be that such institutions help foster the often-noted political apathy that is increasingly prevalent among citizens of contemporary Western liberal democracies? Could it further be that foreign policy based on declarations that the world is comprised of some peoples who are our “friends” and others who are our mortal “enemies” actually helps bring about the kind of world such declarations only claim to notice?

Gollmer’s contribution helps us to see that the Bahá’í rejection of politics as war is a rejection of the ideological division of humanity into essentially warring camps. [Page 22] But his contribution also tells us something about the tone of that rejection: Bahá’í critique—the act of calling into question the tacit and explicit assumptions upon which a way of life is based—cannot itself reproduce the rhetoric of war that it seeks to replace. In other words, critique does not proceed, in a Bahá’í context, in the mode of an attack on the enemy. For the Bahá’í writings do not simply reject the use of actual, physical violence as a way of advancing Bahá’í political goals; they also temper the use of discursive violence directed at other human beings. As Bahá’u’lláh puts it in the Kitáb-i-Íqán: “the tongue is a smouldering fire. . . . Material fire consumeth the body, whereas the fire of the tongue devoureth both heart and soul. The force of the former lasteth but for a time, whilst the effects of the latter endure a century.” This is not to say there is no such thing as Bahá’í critique; it is to characterize the nature of Bahá’í critique. Nor is it to say that there is no place for anger, indignation, outrage, biting satire, or struggle in Bahá’í critique or politics. The point is, rather, that anger or outrage, satire or struggle, should find political expression in ways that do not simply reproduce enemy relations.

Third, by relating the Bahá’í writings to the tradition that views politics as war, Gollmer illuminates not just the Bahá’í critique of this tradition but also the nature of the positive vision of politics that the Bahá’í writings offer in its stead. To do this, Gollmer draws on the distinction that German philosopher and social theorist Jürgen Habermas makes between two types of social action: strategic action, which is social action oriented toward success, and communicative action, which is social action oriented toward reaching an understanding.

People act strategically when, in their interactions with others, they seek to maximize the realization of goals that they possesses before the interaction. In effect, strategically acting individuals treat other persons as a means to realizing their antecedently given goals. The hard-nosed bargaining between political parties or between management and union in labor negotiations—complete with threats and offers—are paradigmatic examples of strategic action. By contrast, when individuals act communicatively, their antecedently given goals are all subordinated to the goal of reaching an understanding with others about the truth or rightness of the matter at hand and of coordinating social action on the basis of that understanding. Communicative action requires a sincere willingness to revise one’s views and goals in light of the force of reasons that others may provide. This, then, is how Gollmer fills in the details of the Bahá’í vision of politics: adopting Habermasian language, [Page 23] he argues that politics “must change from strategically oriented action based on shrewd alliances and power politics aimed at asserting particular . . . interests, to action that is directed towards universal understanding.” By identifying strategic action as a form of action modeled after war or combat, and communicative action as its alternative, Gollmer points to a mode of politics based on reasoned deliberation in the manner of the Bahá’í art of consultation.

Students of Bahá’í political thought would do well to follow Gollmer’s lead and build upon this suggestion, though Gollmer’s own formulation is perhaps a little too one-sided. Consultation certainly is the bedrock of Bahá’í politics, yet even in Bahá’í contexts it is not the only legitimate form of decision making (as, for example, Bahá’í voting procedures demonstrate). Even Habermas has come to recognize that strategic action is sometimes quite appropriate in particular political contexts. There is, after all, a significant difference between fair processes of bargaining and blowing up one’s counterpart. A Bahá’í critique of politics as war is not based on the premise of a fantasy world without conflict, a world in which everyone’s interests coincide and all views achieve consensus. Conflicts of interest and of values are endemic to human society and politics. Indeed, they are often a positive source of innovation and learning. The question is not how to eliminate such conflicts once and for all. It is, rather, how to adjudicate conflicts when they arise. What Gollmer has done is deepen our understanding of what a Bahá’í-oriented answer might look like.

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[Page 25]

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

Misuses of History

Making The Crooked Straight (Desinformation als Methode) is much more than a reply to an obscure renegade’s venomous attack on his former religion. Had it been only a polemic against Francesco Ficicchio’s Der Bahá’ismus—Weltreligion der Zukunft? Geschichte, Lehre und Organisation in kritischer Anfrage, a book that attracted no attention outside Germany, Making the Crooked Straight would have merited a brief review exposing factual errors and shoddy scholarship. Reading Udo Schaefer, Nicola Towfigh, and Ulrich Gollmer, coauthors of Making the Crooked Straight, one realizes that they are defending the Bahá’í Faith from misrepresentations by dozens of writers who for more than a century have been producing distorted accounts of a new and vigorously growing religion. Such accounts have been aimed at confuting the Bahá’í Faith, both theologically and historically. Whereas theological claims may ultimately be a matter of faith, historical claims are susceptible to verification, especially where ample documentation is available, as is the case with the history of the Bahá’í Faith.

Knowledge of the origins and of the early history of any religion is particularly important for understanding and properly appreciating that religion, for the deeds of the founder and of his disciples are no less important than the teachings themselves. What would Christianity be without the person of Jesus and without the Apostles, a Christianity reduced to passages printed in red letters in old-fashioned Bibles? For the seventy years of the Soviet regime school children were taught that Jesus never existed, that he was a myth, another Osiris, an invention of ruling classes

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Copyright © 2004 by Firuz Kazemzadeh.

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

Professor Emeritus of history, Yale University, and Senior Adviser to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, is the author of several books and many articles on Russia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. He served for many years as an editor of World Order.

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[Page 26] serving as an instrument of exploitation and control. In their millennial attempts to discredit Islam, anti-Muslim polemicists never cease to dwell on Muhammad’s alleged epilepsy, which would presumably negate his prophetic mission, reducing his inspiration to the status of a disease. Perversion of the history of a given religion is an unavoidable part of any attempt to discredit it.

