The central myth of the Baha’i faith, as it has come to be understood by its
present-day adherents, is the doctrine of “the Covenant.” In the broadest
sense, this is the claim that there is a perfect line of divine authority, from
the Bab to Baha’u’llah, to ‘Abdu’l-Baha, to Shoghi Effendi, to the Universal
House of Justice. Each link in the chain is believed to be solid and
unquestionable.
In reality, the history of the Baha’i faith is in large part a story of
shattered plans and broken promises—or to put it in Baha’i terminology,
“Covenant-breaking.” During the ministry of each leader and at every stage of
transfer of leadership, there has been a great deal of conflict and
controversy. Covenants have been broken not only by those who have
traditionally been assigned the blame, but by the recognized leaders of the faith
as well. With every fresh round of dissension and excommunications, there were
valid arguments on both sides, but one side utterly defeated the other and
demonized it to such a degree that its views are typically never considered by
Baha’is or by the average person studying the Baha’i religion.
Baha’is have responded to the historical record by digging in their heels on
the thoroughly refutable claim that theirs is the only religion in history
which has a perfect, unbroken chain of authority passed down from one leader to
the next. It does not; no major religion does. In fact, Baha’i may actually be
more noteworthy among religions for its perfect record of leadership conflicts
in every generation or stage of development during the first one hundred years
of its existence. The Baha’i “Covenant” is broken—and always has been, from the
moment
Baha’u’llah
declared himself to be a new Manifestation of God.
Let’s start there. The Bab appointed Mirza Yahya Nuri, a younger half-brother
of Baha’u’llah, as his successor. It was far from clear that another Divine
Manifestation should appear anytime soon; according to Babism, the founders of
religions were supposed to appear roughly every one thousand years. But because
the Bab’s successor was a quiet man with a reclusive personality—more
interested in writing esoteric religious texts than in playing the role of a
charismatic leader for the nascent Babi community—many followers of the Bab
began looking for a forceful personality to provide them with the divine guidance
they craved. Several prominent Babis proclaimed themselves to be “Him whom God
shall make manifest,” interpreting vague prophecies of the Bab in their own
favor. Mirza Husayn Ali Nuri was one of these claimants, calling himself
Baha’u’llah. Shortly thereafter, Mirza Yahya responded by making a similar
claim, and called himself Subh-i-Azal.
It is beyond the scope of this article to investigate the conflict between
these two brothers, but suffice it to say that it was ferocious. There were
denunciations and counter-denunciations, and the Nuri family was split between
supporters of each brother.[1] Things reached the point of assassinations and
attempted assassinations. Eventually the government had to intervene and banish
the two branches of the family and their respective fanatical followers to two
different provinces of the Ottoman Empire: the Azalis to Cyprus, and the
Baha’is to Syria (now Israel).
This was the atmosphere in which Baha’u’llah’s sons grew up: a poisonous
indoctrination into hatred of their own relatives who had chosen a different
interpretation of the Babi religion.
I have not attempted to form a scholarly opinion about which side of the
Azali-Baha’i conflict was more in the right, factually and morally speaking,[2]
but I can understand why Baha’u’llah made his claim to be a new prophet rather
than deferring to his younger brother: He believed—as most other Babis came to
believe as well—that Mirza Yahya was a weak leader and, to the extent that he
was providing leadership at all, was not leading the new religion in the right
direction. In the culture of millenarian Shi'ism and Babism, the way to “get
things done” was to claim to be a divinely guided teacher and draw fellow
religious radicals under your spell. Baha’u’llah did what he felt he had to do,
and his personality fit the role to a T. Within a few years, he had largely
succeeded in taking over the Babi movement, which became the Baha’i faith.
So, the Baha’i faith began by one brother usurping the other brother’s position
as successor to the Manifestation of God in whom they both believed. Perhaps
for legitimate reasons; perhaps, had Baha’u’llah not done this, Babism would
have died out or fragmented into numerous insignificant sects—even if,
technically, he obtained his position of leadership through an illegitimate claim.
