# Baha'u'llah as 'World Reformer'

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Christopher Buck, Baha'u'llah as 'World Reformer', bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Published in the Journal of Bahá’í Studies Vol. 3, number 4 (1991)
> © Association for Bahá’í ™ Studies 1991
> 
> Bahá’u’lláh as “World Reformer”*
> Christopher Buck
> 
> *This article received the award for the university category in the 1991 Association for Bahá'í Studies Contest.
> 
> Abstract
> Vindicating the mission of the Persian reformer known as the Báb (d. 1850) Bahá’u’lláh’s Book of Certitude (1862)
> focused on spiritual authority from an Islamic perspective. In this work, a subtext may be discerned, in which
> Bahá’u’lláh intimates his own mission in the same terms of reference. Later, in his epistles to the monarchs of
> Europe and West Asia (1866–1869), Bahá’u’lláh exercised that authority and spoke of world reform. This article
> places Bahá’u’lláh in the context of Islamic reform, with particular reference to the advocacy of constitutional
> democracy by prominent Iranian secularists. In an ideological ether pervaded by “Westoxication,” Bahá’u’lláh
> sought to reverse the direction of Western influence. Bahá’u’lláh prosecuted his own reforms in three stages: Bábí
> reform; Persian reform; and world reform. In the centrifugal sequence, Bahá’u’lláh is shown to have bypassed
> Islamic reform altogether in his professed role as “World Reformer.”
> 
> O Queen in London! . . . Consider these days in which He Who is the Ancient Beauty hath come in the
> Most Great Name, that He may quicken the world and unite its peoples. . . . Were anyone to tell them: “The
> World Reformer is come,” they would answer and say: “Indeed it is proven that He is a fomenter of
> discord!” . . . Say: “O people! The Sun of Utterance beameth forth in this day, above the horizon of bounty,
> and the radiance of the Revelation of Him Who spoke on Sinai flasheth and glisteneth before all religions.”
> — Bahá’u’lláh, Tablet to Queen Victoria, 1868
> 
> Internal evidence establishes that The Book of Certitude was revealed in 1862. “In Istanbul in 1863,” according to J.
> R. I. Cole, Bahá’u’lláh “first gave evidence of thinking about the global social reforms that he advocated in later
> years” (“Bahá-Alláh” 425). The Book of Certitude obliquely established the doctrinal foundation for Bahá’u’lláh’s
> authority as the messianic “World Reformer.”1 The programmatic articulation of his world reforms followed, a few
> of which reforms will be discussed in the course of this article.
> Drawing on the elegant theoretical groundwork of Wansbrough’s Quranic Studies as a framework of
> analysis in another work,2 I related Bahá’u’lláh’s techniques of symbolic exegesis to the dozen or so kinds of
> procedural devices employed in the classical tafsír3 tradition. One remarkable feature of The Book of Certitude is its
> creative use of fairly standard classical exegetical procedures to effect a stunning assault on the most intractable of
> Islamic dogmas—the finality of revelation vested in the Prophet Muhammad. The implications of Bahá’u’lláh’s
> exegetical argument alone suffice to establish the intention of a clear break from Islam.
> Transforming its essentially deconstructive argument against revelatory finality into a positive vindication
> of the Báb, The Book of Certitude is charged with eschatological intimations of Bahá’u’lláh’s own messianic status,
> kept under wraps as a “messianic secret,”4 so to speak, until his declaration in Baghdad in the Spring of 1863.
> Indeed, the constructive outcome of the argument against revelatory finality is that revelation is progressive,
> cyclical, and unending. This teaching was put to the test not long after The Book of Certitude was revealed. After his
> declaration, The Book of Certitude took on its new role as an apology for Bahá’u’lláh, yet the text never names
> Bahá’u’lláh directly. Nonetheless, apart from the eschatological figures of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, The Book of
> Certitude simply had no other authority linkages.
> The Book of Certitude was charged with ideological charisma. For converts, the text revolutionized the
> traditional Islamic eschatological worldview. All of the fantastic and surreal images in the Qur’án were demystified
> and personalized. Virtually all of the Last Day savior imagery was considered “fulfilled” in the person of
> Bahá’u’lláh. The eschatological linkage was important. Without it, Bahá’u’lláh’s reforms would have remained
> inert, if stripped of the dream “logic” of the eschaton and its spiritual rewards.
> In prophetological terms, Bahá’u’lláh’s doctrine of “Progressive Revelation” makes possible a post-Islamic
> religiosity, replete with its own missionary and, in a sense, “secular” activism. Bound up with this sense of
> successive dispensations is the concept of social evolution. The nineteenth-century milieu looked much different
> than the sands of Arabia in the seventh century. New social threats loomed with the advance of European war
> technology, encroaching secularism, and the unstoppable hegemony of the colonial powers—in a word, all the
> problems of modernity for the Middle East.
> A case in point surrounds the Islamic doctrine of holy war (jihád). In Bahá’u’lláh’s estimation, holy war
> had outlived its utility and justification (this was decisively proven in the failure of Bábí militarism) in a decidedly
> post-Islamic world. Not surprisingly, in this light at least, the abrogation of the doctrine of holy war constituted
> Bahá’u’lláh’s first legislative act in his new role as the messianic “Manifestation of God” in 1863.
> There were certain reforms Bahá’u’lláh had envisioned. These reforms were at first localized, initially
> concerned with the revitalization of the Bábí community in Persia and its diasporal center in Baghdad. Once his
> leadership had proven itself indispensable and the force of his charisma had won over the allegiance of the majority
> of Bábís, Bahá’u’lláh could then announce his mission as the “World Reformer” par excellence (Tablet to Queen
> Victoria, excerpted by Bahá’u’lláh in Epistle to the Son of the Wolf 59–64; partially translated in Browne,
> Selections). This mission was cast in eschatological terms but was legislatively enacted as reform and appears to
> have been increasingly directed towards the West, as Bahá’u’lláh’s epistolary summonses to the potentates of
> Europe and the Americas attest.
> For the most part, Bahá’u’lláh bypassed Islamic reform altogether to pursue the transformation of the social
> planet. On a number of occasions, Bahá’u’lláh certainly addressed issues of Persian reform, but these admonitions
> were subsidiary to his greater reformist objectives. On questions of Persian reform, Bahá’u’lláh commissioned his
> son ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in 1875 to compose a separate treatise on the subject. This treatise was published in Bombay in
> 1882 and enjoyed considerable popular circulation among the Bahá’ís and their personal contacts.5
> In the cross-cultural past, eschatology has historically been drawn upon as a potent ideology to legitimate
> revolutions. Bahá’u’lláh’s revolution was of a different nature in its relation to the State. Governments were not to
> be overthrown but transformed. The power to effect such transformations did not rest with Bahá’u’lláh alone,
> however. Bahá’í principles were seen as moral forces; ideally, Bahá’ís were seen as agents of change—the martial
> “hosts” of the proverbial “Lord of hosts.” Cole observes that the Bahá’ís of Iran “combined democratic rhetoric with
> millenarian imagery in the generation before the Constitutional Revolution.”6
> The reforms Bahá’u’lláh pursued were not articulated in isolation. Many were part of the ideological ether
> and were emblematic of the times, so to speak. Without diminishing Bahá’u’lláh’s originality, this study will
> endeavor to contextualize those reforms within the context of Persian reform, as Cole has done in the context of
> Ottoman reform (“Iranian Millenarianism and Democratic Thought” 1–26). The Young Ottomans’ movement is
> surely relevant,7 and Cole’s study offers a balance to the otherwise Persian-focused scope of this study.
> The views of the Persian reformers, profiled below, should suffice to give the reader a fair impression of
> the motivations that impelled Islamic reformers in general to pursue their objectives, and of the nature and scope of
> the reforms themselves. Congruences as well as differences among these reformers in comparison with
> Bahá’u’lláh’s reforms will be brought into relief. The reader should note one important distinction throughout, as far
> as Persian reformers are concerned: even the secular reformers, for the most part, talked of Islamic reform. The
> Islamic framework is likewise maintained by the otherwise secularist Young Ottomans (Cole, “Iranian
> Millenarianism and Democratic Thought” 10). Bahá’u’lláh advocated religious reform that went beyond Islam.
> 
> The Symbolic Universe of “Progressive Revelation”
> Bahá’u’lláh has moved from Muhammad’s perceived seal of revelation in Muslim dogma to a Bahá’í doctrine of
> “Progressive Revelation.” This then allows Bahá’u’lláh to continue to legitimate his authority and to pursue the role
> of a prophet-legislator.
> Royalist imagery pervades—one might even say, dominates—Bahá’u’lláh’s writings wherever references
> to authority occur. The eschatological imagery clustered around the figure of the Báb was generalized to include
> Bahá’u’lláh. In the course of his post-declaration proclamation to kings and ecclesiastics, Bahá’u’lláh in effect
> assumed some of the messianic dignities originally associated with his precursor, the Báb, as documented in The
> Book of Certitude itself. This was made all the more possible since The Book of Certitude articulated an inclusivist
> prophetology in which virtually every prophetic dignity was shared by one and all of the Manifestations of God.
> Of Bahá’u’lláh’s particular tributes to the Báb in The Book of Certitude are exceptional attributive titles
> such as “Essences of Essences” and “Sea of Seas,” “divine Luminary,” “that eternal Sun,” “that Ocean of divine
> wisdom,” and so forth (Bahá’u’lláh, The Book of Certitude 234). Some of the imagery transfer to Bahá’u’lláh is
> foreshadowed in The Book of Certitude under the prophetic code name Mustagháth:
> And now, We beseech the people of the Bayán, all the learned, the sages, the divines, and
> witnesses amongst them, not to forget the wishes and admonitions revealed in their Book. Let them, at all
> times, fix their gaze upon the essentials of His Cause, lest when He, Who is the Quintessence of truth, the
> inmost Reality of all things, the Source of all light, is made manifest, they cling unto certain passages of the
> Book, and inflict upon Him that which was inflicted in the Dispensation of the Qur’án. For, verily,
> powerful is He, the King of divine might, to extinguish with one letter of His wondrous words, the breath
> of life in the whole of the Bayán and the people thereof, and with one letter bestow upon them a new and
> everlasting life, and cause them to arise and speed out of the sepulchres of their vain and selfish desires.
> Take heed, and be watchful; and remember that all things have their consummation in belief in Him, in
> attainment unto His day, and in the realization of His divine presence. “There is no piety in turning your
> faces toward the east or toward the west, but he is pious who believeth in God and the Last Day” (Qur’án
> 2:176). (Bahá’u’lláh, The Book of Certitude 92–93)
> 
> Bahá’u’lláh later claimed to be the one foretold by the Báb: “. . . I, verily, am the one promised in al-
> mustagáth with the name of man yuzhiruhu’lláh.”8 The reference here to al-mustagáth has to do with Bábí cabalistic
> speculations as to the timing of the messianic advent. Belief in God on the Last Day, in Bahá’í theophanology,
> means acceptance of the Prophet, or “Manifestation of God,” who speaks on behalf of God. This mode of divine
> proxy is familiar within the Abrahamic Faiths. Proceeding now from form to content, we have already noted the fact
> that The Book of Certitude came to be associated with specific reformist teachings, through their reciprocal
> connection with Bahá’u’lláh. These reformist teachings, a few of which will be presented below, came to be
> associated in a programatic way with The Book of Certitude, in the transition from faith to works, from personal
> salvation to mutual salvation in Bahá’u’lláh’s social gospel.
> 
> The Book of Certitude and Its Reformist Associations
> With regard to the question of authority, The Book of Certitude had far-reaching religious implications. It provided
> the rationale for looking beyond Islam. Without a corresponding political vision of what a realized eschatology
> might look like in the realm of human affairs, The Book of Certitude would be little more than a theological,
> evidential work—invoking Qur’án anti tradition to vindicate the Báb’s revelatory claims. To see its real place in
> religious history, therefore, The Book of Certitude should be looked at from the perspective of its reformist
> associations and the direction in which it steered a religious movement.
> Expectations were set up in both native and exiled Bábí communities (Persia and Baghdad) of an
> eschatological figure foretold by the Báb, viz., “He Whom God Shall Manifest” (man yuzhiruhu’lláh). This
> eschatological tension had the effect of relativizing the Báb’s own Sharí‘ah to its own eventual eclipse. Amanat
> observes:
> 
> The idea of perpetual Zuhūr, conceived by the Báb and enshrined in the chiliastic notion of the He Whom
> God Shall Manifest, essentially militated against the institutionalization of the Babi religion. The Babi
> theology was erected on the precept of the prophetic continuity and the sense of vigilance for future divine
> revelations. . . .
> The possibility of the Babi sharī‘a’s being nullified and replaced by a future manifestation,
> particularly since the time of his advent was signaled in the Bayān in the cryptic code of mustaghāth (he
> who shall be called upon tor help), was an open invitation for messianic innovation. (Resurrection and
> Renewal 410)
> 
> In The Book of Certitude, Bahá’u’lláh reinforces expectations of a new law. In the process of validating the
> immediate past in the advent of the Báb, statements about the future were lent greater authenticity. Bahá’u’lláh
> sustained Bábí chiliastic hopes through calls for a state of readiness to “meet God” in the person of Him Whom God
> Shall Manifest, in the near future:
> 
> When the channel of the human soul is cleansed of all worldly and impeding attachments, it will
> unfailingly perceive the breath of the Beloved across immeasurable distances, and will, led by its perfume,
> attain and enter the City of Certitude. . . .
> They that valiantly labour in quest of God’s will, when once they have renounced all else but Him,
> will be so attached and wedded to that City that a moment’s separation from it would to them be
> unthinkable. They will hearken unto infallible proofs from the Hyacinth of that assembly, and receive the
> surest testimonies from the beauty of its Rose and the melody of its Nightingale. Once in about a thousand
> years shall this City be renewed and re-adorned.
> Wherefore, O my friend, it behooveth Us to exert the highest endeavour to attain unto that City,
> and, by the grace of God and His loving-kindness, rend asunder the “veils of glory”. . . . That city is none
> other than the Word of God revealed in every age and dispensation. In the days of Moses it was the
> Pentateuch; in the days of Jesus the Gospel; in the days of Muhammad the Messenger of God the Qur’án;
> in this day the Bayán; and in the dispensation of Him Whom God will make manifest His own Book—the
> Book unto which all the Books of former Dispensations must needs be referred, the Book which standeth
> amongst them all transcendent and supreme. (Bahá’u’lláh, The Book of Certitude 197–200)
> 
> Reference here to thousand-year intervals would not necessarily have led Bábí readers to expect a distant
> messianic advent, for there were very definite short-term eschatological expectations. In its Bábí context, The Book
> of Certitude functioned as an apologia for the Báb. It will always remain so, of course. A year after The Book of
> Certitude was written, the context was to change radically following Bahá’u’lláh’s declaration on the eve of his
> departure from Baghdad to Constantinople in the Spring of 1863.
