“Matters of State” or “administrative matters”: the scope of the House of Justice

In the 1978 translation of Tablets of Baha’u’llah by Habib Taherzadeh “with the assistance of a committee,” the eighth section of the Tablet of Ishraqaat says:

“This passage, now written by the Pen of Glory, is accounted as part of the Most Holy Book: The men of God’s House of Justice have been charged with the affairs of the people (‘amuur-e mellat). They, in truth, are the Trustees of God among His servants and the daysprings of authority in His countries.
O people of God! That which traineth the world is Justice, for it is upheld by two pillars, reward and punishment. These two pillars are the sources of life to the world. Inasmuch as for each day there is a new problem and for every problem an expedient solution, such affairs should be referred to the House of Justice that the members thereof may act according to the needs and requirements of the time. They that, for the sake of God, arise to serve His Cause, are the recipients of divine inspiration from the unseen Kingdom. It is incumbent upon all to be obedient unto them. All matters of State (‘amuur-e siyaasiyyah) should be referred to the House of Justice, but acts of worship (`ibaadaat) must be observed according to that which God hath revealed in His Book.” [1]

There is a previous translation by Ali Kuli Khan, made in 1906 or earlier,[2] in which the italicised passages read:

“The affairs of the people are in charge of the men of the House of Justice of God … Administrative affairs are all in charge of the House of Justice, and devotional acts must be observed according as they are revealed in the Book.”

Ali Kuli Khan’s translation was included in the widely used compilation of Bahai scriptures, Baha’i World Faith (p 200), and was therefore the text used in the English-speaking Bahai communities during the Guardian’s ministry and later, until Tablets of Baha’u’llah was published in 1978. Both, successively, are officially endorsed translations, and it must be supposed that the change was regarded as an improvement. For various reasons it appears to me that Ali Kuli Khan’s reading is preferable.

In the first place, there are contextual arguments. How are we to square Taherzadeh’s translation with the context of the Ishraqat itself, in which the “sovereigns of the world” are described as “manifestations of the power of God and the daysprings of His authority.” How could Baha’u’llah place the affairs of the people in the hands of the House of Justice, while making governments responsible for the appointment of officials and charging them to “fully acquaint themselves with the conditions of those they govern?” How could it be squared with the wider context of Baha’u’llah’s writings, which from the early Kitab-e Iqan until Epistle to the Son of the Wolf (See e.g., pages 91-2.) teach that God has granted temporal power to temporal rulers, and reserves human hearts for Himself:

“By the righteousness of God! It is not Our wish to lay hands on your kingdoms. Our mission is to seize and possess the hearts of men.”
(Baha’u'llah, The Kitab-i-Aqdas, p. 49)

“Dispute not with any one concerning the things of this world and its affairs, for God hath abandoned them to such as have set their affection upon them. Out of the whole world He hath chosen for Himself the hearts of men — hearts which the hosts of revelation and of utterance can subdue. Thus hath it been ordained by the Fingers of Baha, upon the Tablet of God’s irrevocable decree, by the behest of Him Who is the Supreme Ordainer, the All-Knowing.”
(Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah, p. 279)

To support Taherzadeh’s translation we would have to suppose that in the midst of a career, and in the midst of a Tablet, Baha’u’llah changed one of his fundamental beliefs, and then quickly changed back again, for in the ninth Ishraq Baha’u’llah again refers to “the sovereigns and rulers on earth” as “the manifestations of the power of God.”

In the second place, we have some specific translation issues. The first critical phrase is ‘amuur-e mellat. The translation ‘affairs of the people’ is good, if we do not jump to conclusions about the identity of ‘the people.’ The word mellat means people, but with two connotations: it is used in the Quran and in Ottoman law to refer to specific religious communities, and it is used to contrast the people to the government. In modern Arabic and Persian usage, it is also used for the nation-state, and the affairs of a state are naturally those of a government, but the Middle East of Baha’u’llah’s time did not have any nation-states. The word has shifted its meaning in the same way as a ‘nation’ in English has shifted from meaning ‘a people’ to ‘a state’ in the course of the 20th century.

In this passage in the Ishraqat, the affairs of ‘the people’ (singular) are put in the hands of the members of the House of Justice who are “daysprings of authority in His countries” (Bilaadihu, a plural: it can also mean regions). The ‘people’ are therefore found in more than one country, and I think it reasonable to read ‘God’s countries’ as a synonym for the whole of creation. A reader of the time would surely have concluded that ‘the people’ are the Bahais as a worldwide religious community, whose affairs are in the hands of the House of Justice and, by implication, not in the hands of the ulama, as in the case of the Muslim mellat, or of the patriarchs and priests, as in the case of the Greek orthodox mellat, and also not in the hands of any individual: the leadership of the religious community, for this ‘people,’ is to be collective. Baha’u’llah is also rejecting anarchism in religion: some authorised leadership and direction is required.

Taherzadeh’s translation then says “O people of God,” which is unduly general, for the original says yaa hezb-e Allah, ‘O party of God.’ It refers specifically to the Bahais as a community, and is commonly used in this sense in the Bahai writings. The authority of the Houses of Justice that follows – to determine rewards and punishments in accordance with the needs of the time – is an authority within the sphere of the mellat, within the hezb-e Allah, it is authority over the religious affairs of the Bahai community alone.

Taherzadeh’s translation continues: “All matters of State (’amuur-e siyaasiyyah) should be referred to the House of Justice, but acts of worship (`ibaadaat) must be observed according to that which God hath revealed in His Book.” The crux of the matter is whether ‘amuur-e siyaasiyyah means ‘administrative matters’ as Ali Kuli Khan says, or ‘matters of State’ or something like that. There is no reference to a ‘state’ in the original, and the House of Justice at this time existed only at the local level and was envisioned at an international level, so Taherzadeh’s translation as it stands is anachronistic. It was Abdu’l-Baha who concluded that national level Houses of Justice would be required, and so created the possibility for the Baha’is to confuse them with national governments. In Baha’u’llah’s time there was no such possibility. However an argument could be made that siyaasiyyah here means civil politics at any level, as it does in some places in Abdu’l-Baha’s Sermon on the Art of Governance and elsewhere in the Bahai writings. Moreover Ali Kuli Khan’s ‘administrative matters’ seems too broad: it does not reflect either the specific context here, which refers to reward and punishment, nor the normal connotations that siyaasiyyah has from its etymology and use.

Siyaasiyyah can mean leadership and civil governance, but it also refers to sentencing and sanctions. In the latter case it refers specifically to those punishments that are designed to be appropriate to the place and time, in contrast to stipulated punishments that are specified in the Islamic Shariah and may not be changed by the judge or the ruler, such as amputation for theft, stoning for adultery, death for highway robbery, and so on. In English usage, specifying rewards and punishments would normally be regarded as a legislative, rather than administrative, activity: siyaasiyyah is not simply keeping records and collecting funds, but shaping laws to achieve a desired virtuous order. The Arabic word derives from a root referring to the training of horses or camels. The most appropriate short translation, in the context of the Ishraqat appears to me to be ‘wise administration’, or ‘administrative matters,’ or simply a literal translation: ‘matters of policy.’ None of these carry the desired connotation of setting punishments, which the reader must infer from the context.

In this sentence of the eighth Ishraq, matters of siyaasiyyah are contrasted to matters of `ibaadaat, acts of worship. Acts of worship constitute one of the two main categories of Islamic law. They are matters that primarily concern the individual’s relations with God, although congregational prayer, for instance, incidentally involves a relationship between the believer and the prayer leader. The other main category of Islamic law is mu`aamalaat, transactions or social relations. The authority of the House of Justice in matters of policy is thus limited on two sides: it refers to the affairs of the religious community only, and it does not extend to making rulings about acts of worship. This contrasts with the situation in Islam, in which a mufti or mujtahid may issue a fatwa on the legitimacy of a business transaction in one breath, and in the next decide whether a prayer said in a wine shop is acceptable to God. It also contrasts with the situation in Christian churches – even Protestant ones – in which ‘the church’ is at once the body that organises the affairs of faith community, the community at worship, and the body that determines doctrine. In other words the contrast between siyaasiyyah and `ibaadaat here points us towards a unique quality of the Bahai community: the Houses of Justice and Houses of Worship are distinct institutions, neither infringing on the sphere of the other, and neither with any authority in matters of doctrine, which is a third sphere. But that is another story.