There is also the feet that Baha’u’llah simply did not agree with some of the
Bab’s teachings. For example, the Bab believed in military jihad (holy war);
his goal was the overthrow of the corrupt Persian government, and his
followers rose up as political revolutionaries and fought for the triumph of
their faith by the sword. Baha’u’llah strongly condemned this, and taught the
Baha’is to be peaceful martyrs, obedient even to unjust governments. In an under-appreciated
act of intellectual courage and spiritual reformation, Baha’u’llah, who was
born and raised a Muslim, did what people around the world are hoping that more
Muslim leaders will do today: explicitly renounce the Islamic doctrine of holy
war. In his revolutionary words, “The First Glad Tidings which is conferred in
this Most Great Manifestation on all the people of the world... is the
abolishing of the decree of religious warfare from the Book.”[3]
Dr. Denis MacEoin, a former Baha’i who taught Arabic and Islamic studies at
universities in England and Morocco, summarizes the conflict between
Subh-i-Azal and Baha’u’llah as follows:
Although later Baha’i sources have tended to play down or
distort his role, there is adequate contemporary evidence that, in the early
period of the Baghdad exile, a consensus of opinion favoured the leadership of
a young man widely regarded as the ‘successor’ (wasi) of the Bab—Mirza Yahya
Nuri Subh-i Azal... [B]oth he and his followers emphasized a conservative, retrenched
Babism centred on the doctrines of the Persian Bayan and other later works.
Subh-i Azal seems to have remained faithful to the long-term goal of
overthrowing the Qajar state by subversion ...
There are indications that Husayn ‘Ali [Nuri] did not at first envisage for
himself any role in the Babi community beyond that of spiritual preceptor, and,
indeed, he abandoned the group at one point to embark on the life of a Sufi
darvish at the Khalidiyya monastery in Sulaymaniyya, with every intention, it
seems, of dissociating himself from the movement permanently. Persuaded to return
to Baghdad in the spring of 1856, however, he began to devote himself to the
reorganization of the sect... By the early 1860s, towards the end of his stay
in Baghdad, he had firmly established his position within the community and
begun to express his authority [and] claims in increasingly messianic terms.
Numerous passages of the Persian Bayan refer to the future ‘divine manifestation’
destined to succeed the Bab as the latter had succeeded Muhammad, speaking of
him eschatologically as ‘he whom God shall make manifest’ (man
yuzhiruhu’llah), and indicating that he would appear in about one to two
thousand years time.... The appeal of a new messianic impulse [i.e. the claim
of Baha’u’llah] encouraged a thoroughgoing reinterpretation of the Bayanic
prophecies, in order to demonstrate that the Bab had, in fact, anticipated an
extremely early appearance of this saviour figure ...
Babi militancy having failed, Husayn ‘Ali chose to revert to the quietist
stance of orthodox Shi'ism. ... A semi-pacifist, politically acquiescent
posture was consonant with and, indeed, integral to the deradicalized and
increasingly universalist form of Babism being taught by Husayn ‘Ali during the
1860s...[4]
The full-blown pacifism and internationalism of Baha’u’llah’s later teachings
were a philosophical progression that turned the Baha’i faith into something
completely different from the jihadist, Iran-centric Babism from which it had
sprung. The most important points to understand are that Mirza Yahya Nuri was
recognized as the Bab’s successor, and that the Bab wrote that the next
Manifestation of God would not come for at least one thousand years. But Mirza
Husayn Ali Nuri chose to break this covenant of the Bab and declare himself
Baha’u’llah, the new Manifestation, because he disagreed with the leadership
style and ideas of his brother and believed that Babism should move in a
different direction.
