# Baha'u'llah and Liberation Theology

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Juan Cole, Baha'u'llah and Liberation Theology, Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1997, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> BAHkU’LLliH             AND LIBERATION THEOLOGY
> 
> Juan R. I. Cole
> 
> The tragedy of global poverty in the late twentieth century has
> increasingly preoccupied thinkers of all religions, both lay and cleri-
> cal, as secular strategies for overcoming it have achieved only limited
> and sectional successes. New theologies addressing the concerns of the
> poor are in many ways attempting to recover the voice of the prophets,
> rather than limiting themselves to the otherworldly concerns of
> scholastic theologians.1 Prophets throughout history have, after all,
> tended to side with the poor against the rich, if not politically then at
> least morally and spiritually. The prophets of the Hebrew Bible
> decried injustice toward the downtrodden. The Buddha, a prince, for-
> sook the ephemeral material world to wander with destitute monks in
> the forests near Benares. Jesus, an artisan-peasant, was a partisan of
> the needy and the outcasts in his society, and had a low estimation of
> the likelihood that the rich would enter the kingdom of heaven. The
> Prophet Muhammad, an orphaned member of the noble Quraysh
> tribe, thunderously condemned in his early preaching the callousness
> of Mecca’s wealthy elite toward the indigent. Baha’u’llah, as well,
> made the amelioration of the condition of the poor a prime goal of his
> religion, laying heavy obligations in this regard upon private individ-
> uals, religious institutions, and the state.
> Baha’u’llah’s commitments are all the more remarkable given that
> he was from the class of wealthy government officials and was raised
> in the lap of luxury. For the sake of principle (first his embrace of the
> 80       Revisioning        the   Sacred
> 
> Babi religion, then his revelation of the Baha’i Faith) he relinquished
> his wealth and threw in his lot with the laborers, cobblers, tailors,
> shopkeepers, housewives, and peasants who constituted the majority
> of Babis and then Baha’is. As a result, not only was he left impover-
> ished, but he was also subject to exile and harsh jailings. He said that
> when he was imprisoned in the shah’s dungeon in Tehran in 1852, he
> did not have a dinar to his name and at one point was given nothing
> to eat or drink for two days, but he was at that point the richest per-
> son in the world.2
> The idea of liberation is integral to the Baha’i Faith, for
> Baha’u’llah wrote, “the Ancient Beauty hath consented to be bound
> with chains that mankind may be released from its bondage, and hath
> accepted to be made a prisoner within this most mighty Stronghold
> that the whole world may attain unto true liberty.“3 BahB’u’llah was
> a Manifestation of God become poor to enrich humankind, become
> inmate to set us all free. Elsewhere he specifies that he acquiesced in
> his imprisonment in order to free human beings from the chains of
> “self and passion” (nufs vu haua). 4 Selfishness is intimately wrought
> up with questions of the distribution of wealth in society. The Baha’i
> scriptures, like the life of their Author, evince a special commitment
> to the poor, though they embrace universally all human beings.
> This faith in the downtrodden may help explain why most Baha’is
> have been, and are today, drawn from the ranks of the poor. Such
> groups as the impoverished weavers of Kashan or the suffering tailors
> of Shiraz constituted the bulk of early Baha’is.5      Since the 1960s
> masses of peasants, both men and women, have entered the Baha’i
> Faith in India, Africa, and Latin America. The typical Baha’i in the
> 1990s is a poor villager in the global South. Even in the United States,
> about one-third of the national community consists of African-
> Americans, and a third of them in turn live in South Carolina and
> northern Georgia, two of the least wealthy areas in the country.6 The
> Baha’i Faith lacks any class of official clergy, and since local Baha’i
> affairs are directed not by a seminary-trained clergyman appointed
> from above, but by elected Spiritual Assemblies, Baha’i peasants,
> sharecroppers and workers have a real voice in the spiritual gover-
> nance of their communities.
> It is therefore appropriate, in a volume aimed at exploring the
> possibilities of a Baha’i theology, that we consider the scriptural
> sources of a Baha’i theology of liberation. As I intimated above, the
> Bahd’u’llcEh     and Liberation Theology             81
> 
> starting point for any serious such line of thought must be the ground-
> breaking work of Catholic theologians (especially Gustav0 Gutierrez)
> and laypeople in Latin America, to whom I am grateful for many key
> insights that resonate across religious boundaries, and my debt to
> whom will be apparent below to anyone familiar with this literature.7
> It is desirable that Baha’i pioneers and anthropologists inform us
> more fully about the daily, lived theology of poor Baha’is in the global
> South, so that we in the North can gain essential spiritual insights
> from them. My purpose here is simply to make a beginning, by exam-
> ining what I think are key texts by and about Baha’u’llah, for even
> theology done from the underside of history must have a foundation in
> scripture and in theophanology (the Person of the Manifestation of
> God). I will focus here on Baha’u’llah (even though extremely impor-
> tant perspectives exist on this issue in the writings of ‘Abdu’l-Baha,
> Shoghi Effendi, and the Universal House of Justice) simply for rea-
> sons of lack of space and the desirability of beginning with the reve-
> lation of the Manifestation of God himself.
> It is worth saying briefly that by a BahB’i theology of liberation I
> mean a theology that is grounded in a special commitment to the poor
> and the workers (male and female, adult and child), that includes
> their perspective in the consideration of scriptural meaning, and that
> underpins reformist thought and social action by them and by others
> in solidarity with them. It recognizes that late international capital-
> ism, while capable of creating much wealth, also does a very poor job
> of distributing it equitably, thereby contributing to continued poverty
> in some regions and social sectors. This capitalist order also subjects
> the poor disproportionately to the dangers of an excessive industrial-
> ism, especially environmental pollution and hazards of the workplace.