The 13th numbered section in the Tablet of Bisharat, which is identical to the text of the eighth Ishraq, provides confirmation that we can read these words as a contrast to the practices of other religions. Baha’u’llah summarises the theme of the Bisharat, at the end, as the abolition of the ordinances of previous religions such as “holy war, destruction of books, the ban on association and companionship with other peoples or on reading certain books.”[3] To this list we could add the abolition of restrictions on clothing and the cut of the beard (abolished in the seventh Bisharat), the abolition of priestly celibacy and confession (eighth and ninth Bisharat), and, in the thirteenth Bisharat and the identical eighth Ishraq, the removal of control over the affairs of the religious community, from the hands of priests and ulama to bodies elected by the believers themselves (for matters of policy and punishment) and to the individual conscience and the individual’s own reading of the sacred texts (in relation to acts of worship).

Thirdly, there is a translation by Shoghi Effendi of a similar phrase in Baha’u’llah’s Lawh-e Hikmat (Tablet of Wisdom) that seems to have been overlooked by Taherzadeh and others who have worked on these translations. Habib Taherzadeh translates:

Say: The beginning of Wisdom and the origin thereof is to acknowledge whatsoever God hath clearly set forth, for through its potency the foundation of statesmanship, (bunyaan as-siyaasah) which is a shield for the preservation of the body of mankind, hath been firmly established.[4]

Compare that to Shoghi Effendi’s translation:

The beginning and the true foundation of wisdom is to acknowledge that which God hath revealed, for upon this sure basis rests the edifice of wise administration. Verily this is the shield that hath ever protected the body of mankind.(The Baha’i World Vol. 4 (1930-1932) 105 (emphasis added))

Here, Shoghi Effendi agrees with Ali Kuli Khan, and against Taherzadeh. Shoghi Effendi’s translation stops at this point, but Taherzadeh’s translation continues:

Say, every matter related to state affairs (‘amr siyaassii) which ye raise for discussion falls under the shadow of one of the words sent down from the heaven of His glorious and exalted utterance.

The expression here, (‘amr siyaassii ) is a variant of the same term that Shoghi Effendi has just translated “wise administration.” The questioner (Nabil-e Akbar, a Shi’ah scholar, whose biography is in Abdu’l-Baha’s Memorials of the Faithful, page 5) is being told that his remaining questions fall under the shadow of what has already been revealed in the Tablet of Wisdom, which does not include ’state affairs,’ and there is no reason to think that the remaining questions would have been about state affairs. Therefore Shoghi Effendi’s translation is to be preferred here just as, in the eighth Ishraqat, it is administrative affairs (‘amuur-e siyaasiyyah) and not “matters of state” that are entrusted to the House of Justice

If yet more confirmation were needed, we have what looks like a self-interpretation, by Baha’u'llah, of the eighth Ishraq and thirteenth Bisharat in the Lawh-e Dunya (Lawh-e Dunyaa ). Like Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, this was written in the summer of 1891, and so represents almost Baha’u’llah’s last word on the topic. The date also places it within the context of protests against the tobacco concession in Iran, in which the relationship between religious leaders and politics was a central issue. In the Lawh-e Dunya Baha’u’llah says:

According to the fundamental laws which We have formerly revealed in the Kitab-e Aqdas and other Tablets, all affairs are committed to the care of just kings and presidents and of the Trustees of the House of Justice.

The ‘other tablets’ referred to must include the thirteenth Bisharat and eighth Ishraqat, from the similarity of the wording. This self-interpretation tells us that Baha’u’llah understood the passages in his writings that give authority to the House of Justice and those that give it to the Kings and rulers as complementary, and also that his understanding of the authority given to the House of Justice did not seem to him contradictory to praising the British form of government, with its monarchy, elected parliament, and established church. For him the eighth Ishraq, which puts authority in the hands of the House of Justice, and the Aqdas, which says that political authority in Tehran will fall into the hands of the people, are two aspects of a principle that applies in religion as in politics – that popular self-management through elected and consultative organs is preferable to absolute individual authority, whether of kings, priests or ulama. Another passage that speaks of authority per se, without differentiating between its civil and religious aspects, is in the second of the Words of Paradise:

The Pen of the Most High exhorteth, at this moment, the manifestations of authority and the sources of power, namely the kings, the sovereigns, the presidents, the rulers, the divines and the wise, and enjoineth them to uphold the cause of religion, and to cleave unto it. (Tablets of Baha’u’llah 63)

In the Lawh-e Dunya (and also in the 9th Ishraq), Baha’u’llah goes on to speak of the relationship between religion and government, saying that laws rest on penalties (the state relies on coercion) whereas religion gives us the inner motivation to do good and avoid evil.

From all of this I conclude that the authority in matters of policy and punishment given to the House of Justice in the eighth Ishraq is an authority within the religious sphere, which is exercised through exhortation and by using rewards and sanctions relating to status in the religious community, and is not the authority of governments, who may use physical and monetary rewards and punishments to get their way. In other words, ‘matters of policy and punishment’ are divided up into two spheres, just as Baha’u’llah divides the concept of sovereignty in the Kitab-e Iqan into worldly sovereignty and spiritual sovereignty.

Among numerous later interpretations that indicate that the authority of the House of Justice relates to the religious sphere only, are these from Shoghi Effendi: “Not only with regard to publication, but all matters without any exception whatsoever, regarding the interests of the Cause in that locality … should be referred exclusively to the Spiritual Assembly … unless it be a matter of national interest, in which case it shall be referred to the national body. … By national affairs is not meant matters that are political in their character, for the friends of God the world over are strictly forbidden to meddle with political affairs in any way whatever, but rather things that affect the spiritual activities of the body of the friends in that land.” (Unfolding Destiny 8 ) In Baha’i Administration p.8 the scope of the Administration is defined as “matters pertaining to the Cause.”

Given that those who prepared the 1978 translation of the Ishraqat had Ali Kuli Khan’s translation before them, one has to wonder why they would have chosen a translation in the eighth Ishraqat that is inconsistent with the remainder of that tablet, with Baha’u’llah’s explanation in the Lawh-e Dunya, and with Bahai teachings in general. One possible answer lies in a paragraph of Abdu’l-Baha’s Will and Testament, which Shoghi Effendi translated:

O ye beloved of the Lord! It is incumbent upon you to be submissive to all monarchs that are just and to show your fidelity to every righteous king. Serve ye the sovereigns of the world with utmost truthfulness and loyalty. Show obedience unto them and be their well-wishers. Without their leave and permission do not meddle with political affairs (‘umuur-e siyaasii), for disloyalty to the just sovereign is disloyalty to God Himself. (Will and Testament 15)

It could be that because Shoghi Effendi translated ‘umuur-e siyaasii as ‘political affairs’ here, the committee translating the Ishraqat and Bisharat felt obliged to give the phrase a similar meaning, if not exactly the same wording. In the Will and Testament, however, ‘political affairs’ are firmly under the control of civil rulers, whereas using the same translation in the new translation of Ishraqat and Bisharat puts political affairs in the hands of the Bahai House of Justice! Consistency in translation here produces inconsistency in teachings. Abdu’l-Baha’s use of siyaasii in the Will and Testament (and frequently in the Sermon on the Art of Governance) is more modern than Baha’u’llah’s usage in the Ishraqat, as the word shifts its meaning to reflect the development of an autonomous political sphere in the formerly patrimonial lands of the Middle East.