Having been born in the bright light of modern history, the Bábí and Bahá’í Faiths attracted attention both at home and abroad. The sources on the early history of the Bahá’í Faith are rich, and much documentation is available. Nineteenth-century official Iranian historians such as Mírzá Muḥammad Táqí Sipihr and Riḍá Qulí Khán Hidáyat, authors of the two most detailed and influential works on the Qajar period, serving the Shah and the Shiite establishment, laid the foundation of many misrepresentations that would be endlessly repeated by others. European writers, respectable scholars among them, did not always escape the views and errors put into circulation by Iranian officials. Although Ficicchia read neither Persian nor Arabic, he ingested much misinformation from Western authors who relied uncritically on their Iranian sources. It is, therefore, appropriate that Nicola Towfigh should devote an entire chapter in Making the Crooked Straight to Ficicchia’s Persian sources even if his familiarity with these was limited to excerpts translated into European languages.

Towfigh subjects to a detailed and meticulous analysis the Kitáb-i-Nuqṭatu’l-Káf (The Book of the Point of the Letter “K”), a work of dubious provenance found among Comte de Gobineau’s papers at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris by the well-known British orientalist, Edward G. Browne. If the manuscript had belonged to Gobineau, an orientalist and diplomat with several years’ service at the French legation in Tehran, there is no evidence of its having been used by him or of his having left any indication of where and under what circumstances he had obtained it. Browne attributed the authorship to Mírzá Jání of Kashan, a Bábí who hosted the Báb in his home during the Báb’s brief stay in Kashan, but the attribution was always uncertain, to say the least. Browne, who sympathized with Mírzá Yaḥyá Ṣubḥ-i-Azal, Bahá’u’lláh’s half-brother, and the tiny and violently anti-Bahá’í band of Azal’s followers, found, or thought he found, in the Nuqṭatu’l-Káf some justification for Azal’s claims to the leadership of the Bábí community. Browne did not subject the manuscript to stringent critical analysis, published its Persian text, and introduced it to the world as the earliest history of the Bábí religion.

Towfigh demonstrates that Mírzá Jání, martyred in Tehran in September 1852, could not have been the sole author of the entire Nuqṭatu’l-Káf as it contains passages that refer to events after Mírzá Jání’s death. Parts of it probably belong to the pen of Mírzá Jání, but other, as yet unidentified, hands have added to it, giving the work its distinctive bias. Towfigh’s analysis is convincing. Like Hasan M. Balyuzi, the author of a number of books on Islam and the Bahá’í Faith, before her, Towfigh shows that most of the doctrines attributed in the Nuqṭatu’l-Káf to the Báb had [Page 27] little or nothing in common with the Báb’s teachings and that the original manuscript had been tampered with to such an extent that its authenticity cannot be accepted. On the basis of more recent research, including an examination of primary sources in Persian and Arabic, Yulii A. Ioannesian of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in his Essays on the Bábí and the Bahá’í Faiths, a book published in Russian (a language that, unfortunately, is unknown to most Western scholars who write about Iran), teaches conclusions that fully confirm Towfigh’s findings.

The Nuqṭatu’l-Káf’s bias made it a convenient tool with which to attack the Bahá’í Faith. That its attribution to Mírzá Jání was not entirely correct; that whatever its original text may have been, the one published by Browne had been garbled and made unreliable; that it chronicled a brief but turbulent moment when, deprived of effective leadership, the Bábí community was confused and demoralized is of no concern to those who grasp at straws in their endeavors to construct a historically plausible refutation of Bahá’u’lláh’s claims.

Towfigh’s analysis of Táríkh-i-Jadíd or New History of Mírzá ‘Alí Muḥammad the Báb, written by a devoted Bahá’í, Mírzá Ḥuseyn-i-Hamadání, is equally thorough and convincing. Translated and published, like Nuqṭatu’l-Káf by E. G. Browne, this book has been another object of controversies among orientalists. Browne saw in it a Bahá’í attempt to justify Bahá’u’lláh’s supposed claim to succeed the Báb as head of the Bahá’í community and to usurp Azal’s position. To Browne, New History was the Bahá’í answer to Nuqṭatu’l-Káf and, therefore, unreliable. Towfigh deals with it at some length before moving to Hasht Bihisht (Eight Paradises), a slanderous attack on the Bahá’í Faith. Written by two sons-in-law of Mírzá Yaḥyá Azal, Hasht Bihisht was given by them to E. G. Browne as the work of a Bábí who, they falsely claimed, was one of the Letters of the Living, the first eighteen disciples of the Báb. Browne, predisposed though he was to accept the claims of Azal and his followers, expressed his reservations about the allegations made against the Bahá’ís in Hasht Bihisht, such as the allegations of perverting the teachings of the Báb and of committing an array of abominable crimes. Yet he published many passages from this scurrilous work as endnotes to his translation of A Traveller’s Narrative, a small book by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

Nearly eighty years after Browne’s death, Balyuzi observed that “No Western scholar has ever equalled the effort of Edward Granville Browne in seeking and preserving for generations to come the story of the birth and the rise of a Faith which [Page 28] was destined, as he foresaw at the onset of his distinguished career, to have a significance comparable to that of the other great religions of the world.” Towfigh discusses at length Browne’s contribution, acknowledging the significance of his research and the influence of his writings. However, that influence, as Balyuzi demonstrated a generation ago in his Edward Granville Browne and the Bahá’í Faith, was not always positive. Towfigh makes plain that Browne had strong biases that frequently obscured his vision and lists specific instances in which such biases vitiated his work. It is precisely the biased and inaccurate elements of Browne’s writings that continue to be used by opponents of the Bahá’í Faith such as Ficicchia. One might add that there were other instances in which Browne’s feelings prevailed over his scholar’s scruples. For example, in describing the role of Mírzá Malkum Khán, one-time Persian minister to England, in the events leading up to the Persian revolution of 1906, which Browne strongly supported, he testifies to Malkum Khán’s love of freedom. But Browne conceals the fact that Malkum had turned against the Shah largely for personal reasons and only after the Shah had dismissed him from his diplomatic post, a dismissal caused by his role in a business swindle that would have brought him before British courts had he not been protected by diplomatic immunity.