> By a theology of revolution I do not, and cannot as a Baha’i,
> intend, on the one hand, any way of thinking that sanctions violence
> or class warfare, or indeed, entanglement in the petty squabbles of
> party politics. On the other hand, a Baha’i theology of liberation must
> involve speaking out against injustice and engaging in social activism
> in order to have any meaning. Liberation, in this view, would consist
> in nothing less than a truly BahB’i society, which would provide
> employment at a fair wage to every citizen; would ensure a decent and
> dignified life to all; would guarantee basic human rights as outlined
> in United Nations declarations and covenants; would give the less
> well-off a voice in their own governance and scope for expressing their
> 82       Revisioning        the    Sacred
> 
> spiritual and creative energies; and would eliminate the vast gap
> between the wealthy and the poor characteristic of late capitalist soci-
> eties. In the post-Cold War world, wherein the materialist and totali-
> tarian vision of state-imposed economic equality has collapsed, wherein
> the excesses of industrialism and of laissez-faire capitalism are largely
> unrestrained and the gap between the poor in the global South and the
> rich in the North is growing, the world desperately needs a new vision
> of spiritual and social justice such as BahB’u’llah enunciates.
> 
> THE POOR IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY
> MIDDLE EAST
> 
> The struggle of the poor is not everywhere and always the same,
> depending rather on the sort of social system and the historical
> moment in which they subsist. BahB’u’llah was addressing a society
> very different from any that still exists today. The Middle East of his
> day was ruled by the absolute monarchies of the Ottoman Empire and
> &ajar Iran, and a variety of political economies uneasily coexisted
> therein. In the 1860s and 1870s perhaps a third of Iranians were still
> pastoral nomads, most of them organized into tribes (the percentage
> was less in most Ottoman possessions, with the exception of Iraq).
> Although the tribes often lacked formal title to land, they did possess
> substantial wealth in the form of livestock, and every tribal family
> had at least a few sheep or goats. But in subsequent decades, most
> nomads were made to settle by the state, and in the process, tribes-
> people frequently lost their herds and any claim to tribal lands, being
> reduced to the worst of fates-that of landless peasants. Some fifty
> percent of the population of Iran consisted of villagers, divided into
> landless peasants, smallholders, and medium and rich peasants.
> Many villages were still actually owned by semi-feudal landlords, and
> all paid heavy taxes to nobles, to governors, and to the king. Some
> twenty percent of the population lived in cities (less in Ottoman
> lands), where the majority were laborers and artisans. In the cities
> also lived the absentee landlords, landholding government officials,
> and the great merchants.
> This social structure of cities, villages and tribes was anything
> but static, coming under new pressures throughout the period
> 1850-1900. This half-century saw a vast expansion of agrarian capi-
> talism (but not yet much substantial industrialization in the area).
> BahcA.‘u’llcE,h   and Liberation Theology              83
> 
> Subsistence farming was giving way to the cash-cropping of cotton,
> tobacco, grains, and opium. Imported European industrial goods were
> putting thousands of Middle Eastern artisans out of work.
> Governments, used to taxing land, were not very good at adapting to
> the new importance of commerce, with many great merchants enjoying
> an exemption from taxes. The population of the region began growing
> by leaps and bounds from about 1850, increasing the supply of labor
> faster than the numbers of new job opportunities (and therefore keep-
> ing wages low), and reducing the size of family farms through estate
> fragmentation. The landless and smallholding peasants, day laborers,
> and displaced artisans (such as weavers) were or became the poorest of
> the poor, sometimes even starving to death during famines such as
> that of 1869-1872 in Iran.8
> 
> BAHkU’LLAH          AND THE POOR
> 
> The first indication we have of Baha’u’llah’s attitude toward the
> poor comes in his Baghdad-era collection of mystical aphorisms, The
> Hidden Words (1858). His emphasis at this point is largely personal
> and ethical rather than institutional.9 He continually draws a con-
> trast between the dangers and powerful temptations of wealth versus
> the virtue of poverty. “Busy not thyself with this world,” he writes, “for
> with fire We test the gold, and with gold We test Our servants.”
> (Arabic, No. 55) He adds, “Thou dost wish for gold and I desire thy
> freedom from it.” (Arabic, No. 56) Baha’u’llah castigates wealth as “a
> mighty barrier between the seeker and his desire” and warns that
> “the rich, but for a few, shall in no wise attain the court of His pres-
> ence nor enter the city of contentment and resignation.” (Arabic, No.
> 53) Hardheartedness and selfishness especially afflict the wealthy:
> “Tell the rich of the midnight sighing of the poor lest heedlessness
> lead them into the path of destruction, and deprive them of the Tree
> of Wealth.” (Persian, No. 49) Wealth is, then, a test, a barrier, an
> obstacle to spiritual progress and the attainment of union with the
> beloved (a Sufi metaphor for a feeling of oneness with the divine that
> is the goal of the seeker). It carries with it the risk of indifference to
> the plight of the less fortunate, a moral and spiritual lapse that inex-
> orably ends in doom.
> If being rich is a drawback on the path, being poor is an asset.
> Baha’u’llah says, “Yet to be poor in all save God is a wondrous gift,
> 84        Revisioning        the   Sacred
> 
> belittle not the value thereof, for in the end it will make thee rich
> in God.” (Persian, No. 51) Since he recognizes the grief of the
> impoverished, having spoken of the “midnight sighing of the poor,”
> BahB’u’llah does not glamorize their lives. He does say that they are
> beloved of God because of their poverty, and that the undeniable hard-
> ships they face can be aids to spiritual advance, aids not naturally
> available to the comfortable bourgeoisie or opulent nobility. By the
> poor, Baha’u’llah makes it clear that he is referring to the working
> poor and the poor who want to work if only they might find employ-
> ment, for he commands all to engage in arts and crafts, and to provide
> for their loved ones. (Persian, Nos. 80, 82)
> On the social and human plane, BahB’u’llah insists that all human
> beings are equal: “Know ye not why We created you all from the same
> dust? That no one should exalt himself over the other.” (Arabic, No. 68)
> Elsewhere, he wrote, in the same vein: “0 ye rich ones on earth! If ye
> encounter one who is poor, treat him not disdainfully. Reflect upon
> that whereof ye were created. Every one of you was created of a sorry
> germ. “10 The rich and their apologists in every age have a tendency to
> justify their affluence, often by asserting their innate superiority. But
> this is not a claim that BahB’u’llah will countenance, insisting instead
> on the universal unity of humankind: “Since We have created you all
> from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul,
> to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the
> same land.” (Arabic, No. 68) The poor, then, are spiritually superior to
> the rich and are their equals in civil society. Baha’u’llah’s attitude in
> this regard is extremely challenging. Certainly, many in the Ottoman
> and Iranian upper classes would have shrunk in horror from the idea
> of sitting down to eat with the poor, or from being one with them in any
> meaningful way. Baha’u’lltih      was just as antagonistic to the hierar-
> chies of Mediterranean society as Jesus Christ had been nearly two
> millenia before. His call for unity among persons of the various social
> classes clearly requires an active attempt on their part to mix and
> break down neighborhood and cultural barriers.