The ninth Ishraq, the last numbered section, returns to the role of religion in society:

Religion bestoweth upon man the most precious of all gifts, offereth the cup of prosperity, imparteth eternal life, and showereth imperishable benefits upon mankind. It behoveth the chiefs and rulers of the world, and in particular the Trustees of God’s House of Justice, to endeavour to the utmost of their power to safeguard its position, promote its interests and exalt its station in the eyes of the world. In like manner it is incumbent upon them to enquire into the conditions of their subjects and to acquaint themselves with the affairs and activities of the divers communities in their dominions. We call upon the manifestations of the power of God — the sovereigns and rulers on earth — to bestir themselves and do all in their power that haply they may banish discord from this world and illumine it with the light of concord.

Civil rulers have a general duty to promote the interests of religion, while the “Trustees of God’s House of Justice” have a special duty. The concern of the ‘chiefs’ is not confined to one religious community, they should be aware of the actions and affairs (a`maal wa ‘umuur) of every religious community. Baha’u’llah’s understanding of the role of religion in society takes religious pluralism as a self-evident context.
__________

This is adapted from the discussion of the translation of the Ishraqat in Church and State by Sen McGlinn, pages 181-186, available from Amazon Books or Kalimat Press.

1. Tablets of Baha’u’llah 128-9, cf. Majmu`ih az alwah-ye Jamal-e Aqdas-e Abha 75
2. Tablets of Baha’o’llah Revealed at Acca (1906). The eighth Ishraq is on pages 129-30 of that volume, and is unchanged in Baha’i World Faith.
3. Tablets of Baha’u’llah 28, cf. Majmu`ih az alwah-ye Jamal-e Aqdas-e Abha 15.
4. Tablets of Baha’u’llah 150, cf. Majmu`ih az alwah-ye Jamal-e Aqdas-e Abha 90.

Do assemblies learn?

The Spiritual Assemblies that administer affairs in Bahai communities suffer from growing pains: and the members themselves are the nerve that feels it the most. If the problem is disunity, is there a point at which it is better for some members to resign? Or should the assembly be maintained, and meet, come what may – even if the problems in the meeting seep out and undermine the good work and good feeling in the community?

On the one hand, we have quotes such as this:

“The assemblies of the North American continent, constituting the base for the gigantic operations destined to warm and illuminate, under American Bahá’í auspices, the five continents of the globe, must, at no time and under no circumstances, be allowed to diminish in number or decline in strength and in influence. The movement of pioneers, whether settlers or itinerant teachers, which in fields so distant from this base, has exhibited so marvelous a vitality, must, within the limits of the homeland itself, be neither interrupted nor suffer a decline. The groups and isolated centers so painstakingly formed and established must, conjointly with this highly commendable and essential duty, be maintained, fostered and if possible multiplied. “ (Shoghi Effendi, Citadel of Faith, p. 75)

This is not the same as saying that every individual assembly must be held, come what may. It seems to me to be saying that the institutional foundation in the country must be maintained, it should not be sacrificed by sending out too many pioneers.

In a situation where the number of active Bahais in the country is pretty much constant, or even declining, there will certainly be communities that shrink and assemblies that will be lost. They will mainly be in more rural areas affected by the drift to the cities, and areas with older populations. It is to be hoped that these losses can be compensated with new assemblies and new capacities elsewhere, so that the foundations for pioneering, teaching work, the support of the funds and for the next generation of Bahais can be maintained. In a rapidly changing society, we should not imagine that the institutional foundations can always be maintained in the same places.

Assembly work is quite demanding: it is conceivable that a community could have 9 or more adult Bahais, but not 9 whose circumstances and character enables them to serve on the Assembly.

Sometimes, concentrating on individual and community activities is the solution to disunity in the Assembly. Most Assemblies have a terrible tendency to over-administer anyway. Scaling back the Assembly meetings, holding a brief meeting on the margins of some other activity, and limiting the decisions to essentials, while at the same time increasing the deepenings, devotional meetings, proclamation, social activities and teaching, may reduce the pressure on assembly members to allow unforced growth in their relationships with one another, while also offering some hope of new ideas and new people refreshing the community. This solution will be particularly effective if a substantial part of the problem is that some assembly members are unenthusiastic about the assembly work itself. Perhaps there is little real call for assembly decisions, and frequent meetings, so long as the assembly is elected and is there as the first authority to turn to if an administrative issue should arise. In small communities, many matters can best be taken care of by individual initiatives, by friends working together in groups on particular projects, and by common consent at the Feast. The Assembly is a means, not an end in itself, and sometimes other means will work better.

“As the administrative work of the Cause steadily expands, as its various branches grow in importance and number, it is absolutely necessary that we bear in mind this fundamental fact that all these administrative activities, however harmoniously and efficiently conducted, are but means to an end, and should be regarded as direct instruments for the propagation of the Bahá’í Faith. Let us take heed lest in our great concern for the perfection of the administrative machinery of the Cause, we lose sight of the Divine Purpose for which it has been created.” (Shoghi Effendi, Baha’i Administration, p. 102)

However, if the cause of the difficulty is not a shortage of people able to serve, but disunity about some particular Bahai issue, the most likely solution is to get together to define the question as clearly as possible, and then to seek an answer to it. However one or two members who think they know the answer, and are personally qualified to define the question, can easily prevent this working.

There seems to be very little “institutional learning” in the Spiritual Assemblies, especially in the local assemblies. They can grow and develop for a while, and then lapse back: a sure sign that it was the individuals who did the learning, but it was not passed on in the form of maturity for the institution. A business or organisation would improve institutional learning by turning its learning, year by year, into training course materials, situation response scenario’s, “best practice” codes, and the like, and then by calling individuals to account if they failed to use what had been learned in the past. Most Local Assemblies are not going to do that, and if they were to devote much of their time to writing their learning down it would be a distraction and largely a waste of time.

That means that the maturity of the assembly never becomes “bedded- in” : it is the sum of the maturity and learning of the members, and little more. We will have more mature assemblies when there are more mature Bahais, and when the more mature among us are in fact elected and serve.

The first half of this means that the focus of all that “institutional learning” stuff should be the Bahai community, particularly children and youth, not the Assembly members. Not the procedures of the assembly, but skills such as consultation and attitudes such as humility about one’s supposed knowledge of ‘The Faith’ will have to be studied and practised.

The second part requires first of all larger communities (so that the voters have some choice), maturity in the voters (they must really be told that they harm the assembly by voting for Mr. Knowitall and that rich couple with the enormous house where every feast can be hosted), and more openness between the assembly and the community. If the voters do not know which assembly member seldom attends, who comes up with good ideas, who squelches every initiative, who does the real work and who complains that other people should — then the voters cannot give the assembly better members at the next election.

Ending the secrecy of LSA deliberations (but not the confidentiality of personal matters) is an important step: put the minutes of the Assembly on the table at Feast, or publish them or a summary in the newsletter (without the confidential matters relating to individual’s situations). Let the minutes, or the Assembly report, go to the Feast: say who was present, who sent apologies, who came up with ideas and who brought what argument in support or against the proposals. There is nothing in the Writings to prevent the community being told that Alice sent her apologies, Mary presented an idea for regular newspaper advertisements, Majnun offered to help while Mary was on holiday, Tahireh and Peter said that media proclamation was being discouraged, since Ruhi classes would be more effective, and Dawn said that the decision should be postponed until more members could attend, or perhaps a committee could be formed to study the Guidance. In fact, openness between the assembly and the community is encouraged:

“Every institution in the Faith has certain matters which it considers should be kept confidential, … Such matters, however, are but a small portion of the business of any Bahá’í institution. Most subjects dealt with are of common interest and can be discussed openly with anyone. Where no confidentiality is involved the institutions must strive to avoid the stifling atmosphere of secrecy; … (From a letter written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to a National Spiritual Assembly, August 2, 1982)

“… Their functions is not to dictate, but to consult, and consult not only among themselves, but as much as possible with the friends whom they represent. … They must at all times avoid the spirit of exclusiveness, the atmosphere of secrecy, free themselves from a domineering attitude, and banish all forms of prejudice and passion from their deliberations.”
(Shoghi Effendi, From a letter to the Bahá’ís of America, February 23, 1924: Bahá’í Administration, p. 64)

If the community is informed about the assembly’s work and functioning, informed voting by the believers will in time turn lame-duck assemblies into Assemblies going somewhere. Members of the community will get a boost just from the respect that is implicit in being informed.

