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Updated: June 13, 2025
Jamál-i-Burújirdí, Mírzá Muḥammad-‘Alí’s ablest lieutenant in Persia, fell a prey to a fatal and loathsome disease; Siyyid Mihdíy-i-Dahájí, who, betraying ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, joined the Covenant-breakers, died in obscurity and poverty, followed by his wife and his two sons; Mírzá Ḥusayn-‘Alíy-i-Jahrúmí, Mírzá Ḥusayn-i-Shírázíy-i-Khurṭúmí and Ḥájí Muḥammad-Ḥusayn-i-Káshání, who represented the arch-breaker of the Covenant in Persia, India and Egypt, failed utterly in their missions; whilst the greedy and conceited Ibráhím-i-Khayru’lláh, who had chosen to uphold the banner of his rebellion in America for no less than twenty years, and who had the temerity to denounce, in writing, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, His “false teachings, His misrepresentations of Bahaism, His dissimulation,” and to stigmatize His visit to America as “a death-blow” to the “Cause of God,” met his death soon after he had uttered these denunciations, utterly abandoned and despised by the entire body of the members of a community, whose founders he himself had converted to the Faith, and in the very land that bore witness to the multiplying evidences of the established ascendancy of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Whose authority he had, in his later years, vowed to uproot.
Baha-'ullah, as we have seen, acted differently; apparently he did not consider that the Islamic peoples were quite ripe for monogamy. But surely he did not choose the better part, as the history of Bahaism sufficiently shows. At any rate, the Centre of the Covenant has now spoken with no uncertain sound.
The Bayan does not leave this in uncertainty. The Bāb's believers therefore are not confined to a revelation constantly becoming less and less applicable to the spiritual wants of the present age. The comparisons sometimes drawn between the history of nascent Christianity and that of early Bahaism are somewhat misleading.
+1120+. Babism and Bahaism, the transformation of Babism effected by Baháu'llah, is a church in all essential points, though its organization consists merely in the devotion of its adherents to the teaching and the person of its founder; it has no clergy, no religious ceremonial, no public prayers, no connection with any civil government, but its dogma is well-defined and it offers eternal salvation to its adherents.
More important is it that both in early Christianity and in early Bahaism we find a conspicuous personage who succeeds in disengaging the faith from its particularistic envelope. Paul and Baha-'ullah may both be said to have transformed their respective religions. Yet there is a difference between them.
It is true, Christianity has, thus far, been intolerant of other religions, which contrasts with the 'easy tolerance' of Buddhism and Hinduism and, as the author may wish to add, of Bahaism. But is the Christian intolerance a worthy element of character? May we not, with Mr. Another very special jewel of Christianity is the doctrine of the Spirit.
The Temple of Unity Bahaism as it is held in America to-day is distilled out of the writings and teachings of Baha'u'llah and Abdul-Baha. Naturally enough, in the popularization of it its contradictions have been reconciled and its subtleties disregarded. What is left fits into a variety of forms and is in line with a great range of idealism.
It appears to me that the essence of Bahaism is not dogma, but the unification of peoples and religions in a certain high-minded and far from unpractical mysticism. I think that Abdul Baha is just as much devoted to mystic and yet practical religion as his father. In one of the reports of his talks or monologues he is introduced as saying: 'A moth loves the light though his wings are burnt.
He was thus able to give the world his message and we find in his teachings the germ of the gospel of Bahaism. Before his death he named his successor a young man who had been greatly drawn to him and who seemed by his youth, zeal and devotion to be set apart to continue his work.
The twelve basic principles of Bahaism as announced in its popular literature are: The Oneness of Mankind. Independent investigations of truth. The Foundation of all religions is one. Religion must be the cause of unity. Religion must be in accord with science and reason. Equality between men and women. Prejudice of all kinds must be forgotten. Universal Peace. Universal Education.
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