> BahB’u’llAh   is also clear about what the rich can do to lessen the
> spiritual opprobrium he has laid upon them: They must “cleanse
> themselves” of the “defilement of riches,” for only through detachment
> from material things can they pursue the spiritual path. (Persian, No.
> 55) Nor is it enough, for instance, to make over one’s wealth to a fam-
> ily member and then pursue the cleansing of the soul. “Bestow My
> Bahd’u’llcih and Liberation Theology                   85
> 
> wealth,” he commands, “upon My poor, that in heaven thou mayest
> draw from stores of unfading splendor and treasures of imperishable
> glory.” (Arabic, No. 57) Elsewhere he speaks of the absolute responsi-
> bility of the wealthy for the welfare of the needy: “0 ye rich ones on
> earth! The poor in your midst are My trust; guard ye My trust, and be
> not intent only on your own ease.” (Arabic, No. 54)
> The vast inequalities of wealth characteristic of modern societies
> can often only be maintained by authoritarian and repressive state
> structures acting on behalf of the wealthy elite. Here, too, BahB’u’llah
> is unequivocal: “0 oppressors on earth! Withdraw your hands from
> tyranny, for I have pledged Myself not to forgive any man’s injustice.
> This is My covenant which I have irrevocably decreed in the preserved
> tablet and sealed it with My seal of glory.” (Persian, No. 64) When
> BahB’u’llah praises the wealthy who are not “hindered” by their “rich-
> es from the eternal kingdom” (Persian, No. 531, it seems in view of
> these other passages that provision for the poor and commitment to
> social and political justice are implied along with faith as a prerequi-
> site for attaining such splendor.
> The circumstances of BahB’u’llah’s  life threw him in with the poor.
> In 1854-56, he lived the life of a wandering holy man or dervish
> (daruish, a word literally meaning “poor”) in Iraqi Kurdistan, dwelling
> alone in a cave for a while and then consorting with other dervishes
> and Sufis in Sulaymaniyyah. Even once he had returned to Baghdad,
> where he lived as a despised exile expelled from his country for heresy,
> his life was by no means one of ease. “There was a time in ‘Iraq,” he
> recalled, “when the Ancient Beauty . . . had no change of linen. The one
> shirt He possessed would be washed, dried and worn again.“ll
> Communal sharing and an obliteration of the usual social hierarchies
> characterized the life of the Babi partisans of BahB’u’llah.     They lived
> in very humble dwellings in Baghdad, and the disciple Nabil-i A’zam
> Zarandi occupied, with two other men, a room that had no furniture.
> Baha’u’llah, he says, came to the room one day and remarked: “Its
> emptiness pleases Me. In my estimation it is preferable to many a spa-
> cious palace, inasmuch as the beloved of God are occupied in it with
> the remembrance of the Incomparable Friend.“12 Nabil reports: “Many
> a night no less than ten persons subsisted on no more than a penny-
> worth of dates. No one knew to whom actually belonged the shoes, the
> cloaks or the robes that were to be found in their houses. . . . Their own
> 
> I
> names they had forgotten, their hearts were emptied of aught else
> 86        Revisioning          the    Sacred
> 
> except adoration for their Beloved.“l3 The severity of a room without
> furniture, the comradeship of intermingled possessions, the nights of
> communal meditation and ecstatic worship in the presence of their
> beloved BahB’u’llah,  make this band of his Babi followers icons for the
> virtues of the poor.
> In Baghdad in the early 1860s Baha’u’llah used to meet occasion-
> ally with Iranian princes of the &ajar house. Often such persons were
> out of favor with the shah and had taken refuge outside Iran near the
> Shi‘i shrine cities of Karbala and Najaf, not far from Baghdad in
> Ottoman Iraq. He would inquire as to the political situation in Tehran.
> They complained at one point, however, that he never discussed spiri-
> tual issues with them, only worldly ones. In reply, Baha’u’llah set very
> stringent standards for his willingness to converse on things of the
> spirit. To one of the princes, BahB’u’llah said, “My purpose in coming
> to this corrupt world where the tyrants and traitors, by their acts of
> cruelty and oppression, have closed the doors of peace and tranquillity
> to all mankind, is to establish, through the power of God and His
> might, the forces of justice, trust, security and faith.“14 He says that
> when these aims have been achieved, an attractive woman wearing
> jewelry should be able to travel all over the earth without fear of
> molestation, given the high standards of trustworthiness and justice
> that would have been attained. Baha’u’llah’s choice of example is inter-
> esting in that it focuses on sexual harrassment as a prevailing evil he
> wishes to see eliminated. Although the example he gives is of a wealthy
> woman being protected from the lust and greed of men, it goes without
> saying that most women likely to be sexually harrassed were poor, and
> so would be the primary beneficiaries of a true Baha’i society.