Closed, insular communities tend to be very stuck in their ways: after a while people just don’t see how strange their accepted ways are, because there is no perspective from outside. So visitors who stay a while and contribute are important: not necessarily Counselors or ABMs (whose aura of expertise can get in the way), but simply visitors from other Bahai communities. We used to have a flow of travel-teachers who not only taught, but also refreshed the communities, but that practice has fallen into disuse. How about an exchange programme, say a house-swap at Ridvan: a couple from the coast goes to the mountains, and vice versa, or between Canadian and American cities? Another way to open the community culture up is to shift the prime focus of the community from Feast and Assembly (Bahais only) to devotional meetings and to the institution (not necessarily a building) of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkar or House of Worship. When we see ourselves more as others see us, we become more ready to change and to see that what we have always done might be open to criticism.

Sen

The puzzle of the Aqdas: joining a few pieces

I first wrote this as an email posting on 1 Jan 2008. I’ve reworked it as a blog entry. It concerns one of the things that puzzles Bahais from a Christian or non-religious background: what is ‘religious law’ and how do we treat the Kitab-e Aqdas?

Usually this comes up not as a broad theoretical question, but in terms of particulars. Why do women seem to be disadvantaged in the inheritance law, why are they treated differently in regard to some religious duties, and what is that verse about having no more than two wives?

I want to show first that the text of the Aqdas is no more than the tip of the iceberg, a sort of hand-list of the laws, whose actual contents are often found elsewhere. So we need to engage with ‘the Law’ and not with the Aqdas alone. And second, that when we do, we will find that religious law is something quite different to the law of the land, or the codified regulations of a professional association, and that what it says and what it is trying to do may be more radical than appears at first glance. I’ll skip over some particular questions about some laws quickly, and then get onto the broader issues that tell us more about the form and approach of the Aqdas, about what kind of thing Bahai religious law is.

Women in the laws of the Aqdas
The first question asked was:

Women are given less inheritance, (and if that’s of no importance given our requirement to make a will, why does this sexually unequal inheritance subject get so much space in our Most Holy Book?), women are “exempt” from the pilgrimage, and from the requirement to do the obligatory prayers when they are enfeebled due to their courses (no wonder we can’t trust them to be on the UHJ, since they are so enfeebled when menstruating).

To understand the position of women in Bahai inheritance, we have to look at Question 37 in the ‘Questions and Answers’ to the Aqdas:

37. QUESTION: In the holy ordinances governing inheritance,
the residence and personal clothing of the deceased
have been allotted to the male offspring. Doth this provision
refer only to the father’s property, or doth it apply
to the mother’s as well?

ANSWER: The used clothing of the mother should
be divided in equal shares among the daughters,
but the remainder of her estate, including property,
jewellery, and unused clothing, is to be
distributed, in the manner revealed in the Kitab-i-Aqdas,
to all her heirs. If, however, the deceased
hath left no daughters, her estate in its entirety
must be divided in the manner designated for men
in the holy Text.

This shows that if a woman does have daughters, her estate is divided differently than ‘the manner designated for men.’ Apart from the clothing, it is does not tell us what the manner for women is, where the woman has female heirs. It is however open to the reading that, when the deceased is a woman, her share of the family home goes to the eldest daughter, and the sisters get priority over the brothers, and so forth.

According to the notes to the Aqdas, though the law is formulated with the presumption that the deceased is a man, its provisions apply, mutatis mutandis [note 38], when the deceased is a woman. The mutatis mutandis principle: “changing what has to be changed”, indicates a direction for interpretation but is hardly explicit: what has to be changed, and how?

There is one direct example of its application given in Question 55, where the question is “If the deceased be a woman, to whom is the ‘wife’s’ share of the inheritance allotted?” and the answer is “The ‘wife’s’ share of the inheritance is allotted to the husband.” This ought already to warn us that Bahá’u'lláh has stepped outside the mould of His Islamic background. Under Islamic law, for each class of inheritors, the males of the class inherit twice as much as the females, thus a son gets twice as much as a daughter, a brother twice as much as a sister, the father twice as much as the mother. In Surah 4 verse 12 of the Quran, this is applied to the wife or husband of the deceased: “In what your wives leave, your share is a half, if they leave no child; but if they leave a child, ye get a fourth… Their share is a fourth, if ye leave no child; but if ye leave a child, they get an eighth.” Thus where the Quran has a general rule about male and female shares which applies whether the deceased is a man or woman, Bahá’u'lláh stipulates a share which is due to the wife when the deceased is a man, or to the husband when the deceased is a woman. This suggests a pattern of symmetrical equality between the sexes. Hence my suggestion that if the deceased is a woman, her share of the family home goes to the eldest daughter. I assume of course that the husband and wife are full partners and therefore co-owners of the family home, so that the husband’s estate normally contains half of the ownership of the home, and the wife’s estate the other half.

Another example: Bahá’u'lláh explicitly says that the residence and personal clothing of the deceased [go] to the male, not female, offspring [Aqdas paragraph 25]. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá interpreted this as meaning that the residence and personal clothing of a deceased man remain in the male line [see note 44]. Shoghi Effendi says in the Synopsis that the residence and clothing of the deceased father pass to the male not to the female offspring. (Synopsis, p 55). So despite the apparent explicit advantages given to male heirs, the interpretation shows that this is only so where the deceased is male.

In light of this pattern, turn to Q37 and ask what happens when the deceased is a woman, and she owns a half share in the family home (which is, after all, only fair), and perhaps other property. That the clothing goes to the daughters is clear. What is “the manner revealed in the Aqdas” for the other property? In the light of the examples above, could it not be that, when the deceased is a woman, the female heirs take the place of the male heirs, and vice versa?

I gave a longer explanation of the implications of the inheritance, including the question of how it relates to the duty to write a will, in a paper in the Bahai Studies Review, Volume 5.1, 1995, which is online here.

To turn to the question of the exemption of women from pilgrimage: both the law and the exemption for women are contained in the Bab’s book of laws, the Persian Bayan (4:16 and 4:18, 6:16). As so often, the brief mention in Baha’u'llah’s Kitab-e Aqdas is hardly more than a pointer: to understand the law we have to go to the Bayan text that is being pointed to. In the Bayan, the exemption there is stated as an exemption for (all) women, except for those who would face no difficulty on the route (4:18). But in fact, the same exemption is given for men: the pilgrimage is obligatory for everyone, but the duty has been lifted for the one who is not sufficiently wealthy to suffer no hardship on the route (4:18). The brief mention in the Aqdas endorses both the duty, and the exemption, contained in the Bayan. The Bayan emphasises that the hardships of travel should be avoided (in contrast to the practice of making pilgrimage travel deliberately hard, for instance on foot or barefoot, in the belief that this brings extra merit). It offers the same exemption twice: once for all people, and once for women particularly: neither should go on pilgrimage where it would entail hardship.

The Bayan also gives a long explanation of why one bit of dust should be singled out (as a place of pilgrimage) above another, given that God is not in any particular place. In fact the Bayan frequently gives a reasoning and understanding of the law which, in my opinion, is more valuable than simply knowing the details of what applies to whom.

Similarly the obligatory prayer, fasting and other religious practices. The purpose is not that these duties should be a great burden. All who are weak from illness or age are exempted from the obligation, in fact the are told not to perform obligatory prayer or fast when ill (Aqdas, Question 93), and this specifies “men or women.” Aqdas paragraph 13 specifies an alternative verse that women in their courses may use: the implication is that this may be said standing, sitting or lying. At any rate, there is no bending, kneeling and bowing specified, as for the usual obligatory prayer. Presumably a woman having a very heavy period, bad cramps etc would be “weak from illness” and thus should not fast or perform obligatory prayer. But normal pregnancy and menstruation are not illnesses, they are natural processes. Paragraph 13 gives an intermediate solution: an alternative to obligatory prayer for the woman whose mind and spirit are ready for prayer, but whose stomach muscles are protesting. The purpose again is that the duties of religion should be light: God is not more pleased by greater hardships endured, rather God is pleased by the happiness and willingness of the creatures.