That Browne was the principal source of both correct information and errors is documented by Ulrich Gollmer in his analysis of the work of Hermann Römer, an early twentieth-century Protestant theologian who knew neither Persian nor Arabic and was, in his own words, motivated by “‘the practical need to counter the propaganda of the Bahá’ís in Germany, after I had witnessed the establishment of the Bahá’í Association in Stuttgart when I was municipal vicar there in 1907.’” Römer may have been thorough in his research into the meager sources available to him and scrupulous in citing his references, but, as he freely confessed, he was not motivated by a thirst for knowledge. Römer’s polemic is a historiographic antique and does not deserve the extensive treatment given it by Gollmer.

The detailed examination by Towfigh of Bahá’u’lláh’s claim to be the messenger whose appearance had been prophesied by the Báb, the counterclaims advanced by Mirzá Yaḥyá Azal, and the subsequent conflict within the Bábí community is useful not only as a refutation of Ficicchia’s vaporings. That Azal was nominated by the Báb to head the Bábí community is not disputed by Bahá’í historians, but neither Browne nor others who came in his wake seem to have grasped the point that [Page 29] Bahá’u’lláh never laid claim to such a position. His claim was infinitely more vast. It was a claim to a station equal to that of the Báb, Muḥammad, Jesus, and all the prophets of the past. Unsurprisingly, a number of Bábís rejected that claim. However, the truly remarkable thing is that a vast majority joyfully accepted Bahá’u’lláh. This majority included some of the most learned Bábís who were well familiar with the Báb’s teachings concerning Him Whom God Will Make Manifest, with Persian and Arabic theological and eschatological terminology, and had personal knowledge of the character and stature of both Bahá’u’lláh and Azal. Towfigh makes it clear that the episode of Ṣubḥ-i-Azal is not about succession in the leadership of the Bábí community but rather about the rejection of Bahá’u’lláh’s claim to an independent revelation.

Towfigh traces the history of Azalí opposition to Bahá’u’lláh, the turmoil within the Bábí community, and the pathetic failure of Mirzá Yaḥyá, abandoned by virtually all his supporters, but seeking revenge through his fruitless attempts to discredit the Bahá’ís. The Bábís themselves, whose nominal leader Mirzá Yaḥyá once was, almost unanimously rejected the version of events produced by him and his sons-in-law, which, one might add, did not prevent a number of Western writers antagonistic to the Bahá’ís—for example, the Christian missionary William McElwee Miller or the Soviet orientalist Igor Vadimovich Bazilenko—from repeating the many unfounded allegations that go back to Hasht Bihisht and other equally mendacious Azalí sources.

In a chapter on the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, a document of unique importance among Bahá’í sacred writings, Gollmer deals with Ficicchia’s contention that the Will and Testament is a forgery. This claim was first advanced by Ruth White, a disaffected Bahá’í whose stormy religious pilgrimage brought her at the end of her life to the guru Meher Baba. Disagreeing with the principles of Bahá’í administrative order, she sought to discredit it by questioning the authenticity of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s will. In spite of her avowed antagonism toward the organizational aspects of the Bahá’í Faith and the slanderous character of her book, other antagonists such as Miller have quoted from it, being careful not to endorse her theories explicitly. Gollmer analyzes every one of the arguments adduced by White and shows them to be without merit.

[Page 30] Making the Crooked Straight will not put an end to attacks on the Bahá’í Faith. Römer’s book was provoked by the establishment of a Bahá’í’ Association in Stuttgart in 1907. The first attacks in America were a result of the appearance of tiny Bahá’í communities in the United States and Canada. Miller’s anti-Bahá’í polemic appeared in 1974 in a decade when the Faith began to emerge from obscurity and the number of Bahá’ís in the United States increased tenfold. Bazilenko’s Baha’ism was a 1994 response to the Faith’s entering Russia after the collapse of the Soviet regime. As the Bahá’í community grows and the Faith attracts the attention and even the allegiance of ever-larger numbers, attacks will multiply. Udo Schaefer, Nicola Towfigh, and Ulrich Gollmer have provided the Bahá’í community, and all those interested in the Bahá’í Faith, an excellent antidote to misrepresentations and distortions spread in the guise of serious scholarship.

[Page 31]

Jessie

I recall, years before my grandmother died, when

I was still young, and thought of her lemon pie and cambric tea,

Going to visit her and Grandpa, in Toronto.

It was quiet in the apartment, late,

And I lay awake, excitement in the solitude,

Calm comfort in this other home.

Then, dreaming in the shadow of the half-light that

Fell through the city window across the

Bedcovers, I wondered. Dreams?

The streetlamp, the child, the place.

Inchoate longing. You see,

I felt that I would remember these

Moments with this woman, my mother’s mother,

And wish once again to see her.

She lived a full life and left a legacy.

Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren

Say her name with sweetness.

She believed with steadfastness and

Embraced us all with godliness.

I remember her in streetlights,

Bake her lemon pie, sip tea, eat her poems,

Pray for her as she prays for me

And whisper a little ode in the night.

