# Baha'i Scholarship: Definitions and Perspectives

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Moojan Momen, Baha'i Scholarship: Definitions and Perspectives, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Bahá'í Scholarship:
> 
> Definitions and Perspectives
> 
> Moojan Momen
> 
> published in Bahá'í Studies Review3:2
> 
> London: Association for Bahá'í Studies of English-Speaking Europe, 1993
> 
> The first part of this talk will explore definitions of Bahá'í scholarship and then I will end by discussing perspectives. Many of the problems and heated debates about Bahá'í scholarship are because of the failure to make a distinction between two different aspects of Bahá'í scholarship. This distinction is between polemical scholarship and the academic study of the Bahá'í Faith. Polemical scholarship is a type of scholarship which promotes a particular position, specifically designed to advance a cause, whereas the academic study of the Bahá'í Faith is supposedly neutral and has no particular aim other than finding out the truth.
> 
> Polemical scholarship can, of course, be both for and against the Bahá'í
> Faith, but in this presentation, we will concentrate on polemical scholarship
> supporting the Faith. The scope of such polemical scholarship is
> very wide and ranges all the way from intensive deepening to Bahá'í
> polemic. Intensive deepening would involve, for example, examining
> the texts and producing compilations on different subjects, whereas Bahá'í
> polemic would be more concerned with writing defences of the Faith against
> attack or introductory works on the Faith.
> 
> The importance of the distinction between this polemical scholarship
> and the academic study of the Faith is that both are commonly referred
> to as Bahá'í scholarship and consequently many misunderstandings
> occur. I will therefore make an attempt to explain the differences
> in approach between these two types of Bahá'í scholarship.
> The point about polemical scholarship and, in particular, intensive deepening,
> is that it only researches the texts. In other words, it looks at
> the Bahá'í scriptures for everything and doesn't go outside
> them. It hopes to find all the answers to whatever questions are
> being asked within the scriptures themselves.
> 
> In contrast, the methodology of the academic study of the Bahá'í
> Faith is that everything is explicable from the outside, that any text
> or episode in Bahá'í history is explicable from the external
> circumstances. Everything has an explanation in terms of psychology,
> sociology, economics or whatever. An example of the extreme of these
> two positions may clarify the difference. Extremes often give a better
> picture of the differences between the two. The extreme of polemical
> scholarship is to be very inward-looking and to be what you might call
> simplistic by only looking at the Bahá'í scriptures themselves.
> On the other hand, the academic study of the Bahá'í Faith
> is based on a methodology that is basically irreligious, in the sense that
> it is methodology which assumes that God does not intervene in the world.
> All that happens in the world has a previous cause which can be identified
> and can fully explain that event. Whatever episode or text you are
> looking at has an explanation that is grounded in history, culture, sociology,
> economics, psychology, or all of these different disciplines. Thus
> the academic methodology is irreligious in the sense that it does not allow
> for God to intervene in history, whereas the polemical type of scholarship
> assumes that everything comes from God in the first place and thus is ultimately
> explainable in religious terms.
> 
> An example may make my meaning clearer. You have been asked to
> give a talk to a group of feminists at a University on the Bahá'í
> Faith approach to the status of women. If you were taking the polemical
> approach, you would perhaps look up all the texts you could find that mention
> the words 'women' or 'handmaidens'. Nowadays a computer index will
> produce long lists of such quotes at the stroke of a few buttons.
> These quotes could then be organised into ways that link up with each other
> and a talk can be gradually created which flows from one quotation to the
> next. That would be the basis of your presentation. You may
> perhaps read what other Bahá'ís have written on the subject
> of the status of women and that may give you a few other ideas. But
> basically the approach is that you look firstly at the texts and hoping
> to create an answer to this particular subject. The problem with
> that approach is that very often it leads to a talk that will be very unsatisfying
> to an audience of feminists. You will probably make a presentation
> that will come across as stating that Bahá'ís believe in
> the equality of men and women. The audience will yawn and say "Yes,
> what else? We already accept all that, we want something more." You'll
> get a polite hand-clap and that will be it.
> 
> If you are using the academic approach, the starting point will be
> to research contemporary feminist literature. What are the major
> issues that concern feminists? What sort of literature is being written
> at this present moment? What is there in the Bahá'í
> Faith that corresponds with this literature? For example, one of
> the issues that is being discussed in feminist literature is the issue
> of how our present social structures tend to be based on values of power
> and domination, either on the individual or group level, and how this enhances
> the position of men. Whenever you have such a power-based social
> structure, it tends to lead to men dominating. So there has been
> a lot of discussion on how you can produce social structures that are not
> based on power and domination. If you happen to know that this is
> what feminists are interested in, there is much Bahá'í teaching
> that deals with that area; but this will not be found by looking up the
> Bahá'í scriptures under the subject of women, but rather
> under the subject of Bahá'í administration and the World
> Order of Bahá'u'lláh. We have much to contribute on
> this issue: the development of a pattern of society that does not depend
> on the domination of one group over another; that is non-hierarchical in
> nature; and where power and authority is not given to individuals.