> Once the context had seen a shift in terms of authority—from the Báb to Bahá’u’lláh—the reflexive
> validation of his own prophetic credentials, which The Book of Certitude served to enhance, took on all of the
> associations of his later teachings. The terms of reference for belief brooked no real separation between revelator
> and revelation. Once one accepted the eschatological assertions Bahá’u’lláh had advanced—the interpretive logic of
> which had already been developed at length in The Book of Certitude—it remained for such a convert to embrace
> Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings. Those teachings can be analyzed from a reformist perspective.
> Three stages of reform will be seen within the expansion of Bahá’u’lláh’s influence, culminating in
> activism beyond the pale of Islam, to be enacted on the world stage. The Book of Certitude was written as a
> preparatory stage in Bahá’u’lláh’s reformist ministry. This is a retrospective interpretation, and it will be necessary
> to reconstruct the progression of Bahá’u’lláh’s reformist efforts on the basis of contemporary documents.
> Bahá’u’lláh will be presented as a reformer, concerned initially with (1) Bábí reform; (2) intermittently with Persian
> reform; (3) and fully absorbed by the question of world reform. In representing Bahá’u’lláh as a reformer, the
> immediate question that arises is: What of Islamic reform? From a certain point of view, the assessment of Hamid
> Algar has considerable insight, in that he draws a distinction between Islamic reform and Islamic terminology:
> 
> Babism, as a movement taking its starting point within Islam and then swiftly going beyond its bounds,
> might also in a certain sense be thought of as a “reform” of Islam, parallel to Malkum’s own project of an
> “Islamic renaissance.” Malkum’s plan, like Babism, entailed the use of Islamic terminology for purposes
> fundamentally alien to the Islamic faith. (Mirzá Malkum Khán 59)
> 
> As to the Bábí movement, Algar does not elaborate on exactly what purposes were “alien to the Islamic
> faith,” but surely the break from Islam is meant. It must be remembered that the Báb had already broken with Islam.
> This did not, of itself, preclude the Bábí or a Bábí movement from occupying itself with Islamic reform, as was the
> case with Azalí Babism. Later conflation of the Bábí and Bahá’í ideologies aside, if we draw a distinction between
> the Bábí and Bahá’í movements, it is clear that the Bábí movement represented one reformist solution to the
> pressures and perils facing Persia in the mid-nineteenth century, as Amanat points out:
> 
> The Bábí phenomenon sprang up at a time when Persian society was on the verge of a crucial
> transition. Tormented by its age-old dilemmas, the Persian mind was beginning to be exposed to a
> materially superior civilization. The emergence of the Babi doctrine thus was perhaps the last chance for a
> [sic] indigenous reform movement before that society became truly affected by the consequences of the
> Western predominance, first in material and then in ideological spheres. Notwithstanding its weaknesses,
> the Babi doctrine attempted to address, rather than ignore, the issues that lay at the foundation of the
> Persian consciousness. The Bábí solution was the product of an esoteric legacy, one that sought redemptive
> regeneration in a break with the past without being essentially alien to the spirit of that past. (Resurrection
> and Renewal 413)
> 
> Amanat goes on to explain that the Bábí worldview was not consciously affected by the Western ethos, nor was it
> influenced by the Western positivist models of progress and humanism. Unlike later Islamic reformers, who shrank
> from tampering with time-honored dogma, the Báb “sought to resolve the predicaments of Islamic eschatology by
> returning to the basic issues of prophethood, resurrection, and the hereafter” (Resurrection and Renewal 413). The
> exposure of messianic paradigms to new historical circumstances was such that, according to Amanat, “The Bahá’í
> religion came to represent revisionist tendencies within the movement that sought to achieve further religious
> innovation by means of moral aptitude and adoption of modern social reforms” (Resurrection and Renewal 414).
> While this analysis is easy to accept at face value, Amanat adduces no concrete evidence to support his
> statement to the effect that Bahá’u’lláh, in pursuing reform, was influenced by Western models, either directly or
> through the agency of Islamic reform movements. Bahá’u’lláh certainly had high regard for constitutional
> monarchies and republics, particularly the British model, but was critical of Bonapartist France and absolutist
> Prussia. The middle ground between the determinist or originist analysis of Bahá’u’lláh’s reforms and Bahá’í
> religious bias, which sees Bahá’u’lláh as the expression of universal spiritual ferment, is perhaps the surest position
> to take. It is the methodological integration of two sets of contextualizing perceptions.
> For Bahá’u’lláh, progress became a global issue beyond Islam and beyond the Bábí movement as well. In
> this sense, Bahá’u’lláh never directly pursued Islamic reform but rather, bypassed it. The way in which his reforms,
> though resembling in significant respects Islamic reform, departed from the norm is borne out by a typology of
> Islamic reform movements developed by Shephard (“Islam and Ideology” 307–36). The difference between
> Bahá’u’lláh’s reforms and those of other contemporary reformers is nothing short of categorical. The ideological
> divide, as will be shown below, is over Islamic law. Shepard’s typology is based on the doctrinal content of a wide
> range of movements, which, according to Shepard, each fall into one or another of the following five categories:
> 
> Secularism
> This category of reform refers to recourse to ideology other than Islam, in which the Sharí’ah is effectively
> supplanted. “Secular” does not necessarily mean non-religious. Usually it means that religion is not the direct or
> controlling force in legislation. Secular reform best serves as an ideology for Muslim minorities. It tends to create a
> Westernized élite, widening the gap between that élite and the rest of society, as in prerevolutionary Iran. Radical
> secularism seeks to replace the Church by the State, so to speak, as exampled by Marxist Albania, whose
> constitution had no place for religion. Such a State, within which church and mosque are under lock-and-key, may
> be said to be anti-religious. Moderate secularism seeks to separate Church and State, as exemplified by the “neutral”
> secularism of Turkey, which in 1928 struck from its constitution the clause that made Islam the State religion. Such
> movements may include what Shepard calls “Muslim” secularism as in Egypt, whose constitution pays lip service to
> Islam as “the religion of the State” but which derives considerable authority and legislation from popular
> sovereignty. This category may also extend to the “religious” secularism of Indonesia.
> 
> Islamic Modernism
> This ideology insists that Islam provides an adequate ideological basis for public life. Islamic modernism shows a
> certain adaptive flexibility, however, in the exercise and application of the Sharí‘ah. Such movements attempt to
> integrate Islamic authenticity with proven models for development as evolved in the West. Pakistan’s constitution
> aligns principles of democracy and various civil rights with Islamic ideals. Such reform may provide an Islamic
> veneer for essentially secularist agendas, through restricting the sources of Islamic authority. Reinterpreting
> authority, modernist apologetics will tend to link aspects of the Islamic tradition with Western practices.
> 
> Radical Islamism
> The so-called fundamentalists figure here, with their claims to Islamic authenticity. Islam is seen as distinct from all
> other ideologies. The religion is sufficient unto itself. There is a place for ijtihád (reasoning) in reformulating and
> applying Muslim law, but the Sharí‘ah must somehow be applied nonetheless: it is the controlling legislation.
> 
> Traditionalism
> Generally speaking, this is a response to the Western challenge by invoking Islamic paradigms for coping with
> adversity. Rejectionist traditionalism resists Westernization, as with the conservative element in Saudi Arabia. It is
> best exemplified by nineteenth-century revolts against Western colonial powers and by internal resistance to
> Westernizing Muslim rulers, Accommodationist traditionalism views modernity as corrupt and strikes provisional
> compromises for purposes of adaptation.
> 
> Neo-Traditionalism
> Such a movement comes to grips more realistically with the Western threat. Neo-traditionalism accepts the need for
> modern technology. Accommodationist neo-traditionalism is represented by Sufi orders in present-day Egypt, as
> well as in the views of certain prominent Muslims, such as Sayyid Hossein Nasr. The Islamic revolution in Iran
> might well fit the description of rejectionist neo-traditionalism.
> Shepard’s typology consists of “responses to the Western impact and of proposals for rehabilitating Muslim
> history” (“Islam and Ideology” 308). By Shepard’s standards, the Bahá’í Faith falls outside the proposed typology,
> purely on the basis of the Faith’s rejection of Islamic law, except perhaps in the case of radical and moderate
> secularism, which also reject Muslim law codes. Still, Marxist Albania affords no parallel whatever to Bahá’í reform
> (as Bahá’í law or its consultative principles ought to have a salutary effect on State policy), and the Turkish model is
> perhaps too secular a parallel as well. Nonetheless, the Bahá’í system is arguably close to “secular” ideology—
> relative to Islam and not of itself secular—in that it represents a “view that would openly follow an ideology other
> than Islam in most areas of public life” (Shepard, “Islam and Ideology” 309).
> The application of this typology to the Bahá’í Faith can only be done analogously. It would seem, then, that
> the category of Islamic modernism would best apply, save for the fact that the Bahá’í Faith is not Islam. By analogy,
> the Bahá’í religion would see itself as a system that “does provide an adequate ideological base for public life”
> (Shepard, “Islam and Ideology” 311) in extra-Islamic terms. A Bahá’í modernist could, as readily as a Muslim
> counterpart, “insist that . . . [Bahá’í] . . . social principles are capable of development” (Shepard, “Islam and
> Ideology” 312).
> Then why the break with Islam? Perhaps the Bahá’í perspective, from a certain point of view, has simply
> carried modernist logic to its “logical” conclusion, relegating to obsolescence the legalist legacy of the past through
> undermining virtually all of its present authority.9 The Bahá’í worldview sees the old wineskins of Islamic legal
> systems as too inflexible to accommodate reforms equal to the demands of modernity. In the preamble of “The Most
> Holy Book” (al-Kitáb al-Aqdas, referred to in Bahá’í circles by its Persian title, Kitáb-i-Aqdas), Bahá’u’lláh in fact
> lends the metaphor of wine to the spirit of his laws, the new law code presumably being the new wineskin: “Think
> not that We have revealed unto you a mere code of laws. Nay, rather, We have unsealed the choice Wine with the
> fingers of might and power” (Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings 332).
> A simple literature review reveals opposing historical perspectives on the nature of Islamic reform
> movements and indeed on the relationship of the Bahá’í movement to contemporary reform, particularly Persian
> reform. We turn now to one of the ongoing academic discussions as to the nature of religion and reform in
> nineteenth-century Persia. That a comparative approach to reform serves to contextualize the work of Bahá’u’lláh is
> illuminating but not exhaustive.
> 
> Mysticism and Dissent
> In The Roots of the Iranian Revolution (1983), Hamid Algar presents the Islamic Revolution as a development of the
> clerical tradition. Algar characterizes both the 1905–1911 Constitutional Revolution and the 1979 Iranian
> Revolution alike in terms of a struggle of the religious classes against the oppressive State. In contrast to this
> analysis, Mangol Bayat seeks to prove that, in the nineteenth century, the religious classes were far more concerned
> with their internal affairs than with affairs of State. Bayat depicts the traditional pattern of Shí‘í dissent as a struggle
> against the dominance of the mujtahids or sacerdotal authority in general.
> According to Bayat’s thesis, the mujtahids’ concentration of power was amassed not to arrogate national
> leadership but rather to contain dissidents. The essential feature that distinguished orthodox from dissident was a
> proclivity for pessimism versus optimism. The orthodox saw the world as pejorative, worsening until the salvational
> advent of the Hidden Imám. Heterodox dissidents usually viewed humanity as evolving towards perfection. It was
> this optimism that linked traditional dissent with secular modernists.
> The failure of the Bábí and Shaykhí movements was instructive for social malcontents, who turned
> elsewhere for inspiration in a model to follow. This they found in the anti-theological, anti-metaphysical thought of
> eighteenth-century Europe, in the post-Enlightenment critique of religion. The new thinkers in Iran “sought, no
> matter how awkwardly or how unconvincingly, to accommodate Western ideas with Islam.” The efforts of the
> reformers, however, were secular, and “should by no means be taken for Islamic reformism,” since “they all
> advocated a reform program that would ensure an absolute separation of religious and temporal affairs,” Bayat
> maintains (Mysticism and Dissent 134).
> Yapp accepts Bayat’s argument that explores variations on a common theme in dissent, in which “the
> challenge to the concept of a closed religious law exclusively interpreted by the mujtahids and the assertion of the
> possibility of change through the agency of the divinely inspired” is the dissident ideal in most cases. The difficulty
> for Yapp lies in accepting Bayat’s contention that “the lay thinkers who emerged at the end of the nineteenth century
> retained the core of these dissenting ideas and simply transformed the agency of change into reason.” Contrary to
> this analysis, Bayat characterizes modernist reformers as purely “fresh imports from Europe” (Yapp, “Review of
> Mysticism and Dissent” 140–41).
> From another perspective, Amanat sees Shiism in the Qájár period as the conflict between: (1) scholastic
> Shiism—replete with a juristic system dominated by a clerical order—and (2) speculative Shiism, manifested in
> “recurring heterodoxies.” Prior to the nineteenth century, the latter led a rather “subterranean” existence in Iran but
> generated “a new momentum” in the nineteenth century in challenging the prevailing Sharí‘ah and, to a certain
> extent, the political order of the day. In contrast to reform movements in Sunni Islam, heterodox movements in
> Qájár Iran inspired a conscious break with Islamic tenets (Amanat, “Review of Mysticism and Dissent” 467).
> Amanat acknowledges Bayat’s original contribution in developing an “elaborate theoretical framework”
> that seeks to explain an underlying continuity in diverse heterodox movements within the context of dissent. But in
> trying to forge links between religious and secular movements, Bayat’s “preoccupation with apparent similarities”
> results in her “overlooking the profound differences” among such groups. Bayat has tried to smooth over such
> differences through frequent recourse to a “diagnosis of taqiyya, which she considers the ultimate solution to all
> intellectual diversities.”10
> Amanat criticizes Bayat for her lack of insight into the nature of millenarian movements, which to her are
> all simply chronic manifestations of bátiní (esoteric) thought. What took place in the nineteenth-century speculative
> Shiism, however, was significantly different: “What proved to be critical for later developments,” Amanat writes,
> “was the introduction of an explicit notion of time and dynamism of change into the static world of bátin. This sense
> of urgency transformed the supratemporal image of the hidden Imam and lends itself to a messianic movement of
> sizable proportions” (“Review of Mysticism and Dissent” 470–71).
> As to her treatment of the Bábí upheavals, Bayat is taken to task for not having investigated sufficiently the
> real causes behind the Bábí revolts, especially as regards the “joint action undertaken by the ulama and the state,”
> not to mention the fact that the Bábís were “defenders” and not aggressors in the conflict. Bayat “magnifies the
> militancy” of the Bábís, blowing that dimension of Bábí history out of proportion. In terms of the subsequent
> unfoldment of the Bábí movement, the author imputes the Bahá’í “doctrinal acceptance of the de facto secularization
> of politics”11 to Western models, rather than treating Bahá’í concepts “as a logical continuation of Bábí
> development” (Amanat, “Review of Mysticism and Dissent” 472–73).