So far as I know (not from personal experience), service on the UHJ does not involve any exertion for the stomach muscles, so I doubt that this law is relevant to the membership of the UHJ.

The next question asked concerned polgyamy:

Baha’u'llah specifically allows two wives (not two husbands!) but then this gets immediately abrogated in the notes. If it’s immediately abrogated, why in the world did it get such prominent mention in our Most Holy Book for the next thousand years?

Once again, to understand this we have to turn to the Bayan - the Aqdas simply endorses a law whose details and justification is given by the Bab.

Let’s start with the principle that “the exception proves the rule.” It’s an odd expression, but perfectly valid in legal reasoning. Suppose there is a law that says “it is permissible to exceed 30 mph in a built-up area in an emergency situation where speed is of the essence.” The fact that this is framed as an exception, shows that there must be a rule that says that, normally, one may not exceed 30 mph in a built- up area.

Now in the Persian Bayan, wahid 8 section 14, the Bab says (translating from the French):

“If a man or woman proves incapable of having a child, it is legitimate for the spouse who is not infertile (whichever it may be) to marry again after having obtained the permission of the other party, but not without her permission [the French has 'her' here, but the Persian pronoun u applies to men or women] and the purpose is that a child be born of this spouse, male or female. … In this world, the most exalted of the fruits that God has given humanity, after Faith in Himself, the Letters of Unity and in what has been revealed in the Bayan, is to gather the fruits of his (bodily) existence so after his death, the man leaves a fruit which will mention him with praise. This (having children) has been ordained in the Bayan, in the most proper and most precise way. (What has been ordained) on this point, is that if any incapacity (to produce) is found in one of the two spouses, the other spouse should marry in another ceremony with the permission of his spouse, so that a fruit of his existence may be manifest …”

So, in the event of infertility, the couple has permission to take a second husband or wife for the purpose of conceiving a child. This exception in itself implies that the general rule is monogamy. The exception proves the rule. This explains why Shoghi Effendi can say that the Kitab-e Aqdas “prescribes monogamy” (God Passes By, p. 214): he does not say that Abdu’l-Baha changed the law, but rather that the text itself prescribed monogamy — which it does, by implication, by endorsing a law which allows for a second wife or husband only under special circumstances (and also by then adding that it is better to be content with one (wife or husband)).

Many laws that are stated briefly in the Aqdas are detailed in the Bayan, and in many cases one has to have the Bayan on hand to understand what the Aqdas is saying, because the Aqdas is so telegraphic. The general principle is that “The Bayan hath been superseded by the Kitab-i-Aqdas, except in respect of such laws as have been confirmed and mentioned in the Kitab-i-Aqdas.” (Aqdas, note 10 but that a brief mention is taken as implying the whole of the previous law — as in the case of the Aqdas‘ very brief mention of the forbidden degrees of marriage.

The Aqdas says:

“God hath prescribed matrimony unto you. Beware that ye take not unto yourselves more wives than two. Whoso contenteth himself with a single partner from among the maidservants of God, both he and she shall live in tranquillity.” [Aqdas, paragraph 63]

If this is a compact endorsement of the law that is set out in detail in the Bayan, then it is only an exception for infertile couples. And this fits with what Abdu’l-Baha wrote: on the one hand he endorses the legitimacy of the Aqdas text:

“You asked about polygamy. According to the text (nass) of the Divine Book the right of having two wives is lawful and legal (ja’iz). This was never (abadan) prohibited, but it is legitimate and allowed (halal wa mubah). You should therefore not be unhappy, but take justice into your consideration so that you may be as just as possible. what has been said was that since justice is very difficult
(to achieve), therefore tranquility (calls for) one wife. But in your case, you should not be unhappy.” ['Abdu'l-Baha, cited in Amr wa Khalq 4: 174]

And the confirmation of bigamy seems to be still more clearly formulated in yet another passage:

“Concerning bigamy, this has been promulgated, and no one must abrogate it (mansusast nasikhi nadarad). ‘Abdu’l Baha has not abrogated this law. These are false accusations and lies (spread by) the friends. What I have said is that He [God?] has made bigamy bound on a precondition. As long as someone does not attain certitude regarding the capability to practice justice and his heart is not at rest that he can practice justice, he should not be intent upon a second marriage. But if he should be sure and attain certitude that he would practice justice on all levels (and conditions) (dar jami’ i maratib), then a second marriage is lawful. Just as has been the case in the Holy Land : the Baha’i friends wished to marry a second wife, accepting this precondition, and this servant (i.e., ‘Abdu’l Baha) never abstained (from giving permission), but insisted that justice should be considered, and justice actually means here self restraint (daraji i imtina’); but they said, that they will practice justice and wished to marry a second wife. Such false accusations (concerning ‘Abdu’l Baha’s prohibition of bigamy) are the slanderous whisperings (zamzamih) of those who wish to spread doubts (in people’s hearts) and to what degree they already succeed in making matters ambiguous! (Our) purpose was to state that bigamy without justice is not lawful and that justice is very difficult (to achieve).” [Amr wa Khalq 4: 174f]

So the exception (for infertile couples) still stands, and could be adapted to deal with more modern phenomena such as artificial insemination etc. As an exception, it still points to the general rule of monogamy. And Abdu’l-Baha apparently says that it was also the rule in Islam. The law that made having up to four wives dependent on justice was in the Quran, 4:3:

“And if ye fear that ye will not deal fairly by the orphans, marry of the women, who seem good to you, two or three or four; and if ye fear that ye cannot do justice (to so many) then one (only) …”

To which `Abdu’l-Baha says

“In the Quran the word has been revealed “and if ye fear that ye cannot do justice (to so many) then one (only)…”, indicating that in the presence of God the acceptable judgement is monogamy.” [Amr wa Khalq 174- 5].

Abdu’l-Baha treats the Quranic verse as defining an exception (in a situation where there were many orphans and widows), which proves that the general rule has always been monogamy — also in Islam, if it were correctly understood.

The nature of the Aqdas
Now for the more general questions about the Aqdas. Yes, the Aqdas is largely addressed to a time and place, so is the Quran, so is the New Testament, so are the various layers of the Old Testament. We always have to read scripture with two eyes - one for what it meant for those people then, and one for what it means for us now. It is not like the road code, which is intended to be read in its plain meaning and applied directly. With the religious law, it is precisely the other way round: it has no purpose until it is made internal, until it becomes meaningful for us now. A mere outward and literal observance would be pointless, it would be a “mere code of laws.” We read religious history in the same way: one significance is that Mulla Husayn or Tahireh, or the Master, did this or that, another is the connection we make to what we are doing today. For example:

No lesser tribute can be paid the memory of the glorious Báb, the immortal Quddus, the lion-hearted Mulla Husayn, the erudite Vahid, the audacious Hujjat, the illustrious seven martyrs of Tihran and a host of unnumbered heroes … than a parallel outpouring of their substance by the builders of the most holy House of Worship laboring in the corresponding decade of the succeeding century. (Shoghi Effendi, Citadel of Faith, p. 66)

Heroism is for all time, but the forms in which it is expressed have to change with the times.

So yes, the Aqdas is for a time and place — until we make it meaningful for ourselves, today, by translating one set of symbols and meanings into contemporary meaningfulness. Slavery is literally slavery, but it has a contemporary correspondence in indentured labour and wage slavery: conditions which leave the worker just enough to stay alive, but no dignity, no choice and no future.

You can probably think yourself of a contemporary “type” corresponding to the pollution of public baths (whose use is forbidden in the Aqdas), public baths to which everyone would bring their dirt to share, and there was seldom fresh clean input. In those days of course there was no such thing as a filtration system and disinfactants, so you can imagine what the water of a Persian public bath was like. How do you think Abdu’l-Baha would feel about people, and class cultures, even whole nations, that are daily immersed in the gutter press, Undercover Lover and Temptation Island? Isn’t this immersing yourself in a not-to-clean public bath?