Perhaps somewhat predictably, in the next generation Baha’u’llah’s sons
reenacted the brother-against-brother battle of their father and uncle,
concerning the future direction of the Baha’i faith. Once again, the younger
brother accused the elder of making excessively grandiose claims. The issues at
stake were different, of course; and in this case, it was the successor of the
prophet who was more inclined to make changes to the religion rather than his
competitor. But the intensity of the dispute between Abbas Effendi and Mohammed
Ali Bahai, and the bitterness of the rift it created not only between
themselves but in the faith community as a whole, was very similar to what had
happened between Mirza Husayn Ali and Mirza Yahya. Holy war was not abolished
even from their own family, despite the noble principles for humanity that
Baha’u’llah had taught in his writings. Instead, impressionable young men
learned from the example of their elders in their own lives: the authoritarian
absolutism of their father, a man who claimed to be speaking for God at all
times (a claim which was emulated to some degree by Abdu’l-Baha), and his
acrimonious yet highly successful usurpation of his brother’s position of
religious authority (a less ambitious version of which Mr. Bahai seems to have
desired to accomplish for himself).
Although the brothers Abbas and Mohammed Ali didn’t fight each other with
swords or pistols at dawn, perhaps brotherly fisticuffs could have helped to
clear the air. But since they were brought up to be dignified religious
leaders, they struck the pose of perfect gentlemen and holy men, while
passive-aggressively warring against each other for decades over the future
direction of the Baha’i faith. We’ll discuss the causes and substance of their
dispute in detail later.
For now, the important thing to understand is that Baha’u’llah wanted them both
to work together, and wanted the younger brother to succeed the elder if he
outlived him. Neither of these intentions of the founder of the Baha’i faith
came to pass. Mohammed Ali Bahai broke his father’s covenant by launching a
destructive sectarian argument rather than accepting the role of
second-in-command and helping to spread the Baha’i teachings to new souls,
thus deviating from the spirit of Baha’u’llah’s words: “O Ghusn-i-Akbar!
(Mightiest Branch) Verily We have chosen thee for the help of My Cause; rise
thou in a marvelous assistance.”[5] ‘Abdu’l-Baha also broke the covenant by
refusing to reconcile with his brother when he later sought an honorable
resolution to their conflict, instead condemning him in his will and appointing
a different successor, thus departing from Baha’u’llah’s stated plan of
succession: “We have surely chosen the Mightiest (Akbar) [Mohammed Ali]
after the Greatest (A'zam) [Abbas Effendi] as a command from the All-Knowing,
the Omniscient.”[6]
Another important point, often overlooked, is that Baha’u’llah did not teach
that his sons should be the only source of authority in the Baha’i faith after
his passing. Instead, he taught that a great deal of authority should vest in
an institution he called the House of Justice, which would resolve questions
and make policies not clearly specified in the scriptures. As he wrote:
It is incumbent upon the Trustees of the House of Justice to
take counsel together regarding those things which have not outwardly been
revealed in the Book, and to enforce that which is agreeable to them. God will
verily inspire them with whatsoever He willeth, and He, verily, is the
Provider, the Omniscient.[7]
Although ‘Abdu’l-Baha allowed Baha’i Houses of Justice to be established at
the local level, he did not establish an international (“Universal”) House of
Justice, reserving all power over the Baha’i faith as a whole to himself alone.
It seems unlikely that this was Baha’u’llah’s intention. More likely, he
intended Abbas Effendi to call for the Baha’is to elect this institution during
his lifetime and to serve as its chairman, and for Mohammed Ali Effendi to
serve as its vice chairman.
After leading the Baha’is for almost 30 years without a Universal House of
Justice, ‘Abdu’l-Baha died and left the reins of authority to his grandson,
Shoghi Effendi Rabbani, whom he gave the title of “Guardian.” However, he made
it explicitly clear in his will that Shoghi Effendi should work together with
the democratically elected leadership body, at long last to be created, that
Baha’u’llah had originally envisioned. As ‘Abdu’l-Baha wrote:
The sacred and youthful branch, the Guardian of the Cause of
God, as well as the Universal House of Justice to be universally elected and
established, are both under the care and protection of the Abha Beauty
[Baha’u’llah]... Whatsoever they decide is of God....