> Another example which BahB’u’llah provided the princes had to do
> with self-renunciation:
> 
> Suppose there is a very rich person whose wealth is enormous and
> beyond measure. And suppose that gradually and in the course of time he
> bestows so much of his wealth upon a poor person that he himself is
> reduced to absolute poverty while the poor man has turned into a very
> rich man. . . Suppose in his poor and distressed state he reaches a situ-
> ation in which he incurs some small debt. Being unable to pay it, he is
> brought to a public square in town where he is humilated and punished.
> He is further informed that his release will not be considered until he
> pays his debt. At this point suppose he sees his friend (who once was poor
> and as a result of his generosity has become rich). Should the thought
> Bahci’u’lkih and Liberation Theology                      87
> flash through his mind that he wishes that in return for all his generosi-
> ty to him, this friend would now come forward and relieve him of this
> calamity, immediately all his deeds would become void, he would become
> deprived of the virtue of contentment and acquiescence, and would be
> shut away from the virtues of the human spirit.is
> 
> Personal obligations or individual gratitude, BahB’u’llah says, are
> not the point of his teachings on detachment from the material world.
> Thus, he says, if the second man, grown rich at the expense of the
> first, is tempted to help him out of specific gratitude, he too is lost. The
> only worthy motive is a universal one, irrespective of person. Love,
> giving, and responsibility to others must be all-encompassing. This
> principle is crucial, since otherwise the rich will help only the poor
> they know personally, and the poor so assisted will be more clients
> than simply fellow human beings.
> In Edirne, where BahB’u’llah was kept in exile (1863-1868) by the
> Ottoman government, he continued to address the problem of the
> poor. His discourse here, however, takes on a more institutional tone,
> as he begins elaborating the bases of the new Baha’i religion and con-
> sidering its relationship to the governments of the world. In the Surah
> of God (Suratu’ZZah, ca. Spring, 18661, BahB’u’llah writes that a sub-
> ject is better than a thousand rulers, a subordinate is more exalted
> than a myriad of superiors, and one oppressed is more excellent than
> a city full of tyrants. He urges the Baha’is to emulate Baha’u’llah him-
> self in severing themselves from all things.16 These pronouncements
> have the effect of turning upside down conventional social distinctions
> based on wealth and power. The subaltern is better than the elite, and
> the oppressed superior to the oppressor. Here, as in the Hidden Words
> and Five Treasures, Baha’u’llah condemns political tyranny along
> with excessive attachment to the things of this world, perhaps a clue
> that he thought the two things went together. Later, in the ‘Akka peri-
> od, he pointed out that many of the rich had been prevented by their
> riches from accepting the BahB’i Faith, whereas many of the poor had
> attained to the mystical knowledge (‘b-fan) of God.17
> In the early-‘Akka-period Surah of Utterance (Surcitu’l-Bayin),
> BahB’u’llah reaffirmed the ethical foundations of his teachings on
> wealth and poverty. “Withhold not from the poor,” he wrote, “the gifts
> which the grace of God hath bestowed upon you. He, verily, shall rec-
> ompense the charitable, and doubly repay them for what they have
> bestowed.“18 In the same work, he reaffirms that God loves the poor, not
> because they are good, but because they are poor and suffering. He says:
> 88        Revisioning the Sacred
> 
> If ye meet the abased or the down-trodden, turn not away disdainfully
> from them, for the King of Glory ever watcheth over them and sur-
> roundeth them with such tenderness as none can fathom except them
> that have suffered their wishes and desires to be merged in the Will of
> your Lord, the Gracious, the All-Wise. 0 ye rich ones of the earth! Flee
> not from the face of the poor that lieth in the dust, nay rather befriend
> him and suffer him to recount the tale of the woes with which God’s
> inscrutable Decree hath caused him to be afflicted. By the righteousness
> of God! Whilst ye consort with him, the Concourse on high will be looking
> upon you, will be interceding for you will be extolling your names and glo-
> rifying your action. lg
> 
> The rich are urged, not simply to “give to the poor” in a cold or abstract
> way, but to actually befriend them and listen to their accounts of the
> travails through which they have lived. This very act of listening is
> itself raised to the station of a deed that brings the intercession of the
> Concourse on High.
> In his Tablet to the Kings (Surcitu’Z-Multik) of the late Edirne peri-
> od, Baha’u’llah, virtually alone and a political and religious prisoner
> under house arrest and in internal exile, dared address the Ottoman
> Sultan ‘Abdu’l-‘Aziz, his jailer. He urged the sultan not to pay his min-
> isters and aides so well that they would be enabled to “lay up riches
> for themselves” or to be “numbered with the extravagant.” He attacks
> the vast extremes of wealth he witnessed in the Ottoman imperial
> capital, where destitute rural immigrants lived near rich landlords,
> tax-farmers, and import-export merchants. He says: “We observed
> upon Our arrival in the City [Istanbul]” that some of its inhabitants
> “were possessed of an affluent fortune and lived in the midst of exces-
> sive riches, while others were in dire want and abject poverty. This ill
> beseemeth thy sovereignty, and is unworthy of thy rank.“20 The huge
> wealth inequalities visible in a Mediterranean city like Istanbul dur-
> ing the incipient Age of Capital shocked and dismayed BahB’u’llah.      He
> correctly saw that government officials were among the chief
> exploiters of the people, amassing private fortunes from their public
> service, and warned the sultan not to “aggrandize thy ministers at the
> expense of thy subjects. Fear the sights of the poor and of the upright
> in heart who, at every break of day, bewail their plight, and be unto
> them a benignant sovereign.” He calls the poor the ruler’s “treasures
> on earth” and urges him to safeguard them from those who wish to rob
> and expropriate them. “Inquire into their affairs, and ascertain, every
> BahcE’u’ll&h     and Liberation Theology               89
> 
> year, nay every month, their condition, and be not of them that are
> careless of their duty.“21 Not only do the rich owe an absolute respon-
> sibility to the poor, but so does the government. The state is charged
> with intervening against excessive extremes of wealth and poverty,
> and of continually monitoring the welfare of the citizenry.