> All these factors are very interesting to feminists because they are looking
> at these kinds of patterns of society as a way of answering the question,
> "How can you create a kind of society where men will not always be automatically
> dominant within that society?" If you are aware that this is the
> kind of question that feminists are interested in, then answers exist in
> the Bahá'í Faith, but unless you know what interests them,
> you are not going to find those answers.
> There is therefore a difficult position where two approaches present
> themselves in researching the Bahá'í position on an issue
> - one that is based on an irreligious methodology but produces interesting
> insights, and the other that only explores the Bahá'í writings
> and may produce simplistic answers. As a personal note I may add
> that whenever I have researched an area and read the non-Bahá'í
> literature and then come back to the Bahá'í literature, it
> has provided me with many insights into the Bahá'í material
> which I would not have gained by just studying purely the Bahá'í
> texts themselves.
> 
> I would suggest that in order to research a subject, as with all other
> issues, the best approach is to take a middle course between the two extremes.
> We should not to get trapped into the extremes of the academic methodology
> which aims at removing all religious impulses from society. In other
> words, we should avoid focusing only on the academic perspective which
> assumes that there is nothing in religion other than man-made phenomena.
> On the other hand, we need to be sufficiently aware of what is going on
> in the academic field and in the world outside to know what are the issues
> being discussed, in what way they are being discussed, and thus have an
> impression of possible areas of interest from a Bahá'í perspective.
> So we have to find a balance between the two opposing or contradictory
> viewpoints.
> 
> We must develop a presentation of an issue that would satisfy the most
> conservative of Bahá'í audiences and is perceived as a true
> presentation of the teachings of the Bahá'í Faith, which
> does not rely entirely on speculative thinking and individual interpretation.
> It also has to capture the interest of a non-Bahá'í audience
> by discussing the current or fashionable issues--the academic world, like
> every other part of the human world, goes through fashions.
> 
> The Bahá'í scholar has several criteria to satisfy.
> The first challenge is to satisfy yourself personally that you have done
> the scholarship to the best of your ability. Secondly, you have to
> satisfy the Bahá'í community that your scholarship is a true
> representation of the Faith, one that most Bahá'ís would
> agree is a presentation of the Faith that is consistent with the texts
> and being interpreted in ways to which most Bahá'ís would
> not object. At the same time, the academic audience must be considered.
> What you present must conform to their criteria of thorough research and
> a reasonable use of sources.
> 
> Having dealt briefly with definitions, I want to discuss the dangers
> of the academic study of the Bahá'í Faith. Among them
> is the exposure that you will receive to an environment in which the values
> of everyone around you are completely different to yours. The criteria
> and assumptions of the academic world are completely irreligious, the methodology
> is based on the assumption that God does not intervene in history and does
> not reveal himself. All human phenomena can be fully explained by
> sociology, psychology, economics, cultural factors, and therefore anything
> that has happened can be accounted for. For example, the Bábí
> movement in Iran can be traced back to the Shaykhis and Isma'ilis, and
> to all the various religious movements that existed in Iran in the past.
> One could investigate how all these historical, social and religious elements
> converged, and explain the factors that led to the Bábí movement.
> There is no need to bring God into the equation at all. This is how
> the academic world thinks and it's very easy, if you are actually in that
> world all the time, to slip into that mode of thought. It's a natural
> mode of thought to slip into. There are very brilliant minds all
> around you producing work based on these assumptions and very soon it also
> becomes reality for you. If everyone else around you has a certain
> set of assumptions which they accept is truth, it becomes very easy for
> you to slip into the same sort of thinking. This is not just a theoretical
> concern, it's a very real concern. Bahá'ís have gone
> into the academic world and have ended up thinking this way and separated
> themselves from the Bahá'í community to one extent or another.
> Therefore I think it is a very real problem, a very real concern if one
> is considering going into an academic career where the main focus of your
> studies will the Bahá'í Faith. I think it is something
> you should think about, bear in mind, and watch out for.
> 
> The question of Bahá'í scholarship or scholarship on
> the Bahá'í Faith is one which is going to be increasingly
> important in the future. We will inevitably start to have more attacks
> on the Faith, as we come out of obscurity and into the limelight.
> It then falls to Bahá'í scholars to defend the Faith against
> attacks and produce presentations of the Faith for all the various peoples
> who will request them. It is very important for Bahá'ís
> to position themselves so that they will be the ones who are asked about
> the Faith.