Having said that: the audience for Baha’u'llah and the Bab and Abdu’l- Baha was actually quite varied. The 7 Valleys and the 4 Valleys and the Hidden Words are written for particular people of the time, but they are coming from a very different “place” than the experts in religious law. The Tablet of medicine is for a different person again, the Tablet to the Shah and A Traveller’s Narrative and The Secret of Divine Civilization … In short, the Aqdas is not typical of the kind of concerns and the type of audience that the Bahai Writings address. Its “time and place,” and type, are quite particular to the Aqdas.

Baha’u'llah also wrote poetry — to understand what type of thing it is, you need to understand that there is such a thing as poetry, that the short lines and allusiveness and illusiveness and rhyme and rhythm are all part of the genre of “poetry.” In the same way, there is a genre of “religious law,” and to understand what kind of thing the Aqdas is, it will help to look at other religious laws and see what form is typical there.

One of the typical things is that the original text of the religious law is disjointed, skipping from subject to subject, and from grand themes to apparently minor details. It is the same with the Quran, and with the Old Testament. Another typical thing is that the text is made up out of units which are later assembled together — I think this is also true of the Aqdas. Some laws and passages to rulers were being revealed in Edirne or even earlier, some in Arabic and some in Persian, and there was later an ordering, a translation where necessary, and literary polishing. What is unique is that this was done by Baha’u'llah himself, whereas the Quran or Old Testament were gathered and ordered by followers, after the death of the founding figures.

Another thing that is typical of the genre of religious laws is that they consist of core text, commentary and super-commentary, and then the actual applicable law is then derived from this whole. In 19th century Shiah Islam, the commentary was increasingly being given in Persian, and the Bab adopted this form: we have the Arabic Bayan and the Persian Bayan, and each section of the Persian Bayan consists of an Arabic preamble and a Persian discourse on it. The latter often explain the symbolic meaning or the values that underly the law. In this genre, the original core text is not expected to be sufficient or self-explanatory. It may sometimes be so, but the expectation is that there will be a multi-layered meaning, and an interplay between the various layers. There is often a sort of historic dialogue going on as well — between the successive layers of the Old Testament for example, where the later layer assumes a knowledge of the earlier, and modifies it, or gives it a new twist. This is especially so of the Aqdas, which is in dialogue with the Bayan and with Islamic religious law.

Such literary features of religious law are not just arbitrary, they are related to the function of religious law as such. Sound patterns are part of poetry because poetry is to be “read aloud” (even if only in our heads), and savoured. The multi-layered nature of religious law and the jumble of its source texts are there because its purpose is to be the object of “study” as a religious practice, analogous to prayer and meditation and reciting the dhikr (a
Sufi practice, incorporated in the Bahai Faith in the form of reciting the Greatest Name). The detail and discussion of Jewish or Islamic law grow out of the study of the law as a devotional practice. The minutiae of the law are studied as an intellectual, but not necessarily an empty, exercise. In diving into the sea of the Law, its complexity so engages the rational mind that the soul may perhaps feel that it brushes the Word that underlies the words. A law that was structured like a road code would not fulfill the purpose of a religious law, just as the road code doesn’t have any general use as poetry.

A practical, applicable law has to be structured by themes, written in the vernacular and accessible to the mass of the people, and has to also embody the institutions for monitoring, enforcement, and punishment. The road code without the traffic police and the driver’s licence authority and the safety testing station and the magistrate, would be nothing. Societies need codified law with these attributes, but this is not to be found in the Aqdas. Governments and Houses of Justice (in different spheres) produce codified law which is workable in social practice, while scriptures provide a law which can be followed (eg, the law on obligatory prayer) and which can be studied for its own sake.

The next question passed from the particularity of Bahai religious law, to the supposed superiority of the Bahai religion:

The Aqdas is fine, but I just don’t see it as a “proof’ of Divine origin or anything like that. After ten years of intense study, I find myself loving the Baha’i Faith, choosing it over all the world’s religious traditions, but I find no overriding “proof’ of its inherent and inevitable Divine superiority over all religions for all people. I see it as the best choice, but not a proven, inevitable necessity that all people must choose. I still see other religions as valid choices for some people. Does that make me a bad Baha’i?

First, I don’t think that the Writings are the “proof” of the Bahai Faith, in the way that the Quran is the “proof” for Islam, the rapid revelation of verses is a proof for Babism, and the Bible is used as a proof in some forms of Protestant Christianity. Baha’u'llah writes

“The first and foremost testimony establishing His truth is His own Self. Next to this testimony is His Revelation. For whoso faileth to recognize either the one or the other He hath established the words He hath revealed … ” (Gleanings p. 105)

and

“”Write: ‘Hast thou not heard that My proof is My Essence, My evidence My person, and My argument My Manifestation? While that which hath proceeded from My pen is a path leading unto My recognition, … My proof hath been the manifestations of My power, which have encompassed all who are in heaven and on earth. I have appointed Divine Verses as a path leading unto My recognition, as a bounty from Our presence unto both worlds.” (Ma’idah al Ismani vol 4 p 93, trans. Ahang Rabbani).

Thus the text of scripture is a 3rd-order revelation, which can lead us to the Revelation and Self of the Manifestation. Bahai theology generally needs a course correction here I think: it has been too much influenced by the Muslim, Protestant and Babi models.

So it would be wrong to think that the Writings are a proof of the Faith, or its superiority. I also do not think that everyone should, or will eventually, choose to become Bahais. The Bahai Faith does have a fuller measure of revelation, but that does not mean other religions are simply switched off from the ‘voltage’ of the Holy Spirit. God’s way has been to work through successive revelations at long intervals, but also to keep inspiring previous religions for thousands of years. Shoghi Effendi writes:

Such institutions as have strayed far from the spirit and teachingsof Jesus Christ must of necessity, as the embryonic World Order of Bahá’u'lláh takes shape and unfolds, recede into the background, and make way for the progress of the divinely-ordained institutions that stand inextricably interwoven with His teachings. The indwelling Spirit of God which, in the Apostolic Age of the Church, animated its members, the pristine purity of its teachings, the primitive brilliancy of its light, will, no doubt, be reborn and revived as the inevitable consequence of this redefinition of its fundamental verities, and the clarification of its original purpose.

For the Faith of Bahá’u'lláh — if we would faithfully appraise it — can never, and in no aspect of its teachings, be at variance, much less conflict, with the purpose animating, or the authority invested in, the Faith of Jesus Christ.
(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha’u'llah, p. 185)

In The Secret of Divine Civilization, Abdu’l-Baha proposes not just ways to revive the fortunes of Iran and bringing peace, but also ways to revive the Faith of God there (Shi’ah Islam) and he argues that religions (plural) are the basis of human progress. There, and in A Traveller’s Narrative, he argues for religious tolerance, so that people of all religions can live side by side.

I think that Baha’u’llah, Abdu’l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi look forward to a revival of Christianity, Islam and other religions, which, because they rediscover the universal in their own teachings, will learn to work together. I do not know anywhere where they look forward to the extinction of other religions.

What the world needs is not simply a new religion, that Bahai and only Bahai can provide. I think the need is for a new kind of religious order, and I think that the new religion of Bahai will help the older religions to create it, together. What is needed is a new kind of religious order which will foster global unity, rather than creating a lot of separate religious identities that compete with one another or fight.

I think it is important to acknowledge that we leave childhood behind, but we take the things of childhood with us. Much of the past comes with us into postmodernity, but transformed or placed in a wider context. National and cultural identities for example. And Christianity “reborn and revived” as in the quote from Shoghi Effendi above.