> The implicit danger to the poor here is overtaxation, especially the
> imposition of fraudulent or unwarranted taxes by state officials seek-
> ing to line their own pockets. BahB’u’llah identifies, in addition,
> another motive for excessive levies on the destitute, the arms race
> engaged in by modern states. He instructs the rulers of the earth to
> “compose your differences, and reduce your armaments, that the bur-
> den of your expenditures may be lightened, and that your minds and
> hearts may be tranquillized.” He urges states to engage in proactive
> peace-making of a sort that will allow them to have low military
> expenditures, and to maintain something akin to militias for self-
> defense rather than armies for conquest. He complains bitterly: “We
> have learned that you are increasing your outlay every year, and are
> laying the burden thereof on your subjects. This, verily, is more than
> they can bear, and is a grievous injustice.” He reaffirms that the poor
> are “the trust of God” in the midst of the rulers, and warns them
> against betraying that trust22
> The Tablet to the Kings is remarkable in subordinating the issue of
> world peace, a key teaching of Baha’u’llah, to that of the elimination of
> poverty. That is, one of the primary reasons given for the implementa-
> tion of a peaceful world order is that this step will reduce military bud-
> gets and in turn allow lower rates of taxation on those least able to
> afford it. The corollary of this principle is the implication that martial,
> praetorian states create poverty and social injustice. In the beginning of
> his own independent ministry, then, Baha’u’llah goes beyond the ethi-
> cal and mystical aspects of wealth and poverty that had preoccupied
> him in his Baghdad-era works, now addressing the role of the state. The
> government is responsible, in his view, for keeping the salaries of offi-
> cials reasonable and taxes low and for continually inquiring into the
> condition of the poor and the means of improving it. This view of the
> responsibilities of the state, it should be noted, differs radically from
> that espoused by most nineteenth-century reformers, whether in the
> Middle East or Europe. Baha’u’llah’s anti-militarism and his dim view
> of extremes of wealth and poverty clearly place him on the progressive
> end of the spectrum in the political discourse of the time.
> 90       Revisioning         the    Sacred
> 
> In the early ‘Akka period, from 1868, Baha’u’llah denounced the
> tyranny of the Ottoman state in no uncertain terms (Lawh-i Fu‘cid)
> and began praising British-style parliamentary democracy. He
> praised Queen Victoria, in his tablet to her, for abolishing slavery and
> putting the reins of democratic governance (which he ,called, in nine-
> teenth-century Middle Eastern parlance, “counsel”) in the hands of
> the people. The word he uses for “people” (an-nas) indicates the com-
> mon people, and it is clear that here he not only advocates that the
> state work for the interests of the poor, but also insists that the poor
> should have a voice in their own governance. His abolition of slavery
> reaffirms the inherent dignity of every human being before God, and
> it implies, by analogy, that not only classical slavery but also any form
> of unpaid or barely paid bondage is illicit.
> In his Most Holy Book (Kit6i Aqdas; ‘Akka, 18731, BahB’u’llah
> reaffirms the democratic principle, predicting that Iran would undergo
> a revolution and be ruled by a democracy of the people (jumhur an-
> nas).23 BahB’u’llah’s   principle that Baha’i communities should be
> administered by local Houses of Justice (currently called local Spiritual
> Assemblies) comprised of lay believers also gave a voice to the poor. In
> a village, local Baha’i community policy is not made by a clergyman
> from the urban middle class posted to the countryside, but rather by
> the villagers themselves, who enjoy universal adult suffrage and freely
> elect representatives to the local Spiritual Assemblies. Again, in the
> 1990s the vast majority of local Spiritual Assembly members are what
> most of those in the global North would consider “poor.” Baha’u’llah
> instructed that the local Spiritual Assemblies make their decisions
> through “consultation,” a process that allows a multitude of voices to
> be heard and encourages individuals to seek the truth and the best
> course, rather than to cling stubbornly to their initial opinions.
> Several of the laws BahB’u’llah enacted in the Most Holy Book
> were aimed at improving the situation of the poor. He designates
> them as appropriate recipients of gifts during the annual BahB’i festi-
> val, Ayyam-i Ha, in which presents are given prior to the period of the
> Fast.24 He insists on universal education for children (in most of the
> world at that time, children received schooling only if their parents
> could afford to pay for it, and this is still the case in much of the glob-
> al South) and makes the House of Justice responsible for providing
> instruction to indigent children .25 Since education is a key to
> improved skills and economic independence, and since the education
> Bahd’u’llkh and Liberation Theology                 91
> 
> of women brings down birth rates and allows them greater economic
> independence, universal education provided by social institutions
> such as the state or religious bodies can have an important impact on
> poverty. Also in the Most Holy Book, BahB’u’llah ordains the payment
> by Baha’is of z&at, a form of alms originating in Islam.26 In contem-
> porary Muslim countries such as Pakistan, zakat is formally assessed
> as a 2.5 percent annual levy on liquid wealth (principally bank
> accounts), and the funds are distributed in poor neighborhoods.
> BahB’is in the West have not yet begun paying zakat, but its imple-
> mentation would be a significant step forward in providing funds for
> a proactive role by BahB’i institutions in working with the poor.
> Although the percentage is small, if the funds were wisely employed
> they could, alongside governmental and private charitable efforts,
> have an important impact.