> Another approach is taken by Lambton, who criticizes Bayat for failing to recognize important differences
> between modern Iranian intellectuals (who view Islam as a vehicle for change) and earlier dissident movements
> (moved by nostalgia in a desire to return to “true Islam”). Moreover, the terms of reference themselves underwent
> change. It was to be expected that “in a theocracy such as Islam unorthodoxy and political dissent . . . tend to be
> expressed in religions terms.” It was only natural that, to gain the support of certain prominent religious leaders,
> avowed secularists would take pragmatic recourse to an ostensibly Islamic rhetoric. But the “triumph” of Persian
> constitutionalism was, after all, one of governmental reform, not religious reform, despite the involvement of certain
> key ‘ulama’. The consequence of the post–1906 de facto secularization of government—viz., the emergence of a
> distinct class of “turbaned” specialists in Islamic jurisprudence—is, after all, nothing really new, Lambton points out
> (Lambton, “Review of Mysticism and Dissent” 115–17).
> Bayat discusses in some detail five prominent “secular” Persian reformers: (1) Sayyid Jamálu’d-Dín-i-
> Asadabadí, known as Afghání (1838–97); (2) Malkum Khán (1833–1908); (3) Ákhundzáda (1812–78); (4)
> Tálibzáda (1834–1911); (5) Mírzá Aqá Khan Kirmání (1853–96). Certain of these reformers have Bábí, Azalí Bábí,
> and Bahá’í associations.
> 
> Sayyid Jamálu’d-Dín-i-Afghání (1838–97)
> Afghání’s early education in Persia brought him into contact with Shaykhí and Bábí thought. He moved freely in
> Bábí circles. Dorraj states that it was not only Afghání’s unorthodox ideas but also his “association with the Bábís”
> that led to his exile from Persia as a youth (From Zarathustra 95). Afghání, along with Tálibzáda and Malkum
> Khán, sought to reconcile with Islam the idea of constitutionalism and social reform (Dorraj, From Zarathustra 98–
> 99). In his Answer to Renan, Afghání distances the brilliant achievements of medieval Islamic science and
> philosophy from the “heavy yoke” of the jurists and orthodox watchdogs of his day. In the current social crisis, in
> which Islam is presented as oppressive and backward, Afghání advocated reform in which science is highly prized.
> He censures the philosophers of his own time for their indifference to the “real sciences” of Western technology. He
> characterizes the contemporary Muslim philosopher as one who “splits hairs over imaginary essences” (cited in
> Bayat, Mysticism and Dissent 147).
> The West, by contrast, was now the master of the world, for the Westerners “have conquered the world, not
> because of their belief in Jesus or Mary, but because of their capacity to build railroads, to create the telegraph
> system” (Dorraj, From Zarathustra 98). Science is what rules the world, and Islamic governments should thus
> import science if they are to care their social ills. Afghání’s modernism was inspired by Western enlightenment.
> Bayat’s characterization of Afghání as a secular reformer dismisses his efforts at reconciling Islamic faith and
> reason as “feeble” and ‘‘merely an unconvincing repetition of the view of the Shaikhis and other traditional
> theosophers.” Bayat determines that “despite his self-appointed mission as the reformer, he does not suggest any
> possible redefinition or reformulation of the relationship of Islam to the new sciences, besides the old, worn-out
> theosophers’ argument that the Koran is all-encompassing, and what is needed is only a matter of proper
> understanding.” Thus, according to Bayat, the theosophers’ concerns—which the Shaykhís had socialized and the
> Bábís politicized—were “successfully secularized by Afghani” (Bayat, Mysticism and Dissent 148).
> Afghání freely associated with Bábís, as well as with Jews, Sikhs, and Armenians (Algar, Religion and
> State in Iran 195). Among his collaborators were Azalí Bábís Mírzá Áqá Khán Kirmání, Shaykh Ahmad Rúhí, and
> Afdalu’1 Mulk Kirmání (Algar, Religion and State in Iran 201). Despite his pan-Islamic ideal, Kirmání did not
> champion Islam as a religion. Bayat underscores Afghání’s importance by stating: “Afghani is perhaps the most
> controversial political figure of the Middle East in the nineteenth century” (Bayat, Mysticism and Dissent 134). His
> most illustrious student was the great Egyptian reformer Muhammad ‘Abduh (d. 1323/1905).
> What, if any, contact or influence was there between Afghání and the Bahá’í community? According to
> Keddie, Afghání was in touch with the Bábí exiles in Baghdad in the 1850s (Sayyid Jamál al-Dín 20–22). But as to
> influence, nothing can be proven. His antipathy for the Bahá’ís may have had to do with the perceived threat they
> posed to Islamic unity. Notwithstanding this, it appears Afghání wished to maintain his contacts with Bahá’í leaders
> since he sent them copies of his newspaper from Paris in the 1880s. Bahá’u’lláh, in his “Tablet of the World”
> (Lawh-i-Dunyá), makes reference to this:
> 
> Gracious God! A thing hath recently happened which caused great astonishment. It is reported that
> a certain person [Afghání] went to the seat of the imperial throne in Persia and succeeded in winning the
> good graces of some of the nobility by his ingratiating behavior. How pitiful indeed, how deplorable! One
> wondereth why those who have been the symbols of highest glory should now stoop to boundless shame.
> The aforesaid person hath written such things concerning this people [the Bahá’ís] in the Egyptian
> Press and in the Beirut Encyclopedia that the well-informed and the learned were astonished. He proceeded
> then to Paris where he published a newspaper entitled ‘Urvatu’l-Vuthqá [The Sure Handle] and sent copies
> thereof to all parts of the world. He also sent a copy to the Prison of ‘Akká, and by so doing he meant to
> show affection and to make amends for his past actions. In short, this Wronged One bath observed silence
> in regard to him. (Bahá’u’lláh, Tablets 94–95)12
> 
> Momen speculates that Afghání may have “found the ideas emanating from this source [the Bahá’ís] useful
> to him in formulating his own views,” but admits that this is impossible to prove (Momen, “The Bahá’í Influence”
> 49).
> 
> Mírzá Malkum Khán (1833–1908)
> The evidence is greater for significant interaction between Bahá’ís and this reformer. An Armenian Christian by
> birth who converted to Islam, Malkum was the most Westernized of the five secularists. According to Bayat,
> Malkum Khán was the most modern of all the secular reformers, and it was he who introduced the Western concept
> of law to Persians. He is considered the father of constitutionalism in Iran (Bayat, Mysticism and Dissent 162–67).
> Malkum Khán advocated a superficial Islamicization of constitutionalism to predispose the ‘ulamá’ in its favor
> (Dorraj, From Zarathustra 96). To prosecute his reforms, his tactic was to “manipulate religion, and religious
> sentiment, for a secular end” (Bayat, Mysticism and Dissent 149). His search for allies led him into Azalí Bábí
> circles, who were followers of Mirzá Yahyá—known as Subh-i-Azal— Bahá’u’lláh’s rival half-brother. An Azalí
> source confirms Afghání’s contacts with Bábís in Baghdad. In his interviews with the Western press, he never failed
> to support the Bábí cause, comparing the new faith to Christianity. This naturally led to his condemnation as a Bábí
> by his opponents (Bayat, Mysticism and Dissent 149).
> Malkum privately (though somewhat openly) saw reason as imprisoned by religion. He covertly sought to
> diffuse his humanist ideal through a secret society he founded in 1858, the “House of Oblivion” (farámúsh khána)—
> a lodge possibly modelled on French Freemasonry. This society aroused imperial suspicions of possible Bábí
> connections, such a charge considered groundless by Gobineau (Algar, Religion and State in Iran 187). The short-
> lived organization drew the wrath of the clergy and prompted the Shah in 1861 to order it to cease and desist.
> Malkum then founded a new religious movement, presented as the “religion of humanity” (dín-i insániyyat)
> developed in the revolutionary phase of his career, evidently influenced by Auguste Compte’s Religion de
> l’humanité. Malkum claimed there was no difference between the Bible and the Qur’án, and that the doctrines of the
> Báb were “identical with those of Jesus Christ” (Algar, Religion and State in Iran 188, n. 22).
> Malkum’s humanism led him to call for open revolt. To disseminate his views, he started a newspaper
> called Qánún [“Law”], published in 1890. Due to its revolutionary incitements, the paper was quickly banned,
> though it continued to circulate underground. Ironically, in 1898 Muzaffar al-Dín Shah reinstated Malkum’s titles
> late in life and named him ambassador to Rome. “Of all the writer-statesmen Persia produced in the nineteenth
> century, Malkum Khán was the most articulate and the most prolific” (Farmayan, “Forces of Modernization” 137).
> His entire reformism may be summed up so: The survival of Persia depends on the adoption of Western civilization
> (Farmayan, “The Forces of Modernization” 138). Malkum Khán is thought of as the most progressive of nineteenth-
> century Persian secular reformers and is thus considered the father of constitutionalism in Iran. This intellectual
> distinction might not, in the final analysis, rightly belong to Malkum Khán. Cole makes this telling observation:
> 
> After decades of advocating mere administrative reforms, the embittered ex-diplomat Mirza Malkum Khan,
> recently dismissed for corruption, finally came out for elected, parliamentary government in his London-
> based journal, Qānūn, in December 1892. Historians of modern Iranian intellectual history have seen this
> call as something of a breakthrough. Yet Baha’u’llah had, of course, been making this argument openly
> since 1868, and in the context of the Tobacco Revolt he strongly reaffirmed it in the Tablet to the World a
> year and a half before that historic issue of Qānūn. (Cole, “Iranian Millenarianism and Democratic
> Thought” 19)
> 
> On the issue of constitutionalism, Cole points out that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had originally supported the Persian
> constitutional reforms, in 1906 praising those reforms as “the basic foundation of the Most Great Civilization.”13
> When he saw that civil war and foreign intervention would prove unavoidably disastrous outcomes of the
> movement, he “could abide neither prospect,”14 and the policy of Bahá’í non-involvement in politics—in force
> among Bahá’ís to this day— was adopted. Bahá’u’lláh’s earlier prohibition against sedition was not a proscription
> against political involvement as such, but political realism made neutrality the better part of valor from 1907
> onward.
> There was contact between Afghání and Bábí circles. According to Nabíl, the first contact between Mirzá
> Malkum Khán and the Bahá’ís took place in late 1861, when he had fled to Baghdad, fearing for his safety at the
> displeasure of the Shah, who had ordered him out of the country. A particularly sensitive topic was the secret society
> Malkum had organized, the aforementioned “House of Oblivion,” which had aroused the Shah’s suspicion.
> Malkum’s escape to Baghdad, in pursuance of the Shah’s decree, would seem to have placed him out of immediate
> danger, were it not for the fact that Mirzá Buzurg Khán, the Persian consul in Baghdad, let out that he had been
> charged by his superiors to have Malkum Khán detained and escorted back to Iran, there to face an undisclosed fate.
> Fearing for his life, Malkum Khán came to Bahá’u’lláh, seeking protection. Bahá’u’lláh’s prudence dictated that to
> harbor Malkum Khán was against better judgment, and so he was lodged elsewhere. Entrusting him to the care of
> the Válí, Bahá’u’lláh sent Malkum Khán to the Seraye. The Válí eventually sent him safely off to Istanbul in the
> Spring of 1862 (Balyuzi, Bahá’u’lláh: The King of Glory 151–52). In this way, Bahá’u’lláh saved him from the
> clutches of the Persian consul.
> In Istanbul, Malkum Khán again had occasion to contact Bahá’u’lláh and his followers when the exiles
> arrived there in May, 1863. When Ernest Renan met Malkum Khán in Istanbul in June; 1865, Malkum Khán
> represented himself as being an authority on the Bábí movement, so much so that Renan encouraged him to write a
> book on the subject (Momen, “The Bahá’í Influence” 49–50).
> 
> Ákhundzáda (1812–78)
> Typical of Persian secular reformers, the Azarbayjání secularist Ákhundzáda was “one of the first thinkers of the
> constitutional era to question the compatibility of Islamic traditionalism with democratic constitutionalism” (Dorraj,
> From Zarathustra 95). Ákhundzáda’s self-proclaimed mission was to arouse the Muslim nations from their torpor
> and to pursue the course of progress charted by European civilization. He threw caution to the wind and wrote
> boldly and perhaps rashly. His essays were deliberately provocative writing:
> 
> I perceived that Islamic faith and fanaticism represented an obstacle to the diffusion of civilization among
> the Muslim peoples. I therefore set myself the task of sundering the foundations of the faith, of extirpating
> fanaticism and dissipating the dark ignorance of the peoples of the East. (Quoted in Bayat, Mysticism and
> Dissent 153)
> 
> He condemned taqlíd (following the rulings of a mujtahid) and ijtihád (the legal function of a mujtahid). “Taqlíd has
> ruined us,” he pined (quoted in Bayat, Mysticism and Dissent 156). His religious model being the Protestant
> movement in Europe, he advocated laws protecting the rights of citizens. In 1863, Ákhundzáda delivered a tirade to
> a Persian crowd, saying: “Oh Iranians! If you could realize the advantage of liberty and human rights, you would
> never have tolerated slavery and humility: you would have studied the sciences, set up societies, united your powers,
> and decided to save yourself from the tyranny of the despot” (quoted in Dorraj, From Zarathustra 95).
> 
> Tálibzáda (1834–1911)
> According to Dorraj, the writings of Tálibzáda increased the flow of Western ideas into Persia (Farmayan, “The
> Forces of Modernization” 142). In the past, according to Tálibzáda, Persians had “become Arabized by force,” but
> were “now becoming Europeanized by choice” (quoted in Dorraj, From Zarathustra 96–97). Similarly, Tálibzáda’s
> anti-clerical attitude was in keeping with the views of his contemporary secularists, referring derogatorily to high-
> ranking divines as “God’s attorneys” wallowing in wordliness and hypocrisy (quoted in Bayat, Mysticism and
> Dissent 140, 156–57). As to religion generally, Tálibzáda stated: “It is time for us . . . to learn to distinguish reform
> from innovation” (Bayat, Mysticism and Dissent 156). He considered a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral
> legislature the form of government best suited for Persia (Dorraj, From Zarathustra 95). He favored separation of
> Church and State and advocated a distinctive Persian national identity.
> 
> Mírzá Áqá Khán Kirmání (1853–96)
> Around the turn of the twentieth century, prior to and during the Constitutional Revolution, a number of key
> advocates of constitutional reform were reportedly crypto-Azalí Bábís. To the extent that this may have been true,
> their affinity with Babism was more a nostalgia for the Báb and the early Bábís than an empathy with Bábí ideals
> (Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal 415). Among the professed Azalí Bábí reformers was Kirmání.
> Mírzá Áqá Khán Kirmání was a son-in-law of Subh-i-Azal.15 it was the celebrated Bábí—Hájí Sayyid Javád
> Karbalá’í—who had taught Kirmání the philosophies of Mulla Sadrá, Shaykh Ahmad Ahsá’í, and of the Báb (Bayat,
> “Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani” 65). Yet, according to Amanat, Kirmání’s “later modernist critiques of religion and
> society” were “influenced more by nineteenth-century European trends than by Bábí thought” (Amanat,
> Resurrection and Renewal 415).