Concerning the House of Justice which God hath ordained as the source of all
good and freed from all error, it must be elected by universal suffrage, that
is, by the believers. Unto this body all things must be referred. It enacteth
all ordinances and regulations that are not to be found in the explicit Holy
Text. By this body all the difficult problems are to be resolved and the
Guardian of the Cause of God is its sacred head and the distinguished member
for life of that body.[8]
Defying his grandfather’s instructions to create the Universal House of Justice
and lead the Baha’i faith in conjunction with its elected members as its
chairman, Shoghi Effendi chose to rule unilaterally. His ministry lasted over
35 years, and during that entire time the House of Justice was never brought
into being. This was a choice he made—a choice which violated both the spirit
and the letter of ‘Abdu’l- Baha’s will. There were plenty of eminent Baha’is
from various nations who could have served capably and admirably on a Universal
House of Justice, had it been created, but Shoghi Effendi evidently preferred
to hold all power in his own hands—just as ‘Abdu’l-Baha had preferred and
chosen in his own ministry.
Following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Shoghi Effendi also chose to
excommunicate his relatives who did not show absolute deference to his wishes
and views. By the end of his life, he had excommunicated every one of the
descendants of ‘Abdu’l-Baha as well as all the descendants of Baha’u’llah’s
third wife. Thus, the entire family of Baha’u’llah—except for Shoghi Effendi
himself, his wife Ruhiyyih, and ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s widow Munirih and sister
Bahiyyih—ended up expelled from the mainstream Baha’i community and shunned.
To be fair to ‘Abdu’l-Baha, the half-siblings he declared as “Covenant-breakers”
were actually leaders of a competing Baha’i sect, so there is considerably more
justification or at least a reasonable argument for his decision. In the case
of Shoghi Effendi, he expelled his family for mostly trivial reasons, over
issues of their personal relationships, based on an extremely authoritarian
interpretation of his authority as the Baha’i Guardian.
One of the most disturbing examples was Shoghi Effendi’s excommunication of
his cousin Munib Shahid for marrying a Muslim. In the words of Hassan Jalal
Shahid, the last surviving grandchild of‘Abdu’l- Baha:
Regarding my brother Dr Munib Shahid of the American
University of Beirut (AUB)... His wife Serene Husseini was the daughter of
Jamal Husseini. He was a notable of Jerusalem, a prominent and respected
Palestinian politician who had been exiled by the British to the Seychelles
Islands and then to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to put an end to his
struggle for an independent Palestine. While there, his daughter Serene wanted
to get married to my brother Munib Shahid. She contacted her father, Jamal
Husseini, for his consent. He did not know who Munib Shahid was and asked a
fellow exile from Haifa, Mr Tanimi, about him. Mr Tamini told him to consider
it an honor that the grandson of Abdul-Baha wanted to marry his daughter. On
the recommendation, he consented to and blessed the marriage....
My brother was a sincere and true Bahai and tried many times, until the last
years of his life to return to the Cause [i.e. the organized Baha’i faith], ...
Munib was no Covenant Breaker and died a disappointed man for having been
deprived of something that meant so much to him and in which he sincerely
believed.[9]
The marriage of one of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s grandsons to the daughter of a prominent
Muslim politician could have been an excellent opportunity for interfaith
dialogue between the Islamic and Baha’i communities in Palestine. Instead,
Shoghi Effendi saw this marriage by his cousin as disloyalty to the Baha’i
faith, and expelled him for it—even though the Guardian was never given the
authority to veto marriages either by members of Baha’u’llah’s family or by any
Baha’i.
Shoghi Effendi also excommunicated both of his sisters and another cousin for
marrying relatives who were descended from Baha’u’llah through his third wife,
Gawhar Khanum. Gawhar’s daughter Foroughiyya Khanum and her husband Siyyid Ali
Afnan sided with the Unitarian Baha’is for a while, but eventually reconciled
with ‘Abdu’l- Baha. Mr. and Mrs. Afnan’s sons seem to have wanted to move
beyond the religious conflicts of the previous generation. One of them, Nayer
Afnan, is known to have been friendly with all branches of the family,
including the descendants of Mohammed Ali and Badi Ullah Bahai; Negar Bahai
Emsallem remembers him fondly. Shoghi Effendi apparently felt that this third
branch of Baha’u’llah’s family was too liberal in their attitude about
“Covenant-breakers,” because they didn’t believe in shunning their relatives
who had unorthodox ideas about the Baha’i faith. Thus, he excommunicated all of
his relatives who married into that branch of the family.