> Helping the poor is also among the purposes of the larger BahB’i
> tax of nineteen percent on profits or accumulated wealth, called the
> Right of God (huquqz~‘ZZcih).~7 In his own lifetime, BahB’u’llah super-
> vised the distribution of the Right of God to indigent Baha’is. One
> community asked him if they should support the impoverished with
> these funds, and he replied that this should only be done with his per-
> mission-he wanted an accounting of Right of God contributions and
> the particulars of its possible recipients among the poor. He feared
> that giving blanket authority for such measures to the new Baha’i
> communities in Iran might prove a cause of dissension.2s (Some who
> thought themselves deserving might blame the local believers in
> charge of the funds if they were excluded, whereas no one would argue
> with Baha’u’llah). Baha’u’llah’s personal attention to the needs of
> impoverished Baha’is is quite touching, and his solicitude comes
> through in his letters, as for instance when he directs that specific
> sums from the Right of God be given to individuals like “Mr. A. Z.” in
> Khurasan because he is in debt and anti-Bah8’i enemies have mulct-
> ed him.29 In a letter to a prominent believer in Shiraz probably writ-
> ten around 1879430, Baha’u’llah instructs that half the Right of God
> collected in that city be given to the poor. He adds that the communi-
> ty should strive, however, to see that all are provided with gainful
> employment, since being reduced to dependence on charity is inap-
> propriate to the station of a human being.30
> Baha’u’llah makes the indigent an issue for governmental and reli-
> gious institutions and gives the poor an active voice in the governance
> 92        Revisioning          the    Sacred
> 
> of both (in contrast to the kings, caliphs, and popes who ruled
> absolutely in his own day). Nor does he intend by “the poor” only men,
> for here, as elsewhere, he is concerned to overturn the gender
> inequities of patriarchy. He says that “the servants of God and His
> handmaidens are regarded on the same Plane.” Devoted Baha’i
> women, he writes, “excel over men in the sight of God. How numerous
> are the heroes and knights in the field who are bereft of the True One
> and have no share in His recognition.“31
> Baha’u’llah envisages the rich working with the poor to change
> the world:
> 
> They who are possessed of riches, however, must have the utmost
> regard for the poor, for great is the honor destined by God for those poor
> who are steadfast in patience. By My life! There is no honor, except what
> God may please to bestow, that can compare to this honor. Great is the
> blessedness awaiting the poor that endure patiently and conceal their
> sufferings, and well is it with the rich who bestow their riches on the
> needy and prefer them before themselves.
> Please God, the poor may exert themselves and strive to earn the
> means of livelihood. This is a duty which, in this most great Revelation,
> hath been prescribed unto every one, and is accounted in the sight of God
> as a goodly deed. Whoso observeth this duty, the help of the invisible One
> shall most certainly aid him. He can enrich, through His grace, whomso-
> ever He pleaseth. He, verily, hath power over all things.32
> 
> Baha’u’llah continually stresses the self-worth, agency, and indepen-
> dent action of the poor themselves, which explains his emphasis on the
> need to earn a livelihood. Of course, the other side of this coin is the
> responsibility of the state and the economic system to provide gainful
> employment for all who seek it, a responsibility implied by Baha’u’llah’s
> emphasis on governmental responsibility in his Tablet to the Kings.
> The patience Baha’u’llah calls for in the poor (a patience he exer-
> cised himself, for most of his life) is not a passive, static suffering. It
> is the patience that eschews violence and hatred while working cease-
> lessly toward the creation of a new civilization wherein the extremes
> of wealth and poverty would be eliminated at last. BahB’u’llah,        in a
> Persian tablet, says to the devoted Baha’i poor that they should not
> despair, for even in this life innumerable doors exist, and that the poor
> should open them with the fingers of volition so as to witness new
> worlds in this one. He announces that he keeps company with all who
> are poverty-stricken, gives his solicitude to the oppressed, and gazes
> BahcE’u’lkih      and Liberation Theology                 93
> 
> upon the grief-stricken. The delights of the Word of God, he says,
> I   transform and efface the bitterness of this ephemeral world.33 The
> Word of God does not only solace the poor in their suffering or offer
> them a “mystical” escape from their pitiful condition. Rather, they are
> called upon to exercise their own wills in order to take advantage of
> opportunities for change that exist in this world, with the help of
> divine benevolence and of the principles revealed in Baha’i scripture.
> The poor, like other Baha’is, are called upon to denounce tyranny and
> infractions against basic human rights, to work for parliamentary
> democracy, to allow the expression of the views of the humblest BahB’i
> within the community, and to reform the world’s economy so as to
> reflect the divine attribute of justice.
> Subsequent Baha’i holy figures, such as Baha’u’llah’s son and
> authorized interpreter, ‘Abdu’l-Baha (184&1921), and the latter’s
> grandson Shoghi Effendi (Guardian of the Baha’i Faith, 1921-19571,
> have further elaborated on issues in the theology of liberation. A spe-
> cial commitment to the poor continues to be evident in ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s
> teachings, which include corporate profit-sharing, binding arbitration
> of labor disputes, a graduated income tax, a commitment to the aboli-
> tion of poverty, and the condemnation of workers being impoverished
> while capitalists grow rich-which he refers to as “industrial slavery.”
> Nevertheless, as ‘Abdu’l-Baha makes clear, he does not envisage a
> classless society, simply a society in which everyone is at least com-
> fortable. In 1875, ‘Abdu’l-Baha wrote:
> 
> Wealth is most commendable, provided the entire population is wealthy.
> If, however, a few have inordinate riches while the rest are impoverished,
> and no fruit or benefit accrues from that wealth, then it is only a liabili-
> ty to its possessor. If, on the other hand, it is expended for the promotion
> of knowledge, the founding of elementary and other schools, the encour-
> agement of art and industry, the training of orphans and the poor-in
> brief, if it is dedicated to the welfare of society-its possessor will stand
> out before God and man as the most excellent of all who live on earth and
> will be accounted as one of the people of paradise.34
> 
> Shoghi Effendi wrote that the “Cause neither accepts the theories
> of the Capitalistic economics in fun, nor can it agree with the Marxists
> and Communists in their repudiation of the principle of private own-
> ership and of the vital sacred rights of the individual”35
> From 1908, ‘Abdu’l-Baha, in response to the turmoil of the Iranian
> Constitutional Revolution (1905-11) reversed his earlier support for it
> 94       Revisioning         the    Sacred
> 
> and temporarily adopted a policy of political neutrality.36 This policy
> has since been maintained, during this early stage of the expansion of
> the Baha’i faith into a world religion, so as to avoid divisions within the
> community along political lines. Non-intervention in party politics,
> however, does not necessarily impede social activism, as Baha’is
> showed in the United States in the 1980s when they mobilized to work
> with other groups to aid the ratification of the United Nations
> Convention on Genocide bill by the U.S. Congress. Practical action for
> the poor, as with the establishment by the National Spiritual Assembly
> of the Baha’is of India of numerous vocational schools in that country,
> are clearly key duties for all Baha’is. BahB’u’llah      does not prescribe
> only a sort of paternalistic philanthropy, however. Rather, he urges
> that the voices of the poor themselves be heard, and that the poor exer-
> cise their own volition and agency in changing their condition.