This opens the possibility for an explanation of progressive revelation that is not supercessionist. There are revelations throughout history, and their communities and positive effects continue for some thousands of years (but not indefinitely). Humanity passes through climactic changes, such as the end of the classical age, and the current transition to the postmodern, and then *all* of the religious communities have to reinvent themselves in a new world, which is painful and difficult. The religion that is born at the time of such a change also has to transform, but it has an easier task, less baggage, so their example of transformation can show the way.

This reading preserves the special role of the new revelation in shaping the new age, but does not treat all previous revelations and the wisdom in their traditions as simply superseded.

In the Bahai writings, especially those of Shoghi Effendi, the World Order is more than religion alone, and is not created by religion alone. In the postmodern world order (as it will be, with global justice, pluralism, protection of human rights, rule of law etc), there is no place for the old religious order of religions claiming exclusive truth, or exclusive validity for one people. Given the shape of the World Order, the required religious order has to be tolerant, it cannot give priority to one religion over others, it has to work together for common goals (the well-being of humanity), and so on. For most religions, this will involve quite a large re- think, but for Bahais this is basic scripture. So in some sense Bahai is “best suited” — it has a relative advantage on the ideas front, but is at a really big disadvantage so far as numbers and depth of culture go.

Youth: every age its own problem

As a first experiment in blogging, here’s a letter I wrote to the Bahai Youth Council in 1996. The Council had written a jeremiad about the terrible state of youth, and invited comments. They got them.

To the European Bahá’í Youth Council
I have recently received a copy of your paper “The State of the Bahá’í Youth in Europe,” dated May 1995. That is a long time ago - particularly in the life of a youth - and perhaps this paper no longer reflects the thinking of the Youth Council. I hope so, at any rate, because the approach adopted in the paper does not suggest a way forward for either the Council or the youth themselves.
In addition to the general observation that one cannot expect positive output from negative input, two areas in particular struck me as needing re-vision: the approach to morality and to individualism.

Moral standards
As the ‘Prosperity Of Humankind’ statement prepared of the Bahá’í International Community says, “religion’s challenge is to free itself from the obsessions of the past… morality has nothing in common with the life-denying puritanism that has so often presumed to speak in its name..” This challenge must also be faced by the Bahá’í community. It demands a focus on the sources of morality rather than an attempt to restrain particular behaviours. The sweeping condemnations of the language, dress, self-expression, music, films, jokes, and reading materials of the youth in this paper focus on the most superficial aspects of behaviour, those in which the standards and fashions quite normally change with every generation. In fact the reference in this paper to “the tendency for Bahá’í youth to portray aspects of personal conduct and appearance which are not expressly prohibited in the Writings, but which do not reflect the spirit of the Teachings” seems to imply that the Council feels itself to be in possession of some deeper understanding of the spirit of the Teachings which enables it to discern the true path even in areas which are not covered in the Writings or which are expressly left to the responsibility of the individual, as in the case of styles of dress and music. The underlying problem, according to this paper, is that some youth suffer from “a very basic lack of understanding of the Bahá’í Faith”, but much of the ground covered in the paper speaks rather of the condition of (mutual) incomprehension known as the generation gap. This impression is strengthened by the fact that one of the few steps which the paper suggests the Council itself might take is to produce a compilation of the guidance given to the youth of the 80s. The inescapable conclusion is that the vision animating the Council is not to assist the youth of today to understand who they are, as individuals and as a generation, and what this implies in terms of opportunities and responsibilities, but rather to recreate the generation which was in its youth 15 or 20 years ago. But, as Heraclitus said, you cannot step into the same river twice.

Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. The remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as that which a subsequent age may require. Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements. (Gleanings, page 213)

What is required, it seems to me, is not just a resolve to ‘be more positive’ or ‘don’t be so old-fashioned’, but rather (or also) a more fundamental re-visioning on the part of the Council and a deeper and soundly-based understanding of the significance of the period of youth. It might well be fruitful for the Council to seek out people with expertise and experience in youth development work, in particular to seek advice from people whose vision of the processes which youth go through at this stage in their maturation and how these processes can be supported is of proven practical utility, as evidenced in their effects on the youth concerned over some years.

Individualism
The difference between the good behaviour of a child and the sound morality of an adult (which is not to say that all adults are moral, or all children good) lies in the self-awareness which can be expected of an adult but not of a child. Adults should have an understanding of their own individual natures, of their strengths and weakness, their tendency to self-deception regarding their own motives or to tolerating an easy emotionalism as a means of evading rational decision, as the case may be. This awareness of one’s own identity is developed primarily in youth, and until it has been developed one can speak only of behavioural norms, not of true morality. Identity begets morality, or, more eloquently,

… man should know his own self and recognize that which leadeth unto loftiness or lowliness, glory or abasement, wealth or poverty. Having attained the stage of fulfilment and reached his maturity… (Tablet of Tarazat)

The formation of one’s own identity is a difficult process, and this difficulty largely explains the turbulence which characterizes the period of youth. One early part of this process is to successively take an objective distance from each of the various frameworks which provide one’s identity as a child. This necessary process of separation often involves adopting other frameworks which support one’s identity during a painful and uncertain period analogous to parturition. The most salient example is young peoples’ strong identification with their peers and differentiation of everything which relates to their peer group from the generation of their parents. This leads to the apparent paradox of conformist rebels: strong conformity in matters of taste and superficial behaviour within a generation which at the same time proclaims its individualism and rebellion in relation to an older generation.

A later stage involves consciously adopting for one’s own those roles and duties which are compatible with the personal identity, character, and aptitudes, with the soul’s “particular aspiration”, as this is discovered in the process of youth. These roles may include evidence of the “individual initiative and leadership” which the May 1995 paper notes that youth normally lack. It should be clear that this stage represents the maturity of one’s own distinct identity, not its subordination. It can only be based on the successful completion of the previous stage, which the May 1995 paper calls “the search for individuality and self-expression,” In the simplest terms, no individuality mean no individual initiative and no “individual response to the message of Bahá’u'lláh.”

The Youth Council’s position paper seemed to me to display a rather ambivalent attitude to the process of individuation: condemning its manifestations on the one hand while looking forward to its fruits on the other hand. My suspicion is that the Council has drawn on a strand of social criticism which one sees widely published in newspapers and which is to some extent carried over in Bahá’í publications, summer-school presentations and so forth, according to which the ills of society are to be attributed to individualism, without considering how strongly aspects of individualism, as a philosophical position, are embedded in the Bahá’í teachings. To give one example, both the Shi`ih faith and, until recently, the Catholic Church have denied the individual’s capacity to carry out an individual search for religious truth. This is reflected in their approach to moral questions relating to the position of the individual in society and in their expectations regarding norms of individual behaviour. Since the Bahá’í Faith does explicitly acknowledge the capacity of every individual to search for truth, its moral teachings and ethical norms, and also the way in which it seeks to convey these norms to new generations, will be radically different from those which functioned in either Persian or traditional European societies.
It seems important therefore, most particularly for those who have to deal with youth, to achieve some sort of understanding of the Bahá’í teachings regarding the station of the individual. I hope at least to show that the anti-individualist stance is not a necessary correlative of Bahá’í belief. These are of course just personal thoughts, and my ideas are in a process of change.

Some years ago, when I was studying at a Catholic Seminary, I was strongly influenced by the Liberation theologians, whose critique of Western society and individualistic theology was in turn very much influenced by Marxist critiques of Western capitalism. As time goes by, and history works itself out, I have begun to think that this view of modern Western society, or modern Western history, which attributes its ills to excessive individualism and the separation of the society into differentiated components may be completely wrong. The question comes down to deciding whether some key trends in post-enlightenment history, and particular its individualism, are part of the creative, or the disintegrative, processes which we know are occurring.