> Kirmání “wrote abundantly but without system” (Bayat, Mysticism and Dissent 157). He was not just an
> Azalí—he claimed to be a Muslim, a Bábí, and an agnostic all at the same time. His major objective was to advance
> modern science and the use of reason, incompatible as he felt they were with religious truth. With surprising
> courage, Kirmání’s critique of the dominant Muslim institutions of his day was forthright to the point of being blunt.
> His conception of religious law was progressive—laws should address the exigencies of the day and as such are
> liable to revision as circumstances may require. Though anticlerical, though he scorned Arabs and traditional Islam,
> he would relapse into professions of orthodoxy to avoid at all costs the threat of takfír (charge of unbelief). Thus his
> writings “constitute a hopeless amalgam of the most disparate philosophical and social ideas” (Bayat, Mysticism and
> Dissent 156).
> Sharply critical of the doctrine of nájis (ritual impurity/contamination), Kirmání argued that although the
> Qur’án honors Christians and Jews as “People of the Book,” yet the doctrine of nájis holds them to be unclean. This
> belief has precipitated Persia’s utter isolation from the outer world (Bayat, “Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani” 78). An
> erstwhile collaborator with the likes of Afghání and Malkum Khán, Kirmání made no secret about his Bábí
> sympathies. In condemnation of the bloody massacres of the Bábís, Kirmání exclaimed:
> 
> O people! What is their fault? . . . What is their crime? . . . You believed in Muhammad the Arab,
> they in Mirza Ali Muhammad the Bab. Whatever the former said, the latter also said. One brought the
> Koran, the other the Bayan. If the one’s verse was miraculously revealed in Arabic, the other’s was
> miraculously revealed in Arabic and Persian. What the Jews, Christians and Muslims say, they also say.
> Either all religions are right and correct, then theirs is right and correct; or all religions are wrong and lies,
> then theirs is also wrong and a lie. (Quoted in Bayat, “Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani” 71)
> 
> The Persians are castigated for the participation by all strata of society in torture and murder of the Bábís, carried out
> with an air of festivity and fanatical zeal.
> Kirmání despised Islam and rejected it as an alien religion, the cause of all the cultural ills in Persia.
> Paradoxically, though preaching civil rights and universal reform, his writings were at the same time racist and
> given to irrational diatribes. He hailed the Báb as the redeemer whose destiny it was to liberate Persia, but this was
> not central to his reformist platform (Bayat, Mysticism and Dissent 160–61).
> 
> Persian Secular Reformists: A Summary
> Divergent though these reformers were, yet they were of one accord with respect to their secular ideals. All of them
> shared a constitutional ideal. Ákhundzáda, in one of his essays, appealed to the Shah to liberalize his rule, to support
> the reformers in their struggle against clerical, domination, and to promote secular education. Násiri’d-Dín Sháh did
> in fact appoint new ministers favorable to such reforms. Though Afghání and Malkum carefully couched their
> secular program in religious rhetoric, the three other reformers—Ákhundzáda, Kirmání, and Tálibzáda—were
> forthright in their call for secularization. The secularists wished to see religion adapt itself to new social and cultural
> realities. These intellectuals were able to coalesce and mobilize a social movement, demanding curtailment of
> sacerdotal control over those institutions they wished to reform.
> This is, in brief, the contemporary Persian backdrop before which the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh enacted their
> reforms. Ottoman reforms must likewise be kept in mind, but the Persian reformers are representative enough of the
> tenor of the times.
> 
> The Book of Certitude and Bábí Reform
> The Book of Certitude was revealed at a time when Bahá’u’lláh was committed to the reform of the Bábí
> community. He was not, at that time, bent on the reform of Islam, Persia, or of the world for that matter, as the
> consolidation of the Bábí community was uppermost in his mind at the time, as attested by several autobiographical
> remarks. Practically by default, in the power vacuum created by Azal’s inaccessibility, the need arose for an
> effective Bábí leader. Prompted by Azal’s timorousness and ineffectuality as nominal chief of the Bábís,
> Bahá’u’lláh’s post-exile (1856) role as leader—accepted with some reluctance—appears to have been solicited by
> certain of the Bábís themselves. The growth and expansion of the Bábí movement would scarcely have been
> possible without such leadership. This was, after all a movement missionary in its principles and goals. It had to
> carry on, to promote its own vision of reform, or suffer the fate of increasing marginalization.
> In a sense it was advantageous that there later developed a power struggle between Bahá’u’lláh and Azal—
> each representing opposing reformist paradigms—for it precipitated a crisis in leadership and, from one perspective
> at least, brought about the emergence of that nucleus of believers from which the Bahá’í Faith sprang. A problem
> does arise in trying to reconstruct Bahá’u’lláh’s sense of mission as it developed during the Baghdad period and
> determining at which point that sense of destiny took on clearly messianic overtones. Among several
> autobiographical remarks in The Book of Certitude, Bahá’u’lláh discloses:
> 
> In these days . . . odours of jealousy are diffused. . . . For a number of people who have never inhaled the
> fragrance of justice, have raised the standard of sedition, and have leagued themselves against Us. On every
> side We witness the menace of their spears, and in all directions We recognize the shafts of their arrows.
> (The Book of Certitude 249)
> 
> Although I never exalted myself over any one in any matter, nor sought for authority over any one; I
> associated with every one with the utmost affection, and (was) extremely patient and accessible, and with
> the poor was as the poor, and with the learned and great (I was) perfectly submissive and contented.16
> 
> I swear by God, the one true God! grievous as have been the woes and sufferings which the hand of the
> enemy and the people of the Book inflicted upon Us, yet all these fade into utter nothingness when
> compared with that which hath befallen Us at the hand of those who profess to be Our friends.
> (Bahá’u’lláh, The Book of Certitude 250)
> 
> Perhaps a question that should be asked here concerns the intent of the passage: does Bahá’u’lláh wish to say that
> consolidation efforts within the Bábí community were met with ill-deserved opposition, due to rivalry? We can only
> speculate as to whether or not such machinations had the object of undermining Bahá’u’lláh’s role as de facto leader
> only, or whether there was also a perception of Bahá’u’lláh’s implicit theophanic claims and a negative reaction to
> them.
> 
> Bahá’u’lláh’s Authority as Reformer
> In the early Baghdad period, the fabric of the Bábí community was unravelling, and the need for consolidation was
> acute. The community could scarcely have sustained the pressure of a serious, confrontative messianic bid for
> leadership, nor could the community have easily adjusted to the test of any new doctrine. Such a leadership struggle
> would have undermined the fragile unity of the Bábís. Throughout the remainder of the Baghdad period, from 1856
> to 1863, Bahá’u’lláh’s efforts focused primarily on the reform and consolidation of the Bábí enclave. His declaration
> in 1863 was timely, as this source of fresh charisma became a rallying point for the Bábís. Even so, it precipitated a
> serious split among the Bábís in 1866. However, the assumption by Bahá’u’lláh of an unequivocal status of
> leadership among the Bábís had been in the offing for years prior. The Bábís were generally prepared to accept
> Bahá’u’lláh as leader by virtue of the leadership Bahá’u’lláh had already exercised in steering the Bábí community
> away from its disastrous militarism to a pacifist orientation. Recalling the attempt on the life of the Shah by two
> Bábís on 15 August 1852 and the persecution that plagued Bábís as a consequence, Bahá’u’lláh remarks on his
> resolution, during the Síyáh-Chál incarceration (1852) and ever since, to reorient the Bábís in their aims and
> aspirations:
> 
> Day and night, while confined in that dungeon, We meditated upon the deeds, the condition, mid
> the conduct of the Bábís, wondering what could have led a people so high-minded, so noble, and of such
> intelligence, to perpetrate such an audacious and outrageous act against the person of His Majesty. This
> Wronged One, thereupon, decided to arise, after His release from prison, and undertake, with the utmost
> vigor, the task of regenerating this people.
> One night, in a dream, these exalted words were heard on every side: “Verily, We shall render
> Thee victorious by Thyself and by Thy Pen. Grieve Thou not for that which hath befallen Thee, neither be
> Thou afraid, for Thou art in safety. Ere long will God raise up the treasures of the earth—men who will aid
> Thee through Thyself and through Thy Name, wherewith God hath revived the hearts of such as have
> recognized Him.”
> And when this Wronged One went forth out of His prison, We journeyed, in pursuance of the
> order of His Majesty the Sháh—may God, exalted be He, protect him to ‘lráq, escorted by officers in the
> service of the esteemed and honored governments of Persia and Russia. After Our arrival, We revealed, as
> a copious rain, by the aid of God and His Divine Grace and mercy, Our verses, and sent them to various
> parts of the world. We exhorted all men, and particularly this people, through Our wise counsels and loving
> admonitions, and forbade them to engage in sedition, quarrels, disputes and conflict. As a result of this, and
> by the grace of God, waywardness and folly were changed into piety and understanding, and weapons
> converted into instruments of peace. (Bahá’u’lláh, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf 21–22)
> 
> The interposition of a dream report in this autobiographical narrative is significant. The dream report
> evidently reinforced Bahá’u’lláh’s sense of mission as if assumed the stature of a divine commission. This dream
> legitimation with the consequent claim to having “revealed . . . Our verses” shows that Bahá’u’lláh could speak in
> distinctively theophanic terms while at the same time assume a tone of deference to the Shah. Retrospectively, it is
> clear that Bahá’u’lláh looked upon his leadership role in Iraq in teruts of a God-given mission:
> 
> Upon Our arrival in ‘Iráq, We found the Cause of God sunk in deep apathy and the breeze of
> divine revelation stilled. Most of the believers were faint and dispirited, nay utterly lost and dead. Hence
> there was a second blast on the Trumpet, whereupon the Tongue of Grandeur uttered these blessed words:
> ‘We have sounded the Trumpet for the second time.’ Thus the whole world was quickened through the
> vitalizing breaths of divine revelation and inspiration. (Bahá’u’lláh, Ishráqát in Tablets 131)
> 
> According to this statement, there occurred what is otherwise referred to as the “Second Resurrection.” It was
> unbeknown until after Bahá’u’lláh’s declaration, but I think the point being made here is that the Bábí community
> was in any event benefitting from leadership whose object was consolidation and Bábí reform.
> 
> Specific Bábí Reforms
> In the aftermath of three bloody Bábí defensive battles [Shaykh Tabarsí, Nayríz, and Zanjánj followed by the
> attempt on the life of the Shah (1852), Bahá’u’lláh adopted a quietist stance. His primary concern was for the Bábí
> community, faced with threats of internecine factionalism. Within its ranks, up to twenty-five Bábís entertained
> messianic pretensions in the leadership vacuum caused by Azal’s absence. Bahá’u’lláh’s quietist stance served to
> distance the Bábís from their revolutionary stigma by disavowing militarism altogether. To effect internal
> consolidation, Bahá’u’lláh urged moral reform. The moral consolidation of the Bábí community concentrated on the
> integrity of the individual but also had an impact on the collective Bábí response to State authority.
> Bahá’u’lláh linked moral purity with spiritual sensitivity and was able to use the existing eschatological
> tension among Bábís for this end. This becomes evident in a section of The Book of Certitude, known among
> Bahá’ís as the “Tablet of the True Seeker.” Here, the ability to make sense of the cryptic quranic warnings
> concerning the eschaton is imparted only to the pure in heart, and this purity is conditioned on moral rectitude. Some
> elements of the moral dimension of Bahá’u’lláh’s reformist teachings can be found in The Book of Certitude itself,
> which speaks of ethical preconditions to spiritual perspicuity:
> Inner Purification
> . . . O my brother, when a true seeker determines to take the step of search in the path leading to the
> knowledge of the Ancient of Days, he must, before all else, cleanse and purify his heart, which is the seat
> of the revelation of the inner mysteries of God, from the obscuring dust of all acquired knowledge, and the
> allusions of the embodiments of satanic fancy. (Bahá’u’lláh, The Book of Certitude 192)
> Detachment
> He must purge his breast, which is the sanctuary of the abiding love of the Beloved, of every defilement,
> and sanctify his soul from all that pertaineth to water and clay, from all shadowy and ephemeral
> attachments. He must so cleanse his heart that no remnant of either love or hate may linger therein, lest that
> love blindly incline him to error, or that hate repel him away from the truth. . . . That seeker must at all
> times put his trust in God, must renounce the peoples of the earth, detach himself from the world of dust,
> and cleave unto Him Who is the Lord of Lords. (Bahá’u’lláh, The Book of Certitude 192–93)
> 
> When the channel of the human soul is cleansed of all worldly and impeding attachments, it will
> unfailingly perceive the breath of the Beloved across immeasurable distances, and will, led by its perfume,
> attain and enter the City of Certitude. (Bahá’u’lláh, The Book of Certitude 197)
> 
> Humility
> He must never seek to exalt himself above any one, must wash away from the tablet of his heart every trace
> of pride and vainglory, most cling onto patience and resignation, observe silence, and refrain from idle talk.
> (Bahá’u’lláh, The Book of Certitude 193)
> 
> Proscription against Backbiting
> That seeker should also regard backbiting as grievous error, and keep himself aloof from its dominion,
> inasmuch as backbiting quencheth the light of the heart, and extinguisheth the life of the soul.