> 
> The standards and assumptions of the present day world tend towards
> asking for the opinion of "experts" in a particular area for information
> about it. Therefore, if people want to know about the Bahá'í
> Faith, they turn to "experts" on the Bahá'í Faith.
> If you are in the unfortunate position of not having any Bahá'ís
> who are in the academic world, when people such as journalists, editors
> of encyclopaedias, or people writing books on religion want information
> about the Bahá'í Faith, they turn to people who perhaps are
> not particularly friendly towards the Bahá'í Faith but are
> nevertheless perceived as experts on the Bahá'í Faith.
> 
> It is therefore very important for Bahá'ís to position
> themselves in the academic world, to be known as experts on the Bahá'í
> Faith, so that when people want information on the Bahá'í
> Faith, it is Bahá'ís that they come to. This is the
> nature of the world in which we live. People assume that experts
> know, and that experts will give an impartial view of the subject in which
> they are specialists. The problem is that experts are not neutral.
> I have never known an expert who was an impartial observer; the very fact
> that they are an expert means that they have a passion about the subject.
> So it is illogical to consider them as impartial and dispassionate.
> To take an historical example, E.G. Browne is considered to be one
> of the greatest academics on Iran that there has ever been. But he
> was extremely passionate on every area he went into, not just the Bahá'í
> Faith, but also on the Constitutional Movement. There was almost
> no area of Iranian life that he wasn't passionate about, and that's what
> made him a great scholar. He was sufficiently interested in all these
> things that he was quite happy to stay up hours at night and research them.
> He did not regard it as a nine to five job, it was an eight in the morning
> until midnight job as far as he was concerned which is why he was a great
> scholar.
> 
> Experts are never impassionate. They are never neutral observers.
> They always have some viewpoint. They always have some particular
> bias in the way they think about a subject. Unfortunately if we as
> Bahá'ís do not place ourselves in the position of being the
> acknowledged experts on the subject in the academic world, then other people
> will and may not present the Faith in such a favourable light. Because
> they are the experts, they will be asked to write the encyclopaedia articles
> on the Bahá'í Faith; they are the ones to whom journalists
> will turn for information whenever there is something to say about the
> Bahá'í Faith; they are the ones who will asked to write chapters
> in books and so on. Therefore it is very important that we position
> ourselves, including the Bahá'í community as a whole, in
> this role of experts in the academic world and occupy the academically
> respected positions and posts.
> 
> The means to this end will vary for different individuals - not everyone
> needs to study Arabic and Persian in order to become a Bahá'í
> scholar. There have been some who have done that and have done it
> reasonably successfully but it is by no means the only way of doing it,
> particularly if you do not happen to be good at learning languages.
> You do not have to go down that particular road, there are all sorts of
> different areas which you can study and which will eventually lead to the
> same sort of result. For example, at the moment we have almost nobody
> in the field of religious studies, which is a growing field in the academic
> world with new university departments being created. Very few Bahá'ís,
> as far as I know, are in that field, studying it, becoming experts and
> relating it to the Bahá'í Faith.
> 
> There are all sorts of other areas which Bahá'ís can
> research and become experts. It is difficult at the moment to relate
> fields such as economics to the Bahá'í Faith, because, although
> the Bahá'í Faith has teachings that have an economic bearing,
> there has not been sufficient research into Bahá'í economics
> so that Bahá'ís can become experts within the academic world.
> However these fields will develop within the next fifty to a hundred years
> and there is no reason why people cannot perhaps make a start; it will
> just be that more difficult.
> 
> There are many other fields which Bahá'ís can research
> and thereby make an impact locally among ordinary people; areas such as
> feminist thought, development issues, racism, etc. where there is much
> discussion and many groups which have nothing at all to do with the academic
> world. To enter that sort of field, one can read the literature,
> become aware of the issues. In this way one will be a scholar of
> feminism, for example. Then one can go along to these groups and
> have something interesting to say to them because one is are aware of what
> they are thinking and what issues concern them. It is quite possible
> for someone who does not hold an academic post to participate in this process
> but it must be done thoroughly. It is no good just reading one book
> on feminism; one has to read a large number of books, including recent
> material so that one has a sense of what the current thinking is and what
> is being debated presently. At first it may be best to go along to
> some meetings, keep silent and listen to what is going. Gradually
> one can begin to contribute. The number of areas is virtually limitless
> and interested Bahá'ís should follow their own interests.
> It's much better to follow a path that is in line with one's own talents
> and inclinations than to force oneself into something that one is not going
> to be particularly good at. If you are not good at languages, don't
> force yourself to study Arabic, which is a very difficult language to learn
> anyway. Go into a field where you have talent and can make progress,
> eventually aiming to become an authority in that area.
> 
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> previous at archive.org.../momen_bahai_scholarship_definitions;
> URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
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> — *Baha'i Scholarship: Definitions and Perspectives (Used by permission of the curator)*