What I am beginning to question is a view shared by Marxists, many Liberation theologians, and some Bahá’ís, who see the individuation of society which accelerated so sharply at the enlightenment as a disintegrative, negative, movement. Individuation is seen as, at best, the regrettable side-effect of epistemological freedom, a side-effect for which remedies are sought. There is a tendency to look back to Medieval Christian society as an ideal integrated society: one in which the people and the land, the workers and their produce, the classes of society, the church and the community, were bound in coherent (i.e., meaningful) relationships. These relationships have been radically disrupted and, according to this view, we are in search of a new basis on which the integrated society can be re-established. Individualism is seen as a disintegrative philosophy on which nothing can be built. In literature Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot express this backward-looking philosophy most forcefully, not advocating a return to the past, but looking to the society of the past - the integrated society - for their model of what a society is. According to this view, the integrated but technologically inferior societies of the world are being swamped and destroyed by the virus of individualism which accompanies the spread of Western society.
In Christian theology, the critique of individualism means ‘grass-roots communities’, a theological critique of the competitive basis of capitalism as sinful, a view of the individual as essentially social (the human exists only as a social animal, we are ‘becoming human together’), and of sin and salvation as social phenomena: original sin is the structural sin of society which distorts our humanity. In the Bahá’í version of this, Western society is progressively disintegrating as its religion loses force, and excessive individualism is one of the secondary causes of the disintegration - perhaps the characteristic ill of Western society. This disintegrative process represents the negative phase of a cyclic evolution whose overall thrust is towards ever larger circles of integration, from the family group to the clan, from clan to city-state to nation and ultimately to world integration. Where other religions have offered individual salvation, the Bahá’í Faith offers social salvation.

Perhaps I have set up something of a straw man. The nostalgic nature of this view of pre-enlightenment/pre-capitalist society ought to immediately awake our suspicion, as should its close alliance with Marxist views of social dynamics. There are logical difficulties in saying that Western society is based on an individualistic ethos which is basically a-social or even anti-social, a contradiction of what it is to be a society, while the evidence of our eyes is that, since the enlightenment, Western societies have flourished, have merged into Western Society (with a conscious or unconscious capital letter), and are, indeed, threatening to swamp all others. Either Western Society is not based on individualism, or individualism is not so much at odds with the foundations of social existence as we had thought. Which of these is true is a question of definitions: if we define individualism narrowly in its destructive manifestations, we will find that it is not really basic, perhaps not even common, in Western society. If we define it broadly as the recognition that fundamental values are individual, that the collective gains its life from its members and not vice-versa, then we will find (see below) that it is not really destructive.
According to my summary, this view sees the evolutionary thrust of history as towards increasing socialisation and integration, and those trends which we associate with the Enlightenment, Liberalism, Westernism, etc., as a turning-aside from this great plan.

Now I’ll stand the straw man on his head, beginning with the concept of evolution, to see whether in fact these might be anonymous Bahá’í values, signs in fact of the working of God’s Greater Plan in history. I will begin with the concept of (social) evolution, since this commonly used to exemplify Bahá’í expectations concerning the future of society.
Suppose that evolution is marked not by increasing integration, but by increasing individuation. Grains of sand exist individually, but they are only individuated numerically. Amoebas are more or less the same. Sand and amoebas cannot be said to have any degree of unity - only degrees of identity. A complex and developed ecosystem consists of many individuated species, and the more complex and able species consist of individuated members: wild dogs and baboons, for instance, form societies in which some members, even to an outsider, clearly have individual characteristics. Because they are much more strongly individuated they can also have a kind of unity, and can work collectively. Equally, they can have disunity, conflict, can dominate or be excluded from the group. Amoebas do not form societies. So we can see an evolutionary trend towards individuation, and we see that individuation and social cohesion do not appear to be in conflict, or even to be balancing forces. On the contrary, social structures arise from individuation, and are dependent on individuation. Where the Greek philosophical tradition has regarded the particularities of individual members of a genus as accidents, of no great importance or even as marking a degeneration from the form which should ideally be common to all members of the genus, in this view the individuality of a thing is precisely the mark of God upon it, so that there is a theology of individuality:

When, however, thou dost contemplate the innermost essence of things, and the individuality of each, thou wilt behold the signs of thy Lord’s mercy . . .” [Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Bahá, p. 41]

Each leaf has its own particular identity - so to speak, its own individuality as a leaf. … As each of these forms has its individual and particular virtue, therefore, each elemental atom of the universe has the opportunity of expressing an infinite variety of those individual virtues. No atom is bereft or deprived of this opportunity or right of expression. [Words attributed to Abdu'l-Baha, in The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 285]

The process of individuation reaches the moral level in the human being, who, as an adult at least, has the potential for individual responsibility. In addition to maturity, the individual requires certain means to exercise moral responsibility: material means (e.g. the right of property) and intellectual means (e.g. access to information). In the development of the child, and of the species, we see the means and the responsibility, like individuation and unity, spiralling upwards. The sphere of individual responsibility has successively widened, as the extent of the unity sought has increased. A ‘Western’ society is a society which relies on and ensures the adulthood (i.e., the individual responsibility) of its members in the spheres first of economic activity (capitalism), then of religion (the Reformation) and politics (democracy). This individual responsibility is a tremendous source of personal growth and motivation, and thus of energy for the civilization.
We can see that, in history, the development is towards greater specialisation, greater individuation, greater recognition of the autonomy and value of the individual. Individuation is the trend of history. The principle of property is the expression of this, for property is not theft but responsibility. Property rights are human rights, involving choice and therefore moral autonomy, and moral autonomy is the characteristic (adult) human quality.

In the development of any one individual the same process is repeated. A new-born baby has marginal individuality. The Liberation theologians would appear to be right in saying that the individual per se does not exist, he or she is formed by social relations (there seems to be an echo of this point in the Ridvan message to the world for B.E. 153). But observe the growing child: is not maturity the crystallization of a progressively formed individuality? Individuation is accompanied by moral freedom, in a boot-strap process: moral responsibility (choice, therefore based on freedom) leads to maturity (it individuates the person), which extends the epistemological freedom (the ability to see with your own eyes), which makes the individual morally responsible for what can now be seen.

It could be that we have two opposing tendencies here: a natural law leading towards individuation and a religious counter-force working towards the subordination of the individual to the collective. But I suggest that individuation is also the goal of religious history. In the beginning was the tribe, whose members shared one spiritual destiny, mediated by the shaman. If the spirits were pleased, if the totem was well, the tribe prospered. This collectivism is repeated in early Hebrew religion. The great step forward made by the Pharisees (and borrowed by the Christians and Muslims) was to individualize spiritual destiny. However, although salvation was a property now of the individual, it was a mass-produced salvation. Different religions and different theologians might have differing ideas about what salvation was and how it was obtained, but each thought that it was one thing, obtained in one way. Enter the Bahá’í Faith, which replaces the concept of salvation with that of growth: growth is individual, progressive, and relative to the challenges which an individual faces and his or her personal destiny: Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. An individuated salvation therefore now accompanies individual epistemology.

Although a simple condemnation of individualism is not tenable, whether one is looking at the evidence of history or the Bahá’í teachings, it is also not possible just to take the reverse view. For instance, although salvation has become individual, in the sense that we must all fight our own spiritual battles and achieve, or fail to achieve, our own spiritual destinies, it is also true that if some people play with atomic crackers we all begin to glow in the dark. Our destinies are individual but inextricably related, and the maturity which youth are seeking involves both developing their own individualities and recognizing the intertwining of our destinies.

Well, these are as I said just my personal musings. This view of the station of the individual and the importance of the process of individuation - whether it is individuals in their youth or institutions as they pass through stages of maturity - ties in with a definition I have of the meaning of ‘organic unity’ in the Bahá’í Writings, as a unity of distinct organs, each developing according to its own nature, and each requiring the others to fully become itself. I would certainly accept that people who are operating on a different model of the meaning of unity would come to different conclusions about whether individualism, as a philosophical position, is in accordance with the Bahá’í teachings. I hope I have shown that individualism is at least not to be lightly dismissed as a corruption of the Faith from outside: it can also be the basis for a persuasive and comprehensive reading of the Bahá’í message, and of the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

I hope the Youth Council will find these musings useful, and also that the length of my musings on individualism will not overshadow the need for a reconsideration of the approach to morality which is evidenced in the Council’s position paper.

With warm regards

Sen McGlinn