Sulh-e Akbar

One of the friends asked about the term sulh-e akbar, and how it relates to the terms “Lesser Peace” and “Most Great Peace.”

So far as I know, there is no ambiguity here. Sulh-e akbar (synonym
for sulh-e umuumii, also aasaayesh, raahat) is a global peace between
nations, established by the kings and rulers, and translated variously as
the Lesser Peace (in ESW page 30), as “universal peace” (in God Passes By
page 282) and “the World’s Great Peace” in Gleanings page 249. The concept
is unambiguous, only the translation is context-dependent: when compared
to lesser degrees of worldly peace it is Great or Universal etc., when
compared to the spiritual peace it is the lesser peace, the peace of the
world etc.

I’ve seen various people tying themselves in knots over this
terminology, but I don’t think there’s a problem, so long as one is
clear that we are talking about two different types of peace, and not two
different chronological stages. Imposing a chronological scheme on it just
confuses things. Shoghi Effendi describes these two kinds of peace and the
processes that produce them in The Citadel of Faith from page 32 (“two
simultaneous processes”); and in The Advent of Divine Justice page 85-90.
The distinction between the processes is the distinction between religion
and worldly civilization, between church and state, between the Bahai
community and the (global)nation

Sen
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