Conventional wisdom among Baha’is is that Shoghi Effendi was trying to defend
his family from the spread of heresy, supposedly emanating from Nayer Afnan.
But as Mr. Afnan’s daughter and Shoghi Effendi’s niece Bahiyeh Afnan Shahid
writes:
Regarding [Foroughiyya Khanum’s] second son, my father Nayer
Afnan, he and my mother Rouhanguise Rabbani were married in 1928 in Haifa. The
marriage took place in the Master’s [i.e. ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s] house and the
Master’s sister, Bahiyeh Khanum officiated at the ceremony. Present were the
Master’s wife Mounireh Khanum, the Master’s daughters and other members of the
family as well as Bahai friends. Would things have happened this way if Nayer
Afnan was a covenant breaker? ...
For some strange reason my father was designated by Shoghi Effendi... as the
plotter and schemer behind most of these marriages. His was the evil hand that
wove this mesh of marriages, connecting generations of ‘covenant breakers’ with
one another, serving sinister schemes that took shape seemingly nowhere but in
the Guardian’s mind. He simply could not see a group of cousins and relatives
from a family that considered themselves Bahais in every sense of the word, but
completely cut off from their roots and their natural milieu. Was it not natural
that they should choose each other when they sought husbands and wives?[10]
Most likely, Nayer Afnan’s liberal approach to the Baha’i faith—specifically,
his refusal to shun the Unitarian Baha’is among his relatives— is what caused
Shoghi Effendi to excommunicate him. Although he may have had a relatively
open-minded attitude all along, it is possible that this grandson of
Baha’u’llah decided to develop friendships with his Unitarian Baha’i cousins
precisely because he objected to the authoritarian leadership style of Shoghi
Effendi and was attracted to the relatively progressive views of the ostracized
members of the family.
One more relative of Shoghi Effendi whom he excommunicated deserves special
attention: his cousin Ruhi Afnan, a grandson of ‘Abdu’l-Baha who was a
prominent and well-respected teacher of the Baha’i faith. Ruhi Afnan was such a
significant figure that the liberal Baha’i leader Ahmad Sohrab wrote a whole
book about him and his case, an unauthorized biography entitled Abdul Baha’s
Grandson: Story of a Twentieth Century Excommunication, even though Mr.
Afnan never supported Mr. Sohrab’s denomination. Here is his summary from that
book, of Mr. Afnan’s career as a Baha’i administrator and spokesperson:
Ruhi Effendi Afnan acted as confidential secretary to the
Guardian of the Bahai Cause for fourteen years; and the records of the Bahai
organization show that during that time, from 1922 to 1936, he was constantly
in demand in a variety of capacities. In 1924, he appeared in London as Shoghi
Effendi’s personal representative and delivered a brilliant address on the
Bahai Religion before The Conference of Some Living Religions Within the
British Empire. In 1927, he visited the United States as traveling agent and
spiritual salesman of the Guardian, championing with fervor and zeal the system
of Bahai administration before recognized and declared Bahais. He was an
outstanding and honored guest at the 20th Annual Bahai Convention in Chicago,
where he participated vitally in all proceedings; was the guest speaker at
Green Acre Bahai Summer School in Maine, and traveled from coast to coast,
delivering Bahai speeches before churches, colleges and outside gatherings.
In 1928, we find him in Geneva, Switzerland, where, as the accredited
representative of the Bahai Cause, he participates in the Conference of
International Peace Through the Churches. Here, we see him taking the floor,
offering some constructive suggestions which, as one report says, were very
much to the point, and carrying his argument. In 1935, with the Guardian's
approval (See Baha ’i News, page 3, October 1935), he pays his second visit to
the United States; takes part in the National Bahai meeting in Chicago and,
before his departure, addresses a number of local Bahai communities. [11]
Despite Ruhi Afnan’s exemplary record of service to the Baha’i faith, Shoghi
Effendi excommunicated him in 1941, stating three reasons: (1) that Mr.