—HEATHER NABLO CARDIN

Copyright © 2004 by Heather Nablo Cardin

HEATHER NABLO CARDIN, the mother of three teenagers, has been teaching English and history at the high-school level for twenty years. Her current work on a Master’s degree in English literature at Carleton University in Ottawa has unleashed her poetic muse.

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[Page 33]

ROSHAN DANESH

The Politics of Delay—Social Meanings and the Historical Treatment of Bahá’í Law

Of particular note in Bahá’í legal history is the delay of the official translation and distribution of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas or “The Most Holy Book,” which is the central text of Bahá’í scripture and the repository of the basic laws of the Bahá’í Faith. Revealed by Bahá’u’lláh in 1873, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas was not officially translated or released to the worldwide Bahá’í community until 1993. To the outside observer, this delay seems incomprehensible. One might expect that the Kitáb-i-Aqdas—and law generally—would have been at the epicenter of the Bahá’í community from its inception. The Muslim context within which the Bahá’í Faith was born lends itself naturally to a deep attachment to a “Book” or central text. Law and legalism hold a central place within orthodox Muslim belief systems, a focus that was not substantially undermined by the Bábí Faith. Thus one would assume that the Kitáb-i-Aqdas would be a foundational force in shaping the individual and community life of the Bahá’í faithful.

The issue of delay is seized upon by Francesco Ficicchia in Der Bahá’ismus— Weltreligion der Zukunft? Geschichte, Lehre und Organisation in kritischer Anfrage. Ficicchia, a former Bahá’í, derives from the fact that the Kitáb-i-Aqdas was not made widely accessible in official form to the Bahá’í community that the book is a “‘thorn in the flesh’ of the ‘organization,’ that it is not published in its entirety ‘for propagandistic reasons,’” and that “‘the Bahá’í organization is ashamed of its most holy

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Copyright © 2004 by Roshan Danesh.

ROSHAN DANESH

Is a lawyer and scholar. His research focuses on law and religion, constitutional law, Bahá’í law, and conflict resolution. Danesh completed his doctoral studies at The Harvard Law School, where his doctoral dissertation focused on the relationship between law and religion in the Bahá’í Faith. He has taught law and conflict resolution in Europe and Canada. His essay “Internationalism and Divine Law: A Bahá’í Perspective” will appear in a forthcoming issue (19.2) of the Journal of Law and Religion.

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[Page 34] book and knows that publication of the full content would result in an excessive number of withdrawals.’” He goes on to ascribe to the Bahá’í leadership a history of duplicity and pretext in dealing with the Most Holy Book, a pattern that, in effect, calls into question the motives and objectives of the entire Bahá’í administration.

In chapter 5 of Making the Crooked Straight: A Contribution t0 Bahá’í Apologetics, Udo Schaefer offers an extensive response to Ficicchia’s allegations that the Bahá’í leadership suppressed the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. In its comprehensiveness and command of Bahá’í law and history, Schaefer’s critique is persuasive. Schaefer is, without question, the preeminent Bahá’í jurist, and his treatment of Bahá’í law in responding to Ficicchia illustrates the strength of his scholarship. Engaging Bahá’í law from historical, comparative, theological, and philosophical perspectives, he clarifies important aspects of Bahá’í law as a divine and religious law and exposes Ficicchia’s erroneous method and conclusions.

Yet Schaefer’s attempts to account for the delay in the release of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas are not wholly satisfactory. Although he thoroughly documents the historical treatment of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, as well as formal and substantive challenges to translation, his rationale and justification for the delay are somewhat limited. However, by focusing on the political and social dimensions of Bahá’í law, additional rationale for the historical treatment of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas become clear.

Dealing with Delay

In responding to Ficicchia’s allegations, Schaefer highlights the following points:

1. Numerous publications and translations of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas existed before 1993. As such, “the laws, which had not yet been published in an official translation, and which Ficicchia finds so peculiar, were therefore known to many Bahá’ís.”

2. The translation of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas was not an easy task. The specific challenges included: the style of Arabic in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas; the need to account for the context of late Islamic culture; the need to set translation priorities given the vastness of the Bahá’í revelation; and the fact that many Bahá’í laws were not in force.

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3. The special character of divine legislation necessitates a particular and careful process of translation. Unique aspects of divine revelation in the Bahá’í context include: the lack of a systematic presentation; the “hidden aesthetics” of the text; the need for authoritative interpretation; and the gradual coming into force of Bahá’í law as part of an historical process, which is illustrated by how the law of monogamy is treated in the Bahá’í Faith. As a result, divine law is characterized by unusual modalities, or dynamics and processes of articulation and application, that necessitate a particular and systematic process of translation.

4. There is no principle of Bahá’í doctrine that legitimizes the suppression of the

Kitáb-i-Aqdas. Ficicchia asserts that Bahá’u’lláh affirmed a law of taqíyya (voluntary dissimulation) that legitimizes the suppression of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. Yet Bahá’u’lláh did not affirm taqíyya or the novel extension of this law to support the historical treatment of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas.

Taken collectively, Schaefer’s points about the publication, translation, and application of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas rebut sufficiently Ficicchia’s argument, particularly its ascription of a negative intention to the Bahá’í leadership. They also illustrate Ficicchia’s tenuous and grossly distorted knowledge of Bahá’í history and law. They are not, however, wholly convincing as a justification for the delay in the official translation and dissemination of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas.

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For example, while translating the Kitáb-i-Aqdas was undoubtedly complex and time-consuming, translations of other Bahá’í texts—particularly into English— were common beginning in the early 1900s. It is true that priorities had to be set, and there are good reasons, as Schaefer points out, why the legal aspects of the revelation would not have priority:

Priority was given to those works that informed the world of the theological foundations of the faith, its moral principles and its societal and political goals, i.e. those works that deal with the doctrines concerning God, revelation, the Prophets, the image of man, the divine Covenant, the salvation of the individual and society, as well as the societal and legal structures of a future world and the prerequisites for world peace.