> A Baha’i theology of liberation must begin from and take account
> of key themes in the Revelation of the Manifestation of God for this
> day. In the passage quoted at the beginning of this essay, BahB’u’llah
> speaks of having been chained in order to win the release (it&) of the
> world from its bondage, and having been imprisoned in the Most
> Great Fortress in order to emancipate (‘itq; literally, to manumit from
> slavery) all peoples. The theme of emancipation is therefore central to
> BahB’u’llah’s message and intimately bound up with BahB’i theo-
> phanology. God loves the poor because of their suffering, watching
> over them and surrounding them with supreme tenderness. The poor,
> because of their lack of material means, are “rich in God,” and their
> sufferings can aid them on the spiritual path, even if not all among the
> poor avail themselves of this natural advantage. The rich, in contrast,
> labor under a vast spiritual disability that can only with the greatest
> difficulty be overcome. To draw near to the divine Beloved, the rich
> must invest substantial amounts of their wealth in improving the con-
> ditions of the poor, ensuring that the latter are no longer needy. They
> must be motivated in so doing by nothing less than universal love.
> The state has a key role to play, according to Baha’u’llah. It must
> intervene through tax policy and in other ways to prevent the accu-
> mulation of vast disparities in wealth between rich and poor, must
> ensure that taxes on the less-well-off are as low as possible, and
> must work for peace and world government in order to keep the mil-
> itary budget minimal. It must prevent slavery (and therefore bonded
> labor) and must give even the poor a voice in government through
> democratic, parliamentary elections.
> Bah&‘u’ll&h      and Liberation Theology              95
> 
> BahB’i institutions themselves have a responsibility to the desti-
> tute, to ensure the education of their young and to distribute to the
> needy the proceeds of the zakat alms-tax and some of the Huququ’llah,
> the “Right of God.” Since Baha’i administrative institutions are elect-
> ed by the local community, the BahB’is already have thousands of
> grassroots village communities governed by and for the poor, which
> are experimenting with new societal values. Baha’is have a constant
> duty to remind the rich of the “midnight sighing of the poor.”
> Baha’u’llah throws down the false idol of the market as the unchal-
> lenged system for distributing wealth (whatever its virtues in distrib-
> uting goods). The emphasis here on social action in addition to spiri-
> tual concerns is characteristic of the Baha’i Faith, which inherited
> from Islam both a strong mystical strain and a this-worldly orienta-
> tion, combining these with a distinctly modern vision. All human
> beings, Baha’u’llah says, “have been created to carry forward an ever-
> advancing civilization.“37
> The challenge for Baha’is while they are a relatively small com-
> munity of six million, mostly themselves poor, is to ever remain mind-
> ful that involuntary poverty is evil and illegitimate, that the vast
> wealth of capitalism has frequently been the fruit of the exploitation
> of workers and peasants (“industrial slavery”), and that structural
> changes must be introduced and society transformed if things are to
> change. Charitable work is highly praiseworthy, but within the con-
> text of rapaciously materialist societies it always faces the danger of
> being coopted by the laissez-faire status quo.
> Another danger lies in becoming absorbed in the economic theo-
> ries and minutiae that might underlie a Baha’i social democracy. In
> the end, what is wanted in a Baha’i theology of liberation is not social
> policy alone but universal love, not only new bureaucracies but also
> steadfast faith in the Promised of all Ages, not class struggle but class
> transcendence, not a patronizing of the poor but their empowerment
> and enrichment. Social action must be grounded in mystical percep-
> tion and in faith. As Baha’u’llah instructed us: “Be a treasure to the
> poor, an admonisher to the rich, an answerer of the cry of the needy,
> a preserver of the sanctity of thy pledge.“38
> What is needed is not choirs singing to one side as corporate union
> busters intimidate on the shop floor or as the shock troops of an exces-
> sive industrialism murder Yanomamo Indians in order to despoil the
> Amazon rain forest. We are all challenged to listen to the poor-“suffer
> 96         Revisioning the Sacred
> 
> him to recount the tale of the woes with which God’s inscrutable
> Decree hath caused him to be afflicted”-and join with them in radi-
> cally critiquing the conditions of our collective existence.
> 
> NOTES
> 
> I am grateful for substantive comments on earlier drafts of this paper
> to John Walbridge, Todd Lawson, Seena Fazel, Khazeh Fananapazir,
> and J. A. (Jack) McLean.
> 
> 1. See Dan Cohn-Sherbok, ed., World Religions and Human Liberation
> (Maryknoll, MD: Orbis, 1992).
> 2. BahB’u’llah,    quoted in Mu’idih-‘i Asmani, 9 ~01s. (Tehran: BahB’i
> Publishing Trust, 1972) vol. 4, p. 96.
> 3. Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, trans. Shoghi Effendi
> (Wilmette, Ill.: Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1976) p. 99. This passage is from a
> late-‘Akka period work; see BahB’u’llah,       al-Kit&b al-Mubin (Bombay, n.d.) p.
> 307. All passages in Gleanings can be found in the original languages in
> BahB’u’llah,      Muntakhabati az athar-i Hadrat-i Bahc+‘llah      (Hofheim:   Bahi’i
> Verlag, 1984).
> 4. BahB’u’llah,   Athar-i Q&am-i A’la, 7 volumes (Bombay and Tehran:
> Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1890-1978),     vol. 7, p. 5.