Afnan’s sister married one of the sons of Foroughiyya and Ali Afnan, all of
whom he considered to be Covenant-breakers; (2) that Ruhi Afnan himself married
a cousin, one of the granddaughters of‘Abdu’l-Baha, of whom he apparently
disapproved; and (3) that Mr. Afnan supposedly made his second trip to the
United States without Shoghi Effendi’s approval.[12] On the third point, as
Ahmad Sohrab mentions with documentation, the allegation is simply false. As
for the first reason for Ruhi Afnan’s excommunication, it seems that he refused
to shun his sister after her marriage, and his continued association with her
was unacceptable to Shoghi Effendi. In fact, the main reason for most of Shoghi
Effendi’s excommunications of his relatives was that they chose not to shun
family members whom they loved.
Although it might have been tempting for an articulate Baha’i evangelist such
as Ruhi Afnan to have joined or started a different Baha’i denomination with
more respect for believers’ personal freedom, instead he repeatedly sought to
return to the mainstream Baha’i community—as did many other Baha’is and members
of Baha’u’llah’s family who had been expelled. In a long and very interesting
letter Mr. Afnan wrote in 1970, he recalls, among other things, that:
For twelve years after Shoghi Effendi cast me out of the
Cause I regularly wrote a petition—at least once a year—and more often than
not, took them to the House [of Shoghi Effendi] myself. Several times I saw
[Shoghi’s wife] Ruhiyyih Khanum who would meet me and end up by rejecting my
request. I always wondered whether Shoghi Effendi read those letters or not. One
day I asked [Shoghi’s mother] Zia Khanum. She told me that other than myself,
many people wrote such petitions, for example Rouha Khanum [Zia Khanum’s sister
and Ruhi’s aunt]. Apparently Shoghi Effendi had a special suitcase full of such
letters from members of the family, all of which he saved. Zia Khanum added
that she herself, every month, sometimes every week, would write such a
petition and pour out her heart, in an effort to clarify matters to her son. I
don’t know whether that suitcase full of letters still exists. If it does, it
would tell the story of those people and the pain they bore.[13]
According to Ruhi Afnan, he was even banned from visiting Baha’u’llah’s tomb,
and threatened by Shoghi Effendi’s wife, who informed him that “orders had been
given to beat me and throw me out” if he ever went to the Shrine.[14] This only
changed as a result of a lawsuit by Kamar Bahai in 1952.[15]
None of Shoghi Effendi’s siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, or even his
parents, were ever allowed to return to the organized Baha’i community. They
were utterly and permanently shunned, by order of the Guardian and later the
Universal House of Justice, which to this day teaches that the Guardian was
infallible and therefore all his decisions were automatically justified.
As the facts show, the ministry of Shoghi Effendi was marked by the kind of
dictatorial authoritarianism, paranoia and fanaticism that are not usually
associated with great religions in the modern era. None of his relatives were
even given a hearing and a chance to defend themselves before a panel of
neutral judges before they were excommunicated; and once expelled from the
fold, their appeals fell on deaf ears and they were either written out of
history or recast as villainous characters, despite their strong belief in and
service to the Baha’i faith.
Perhaps the clearest illustration of the Baha’i Guardian’s attitude can be
found in a polemical, triumphalistic history of the Baha’i faith he wrote
called God Passes By. In the following passage of that book, he indulges in
bone-chilling schadenfreude, recounting with relish the misfortunes, illnesses
and deaths of some of the people he considered to be “Covenant-breakers” and
taking comically immature potshots at their memory:
[Mohammed Ali Bahai’s] brother, Mirza Diya’ullah,[16] died
prematurely; Mirza Aqa Jan [Kashani], his dupe, followed that same brother,
three years later, to the grave;... Mirza Muhammad- ‘Ali’s half-sister,
Furughiyyih,[17] died of cancer, whilst her husband, Siyyid ‘Ali [Afnan],
passed away from a heart attack before his sons could reach him, the eldest
being subsequently stricken in the prime of life, by the same malady.