> 
> For the tongue is a smouldering fire, and excess of speech a deadly poison. Material fire consumeth the
> body, whereas the fire of the tongue devoureth both heart and soul. The force of the former lasteth but for a
> time, whilst the effects of the latter endure a century. (Bahá’u’lláh, The Book of Certitude 193)
> 
> Personal Piety
> At the dawn of every day he should commune with God, and with all his soul persevere in the quest of his
> Beloved, He should consume every wayward thought with the flame of His loving mention, and, with the
> swiftness of lightning, pass by all else save Him. (Bahá’u’lláh, The Book of Certitude 194)
> 
> Charity
> He should succour the dispossessed, and never withhold his favour from the destitute. (Bahá’u’lláh, The
> Book of Certitude 194)
> 
> Kindness to Animals
> He should show kindness to animals, how much more unto his fellow-man, to him who is endowed with
> the power of utterance. (Bahá’u’lláh, The Book of Certitude 194)
> 
> Martyrdom and Living Self-Sacrifice
> He should not hesitate to offer up his life for his Beloved, nor allow the censure of the people to turn him
> away from the Truth. (Bahá’u’lláh, The Book of Certitude 194)
> 
> Reciprocity
> He should not wish for others that which he doth not wish for himself, nor promise that which he doth not
> fulfil. (Bahá’u’lláh, The Book of Certitude 194)
> 
> Forgiveness
> With all his heart should the seeker avoid fellowship with evil doers, and pray for the remission of their
> sins. He should forgive the sinful, and never despise his low estate, for none knoweth what his own end
> shall be. How often hath a sinner, at the hour of death, attained to the essence of faith, and, quaffing the
> immortal draught, hath taken his flight unto the celestial Concourse. And how often hath a devout believer,
> at the hour of his soul’s ascension, been so changed as to fall into the nethermost fire. (Bahá’u’lláh, The
> Book of Certitude 194–95)
> 
> Historical Factors Favoring Bahá’u’lláh’s Role as Legislator
> Most of these precepts, which here are enunciated more on the order of moral admonitions, were codified eleven
> years later in Bahá’u’lláh’s Kitáb-i-Aqdas as part of the formal Bahá’í moral code. But the ethical precepts in The
> Book of Certitude are not distinctive from the standpoint of Bábí and later Bahá’í self-definition. What will soon
> emerge as the inchoate stage of a post-Islamic reform program was Bahá’u’lláh’s express abrogation of holy war
> (jihád) upon his declaration in 1863. The post-declaration superimposition of Bahá’u’lláh’s charismatic authority
> over that of Muhammad and the legislative prerogative in abrogating the laws of the latter had already been
> exercised by the Báb. Factors contributing to the break from Islam are analyzed by Amanat as follows:
> 
> The extent to which the teachings of the Báb and his disciples offered an alternative to the religion
> of the time can be demonstrated by the following factors. Foremost was the fact that Babism responded to
> the changing sociomoral climate by consciously incorporating the notion of recurring renewal into the body
> of religious doctrine; something that the orthodox Shi‘ite establishment (and the later Islamic reformers of
> all persuasions) tended to reject or ignore. In introducing the theme of progressive revelation, the Báb
> benefited from the dynamics of the Bātinī theory of cyclical manifestations.
> Hence the religion of the Bayān employed the old symbols of Shi‘ism in order to offer a fresh
> answer to an equally old tension within that religion. The earlier currents of Bātinī thought, with very few
> exceptions, rarely exceeded the claim to the individual deputyship of the Hidden Imam. Only in
> Shaykhism, preoccupation with the Imam’s this-worldly whereabouts subjected his existence to a historical
> process that ultimately was to culminate in his Advent.
> The Báb sought the solution to the dichotomy of the Shi‘ite Imamate: the simultaneous presence
> and absence of the Imam, in the outward declaration of Mahdihood and its logical corollary, the Qiyāma.
> This revolutionary step set the Bábís on the road to a complete break from Islam and the creation of a new
> religious dispensation. The mind that conceived this break, and set about to achieve it, though primarily
> religious, shared the modernity of a secular mind as it traced the stagnation of the community not in the
> irreversible fate of its members but in their failure to see the incompatibility of their past religious values
> with the reality of a new era. Before the introduction of Western ideologies would definitively revise the
> ideals of reform, this was the only answer generated in nineteenth-century Shi‘ite Iran which coped with
> the threat of an alien and materially superior culture without resorting to rejectionism or falling prey to
> complacency. (Resurrection and Renewal 406–7)
> 
> The almost counterpointed themes in Bábí theology, which made possible a reformist break from Islam, are
> suggested by Amanat in this paradigm:
> 
> The three themes of progressive revelation, conditional recognition of temporal authority, and this-
> worldliness of human salvation were in contrast to the Islamic precepts of the finality of Islam, the totality
> of the prophetic authority, and the otherworldliness of the Qiyāma. (Resurrection and Renewal 408)
> 
> The theme of progressive revelation effectively overcame the dogma of the finality of revelation vested in
> Muhammad. It was necessary that a counterdoctrine be formulated in Islamic terms so that a new revelatory claim
> could not be rejected out of hand, if the argument for the possibility of future revelations had any power to persuade.
> The quietist Bábí reforms that Bahá’u’lláh legislated and effected were—from the standpoint of prevailing
> Islamic ethical norms—unremarkable yet necessary. These reforms did reflect a traditionally Shí‘í compromise with
> temporal authority, except for the fact that such authority was viewed as conferred by God and not by the Hidden
> Imám, who was no longer hidden. But, beyond Shiism itself, Bahá’u’lláh went so far as to acknowledge that
> temporal power derived its legitimacy from God. In a lengthy tablet to the Shí‘í cleric Áqá Najafí, Bahá’u’lláh
> states:
> 
> Every nation must have a high regard for the position of its sovereign, must be submissive unto
> him, must carry out his behests, and hold fast his authority. The sovereigns of the earth have been and are
> the manifestations of the power, the grandeur and the majesty of God.17
> The emphasis on individual piety was critical to the survival of the community, since, if unchecked, individual Bábís
> could imperil the community. The Bábí uprisings and the assassination attempt on the Shah indelibly stigmatized the
> Bábís as revolutionaries. This stigma, largely justified at first but later contradicted by explicit Bahá’í policy, was to
> plague the Bahá’í community down to the present. Until the end of his life, Bahá’u’lláh took pains to reconcile
> Bahá’ís with their persecutors and jailers.
> With an emphasis on this-worldliness of salvation, moral responsibility was more immediate.
> Eschatological judgment was no longer deferred. Bábís were given an acute sense of eschatological moment, and of
> immediate consequence, which went a long way towards effectively facilitating Bábí reform.
> 
> Bahá’u’lláh and Persian Reform
> Once stability was restored to the Bábí community and the post-1866 Bahá’í diaspora consolidated, thought and
> energy could be turned to the pressing questions of Persian reform. Careful to keep a distance from seditionists, the
> leaders of the Bahá’í community, on principle, supported constitutionalism. This did not, however, entail supporting
> avowed constitutionalists, most of whom advocated change through revolution. This conflicted with Bahá’u’lláh’s
> paradigm for social change, that is, social transformation under duly constituted authority.
> It would appear that Bahá’u’lláh reflected, to a degree, some of the trends of thought that characterized
> constitutionalism and the drive towards governmental reform. With reference to the intellectual orientation common
> to constitutionalists of the period, as identified by Dorraj, Bahá’í reformist policy presents some shared
> characteristics (From Zarathustra 98–99). To a certain extent Bahá’í policy could be expressed in terms of secular
> nationalism, but such policy was not restricted to the particular interests vested in Persian reform.
> Dorraj rightly points out a fairly obvious fact that a “pervasive feature of political thought of the
> constitutional era is its social reformist character” (From Zarathustra 98). The committed reformists and modernists
> of the period were inspired by the example of Western civilization, which was largely taken as a model, either intact
> (by secularists) or Islamicized (by Muslim modernists). Science and rationalism were perceived as tools for
> liberation from forces of ignorance and poverty.
> In any event, Bahá’u’lláh departed considerably from the fashionable anti-imperial rhetoric and supported
> the monarchy both in practice as well as in principle. This outspoken posture, aligning the Bahá’í community as the
> loyal subjects of sovereigns no matter how despotic, often alienated reformists from Bahá’í leaders who had
> experienced the cruel State-sanctioned consequences of unpremeditated Bábí sedition.
> Bahá’u’lláh made public his preference for constitutional monarchy, on the order of the British model. His
> advocacy of constitutional monarchy notwithstanding, Bahá’u’lláh did not have perfect control over the
> promulgation of his reforms by Bahá’ís themselves. Prior to 1893, in the copy of the Lawh-i-Bishárát, which the
> Bahá’ís had sent to Orientalist Baron Rosen, “the Bahá’ís appear to have thought it expedient to suppress,” Browne
> relates, “. . . the 15th and last clause, recommending constitutional government” (Browne, The New History xxv, n.
> 1).
> Another characteristic of intellectual thought in this period of Persian ferment was anti-Arab and anti-
> Islamic sentiment, neither of which does justice to Bahá’u’lláh’s policy profile. As against these sentiments that
> burned within Ákhundzáda and Kirmání, and to a lesser extent Malkum Khán and Tálibzáda, the most that could be
> admitted of Bahá’í policy is that a strong anti-clerical strain can be seen to pervade Bahá’u’lláh’s writings. At the
> same time, it must be conceded that Bahá’u’lláh was supportive of clerical leadership if its viability for progressive
> reform could be exploited. Bahá’í reform expressed itself in terms of an extended Islamic argument, beginning with
> the almost Meccan preoccupation with eschatological self-inventory and stretching across the religious gamut
> through nation-referenced (rather than nationalist) reformist concerns to a Medinan statesmanship bordering on the
> secular.
> 
> The Legislative Break with Islam
> Amanat, summing up the successive stages of Bábí- Bahá’í reform, states:
> 
> In the aftermath of the Babi persecutions of 1852 and the exile to Iraq, Bahā’u’llāh gradually
> transformed the messianic militancy of the Babis into a pacifist, largely nonpolitical current. . . . The social
> message of the new faith spilled over the bounds of the Babi religion and implied in its universalism, a
> greater reconciliation with the needs of the modern secular world. Increasingly in the closing decades of the
> nineteenth century, Bahā’ī social doctrine tended to distance itself from its own Shi‘ite origin and move in
> the direction of modern morality and ethics. The Babi legacy was no doubt crucial in the way the Bahā’īs
> were able to adopt this essentially non-Islamic outlook. (Resurrection and Renewal 414)
> The continuity of Bahá’u’lláh’s thought with Shí‘í, Shaykhí, and Bábí thought is, in many respects,
> thoroughgoing and rich. I have not dwelt on such affinities—doctrinal as well as lawful—for this study has not
> sought to adduce parallels to assess degrees of influence. Of greater moment, in the present writer’s opinion, are
> Bahá’u’lláh’s actual departures from Islam, in the wake of the decisive and irreversible break of the former from the
> latter. Indeed, the first major legislative break from Islam that Bahá’u’lláh effected was his first legislative act as a
> declared Manifestation of God. This was the abrogation of jihád.
> In a recent publication, Heshmat Moayyad has endeavored to “delineate the points of separation between
> Muslim and Bahá’í communities” (“The Historical Interrelationship” 76). Moayyad has singled out the following
> legislative categories (“The Historical Interrelationship” 82–85). 1 have added more. Remarks on each are my own,
> unless indicated otherwise:
> 
> Abrogation of jihad
> Reportedly, the abrogation of jihád was Bahá’u’lláh’s initial act of legislation at the time of his declaration in
> Baghdad in 1863—though in what way this pronouncement was related to his declaration is not known (Taherzadeh,
> Revelation, of Bahá’u’lláh 1:278). A widely circulated and representative statement on the abolition by Bahá’u’lláh
> of holy war is found in his Lawh-i-Bishárát (Tablet of Glad Tidings):
> 
> The first Glad Tidings
> which the Mother Book hath, in this Most Great Revelation, imparted unto all the peoples of the world is
> that the law of holy war hath been blotted out from the Book. Glorified be the All-Merciful, the Lord of
> grace abounding, through Whom the door of heavenly bounty hath been flung open in the face of all that
> are in heaven and on earth. (Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh 21)
> 
> MacEoin has brought together those statements by Bahá’u’lláh that carry forward the traditional Islamic
> distinction between the “Greater Jihád” of the soul’s struggle against the forces of darkness and the “Lesser Jihád”
> being actual warfare itself (MacEoin, “From Babism to Baha’ism” 228). However, MacEoin fails to note the purely
> poetic retention of the teriu so far as Bahá’u’lláh is concerned, for the comparison becomes exclusionary the
> moment holy war has been “blotted out from the Book.” There is no longer a “greater” or “lesser” jihád, only a
> terminologically redefined “true jihád” (MacEoin, “From Babism to Baha’ism” 228). Bahá’u’lláh’s authority to
> effect this and other changes vis-à-vis Islam derived in part from the force of his personal charisma, but what really
> legitimized Bahá’u’lláh’s authority in the eyes of many of his followers was The Book of Certitude itself.
> 
> Abrogation of Slavery
> Though a practice abandoned by modern Islam, slavery was still prevalent in the nineteenth century. The Qur’án
> enjoins believers to treat their slaves well (4:36), though it encourages the freeing of slaves (90:13). Islamic tradition
> and law, however, freely permitted female slaves to be used as concubines, though offspring of these liaisons were
> considered freeborn, enjoying equal rights of inheritance with other children of the master of the house. In Islamic
> history, Egypt was ruled for some 250 years by slave-kings (the Mamluks).18
> In his Tablet to Queen Victoria, Bahá’u’lláh praised the abolition of slavery: “It hath reached us that thou
> hast forbidden the selling of slaves and handmaidens: this is what God hath commanded in this marvellous
> Manifestation. God hath recorded unto thee the reward of this” (Tablet to Queen Victoria, partially translated in
> Browne, Selections 276). In the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, slavery is expressly forbidden:
> 
> It is unlawful for you to buy or sell maid-servants and youths. One creature must not purchase
> another, since this is prohibited in the Tablet of God. Thus was the matter inscribed by the Pen of Justice
> through Grace.
> No one should glory over another. All are slaves to Him. . . . (Bahá’u’lláh, Al- Kitáb al-Aqdas 43)
> 
> Abrogation of the Category of nájis
> I do not know if the reader has ever experienced the refusal of some (but not most) Muslims in the West to shake
> hands with non-Muslims, for the very reason that the latter are considered unclean (nájis). Here, of course, is the
> overt avoidance of contamination—hence the reluctance to engage in the Western form of exchanging greetings. But
> a wide variety of other substances and situations are also considered unclean, Of itself, this is a legitimate part of the
> practice of certain forms of Islam to some extent, but it seems that Bahá’u’lláh saw this as a divisive factor between
> Muslims and non—Muslims. Presumably because nájis reflects a pervasive psychological distance or attitudinal
> barrier in the path of unity, Bahá’u’lláh has done away with this category—and consciousness—of nájis, utterly
> (Universal House of Justice, Synopsis and Codification 48, 2K; Mázandarání, Amr va khalq 3:302).
> 
> Abrogation of mut‘ah (Temporary “Marriage”)
> Moayyad comments that temporary marriage is an institution “which the Shí‘í ‘ulamá relentlessly defend and try to
> uphold” (Moayyad, “The Historical Interrelationship” 84). The Bahá’í Faith has forbidden this practice (Ishráq
> Khávarí, Ganjínih-i hudúd va ahkám 178).
> 
> Abrogation of taqiyya
> Dissimulation or outward recantation of one’s faith was permitted in life-threatening situations in Shí‘í Islam ever
> since al Mansúr’s campaign against the ‘Alids and their supporters at the time of the Sixth Imám, Ja‘far Sádiq (d.
> 148/ 765) (Momen, Shi’i Islam 39). In Shí‘í practice, according to Rahman, “it became a cardinal principle to
> dissimulate belief, not only under direct and express danger to life but in a generally hostile environment. Further,
> such dissimulation is not merely allowed, it is an obligatory duty of a fundamental order” (Rahrnan, Islam 172; cited
> by Moayyad, “The Historical Interrelationship” 84–85).
> Bahá’u’lláh enjoined absolute truthfulness under all circumstances. A corollary to this requirement received
> an interesting comment by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, who stated that to speak the truth, even if it be blasphemy, is superior to
> dissimulation (Mázandarání, Amr va khalq 3:148–49).