However, if one uses the criteria that Schaefer outlines for deciding which texts should be translated, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas merits priority. As Schaefer points out, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas is not merely a code of laws, but the Mother Book, which includes “elucidations on fundamental theological issues, exhortations, ethical appeals, paraenesis and prophecies.” Thus Schaefer’s argument that the Kitáb-i-Aqdas would not be among translation priorities because of its content is not without its contradictions.

Furthermore, while Schaefer correctly notes that many laws of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas were not in force—thus implying that its translation would not be a priority—the delay in translating the Mother Book only raises more questions. It is not only laws of a public character that have not been and are not in force, but, as Schaefer notes, “the majority of the ritual and legal norms are not yet in force.” The fact that Bahá’í laws of a public character are not in force can be pragmatically explained by the historical growth pattern of the Bahá’í Faith and the lack of a Bahá’í state. But this does not explain why, for example, there has been a delay in bringing into force such ritual practices as the recitation of specific scriptural phrases. The fact that many ritual norms are not in force raises broader issues concerning the nature and status of Bahá’í’ law that should necessarily be engaged when trying to account for the delay in translating the Mother Book.

The contradictions in the arguments about the delay in translating and publishing the Kitáb-i-Aqdas do not suggest a lack of validity to the arguments themselves. But they do suggest the need to place such arguments in a broader framework. Indeed, delay concerning Bahá’í law is not merely an issue of when the Kitáb-i-Aqdas finally reached the hands of the Bahá’í community. Rather, the delay in the official translation [Page 37] and widespread dissemination of the Most Holy Book might be seen as part of a consistent historical pattern concerning the revelation, release, and application of Bahá’í law. Consider the following facts:

• Bahá’u’lláh’s revelation of laws occurred ten years after He declared Himself a Manifestation of God.
• Bahá’u’lláh revealed a tablet in Persian laying out a set of laws, but ultimately held it back.
• Bahá,u’lláh did not act on petitions requesting laws before He revealed the Kitáb-i-Aqdas.
• After Bahá’u’lláh penned the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, He delayed its widespread distribution for a period of time before its publication in Bombay (now Mumbai).
• Bahá’u’lláh issued cautions about how His laws were to be implemented and followed.
• Numerous laws that could be in force have consistently had their application suspended and left as a matter of individual conscience. Moreover, the application of Bahá’í law has been consciously inconsistent.
• The publication of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas in 1993 did not result in more laws being applicable to Bahá’ís.
• The Universal House of Justice has been in existence since 1963 with wide legislative powers, yet these powers have remained largely unused.

Given the facts about the delay in revealing, legislating, and applying Bahá’í laws, the delay in publishing the Kitáb-i-Aqdas appears as but one expression of a consistent pattern of treatment of Bahá’í law. One explanation for this pattern is found [Page 38] within the logic of progressive revelation. In relation to the revelation of Bahá’í law, the Universal House of Justice has stated there is a “‘divinely-purposed delay in the revelation of the basic laws of God for this age.’” Schaefer observes that delay in revealing Bahá’í law illustrates that

revelation has, to a certain extent, the character of a dialogue. This means that the dialectical relationship between revelation and human thought, whereby human capacity is taken into account in the revelation of God’s Word—a relationship that is immanent in the principle of progressive revelation—operates not only in the chain of successive outpourings of divine revelation but also during the period of each prophet’s mission.

A more mundane explanation for the delay in translating and publishing the Kitáb-i-Aqdas and in applying Bahá’í laws is also available—namely, that the pattern of divinely purposed delay originates in Bahá’u’lláh’s recognition of the inevitably political and social nature of law, given the human hands into which His law would inevitably be placed.

Social and Political Dimensions of Bahá’í’ law

Through delay, and the logic underlying it, Bahá’u’lláh aims to prevent the cooptation of His transformative social program by the realities of the contexts, power arrangements, and politics that inherently shape legal regimes. Consider the following statement from Baha’u’llah:

Indeed, the laws of God are like unto the ocean and the children of men as fish, did they but know it. However, in observing them one must exercise tact and wisdom . . . Since most people are feeble and far-removed from the purpose of God, therefore one must observe tact and prudence under all conditions, so that nothing might happen that could cause disturbance and dissension or raise clamor among the

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heedless. Verily, His bounty hath surpassed the whole universe and His bestowals encompassed all that dwell on earth. One must guide mankind to the ocean of true understanding in a spirit of love and tolerance. The Kitáb-i-Aqdas itself beareth eloquent testimony to the loving providence of God.

In this statement Bahá’u’lláh emphasizes his perspective on the social and political dimensions of His laws in two ways.

THE POLITICAL DIMENSIONS OF BAHÁ’Í LAW

First, because law is applied by human beings, it inevitably has a political dimension. It can be applied with “tact and prudence,” or it can presumably be applied in an inappropriate manner. It can be imposed and followed in a manner that can cause “disturbance and dissension” or presumably in a manner that is positive and harmonious. The simple observation this reflects is that any law, whether divine or not, is subject to being shaped, used, and applied based on political choices, power structures, and the inherent fallibility of being human. When Bahá’u’lláh comments that “one must guide mankind to the ocean of true understanding in a spirit of love and tolerance,” He is also acknowledging the innately coercive nature of legal rules when they are accompanied by enforcement mechanisms supported by social institutions. While one would expect that a divine law would, by its very nature as divine, attract unquestioned legitimacy as a positive law, Bahá’u’lláh largely rejects this position. In His matrix, divine law only appears to gain legitimacy as a positive law when particular social conditions are met, in which the application of Bahá’í law would not be a divisive force.