> 5. For the nineteenth-century Baha’i community, see my “Religious
> Dissidence and Urban Leadership: Baha’is in &ajar Shiraz and Tehran,” in
> Michael Bonine and Ahmad       Ashraf, eds. City and Society in &ajar Iran, forth-
> coming. S.V. “Iran,” by Moojan Momen, in Moojan Momen and John
> Walbridge, eds., A Short Encyclopaedia of the Baha’i Faith, 2 ~01s. (Wilmette,
> Ill.: Baha’i Publishing Trust, forthcoming); and Peter Smith, The Babi and
> Baha’t      Religions: From Messianic Shi’ism to a World Religion (Cambridge:
> Cambridge University Press, 1987) chapter 6: “The Iranian Baha’i
> Community, c. 1866-1921.” For the impoverished weavers of Kashan, see
> Haydar ‘Ah Isfahani, Stories from the Delight of Hearts, trans. A. Q. Faizi (Los
> Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1980) p. 96.
> 6. See Peter Smith and Moojan Momen,             “The BahB’i Faith, 1957-1988: A
> Survey of Contemporary Developments,” Religion 19 (1989) pp. 63-91.
> 7. Important works here include Gustav0 Gutierrez, The Power of the
> Poor in History (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1984) and Leonardo Boff, On the
> Edge: Religion and Marginalized Existence, trans. Robert R. Barr (San
> Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989). Good discussions of the context of these
> works include Harvey Cox, The Silencing of Leonardo Boff: The Vatican and
> the Future of World Christianity (Oak Park, Ill.: Meyer Stone Books, 1988)
> and Penny Lernoux, People of God: The Struggle for World Catholicism (New
> Bahc%‘u’llbh       and Liberation Theology                   97
> 
> York: Viking Penguin, 1989). However, clearly both BahB’i scripture and the
> lived experience of BahB’is as a distinct religious community have their own
> individuality, which will become apparent. I am taking the works cited above
> as starting-points for my own investigation, and am not attempting to simply
> clone them. Much of the impetus for what I have to say here comes from
> points made to me by Baha’i workers and villagers in Senegal, Gambia, India,
> Lebanon, and Jordan.
> 8. See Charles Issawi, ed., The Economic History of Iran, 1800-1914
> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 19’71), and John Foran, Fragile
> Resistance: Social Transformation in Iran from 1500 to the Revolution
> (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993).
> 9. BahB’u’llah,    The Hidden Words, trans. Shoghi Effendi (Wilmette, Ill.:
> BahPi Publishing Trust, 1979). Below, passages from this work will be cited
> by number and language (e.g., “Arabic, No. 4”).
> 10. Baha’u’llah, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, trans. Shoghi Effendi
> (Wilmette, Ill.: BahB’i        Publishing Trust, 1971) p. 55.
> 11. Quoted in Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By (Wilmette, Ill.: Baha’i
> Publishing Trust, 1970) p. 137.
> 12. BahB’u’llah,     ibid.
> 13. Nabil Zarandi, Ibid.
> 14. Baha’u’llah, quoted in Nab&i Zarandi, Panj Ganj and translated in
> Adib Taherzadeh, The Revelation of Baha’u’llah, 4 ~01s. (Oxford: George
> Ronald, 19741987) vol. 2, p. 141.
> 15. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 142.
> 16. BahB’u’lhih,    “Siirat Allah,” in Athar-i Qalam-i A‘la, vol. 4 (Tehran:
> BahB’i Publishing Trust, 125B.E./1968) p. 23; Juan R. I. Cole, “Redating the
> Surah of God (Surat Allah): An Edirne Tablet of 1866?-Provisional Translation
> Appended” Baha’i Studies Bulletin vol. 6:4-7:2 (October 1992) p. 11.
> 17. Baha’u’llah, Athar-i &a&m-i A‘&, vol. 6, p. 241.
> 18. Gleanings, p. 278.
> 19. Ibid., pp. 314-15.
> 20. Ibid., p. 235.
> 21. Ibid., p. 236.
> 22. Ibid., pp. 250-51.
> 23. Baha’u’llah, The Kitab-i-Aqdas: The Most Holy Book (Haifa: Baha’i
> World Centre, 1992) para. 93.
> 24. Kitab-i-Aqdas, para. 16
> 25. Kitab-i-Aqdas, para. 48
> 26. Kitab-i-Aqdas, para. 146
> 27. BahB’u’llah     in The Compilation of Compilations, 2 ~01s. (Sidney:
> BahB’i Publications Australia, 1991) vol. 1, p. 504, cf. vol. 1, p. 515. I am grate-
> ful to Seena Faze1 for this citation.
> 28. Baha’u’llah, Athar-i Qalam-i AU, vol. 7, pp. 236-37.
> 98         Revisioning           the     Sacred
> 
> 29. Majmu’ih-‘i Al&h-i Mub&aki, p. 196.
> 30. Ath&--i &a&m-i A‘& vol. 6, p. 283.
> 31. Both passages from Baha’u’llah, quoted in Compilation of
> Compilations, vol. 2, p. 358.
> 32. Gleanings, pp. 202-3; Baha’u’llah, Zqtidarat ua Chand Lawh-i Digar
> (Bombay: n.p, 131oA.H./18%-93)        pp. 291-96.
> 33. Baha’u’llah, quoted in Ma’idih-‘i Asmcini,    vol. 4, p. 96.
> 34. The Secret of Divine Ciuilization,      trans. Marzieh Gail (Wilmette, Ill.:
> BahB’i Publishing Trust, 1970) pp. 24-25.
> 35. Quoted in Badi Shams, A Bahk’i Perspective on Economics of the
> Future (New Delhi: BahB’i Publishing Trust, 1989) pp. l-2. Earlier points
> made in this paragraph about ‘Abdu’l-BahB’s          teachings can also be found in
> this useful compilation.
> 36. Juan R.I. Cole, “Iranian Millenarianism and Democratic Thought in
> the 19th Century.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 24 (1992) pp.
> l-26.
> 37. Gleanings, p. 215.
> 38. Ibid., p. 285.
>
> — *Baha'u'llah and Liberation Theology (Used by permission of the curator)*