> 
> Abrogation of the Sacerdotal Order
> There is no provision for a priesthood in Bahá’í law. Bahá’u’lláh has expressly abolished it (Universal House of
> Justice, Synopsis 47).
> 
> Abrogation of irtidád (Apostasy)
> On this matter, Moayyad states: “Freedom of religion renders the concept of apostasy, irtidád, incomprehensible and
> meaningless to Bahá’ís, a concept that legitimizes the execution of so many blameless individuals even today” (“The
> Historical Interrelationship” 84). The pursuit of world order characterizes a major social thrust in Bahá’u’lláh’s
> program of reform. The global reform Bahá’u’lláh had envisioned is largely up to world leaders to execute. ‘The
> fortunes of Islam are neither central to this vision, nor even of nominal concern. Bahá’u’lláh’s reforms are definitely
> post-Islamic. Indeed, according to Islamicist Bürgel, the only Islamic parallel to Bahá’u’lláh’s reforms are to be
> found in the Moghul emperor Akbar the Great:
> 
> As for Islam, I only emphasize one final point that is of vital importance for the adherents of the
> Bahá’í Faith. Islamic law inflicts capital punishment on those who fall away from Islam and thereby
> commit the sin of apostasy (irtidád). . . .
> Thus, we see that Islam as a legal system, notwithstanding a certain tendency to tolerance, did not
> transcend those borderlines . . . between believers and non-believers, religion and heresy, dín and kufr,
> which place the nonbeliever into a status of non-person or un-person who has the choice between either
> accepting your religion or being killed in the name of your God. This was and is the legal position of Islam,
> although it has been mitigated in the majority of Islamic countries by the introduction of modern
> constitutions. However, Islamic law has been or is being reinstituted in a number of Islamic countries. A
> draft for an Islamic constitution recently elaborated by al-Azhar University contains a paragraph on
> apostasy that calls for capital punishment. . . . Nevertheless, the aforementioned borderline has been
> transcended in an Islamic movement of the highest ethical impact—Islamic mysticism. . . .
> However, these tendencies remained more or less private. The only official breakthrough, the only
> large-scale historical self-transcendence of Islam happened under the Moghul emperor Akbar the Great in
> the second half of the sixteenth century. Akbar installed a monotheistic religion (dín-i iláhí); decreed a
> general peace (sulh-i kull) between the various believers, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Zoroastrians;
> annulled the taxes for non Muslims; and built a house of worship (‘ibádat kháne) where learned men of all
> religions assembled to discuss theological issues. These measures may have had political reasons as well,
> but they primarily sprang from true religious sentiments. . . .
> It seems to me that Akbar’s experiment is a sort of precursor of what Bahá’u’lláh intended with
> his idea of general peace. (Burgel, “The Bahá’í Attitude” 20–21)
> 
> To be fair, there is no single “Islamic” position on many important issues. Regarding apostasy, Cole points
> out, “Lots of Islamic liberals reject the strict clerical ideas on irtidád, including, e.g., past Pakistani supreme court
> justices” (Personal communication, 9 August 1991).
> The Bahá’í break from Islam underwent conceptual and then legislative stages. This distancing from Islam
> was reflected increasingly in the consciousness of the believers. A Bahá’í today looks upon Islam much as a
> Christian looks upon the so-called Old Testament. This parallel is both reinforced and weakened by the fact that the
> Qur’án forms no part of Bahá’í scripture. Though the writings of the Báb do form part of the voluminous corpus of
> Bahá’í holy writ, the doctrinal authority of those writings is relatively weak. To a certain extent, some of the laws of
> the Báb have retained their authority only because of Bahá’u’lláh’s ratification or adoption of important Bábí
> carryovers. These carryovers represent what MacEoin has termed “conflation” of the Bábí and Bahá’í religions
> (MacEoin, “From Babism to Baha’ism” 238–43). Among those elements of the Bahá’í Faith that are not reducible to
> Bábí thought and which have only limited parallel in nineteenth-century Islamic modernist reforms are the world
> reforms both advocated and legislated by Bahá’u’lláh.
> 
> Bahá’u’lláh as “World Reformer”
> The Islamic background of the Bahá’í Faith largely accounts for much of the tenor of Bahá’í thought but does not
> wholly explain its non-Islamic content and worldview. This interplay of Islamic and non-Islamic elements is
> difficult to sort out, but the result of this ideological transformation was, in any event, the emergence of an
> independent world religion. Scholarship has naturally come to identify the obvious Islamic components of Bahá’í
> thought, but scholarship has yet to describe adequately the historical and religions metamorphosis of Bahá’í
> ideology from its ideological chrysalis. Browne has tried to sort out the implications of this interplay of Islamic and
> non-Islamic elements in the following observation:
> 
> At the present day, therefore, the vast majority of Bábís are Bahá’ís, whose doctrines, sentiments,
> and ideals are already far removed from those of the primitive Bábís or modern Ezelís.
> No sooner was Behá [Bahá’u’lláh] firmly established in his authority than he began to make free
> use of the privilege accorded hy the Báb to “Him whom God shall manifest” to abrogate, change, cancel,
> and develop the earlier doctrines, His chief aim seems to have been to introduce a more settled order, to
> discourage speculation, to direct the attention of his followers to practical reforms pursued in a prurient and
> unobtrusive fashion, to exalt ethics at the expense of metaphysics, to check mysticism, to conciliate
> existing authorities, including even the Sháh of Persia, the Nero of the Bábí faith, to abolish useless,
> unpractical, and irksome regulations and restrictions, and, in general, to adapt the religion at the head of
> which he now found himself to the ordinary exigencies of life, and to render it more capable of becoming,
> what he intended to make it, a universal system suitable to all mankind.
> A remembrance of all the wrongs which he and his co-religionists had suffered at the hands of the
> Musulmáns further caused him gradually but steadily to eliminate the tinge of Muhammadan, and more
> especially of Shi‘ite, thought which the Bábí doctrine still maintained, while ever seeking a better
> understanding with the Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians, with all of whom he recommended his followers
> consort on friendly terms. (Browne, The New History xxv)
> 
> MacEoin has brought together a number of important texts for reconstructing the nature of Bahá’u’lláh’s
> reforms within the Bábí community (“Babism to Baha’ism” 221–29). But the picture MacEoin gives of
> Bahá’u’lláh’s religious convictions is reductionist in the extreme. His analyses fail to detect any originality on
> Bahá’u’lláh’s part, such that the latter’s program of world reform is less than the sum of its parts. We are asked to
> believe that Bahá’u’lláh was everywhere influenced by Sufis, by Christian missionaries in Adrianople, and so on,
> such that ultimately, in MacEoin’s view:
> 
> Already strongly influenced by Christian ideas from an early period, and having been in contact
> with European missionaries in Edirne, he [Bahá’u’lláh] seems to have come increasingly under the spell of
> western concepts then current in the Ottoman empire. His later writings, particularly those composed in
> Acre, show a growing concern with themes such as constitutional government, world peace, disarmament,
> collective security, a world legislature, an international language and script, free association between
> members of different religions and races, and so on—ideas which he grafted rather awkwardly onto
> existing Islamic theories, in common with a number of reformers of his period. (“Babism to Baha’ism”
> 227)
> From this kind of analysis, Bahá’u’lláh, as a thinker and reformer, dissolves into a matrix of successive and
> rather passive influences. The dynamic of Bahá’u’lláh as a charismatic figure doubtless inspires Bahá’ís from
> Muslim as well as other backgrounds, who then accept his program for a new world order. But the vision itself has
> its own power to inspire. For whatever reasons, Bahá’u’lláh’s reforms persisted, while those of his contemporaries
> exerted limited degrees of local or regional influence within the Islamic world, but not outside of it. Bahá’u’lláh
> inspired a reformist vision that none of the putative influences on Bahá’u’lláh were capable of producing.
> The problem of constructing a psychohistory apart, I think it is a patent “Orientalist” assumption to
> interpret any contact with the Occident by Orientals as always resulting in the influence of the latter by the former.
> In many cases, perhaps in most, this may be so. There is also the possibility that Bahá’u’lláh could have been so
> influenced, but to assert is not to prove. The burden of proof rests with MacEoin that Bahá’u’lláh was spellbound by
> the West and that this “Westoxication” led to his reformist efforts.19
> It is interesting to note that Bahá’u’lláh sought to reverse the direction of influence, by addressing epistles
> (individual and collective)—in a rather forceful, theophanic voice—to the reigning potentates of his day, in Europe
> and West Asia. Bahá’í author George Townshend makes an interesting observation that must have enjoyed the
> implicit editorial endorsement of Shoghi Effendi: “Bahá’u’lláh from the beginning seems to have realized the
> special capacity of the progressive and enterprising West. He took the most vigorous steps possible to bring the
> Truth of the Age to the knowledge of the West and its leaders” (Introduction, God Passes By vi). If this observation
> is even partially true, it is a penetrating analysis into the breadth of Bahá’u’lláh’s reformist horizon, which overleapt
> Islamic boundaries. Bahá’u’lláh’s global reformist agenda surpasses the Islamic mindset in scope and may, from a
> certain point of view, represent the sacralization of typically secular concerns. Some of these reforms may be
> illustratively described as follows.
> 
> The Critique of Civilization and the Prophecy on Nuclear Weapons
> Beyond his progressivist theophanology. Bahá’u’lláh formulated a theory of civilization. The Book of Certitude had
> served to consolidate Bahá’u’lláh’s spiritual authority in the missionary process. The expression of this divine
> prerogative is worked into the language of practically every major act of legislation. Typical of this kind of reformist
> articulation predicated on divine authority is the passage below, which sets the tone for Bahá’u’lláh’s laws:
> 
> The word of God which the Supreme Pen bath recorded on the ninth leaf of the Most Exalted
> Paradise is this: In all matters moderation is desirable. If a thing is carried to excess, it will prove a source
> of evil. Consider the civilization of the West, how it hath agitated and alarmed the peoples of the world. An
> infernal engine hath been devised, and hath proved so cruel a weapon of destruction that its like none hath
> ever witnessed or heard. The purging of such deeply-rooted and overwhelming corruptions cannot be
> effected unless the peoples of the world unite in pursuit ot one common aim and embrace one universal
> faith. Incline your ears unto the Call of this Wronged One and adhere firmly to the Lesser Peace.
> Strange and astonishing things exist in the earth but they are hidden from the minds and the
> understanding of men. These things are capable of changing the whole atmosphere of the earth and their
> contamination would prove lethal. (Bahá’u’lláh, Tablets 69)
> 
> Bahá’ís detect in these words a chilling foreboding of the invention of nuclear weapons. On ideological
> grounds, the worldview advanced here goes beyond a sense of utilitarian or fraternal commonality. The structural
> solution to which Bahá’u’lláh refers envisions a remapping of religious boundaries (“one universal faith”) and
> consolidation of international efforts in pursuance of some kind of global agenda (“pursuit of one common aim”).
> There is a conflation here between what Bahá’u’lláh terms the “Lesser Peace” (or, the “Great Peace”) and his
> utopian vision of a global spiritual culture and international political order (elsewhere called the “Most Great
> Peace”). In other writings on the subject of the Great Peace, Bahá’u’lláh promotes a conscious movement towards
> transnational and interreligious cooperation. This process, according to the developmental stages of world
> transformation Bahá’u’lláh envisions, will eventually lead into a federation of nations, the constitutional principles
> of which will in some form reflect the Bahá’í reformist agenda. The source of spiritual authority calling the world to
> a new order is Bahá’u’lláh’s revelation, expressed in this particular passage as a divine inscription upon “the ninth
> leaf of the Most Exalted Paradise.”
> Bahá’u’lláh’s critique of the West is not atypical of Islam itself but is atypical of nineteenth-century Islamic
> modernism, when “Westoxication” rendered Western ideas intellectually fashionable for a certain period of time.
> The much-vaunted scientific achievements of the West proved no guarantor of moral progress, as the persecution of
> Jews in Europe attests:
> At present the light of reconciliation is dimmed in most countries and its radiance extinguished
> while the fire of strife and disorder hath been kindled and is blazing fiercely. Two great powers who regard
> themselves as the founders and leaders of civilization and the framers of constitutions have risen up against
> the followers of the Faith associated with Him Who conversed with God [Moses]. (Bahá’u’lláh, Tablets
> 170)
> Here, in Bahá’u’lláh’s advocacy for human rights for Jewish minorities, we see the same moral critique of
> Europe on the basis of its anti-Jewish pogroms. Another critique, which may or may not have had Europe
> specifically in mind, was expressed as a general principle on the question of freedom. The Bahá’í writings support
> the ideals of liberty, but not libertinism. The extreme form of liberty is anarchy, which society must keep in check.
> The principle of the surrender of a measure of personal freedom for the sake of the common weal informs Bahá’í
> law as well. On the dangers of unbridled exercise of personal freedom, Bahá’u’lláh has written:
> 
> Consider the pettiness of men’s minds. They ask for that which injureth them, and cast away the thing that
> profiteth them. . . . We find some men desiring liberty [hurriya], and priding themselves therein. Such men
> are in the depths of ignorance.
> Liberty must, in the end, lead to sedition, whose flames none can quench. Thus warneth you He
> Who is the Reckoner, the All-Knowing. Know ye that the embodiment of liberty and its symbol is the
> animal. That which beseemeth man is submission unto such restraints as will protect him from his own
> ignorance. . . .
> Liberty causeth man to overstep the bounds of propriety, and to infringe on the dignity of his
> station. . . .
> Say: True liberty consisteth in man’s submission unto My commandments, little as ye know it.
> Were men to observe that which We have sent down unto them from the Heaven of Revelation, they
> would, of a certainty, attain unto perfect liberty.20
> 
> Cole sees in this passage an oblique critique of French liberté, in all its connotations of libertinism (Cole,
> “Iranian Millenarianism” 15). Islamicists Goldziher, Browne, and others had grossly misinterpreted this passage. In
> other writings, Bahá’u’lláh clearly approves of political liberty in the context of democracy.
> At the level of global reform, Bahá’u’lláh is not specifically concerned with the rehabilitation of the
> fortunes of Islam. There is no harking back to lost glory, no appeal to quranic foreshadowings of modern times. The
> title of influence turns in Bahá’u’lláh’s efforts to work outside the pale of Islam. The West becomes the new mission
> field, the grand social experiment. What is Bahá’u’lláh’s reformist message in this context? First of all, the
> prophetological content of The Book of Certitude remains intact and is reasserted in various ways in virtually every
> major legislative act, each articulated with Bahá’u’lláh’s signature of eschatological authority. Moreover, since
> Bahá’u’lláh devotes a good part of Part One to New Testament apocalyptic, The Book of Certitude already had the
> potential for a partial appeal to a Western audience. It did in fact make some inroads in the spiritual culture of turn-
> of-the-century North America, when popular religiosity expressed a thirst for non-normative, occult, and Eastern
> forms of spirituality. The first mention of Bahá’u’lláh in North America occurred in the historic 1893 World
> Parliament of Religions in Chicago.