Bahá’u’lláh’s observation about the political dimensions of law is a natural expression of His broader critique of the legal traditions in Muslim societies. Classical Islamic legal theory was intentionalist and textualist, relying on the striving of individual jurists using ijtihád (struggle or striving in the process of making an independent judgment) to derive laws from sources—in particular the Koran or Sunna (normative customs)——considered pure and pristine in their divine legitimacy. In theory, this system was constructed to present the appearance of achieving the highest possible degree of conformity to divine text and purpose and to be free from issues of power, politics, and the requirements to rule. This striving to maintain the integrity of independent legal judgment and to be as free as possible from human [Page 40] motivations when rendering judgments is exemplified by the fact that the idea of legislation—the promulgation of a generally applicable rule by the ruler—did not have a natural place within classical Islamic legal theory as articulated by medieval jurists. A premise of the classical system was that the derivation of law would be apolitical by being a form of “instance law.” The law applicable to a situation would be gleaned through a specific act of ijtihád by a learned scholar—and for every situation a new act of ijtihád would occur. In other words, a law would be found and applied to a situation; then it would disappear.

The reality within Muslim societies, however, was that the application of the classical Islamic legal theory proved to be quite complex. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá also raises questions about the ability of the classical theory to capture divine purposes and intentions when He writes that the majority of Islamic laws “‘were devised by the divines of a later age according to the laws of Islamic jurisprudence, and individual divines made conflicting deductions from the original revealed ordinances. All these were enforced.’” In contrast to the predominant Islamic legal tradition, the Bahá’í system adopts an explicitly political form: creating institutions (in particular the Universal House of Justice) that have clear legislative powers and political roles. For example, ‘Abdul-Bahá writes: “This House of Justice enacteth the laws and the government enforceth them. The legislative body must reinforce the executive, the executive must aid and assist the legislative body so that through the close union and harmony of these two forces, the foundation of fairness and justice may become firm and strong, that all the regions of the world may become even as Paradise itself.” Bahá’u’lláh writes that “all matters of State [umúr-i-siyásíyyih] should be referred to the House of Justice.” By using siyásat, a term for politics in many Middle Eastern languages including Persian, the political implications are inescapable.

THE SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF BAHÁ’Í LAW

The political dimensions of Bahá’í law are complemented by its social dimensions. Thus Bahá’u’lláh’s call for the delay of His laws because He was concerned that they may cause “disturbance or dissension” or “raise clamor” and the general injunction [Page 41] that they be applied with “love and tolerance” are a reflection of the types of social action in which Bahá’u’lláh instructed his followers to engage.

There are many methods of action for social change. They often target varying aspects of society. One method, which has been used by some religious communities both historically and in the contemporary world, focuses their aspirations for change on co-opting existing political and legal institutions—or more generally assuming a position of public power—in an attempt to use the institutions to implement a particular vision of a sacred social order. One predominant example of this method, but by no means the only one, is the creation of a theocracy—in which religious officials assume positions of political power. But examples of a religious community attempting to co-opt existing political institutions to pursue social change is also present in liberal democracies such as the United States, where certain Christian denominations have used a combination of bloc voting and aggressive lobbying to secure the election of politicians who are sympathetic to their religious agenda (though the politicians themselves are not religious officials and often may not even be a member of the same Christian denominations that seek to secure their election).

The current Bahá’í community is subject to severe internal limitations to effect social Change through efforts to achieve public power or co-opt existing political and legal institutions. While Bahá’ís are permitted to vote, they are currently prohibited from seeking political office. Bahá’ís also do not seek to have their moral and behavioral values and precepts adopted by civil governments. For the Universal House of Justice states that “it is not our purpose to impose Bahá’í teachings upon others by persuading the powers that be to enact laws enforcing Bahá’í principles, nor to join movements which have such legislation as their aim.”

[Page 42] Another important locus of action—one that is often used by governments, organizations, and groups of individuals—is action at the level of social meanings. Lawrence Lessig, a professor of law at the Stanford Law School, explains that a social meaning is the “semiotic content attached to various actions, or inactions, or statuses, within a particular context.” Such meanings are often consciously constructed by governments or other social actors to reinforce a particular set of behaviors, understandings, or outcomes. The most powerful meanings are those that appear most natural—or uncontested—and such meanings have a significant impact on shaping the contexts within which individuals act and relate. The process of social change necessarily involves a process of contesting predominant social meanings and, in some cases, advocating for a different social meaning.

The central pivot that Bahá’u’lláh argues should shape the construction of social meanings is “oneness” or “unity.” Unity is a grundnorm, or the ultimate or basic norm that forms the basis of commonplace associations from which Bahá’u’lláh wishes to shape the individual and collective life of humanity. A recurring metaphor in Bahá’u’lláh’s writings is the need to perceive the world through the eye of unity or oneness. The wayfarer in the Valley of Unity “looketh on all things with the eye of oneness, and seeth the brilliant rays of the divine sun shining from the dawning-point of Essence alike on all created things, and the lights of singleness reflected over all creation.” More generally, He exhorts individuals to “Shut your eyes to estrangement, then fix your gaze upon unity” and to “discern with the eye of oneness His glorious handiwork. . . .”

[Page 43] Within Bahá’u’lláh’s positioning of unity as the lens through which the phenomenal world should be viewed can be discerned a Bahá’í focus on action at the level of social meanings. One of Bahá’u’lláh’s intentions is to move unity into the foreground and to have the essential oneness of humanity frame the basic associations people attach to the social realities around them. Bahá’u’lláh gives us examples about how to perceive social phenomenon through the eye of unity and oneness. For example, in His letter to Queen Victoria, Bahá’u’lláh states that the “representatives of the people” should “regard themselves as the representatives of all that dwell on earth,” thus associating with traditional notions of representative democracy a meaning of universalism. Examples can also be seen in the discourse on peace in the Bahá’í writings, in which unity is the key association and harbinger of peace. At the collective level, just as individuals should view the world through the eye of unity, the Bahá’í community is an experiment in creating a community life in which unity is foregrounded. Shoghi Effendi writes that the community should “so exemplify that spirit of universal love and fellowship as to evoke in the minds of their associates the vision of that future City of God” and “demonstrate to their fellow-countrymen the ennobling reality of a power that shall weld a disrupted world.”