Muhammad-Javad-i- Qazvini,[18] a notorious Covenant-breaker, perished
miserably. ... Jamal-i-Burujirdi,[19] Mirza Muhammad Ali's ablest lieutenant in
Persia, fell a prey to a fatal and loathsome disease; Siyyid Mihdiy-
i-Dahaji,[20] who, betraying ‘Abdu’l-Baha, joined the Covenant-breakers, died
in obscurity and poverty, followed by his wife and his two sons;...
[Mohammed Ali Bahai] was stricken with paralysis which crippled half his body;
lay bedridden in pain for months before he died; and was buried according to
Muslim rites, in the immediate vicinity of a local Muslim shrine, his grave
remaining until the present day devoid of even a tombstone—a pitiful reminder
of the hollowness of the claims he had advanced, of the depths of infamy to
which he had sunk, and of the severity of the retribution his acts had so
richly merited.[21]
As for Shoghi Effendi himself, he and his wife found themselves unable to have
children. With no heirs, and having excommunicated every living descendant of
Baha’u’llah but himself, there was no one eligible to be appointed as his
successor in accordance with the provisions of the Will and Testament of
‘Abdu’l-Baha, so the office of the Guardianship became permanently vacant upon
his passing. He died suddenly of the Asian flu, at the age of 60, while
visiting London in 1957. His grave is located in that city instead of among the
Baha’i shrines in Israel, because, according to Baha’i law, a body cannot be
moved more than one hour’s journey from the place of death.[22] He failed to
leave a will, violating Baha’u’llah’s command that “Unto everyone hath been
enjoined the writing of a will,”[23] and thus the Baha’is had no clear guidance
for how their faith should be led without a second Guardian after his passing.
The loss of the Guardianship posed a serious problem for mainstream Baha’is.
They had been accustomed to having an individual leader of their faith, and in
accordance with the intentions of ‘Abdu’l- Baha expressed in his will, they
fully expected that there would be a series of Guardians for generations to
come. Shoghi Effendi had written that “In this Dispensation, divine guidance
flows on to us in this world after the Prophet’s ascension, through first the
Master, and then the Guardians.”[24] Furthermore, he wrote:
Divorced from the institution of the Guardianship the World
Order of Baha’u’llah would be mutilated and permanently deprived of that
hereditary principle which, as Abdu’l-Baha has written, has been invariably
upheld by the Law of God. “In all the Divine Dispensations,” He states, in a
Tablet addressed to a follower of the Faith in Persia, “the eldest son hath been
given extraordinary distinctions. Even the station of prophethood hath been his
birthright.” Without such an institution the integrity of the Faith would be
imperiled, and the stability of the entire fabric would be gravely endangered.
Its prestige would suffer, the means required to enable it to take a long, an
uninterrupted view over a series of generations would be completely lacking,
and the necessary guidance to define the sphere of the legislative action of
its elected representatives would be totally withdrawn.[25]
After Shoghi Effendi’s death, the inner circle of Baha’i leaders he had
appointed to assist him during his ministry, called Hands of the Cause, decided
to establish the Universal House of Justice. It was elected for the first time
in 1963—without a Guardian as its chairman— and the Baha’is, who had been
taught by Shoghi Effendi to believe in the supreme importance of a line of
living Guardians, were expected to put this belief aside yet continue believing
that “the Covenant” of their faith was being fulfilled regardless.
One distinguished Baha’i leader named Charles Mason Remey dissented and
claimed that Shoghi Effendi had intended for him to become his successor, on
the basis that he had appointed him as the head of an executive body called the
International Baha’i Council. Mr. Remey attracted some support, because many
Baha’is, quite understandably, still clung to the teaching of the absolute
necessity of a Guardian to lead the faith; but the vast majority of Baha’is
rejected his claim, because he was not a “branch” of Baha’u’llah’s family as
the Guardians were required to be according to ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s will, and there
was no document in which Shoghi Effendi ever explicitly nominated him for the
office of Guardian. Mason Remey formed a sect, the remnants of which continue
to exist today as a very small Baha’i denomination called the Orthodox Baha’i
Faith and three other splinter groups.