> In principle, the Bahá’í kerygma was strong on social justice. This derives from Bahá’u’lláh’s concern for
> justice, as expressed in The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, a collection of ethical aphorisms revealed in the Baghdad
> period. Rather than looking culturally inward, Bahá’u’lláh directed his efforts towards the development of an
> international order. It was not enough for Islam to “catch up” with the West, nor for the West to spiritualize itself
> through the East. There was a level of interaction that should govern and restrain the behavior of nations. One might
> say that Bahá’u’lláh anticipated the need for world order through the normalization of international relations and its
> regulation under international law. The interiorization of legislated peace—peace within the human heart—would
> arise from personal integrity, widened by the inculcation of global-mindedness. The consciousness of the oneness of
> humankind forms the bedrock of Bahá’í reformist agenda. The structural dynamic of the realization of peace entails
> a certain degree of relinquishing national sovereignties in support of world government.
> 
> Global Disarmament and Collective Security
> Bahá’u’lláh’s principle of collective security has quranic precedent (Cole, personal communication, 9 Aug. 1991),
> yet its internationalist formulation represents a transformation of that principle. I am not aware of any contemporary
> Islamic reformer—or at least of any Persian reformer—who had advocated something similar to the disarmament
> strategy proposed by Bahá’u’lláh below:
> The Great Being, wishing to reveal the prerequisites of the peace and tranquillity of the world and
> the advancement of its peoples, hath written: The time must come when the imperative necessity for the
> holding of a vast, an all-embracing assemblage of men will be universally realized. The rulers and kings of
> the earth must needs attend it, and, participating in its deliberations, must consider such ways and means as
> will lay the foundations of the world’s Great Peace amongst men. Such a peace demandeth that the Great
> Powers should resolve, for the sake of the tranquillity of the peoples of the earth, to be fully reconciled
> among themselves. Should any king take up arms against another, all should unitedly arise and prevent
> him. If this be done, the nations of the world will no longer require any armaments, except for the purpose
> of preserving the security of their realms and of maintaining internal order within their territories. This will
> ensure the peace and composure of every people, government and nation. We fain would hope that the
> kings and rulers of the earth, the mirrors of the gracious and almighty name of God, may attain unto this
> station, and shield mankind from the onslaught of tyranny. (Bahá’u’lláh, Tablets 165)
> 
> That such a teaching was articulated within a religious rather than secular context is significant. The historical
> context was Islamic. Many of Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings are best understood within that context. Context is not
> content, and much of the content of Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings represents an originality of emphasis, if not of intrinsic
> religious vision and legislation.
> 
> Universal Language
> One such move towards increased international conciliation involves an important matter of practicality:
> communication. In his last major work, the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf (1890), Bahá’u’lláh recounts an episode in
> his personal life that illustrates his thinking on the thorny social problem of linguistic dissonance:
> 
> One day, while in Constantinople, Kamál Páshá visited this Wronged One. Our conversation
> turned upon topics profitable unto man. He said that he had learned several languages. In reply We
> observed: “You have wasted your life. It beseemeth you and the other officials of the Government to
> convene a gathering and choose one of the divers languages, and likewise one of the existing scripts, or else
> to create a new language and a new script to be taught children in schools throughout the world. They
> would, in this way, be acquiring only two languages, one their own native tongue, the other the language in
> which all the peoples of the world would converse. Were men to take fast hold on that which hath been
> mentioned, the whole earth would come to be regarded as one country, and the people would be relieved
> and freed from the necessity of acquiring and teaching different languages.” When in Our presence, he
> acquiesced, and even evinced great joy and complete satisfaction. We then told him to lay this matter
> before the officials and ministers of the Government, in order that it might be put into effect throughout the
> different countries. However, although he often returned to see Us after this, he never again referred to this
> subject, although that which had been suggested is conducive to the concord and the unity of the peoples of
> the world. (Epistle 137–38)
> 
> According to this self-disclosure, Bahá’u’lláh’s thinking on global reform commenced no later than the
> Constantinople period (AH 1280/AD 1863). Considering Bahá’u’lláh’s focus on Bábí reform just months earlier, the
> transition from that limited purview to a global reformist context is rather sudden. True, the vocation of an Islamic
> Mahdist figure was clearly to “fill the earth with justice and equity,” but the thinking that must have preceded
> Bahá’u’lláh’s reformist objectives—which were already crystallizing in 1863—had to reach back prior to this time.
> Even a year or two earlier is enough to synchronize the formative period of Bahá’u’lláh’s reformist thinking with all
> of the attendant eschatological presuppositions as developed in The Book of Certitude.
> One natural, even predictable, venue of reform for Bahá’u’lláh to have considered was Persia. Bahá’u’lláh
> never really abandoned his hopes for Persia and was at sundry junctures in his writings declaratively partial to that
> homeland. He expressed the hope that Persia might take an interest in certain of his reforms, the provenance of
> which was inconsequential compared with the greater good. He wrote:
> 
> We fain would hope that the Persian Government will adopt it [universal language] and carry it
> out. At present, a new language and a new script have been devised, if thou desirest, We will communicate
> them to thee. Our purpose is that all men may cleave unto that which will reduce unnecessary labor and
> exertion, so that their days may be befittingly spent and ended.
> . . . O Shayikh! Seek thou the shore of the Most Great Ocean, and enter, then, the Crimson Ark
> which God hath ordained in the Qayyúm-i-Asmá for the people of Bahá.21 Verily, it passeth over land and
> sea. He that entereth therein is saved, and he that turneth aside perisheth. Shouldst thou enter therein and
> attain unto it, set thy face towards the Kaaba of God, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting, and say: “O my
> God! I beseech Thee by Thy most glorious light, and all Thy lights are verily glorious.” Thereupon, will the
> doors of the Kingdom be flung wide before thy face, and thou wilt behold what eyes have never beheld,
> and hear what ears have never heard. (Epistle 138–40)
> 
> As the reader can see, the exhortation towards adopting an international language is far from secular. The
> soteriological exclamation immediately following the topic of language reform contextualizes the teaching as a
> religions one and forms part of the consciousness of Bahá’í “salvation.” At one time Bahá’u’lláh had expressed his
> personal preference for Arabic as a universal language.22 But the particular reference in the above passage to a
> language and script that Bahá’u’lláh had in his possession is one of the historical mysteries of Bahá’í history. This
> script and, presumably, an invented language, have both been lost. The offer to present this language was one of
> many unrequited and sometimes thwarted gestures on Bahá’u’lláh’s part. It was doubtful, anyway, that the very
> regimes (the collusion of Persian and Ottoman) responsible for Bahá’u’lláh’s imprisonment and exile of nearly forty
> years’ duration would have responded to and acted upon the reforms of one of their own prisoners.
> The exhortation immediately following the proposal for language reform is eschatologically charged in
> soteriological terms. Throughout all his post-Baghdad writings, Bahá’u’lláh sustains this association: exhortation
> followed by authority proclamations couched in eschatological imagery. Emphasis on one universal language is a
> recurring theme in Bahá’u’lláh’s reformist platform. Once again, I believe this is not seen in contemporary pan-
> Arabism, and the very nature of this particular reform agenda distances it typologically from even Islamic
> secularism:
> 
> Likewise He [the Great Being] saith: Among the things which are conducive to unity and concord
> and will cause the whole earth to be regarded as one country is that the divers languages be reduced to one
> language and in like manner the scripts used in the world be confined to a single script. It is incumbent
> upon all nations to appoint some men of understanding and erudition to convene a gathering and through
> joint consultation choose one language from among the varied existing languages, or create a new one, to
> be taught to the children in all the schools of the world.
> The day is approaching when all the peoples of the world will have adopted one universal
> language and one common script. (Bahá’u’lláh, Tablets 165–66)
> 
> Bahá’u’lláh discusses a wide range of global concerns in his writings. One of those concerns touches on
> one of the potential solutions to world hunger: agrarian reform. This attention to practical reform is also a
> characteristic of his reformist pursuits.
> 
> Agrarian Reform
> There are some indications that Bahá’u’lláh had looked to the West in terms of its applied technology. The look
> backward to Persia occurs with some frequency in Bahá’u’lláh’s writings, as if his world reforms should have first
> been tried there. This kind of attention to Persia is Persian reformism, but not restricted to it nor defined by it. One
> example of this is Bahá’u’lláh’s c6ncern with agriculture:
> 
> Fifth: Special regard must be paid to agriculture. Although it hath been mentioned in the fifth place,
> unquestionably it precedeth the others. Agriculture is highly developed in foreign lands, however in Persia
> it hath so far been grievously neglected. It is hoped that His Majesty the Sháh—may God assist him by His
> grace—will turn his attention to this vital and important matter. (Bahá’u’lláh, Tablets 90)
> 
> The advanced agricultural technology in foreign lands referred to here has the West in mind, held up as a
> technological and policy model for Persia to emulate. Cole sees this passage in the context of the Tobacco Revolt of
> 1890–1892, in which the Shah granted a Tobacco concession to a British company and thereby incited a popular
> revolt. Alluding to it, Bahá’u’lláh, by the very fact of his advice, admonishes the Shah for having failed to develop
> Persian agriculture (Cole, “Iranian Millenarianism” 18). As the particular events that led Bahá’u’lláh to address the
> Shah directly on this issue recede into history, the primacy given to agrarian reform remains a latent principle
> awaiting its application under presumed future conditions of Bahá’í influenced civic and State policy.
> Given the global scope of the “Tablet of the World,” here the question of Persian reform, though singled out with a
> specific counsel to the Shah, is subsumed under the context of world reform. Cole observes that Bahá’u’lláh
> “demonstrates a strong Iranian patriotism, despite his internationalist sentiments” and that Bahá’u’lláh “lamented the
> loss of Iran’s ancient position as a world center of knowledge and polite culture, and its descent into a self-
> destructive fractiousness” (Cole, “Iranian Millenarianism” 17). Perhaps the fact that his efforts at Persian reform met
> with frustration further motivated Bahá’u’lláh to turn his reformist vision to wider horizons. He expresses regret
> over Persia’s lost opportunity:
> 
> If these obstructing veils had not intervened Persia would, in some two years, have been subdued
> through the power of utterance, the position of both the government and the people would have been raised
> and the Supreme Goal, unveiled and unconcealed, would have appeared in the plenitude of glory. In short,
> sometimes in explicit language, at other times by allusion, We said whatever had to be said. Thus, once
> Persia had been rehabilitated, the sweet savours of the Word of God would have wafted over all countries,
> inasmuch as that which hath streamed forth from the Most Exalted Pen is conducive to the glory, the
> advancement and education of all the peoples and kindreds of the earth. Indeed it is the sovereign remedy
> for every disease, could they but comprehend and perceive it. (Bahá’u’lláh, Tablets 73)
> 
> We have no indications as to what conditions existed in Persia that, in Bahá’u’lláh’s estimation, could have had so
> decisive a potential influence over the West and the rest of the world. The reference to “two years” is also
> unexplained. We can conclude from this passage only that Bahá’u’lláh was convinced of the efficacy as well as of
> the substance of his reforms, prosecuted under favorable circumstances.
> In this section, an attempt has been made to present some of the reforms Bahá’u’lláh proposed for global
> reform. Significant as these teachings are within the Bahá’í worldview, they represent only a few of Bahá’u’lláh’s
> acts of legislation, which, perforce, ranged from matters of personal piety to international relations. Sustained
> throughout his legislative activity was the reiteration of spiritual authority, expressed in the very eschatological
> terms with which The Book of Certitude was concerned. The authority of the World Reformer, as articulated in The
> Book of Certitude, remained an expressive constant throughout Bahá’u’lláh’s subsequent legislative ministry.
> 
> A Synopsis of Bahá’í Reformist Vision
> In the interests of methodological control, this article has, for the most part, restricted its use of Bahá’í interpretive
> texts in an effort to present the writings of Bahá’u’lláh as the primary source for Bahá’í thought. Cole characterizes
> Bahá’u’lláh’s thought as representing a “precocious advocacy of democracy” bound up with his “millenarian ideas”
> (Cole, “Iranian Millenarianism” 3). The ideological trajectory of Bahá’u’lláh’s reformist vision was developed
> further and systematized through the official interpretive writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi and received
> further elaboration through enactments and policy statements by the Universal House of Justice. To give the reader a
> fair impression of how Bahá’u’lláh’s various laws and injunctions have been crystallized into a definitive vision of a
> new world order, which Bahá’ís in their own way endeavor to promote, the following passage from Shoghi Effendi
> is perhaps the most well known and representative:
> 
> The unity of the human race, as envisaged by Bahá’u’lláh, implies the establishment of a world
> commonwealth in which all nations, races, creeds and classes are closely and permanently united, and in
> which the autonomy of its state members and the personal freedom and initiative of the individuals that
> compose them are definitely and completely safeguarded. This commonwealth must, as far as we can
> visualize it, consist of a world legislature, whose members will, as the trustees of the whole of mankind,
> ultimately control the entire resources of all the component nations, and will enact such laws as shall be
> required to regulate the life, satisfy the needs and adjust the relationslups of all races and peoples. A world
> executive, backed by an international Force, will carry out the decisions arrived at, and apply the laws
> enacted by, this world legislature, and will safeguard the organic unity of the whole commonwealth. A
> world tribunal will adjudicate and deliver its compulsory and final verdict in all and any disputes that may
> arise between the various elements constituting this universal system. A mechanism of world
> intercommunication will be devised, embracing the whole planet, freed from national hindrances and
> restrictions, and functioning with marvellous swiftness and perfect regularity. A world metropolis will act
> as the nerve center of a world civilization, the focus towards which the unifying forces of life will converge
> and from which its energizing influences will radiate. A world language will either be invented or chosen
> from among the existing languages and will be taught in the schools of all the federated nations as an
> auxiliary to their mother tongue. A world script, a world literature, a uniform and universal system of
> currency, of weights and measures, will simplify and facilitate intercourse and understanding among the
> nations and races of mankind. In such a world society, science and religion, the two most potent forces in
> human life, will be reconciled, will cooperate, and will harmoniously develop. The press will, under such a
> system, while giving full scope to the expression of the diversified views and convictions of mankind,
> cease to be mischievously manipulated by vested interests, whether private or public, and will be liberated
> from the influence of contending governments and peoples. The economic resources of the world will be
> organized, its sources of raw materials will be tapped and fully utilized, its markets will be coordinated and
> developed, and the distribution of its products will be equitably regulated.
> National rivalries, hatreds, and intrigues will cease, and racial animosity and prejudice will he
> replaced by racial amity, understanding and cooperation. The causes of religious strife will be permanently
> removed, economic barriers and restrictions will be completely abolished, and the inordinate distinction
> between classes will be obliterated. Destitution on the one hand, and gross accumulation of ownership on
> the other, will disappear. The enormous energy dissipated and wasted on war, whether economic or
> political, will be consecrated to such ends as will extend the range of human inventions and technical
> development, to the increase of the productivity of mankind, to the extermination of disease, to the
> extension of scientific research, to the raising of the standard of physical health, to the sharpening and
> refinement of the human brain, to the exploitation of the unused and unsuspected resources of the planet, to
> the prolongation of human life, and to the furtherance of any other agency that can stimulate the
> intellectual, the moral, and spiritual life of the entire human race.