As the architecture of social meanings increasingly reflects the unity grundnorm, the necessary context for the application of Bahá’í law is expanded. For Bahá’í law to be applied in contexts where the architecture of social meanings was not sufficiently engaged with unity would be contradictory and self-defeating. Law tends to dictate as opposed to educate. It demands, before offering justifications and explanations. As such, it is prone to being a source of social disruption and discord in contexts of diversity. If one wishes to avoid such disunity—that the Bahá’í emphasis on unity necessitates—there are two strategies that might be followed. First, one could wait until there were broad social consensus on a subject before legislating on it. This is, however, often impractical, as is made clear by modern liberal constitutionalism in which, because of the impracticality of achieving consensus, appeal is made to legitimated procedures. Second, one can strive to create a context wherein unity becomes part of the foreground of what is considered socially good, and social meanings increasingly reflect the principles of unity. While substantive disagreement may continue to exist, policy and law on a contested topic may not have the same [Page 44] socially disruptive effects. Rather, policy and law become an agent for engaging with the substance of unity within a challenging context.

Simply stated, therefore, the pattern of delay within Bahá’í law is following a particular logic of social constructivism. If unity-centered social meanings come, increasingly, to predominate—a reality that Bahá’ís should be working toward— the possibility for the application of Bahá’í law will and should increase. If such change in social meanings does not take place, the relevance of Bahá’í law will and should remain limited both within and outside of the Bahá’í community.

A comment should be made on this last point: the relevance of Bahá’í law outside the Bahá’í community, and more generally the relationship between Bahá’í political institutions and civil institutions. Debate has been increasing on this issue, often, and distortingly, labeled as a debate about “Church” and “State” in the Bahá’í Faith. Scholarly points of view have been varied, ranging from an assertion of theocratism, to versions of Christian dualism, to affirmations that Bahá’u’lláh had a separationist, if not secular, worldview. This brief description of the relationship between social meanings and Bahá’í law offers an alternative approach to the church/state issue that moves beyond an attachment to a particular institutional form. Over time, in various contexts, the scope and limits of Bahá’í law, and the role of the institutions that legislate and apply it, will depend on how the architectures of social meanings change. As such, the role of Bahá’í institutions within and without the Bahá’í community is contingent and open-ended. The relationship between Bahá’í institutions and civil institutions, as well as the scope and limits of Bahá’í law, will also vary from context to context. There will be no single, nor any certain, form. Expectations or presumptions of a particular pattern of relationships between Bahá’í institutions and civil political institutions ignore Bahá’u’lláh’s sensitivity to the role of social meanings in shaping legitimate uses of institutional power.

[Page 45] Conclusion

As this brief article has attempted to illustrate, Bahá’í law may, in some respects, be seen as articulating themes present in much of contemporary legal thought. The relationship between the application of Bahá’í law and social meanings that one observes in the historical treatment of Bahá’í law is rooted in insights that remain powerful in much contemporary legal thinking: the rejection of formalism, the emphasis on the political dimensions of law, the contextual application of law, and mediating the demands of diversity and unity. Udo Schaefer’s powerful response to Ficicchia in Making the Crooked Straight—and in particular his thorough treatment of the history of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas—opens the door to exploring more speculative approaches and theories. By building on the five decades of scholarship Schaefer has produced on Bahá’í law, future generations of Bahá’í legal scholars will, one hopes, begin to explore novel approaches to the subject and to build bridges for legal scholars to begin approaching the legal content of the Bahá’í revelation.

Ordained

By decree God said

in His answer book

not likely understood

without capacity

holding fast

to faith and patience:

“evolution progresses”

—BARBARA DARR

Copyright © 2004 by Barbara Dar

BARBARA DARR, a collagest, sculptress, painter, and craftsperson, has studied at the Whitney Art School in New Haven, Connecticut, and at the Morris Davidson School of Modern Painting in Provincetown, Massachusetts. From the 1960s through the 1980s she had many exhibits in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Despite her crippling battle With CFIDs, she continues to write poetry.

[Page 46]

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AfterWord

A Survey of Current Iranian Cinema

While the editors of World Order were working on articles and interviews for two back-to-back issues on global cinema (Vol. 35, Nos. 1 and 2) and particularly on Anne Gordon Perry’s “The Unveiling in the West of Iran’s Distinctive Cinematic Presence” (Vol. 35, No. 2) we solicited from a filmmaker in Iran some comments on the status of Iranian film in 2004. We are pleased to share the observations with you.

-THE EDITORS

The Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 changed the country in ways no one could have anticipated. Despite vastly different assessments of the Revolution, it is generally acknowledged that Iranian cinema went through a categorical change for the better after the Revolution. The post-Revolution boom has led to widespread recognition in the international film community where Iranian cinema has won a reputation for some of the finest filmmaking.

No one could have predicted the shape the new wave of Iranian cinema would take. Western influences were literally driven out of the country, violently and without apology. The forces animating the new wave directly and indirectly influenced the works of Beyza’i, Mehrjui, Kiarostami, and Makhmalbaf. The films of this wave reflected the same redefinition of identity with which the whole country was wrestling. The combination of the sociopolitical forces and the new censorship laws and restrictions on the arts and media called for resourcefulness, ingenuity, and creativeness. Instead of the formulaic plots and characters that were so much a part of mainstream films of the time, filmmakers relied on the purest storytelling techniques such as symbolism and character development to shape their films. It was in these experiments of filmmaking that a distinctly “Iranian” cinema took shape— films that took their time, were set in rural areas, often used children as their primary characters, and with camera work that gave cinemagoers a child-like gaze at details and landscapes. Each of these— the pace, the setting, the characters, and the aesthetic—was used to tell deeply symbolic and sophisticated stories. The crisis of social and political restrictions became an opportunity for refreshing cinema.