Despite all the unexpected changes, controversies, twists and turns we have
described, Baha’is today believe that the succession of divine authority from
the Bab, to Baha’u’llah, to ‘Abdu’l-Baha, to Shoghi Effendi, to the Universal
House of Justice is a perfect, unbroken Covenant—that the head of the faith at
each stage was infallible and the transitions unchallengeable. As we have seen,
the facts reveal that this is only a myth; that the reality is far more
complex, more flawed, and indeed more interesting.
-----------------------------------------
Footnotes :
[1] Their half-siblings from their stepmother Kulthum Khanum mostly followed
Mirza Yahya. Two other half-siblings from other stepmothers followed Mirza
Husayn Ali, as did most of his full siblings. See Appendix B: Families of Baha’u’llah
and the Bab.
[2] I have, however, listened to the views of both sides, as should
anyone interested in Babi and Baha’i history. The Azali view is articulately
presented by N. Wahid Azal, a former Baha’i and staunch opponent of the Baha’i
faith, in a 2011 lecture at the University of London’s School of Oriental and
African Studies. The entire lecture can be viewed online, beginning at http://youtu.be/LEhLkVsXddY (Part i of 8).
[3] Lawh-i-Bisharat (“Tablet of Glad-Tidings”). See Chapter 6, p.
70.
[4] Denis MacEoin, “From Babism to Baha’ism: Problems of Militancy,
Quietism, and Conflation in the Construction of a Religion.” Originally
published in Religion, vol. 13 (1983): 220-223. Available online at http://bahai-library.com/
maceoin_babism_militancy
[5] "Sacred Tablet” to Ghusn-i-Akbar. See Chapter 10, p. 150.
[6] Kitab-i-'Ahdi (“Book of My Covenant”). See Chapter 6, p. 94.
[7] Kalimat-i-Firdawsiyyih ("Words of Paradise”), Eighth Leaf.
Official Baha’i translation in Tablets of Bahau’llah Revealed After the
Kitab-i-Aqdas (Wilmette, Ill.: US Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1988 pocket-size
edition), p. 68.
[8] The Will And Testament of'Abdu’l-Baha (Wilmette, Ill.: US Baha’i Publishing
Trust, 1990 reprint), Part One, pp. n, 14.
[9] Hassan Jalal Shahid, “Comments About Munib Shahid,” http://www.abdulbahasfamily.org/writings/comments-about-munib-shahid/
[10] Bahiyeh Afnan Shahid, “Comments About Sayyid Ali Afnan, Forough Khanum,
and Their Sons,” http://www.abdulbahasfamily.org/writings/sayyid-ali-afnan-forough-khanum-and-their-sons/
[11] Mirza Ahmad Sohrab, Abdul Baha's Grandson: Story of a Twentieth
Century Excommunication (New York: Universal Publishing Co., 1943), pp. 67-68.
Emphasis in original.
[12] These points were made by Shoghi Effendi in two cablegrams received
by the leaders of the American Baha’i community on November 10,1941 and published
in the December 1941 issue of Baha’i News, pp. 1-2. Archives are available
online at http://bahai-news.info
[13] Letter by Ruhi Mohsen Afnan to the Baha’i Spiritual Assembly
of Iran, 1970. Translation by Bahiyeh Afnan Shahid, available online at http://www.abdulbahasfemily.org/documents/Ruhi-Afnan-1970-letter.pdf, pp. 20-21.
[14] Ibid., pp. 28-29.
[15] See Chapter 33.
[16] ZiaUllah.
[17] Foroughiyya.
[18] Mohammed Jawad Gazvini.
[19] Also known as Ismu’llah Jamal.
[20] Also known as Ismu’llah Mahdi.
[21] Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By (US Baha’i Publishing Trust,
1979 second printing), pp. 319-320.
[22] Kitab-i-Aqdas (“Most Holy Book”), paragraph 130.
[23] Ibid., paragraph 109.
[24] Shoghi Effendi, Directives from the Guardian (India/Hawaii, 1973
edition), section 89, p. 34.
[25] Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha’u’llah (US Baha’i Publishing
Trust, 1991 first pocket-size edition), p. 148.
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