> A world federal system, ruling the whole earth and exercising unchallengeable authority over its
> unimaginably vast resources, blending and embodying the ideals of both the East and the West, liberated
> from the curse of war and its miseries, and bent on the exploitation of all the available sources of energy on
> the surface of the planet, a system in which Force is made the servant of Justice, whose life is sustained by
> its universal recognition of one God and by its allegiance to one common Revelation—such is the goal
> towards which humanity, impelled by the unifying forces of life, is moving. (World Order of Bahá’u’lláh
> 203–4)
> 
> Bahá’u’lláh was doubtless the inspiration for this vision of a future golden age. Most, if not all, of the ideas
> touching on international relations in the passage above are traceable to Bahá’u’lláh. Were this point to be
> challenged, it would prove an interesting verificatory exercise. In any event, we can definitely say that Shoghi
> Effendi’s interpretations draw out many of the implications of Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings and, in the final analysis, are
> authoritative for Bahá’ís. This fact is significant, in that it commits the Bahá’í Faith to the pursuit of these
> infrastructures of a new world order.
> 
> Conclusion
> In this article, The Book of Certitude has been contextualized in three dimensions: (1) historically, within Bábí and
> Bahá’í history; (2) intellectually, within the rich and multiform Islamic heritage of figurative and symbolic exegesis
> of the Qur’án; and (3) ideologically, within a reformist context in modern Islam. Though text-centered, this article
> has not been ideologically reductionist in addressing context. Questions of genetic influence have been left open
> ended.
> The study of The Book of Certitude is fundamental to an understanding of the rise of the Bahá’í Faith. An
> introduction of this significant text to scholarship was the immediate academic need this study tried to fulfill. As The
> Book of Certitude is used very often in the Bahá’í conversion process, the work continues to produce meaning from
> the Qur’án as well as the New Testament. And from its exegetical techniques and argumentation, meaning is
> produced by Bahá’ís from non-Islamic and even non-Western scriptures in the missionary process. Since the Qur’án,
> as a scriptural authority, is alien to the non-Islamic and so-called primitive forms of spirituality from which the
> majority of Bahá’í converts the world over have recently come, the exegetical principles in The Book of Certitude
> are now adapted and universalized in non-Islamic contexts.
> Islamic thought, of course, informs The Book of Certitude and suffuses it. Yet its ideological departures
> from Islamic orthodoxy are decisive and irreversible. The text’s discontinuities with Islam probably explain more
> about what is intrinsic to the Bahá’í Faith than do the ideological carryovers.
> As an exegete, Bahá’u’lláh clearly demonstrates the acquisitive nature of the Islamic exegetical tradition.
> Of the distinct exegetical techniques employed, The Book of Certitude was found to have drawn most heavily on,
> analogy, on recourse to Imámí anecdotal wisdom tradition, and on the use of interscriptural exegesis. Use of the first
> two techniques may be an indicator as to procedural devices relied on most in allegorical exegesis of the Qur’án.
> Bahá’u’lláh uses such devices to produce new meaning, moving text from traditionally received interpretations to on
> ginativel y “realized” meaning.
> Stylistically, Bahá’u’lláh frequently employs genitive metaphors in the course of his writing. In the
> exordium of The Book of Certitude, the epitome of salvation history is presented with abundant use of metaphor,
> before overt exegesis even begins. Bahá’u’lláh sustains and reinforces his symbolic exegeses through stylistic
> recourse to the very same kind of “metaphorical” genitive (idáfa-yi isti‘árí).
> There has also been the question as to Bahá’u’lláh’s own sense of mission and its stages of development.
> On this depends much of the reading of The Book of Certitude, its authorial tenor and audience reception, why it
> emerged as the most important doctrinal text of the Bahá’í Faith, when it was, in point of fact, originally a Bábí
> apology.
> Associative meanings are important to bring out in this kind of study, for the text had an impact on the
> convert beyond considerations of prophetic veracity. Once faith is vested in God through Bahá’u’lláh as mediator,
> the convert accepts Bahá’u’lláh’s authority, to enact religious legislation, structured within a realized eschatological
> worldview.
> The Book of Certitude was first read as an evidential treatise on the Islamic eschaton, traditional
> assumptions that the Báb had challenged. The Báb’s claim to Mahdihood was difficult for his uncle to accept, and
> we can appreciate why he approached Bahá’u’lláh with his questions. The Báb’s uncle was (to quote the late
> Lawrence Durrell out of context) one of “the devout, saddled with doubt.” Originally an apology for the Báb, The
> Book of Certitude underwent certain associative transformations. Following the Declaration of Bahá’u’lláh, the Bábí
> eschatology of The Book of Certitude itself became “realized” in the person of Bahá’u’lláh. Among other messianic
> dignities, Bahá’u’lláh claimed to be the “return” of the Báb, and on this ground alone did The Book of Certitude
> suddenly transform into a reflexive vindication of Bahá’u’lláh. Hence, the text then took on a dual purpose: first,
> vindication of the Báb, and later, the legitimation of Bahá’u’lláh whom, at any rate in Bahá’í perspective, the Báb
> had foretold.
> In time, the realized eschaton became a reformist agenda. To a limited extent, this program may be seen
> within the context of Islamic reform. Indeed, some facets of Bahá’u’lláh’s vision do share elements of thought with
> Persian secularists and Islamic modernists alike. However, the reforms Bahá’u’lláh pursued were much broader in
> scope. His sense of mission professedly extended to global reform. The very universality inherent in such an
> enterprise already transcends the bounds of Islam.
> Good exegetes are typically quite brilliant. These custodians of the Book had the power, probably more
> than any other class of people apart from autocrats, to advance or retard religious adaptation and social progress. It
> takes a certain measure of genius to produce meaning from a text against the weight of orthodoxy. At the very least,
> Bahá’u’lláh was such an exegete.
> Whether or not The Book of Certitude ought to be read in light of messianic secrecy, as a document of
> covert ideological circumlocution in the prelegislative stage of Bahá’u’lláh’s ministry, soon the Qur’án would be
> invoked as a proof-text for Bahá’u’lláh’s post-declaration authority. His bold new exegesis of the Qur’án, as
> presented in the text under study, served as a bridge to the recognition of a new Revelation, eclipsing both Qur’án
> and Islam in the course of Bahá’í history.
> 
> Notes
> 1. On Bahá’u’lláh’s post-declaration authority claims, see the present writer’s synopsis, “A Unique Eschatological
> Interface: Bahá’u’lláh and Cross-Cultural Messianism.”
> 
> 2. The present article is a revised chapter of the author’s master’s thesis, “Symbolic Quranic Exegesis in
> Bahá’u’lláh’s Book of Certitude: The Exegetical Creation of the Bahá’í Faith” (University of Calgary, 1991),
> forthcoming as Symbol and Secret: Qur’án Commentary in Bahá’u’lláh’s Book of Certitude, Studies in the Bábí
> and Bahá’í Religions Series, vol. 7, with a different concluding chapter. My thesis supervisor was Islamicist
> Andrew Rippin.
> 
> 3. Tafsír, that is, Qur’án commentary. The most accessible discussion of this literature is that of A. Rippin, s.v.
> “Tafsír” in Encyclopedia of Religion 14: 37–47. Oxford University has recently published a proceedings volume
> from the important 1985 conference on the topic at the University of Calgary: Approaches to the History of the
> Interpretation of the Qur’án.
> 
> 4. Cole was the first to have applied Wrede’s concept of Jesus’ “Messianic Secret” to Bahá’u’lláh. See Cole, s.v.
> “Bahá-Alláh,” Encyclopaedia Iranica 424. For further information on Bahá’u’lláh’s messianic secret, the most
> extensive and well-researched treatment to date is Cole’s “Bahá’u’lláh’s Surah of the Companions”; see also the
> final chapter in Buck, Symbol and Secret (see note 2 above). On the subsequent development of Bahá’u’lláh’s
> authority claims, see Lambden, “Some Notes.”
> 5. Two years after the revelation of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, there arose a need to address the question of Persian reform.
> In 1875, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá composed the Treatise on Civilization [Risála-yi Madaniyyat], known today as The Secret
> of Divine Civilization. The circumstances surrounding the writing of the treatise on civilization are given by
> Bahá’u’lláh as quoted in Muhammad ‘Alí Fayzí, Hayat-i Hazrat-i ‘Abdu’l-Bahá 42. By coincidence of
> publication at least, and probably by design when Bahá’u’lláh’s imprimatur is taken into account, The Book of
> Certitude is linked with this treatise on reform. As to specific reforms spelled out in The Secret of Divine
> Civilization, Momen (“The Bahá’í Influence” 53) identifies ten:
> 1) Extension of education throughout the country;
> 2) Systematization of court procedure and in particular a definite limit to the appeal procedure for litigation;
> 3) Development of useful arts and sciences;
> 4) Promotion of industry and technology;
> 5) Extension of foreign relations and expansion of trade;
> 6) Guarantee of individual rights such as security of property and equality before the law;
> 7) Restriction of the absolute authority of provincial governors and review of their sentences by the Shah and
> higher courts in the capital;
> 8) Elimination of bribery and corruption;
> 9) Reform of the army with proper provisions, armaments, and training;
> 10) The setting up of councils and assemblies of consultation.
> 
> 6. Cole, “Iranian Millenarianism and Democratic Thought in the 19th Century” 1. My thanks to Dr. Cole for
> providing me an advance copy of this important study, with permission to cite from it.
> 
> 7. The most authoritative English-language account of which remains Serif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman
> Thought.
> 
> 8. Bahá’u’lláh, Tablet to Áqá Mírzá Asad’u’lláh Núrí, unpublished, uncatalogued manuscript. See Lambden, “A
> Tablet of Mírzá Husayn ‘Alí Bahá’u’lláh” 55 n. 3.
> 
> 9. An irresistible implication, suggested by Rippin, personal communication, 5 December 1990.
> 
> 10. Taqiyya is religious dissimulation under threat of persecution. Amanat, “Review of Mysticism and Dissent” 470.
> 
> 11. On this, Bayat remarks that Bahá’u’lláh’s acceptance of the legitimacy of secular authority “embraced what no
> Muslim sect, no Muslim school of thought ever succeeded in or dared to try: the doctrinal acceptance of the de
> facto secularization of politics which had occurred in the Muslim world centuries earlier” (Mysticism and Dissent
> 130).
> 
> 12. E., G. Browne, who had visited Afghání at Prince Malkum Khán’s home in England in the autumn of 1891,
> writes of Afghání’s encyclopaedia entry (to which Bahá’u’lláh refers in the quotation above): “We talked a good
> deal about the Bábís, as to whom he was very well informed (he wrote an excellent, but unsympathetic account of
> them in Butrus al-Bustání’s Arabic Encyclopaedia, the Dá’iratu’l-Ma‘aríf), though he had no great opinion of
> them” (Browne, The Persian Revolution 45).
> 
> 13. Cole, “Iranian Millenarianism” 23, n. 9, citing ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Majmú’iah-’i mubárakah 89–90, with a supporting
> witness in Thompson, Diary 100–103.
> 
> 14. Cole, “Iranian Millenarianism” 3. Cole states that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was convinced that Bahá’u’lláh had prophesied
> the revolution and constitution (3 and 23, n. 9).
> 
> 15. Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal 415. Another Persian reformer Shaykh Ahmad Rúhí was also a son-in-law
> of Azal.
> 16. Quoted in Browne, “The Bábís of Persia” 946; reprinted in Browne, Selections 252. Shoghi Effendi translates:
> “This, although We have never gloried in any thing, nor did We seek preference over any soul. To everyone We
> have been a most kindly companion, a most forbearing and affectionate friend. In the company of the poor We
> have sought their fellowship, and amidst the exalted and learned We have been submissive and resigned” (The
> Book of Certitude 249–50).
> 
> 17. Translated by MacEoin, “From Babism to Baha’ism” 225, where he perceptively observes: “We are, quite
> clearly, moving very far away from the hopes and methods of early Babism. And, indeed, it is obvious that
> Husayn ‘Alí [Bahá’u’lláh] went beyond even the tradition of Shí‘í quietism in arguing, not that secular rulers,
> though usurpers of true authority, had to be tolerated, but that God Himself had given the government of the earth
> into their hands.”
> 
> 18. See Momen’s remarks in his foreword to Afnan, Black Pearls ix-xvii.
> 
> 19. Elsewhere, MacEoin indulges in totally unsupported speculation in attempting to explain the genesis of
> Bahá’u’lláh’s messianic consciousness. Referring to Bahá’u’lláh’s first visions (said to have first taken place in
> Kurdistán rather than in the Síyáh-Chál in 1852!), MacEoin states: “Visions of this heavenly maiden seem to have
> been linked in Bahá’ Alláh’s mind with a growing sense of personal distress and feelings of disquiet about the
> conduct and future of the Bábí community. In 1859, he was aged forty, and it is arguable that, in common with
> other religious personalities throughout history, he underwent a life crisis whose perplexities became inextricably
> interwoven with external difficulties. Out of this emerged a sense of personal mission that came to be interpreted
> increasingly in terms of the appearance of a new revelation; but public expression of such themes seems to have
> occurred very late” (“Divisions and Authority Claims” 125). The visions were decisive, to be sure; but the whole
> notion of a mid-life crisis in 1859 is not tied to any event whatsoever. Moreover, MacEoin expects us to believe
> that the Sufi poet al-Fárid served as Bahá’u’lláh’s “principal source of inspiration” for the idea of a heavenly
> maiden and that for some time after his return from exile, he “remained under Súfí influence.”
> 
> 20. Synopsis and Codification 24–25. MacEoin judges this passage as reflecting “a very strong anti-liberalism.” This
> may not be the only possible interpretation, however, unless MacEoin wishes to extend his conception of
> liberalism to anarchy. Law and order is often defined in terms of the trade-off between personal freedoms and the
> common weal. MacEoin’s characterization of the Bahá’í system as “epistemological authoritarianism” ignores the
> democratic and representative consultative and legislative structures of the Bahá’í framework of elected councils
> (“Bahá’í Fundamentalism” 63).
> 
> 21. A reference to the 57th Súrih of the Báb’s Qayyúm-i-Asmá: “God, verily, created around this Gate (al-báb)
> oceans of celestial water, tinged crimson with the oil of existence and vitalised through the animating power of the
> desired fruit. For it God decreed arks of ruby, tender [or: refreshingly cool], crimson-coloured, wherein none shall
> ride save the people of Bahá” (Quoted in Lambden, “Mysteries” 60).
> 
> 22. See F. Froughi and S. Lambden, “A Tablet” 28–49.
> 
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>
> — *Baha'u'llah as 'World Reformer' (Used by permission of the curator)*