A political and cultural revolution had occurred: A war with Iraq that would last eight years was tearing apart the border cities and would take the lives of millions; neighbors were turning against each other; women shrouded themselves in black; economic isolation and severe social control of the media, art, filmmaking, and any form of expression were all part of the new Iran. It was within this context that the films The Cow, Travelers, Close Up, and later The Color [Page 48] of Paradise were created. These were the animating forces behind the new wave of Iranian cinema after the Revolution.

But what can be said of the present state of Iranian cinema? Who are the new, young directors and filmmakers today? It has been twenty-five years since the Islamic Revolution. The young filmmakers are the children of the Revolution —those in their teens, twenties, and early thirties who outnumber their elders by more than 60 percent. Their vision and concerns, the forces animating their creative expression are quite different from those of the previous wave. They are still up against similar restrictions, but there is increased accessibility due largely to the Internet, digital video technology, and computer-based editing systems. They are making more short films and documentaries and are ambitiously submitting them to more of the foreign markets and festivals. Thus the international film community may be surprised to see what is coming out of Iran these days. It is not quite like the films we have come to expect. But given the changes that have happened in the last twenty plus years, how could we expect the films to be the same?

Many of the youth of Iran, regardless of their religious affiliation, are facing hard economic times. There is severe underemployment throughout the country, and more and more have left the countryside and smaller cities for the major cities of Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz, looking for work. Addiction, prostitution, and sexually transmitted diseases have become a common part of the rural, but especially the urban, landscape. Many of the talented and ambitious youth emigrate when given the opportunity, not because they do not love their country, but simply because there is not a developed infrastructure in which they can succeed and progress. Those who stay face rising inflation, disproportionately high rents, and the challenge of simply getting married according to traditional standards because those standards have become so difficult to reach. Then there is the increasing disillusionment with religion and a loss of trust in the system, as shown by the very low voter turnout at this year’s parliamentary elections. In this sense, the films of the new generation of Iranian filmmakers reflect their own concerns and values, which are not driven by the passion and fury of 1979 and the years that followed but by an energy and volatility specific to a country that is holding onto its past while more than half the population is leaning toward the future, pressuring the already threadbare seams to break.

So what does this new wave of Iranian cinema look like? How can we define it? It may be too soon to guess. We do know that it has been dynamic for some time already. But we can take a lesson from the tremendous forces released twenty-five years ago—or from any moment in history that saw great change and, with it, a surge of creative arts. This is the case with the new filmmakers in Iran. They are facing new challenges and have entirely new stories to tell.

—N. K.

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CALL FOR PAPERS

A Special Issue on Theater

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: October 1, 2004

Theater, together with music and dance, is among the world’s oldest expressive art forms. Nearly every society known to humanity has left traces indicating that it used some form of public performance for one purpose or another. The reason for the enduring presence of theater is clear enough. As the “imitation of an action in the form of action” (in Aristotle’s phrase), drama promises to hold a mirror up to nature, as Shakespeare put it, giving us images of ourselves as we think we are, as we might once have been, as we wish to be.

As is true of other genres, drama flourishes in some eras but not in others. Like poetry or prose, it may lie relatively fallow in one century, then spring forth with new life in another. Drama tends to emerge revitalized when a society is trying, with great intensity, to “imagine” its new self, or to reimagine a self that it feels in danger of losing, or both— as was simultaneously the case in Classical Greece, Elizabethan England, and sixteenth-century Japan, for example.

We seem to be living in such a time. In spite of (or perhaps because of) the power of film, theater has reemerged as an essential form of expression. Once again it is vital, thriving, bumptious, challenging, sometimes offensive, often moving.

To discuss contemporary theater is to discuss one of the most compelling ways in which our fellow human beings are addressing the important matters of the age. For that reason we are devoting a special issue of World Order to the topic of theater in all its forms. We invite submissions reflecting diverse approaches to this rich subject. Topics and approaches might include (but are certainly not limited to):

• Theater and religion
• Theater and education
• Theater and social change
• Reviews of specific performances or of trends and developments
• Theatrical traditions, both contemporary and historical, that are often overlooked
• Themes, issues, and concerns being explored in contemporary theater
• And many more

---

Manuscript Submission Information

For a copy of the World Order style sheet for preparing a manuscript (and other tips), send an e-mail to <worldorder@usbnc.org>, or write the address below.

Submissions to the journal will be subject to external blind peer review if they fall outside the expertise of the editorial board or upon request by the author.

Manuscripts (in Word or WordPerfect) should be sent to World Order, Dr. Betty J. Fisher, Managing Editor, 7311 Quail Springs Place, NE, Albuquerque, NM 87113-1780, USA or <worldorder@usbnc.org>.

World Order has been published quarterly since 1966 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States.

[Page 50]

Forthcoming...

Special coverage on the destruction of cultural sites in Iran

A topical index of articles, editorials, and reviews in volumes 1-35

Reflections on Brown v. Board of Education

Charles V. Carnegie responds in “Models and Enactments of Transformation” to essays on his Postnationalism Prefigured

Michelle Maynerick explores “Radical Black Feminism and The Bahá’í Faith: Moments of Connection, Models of Change”

Julio Savi reflects on Alessandro Bausani, on Italian scholar of Islam

ISSN 0043-8804