Bahá'ís: a religion that proclaimed the equality of women with men and the sanctity of universal education

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

This religion has many followers all over the world, but we almost never hear about it. Perhaps because she has not yet unleashed a single war. For a long time, the Bahá'ís were considered a kind of Islam, but in the end they had to admit that this is their own confession with its own saints and its own rules. For example, Bahá'ís profess the equality not only of the poor and the rich, but also of men and women.

Rumors and rumors

It is difficult to write intriguingly about Bahá'ís. While many large religions and small (relatively) sects are constantly at the center of financial or obscene scandals, Baha'is seem to live peacefully. However, you can find a small scandal around the morality of Baha'is in India on the Internet: one site says with indignation that the alien Iranian Baha'is are going against Indian customs and corrupting the local Indian Baha'is, engaging in love affairs with them, which leads to divorce or the threat of divorce. So, one couple entered into a carnal relationship during fasting, cynically taking advantage of the fact that it was not prohibited - of course, the whole intrigue was that the couple was unmarried (more precisely, the man was unmarried).

Other scandals around Baha'is: at the beginning of the last century, they forced the queen of Romania to leave Christianity; perhaps they supported the Jews immediately after the war, when they decided to build modern Israel; probably, the founder of Bahaism escaped certain death at the hands of Muslims with the help of the British army, which means that he was a protege of the Western states. In general, the scandalousness of the actual scandals around the Baha'is can be assessed.

However, without any “possibly” and “apparently”, it is reliably known that now, after the Islamic revolution of the seventies, Bahais are being persecuted in Iran as sectarians who distorted Islam. Immediately after the revolution, all members of the Bahá'í National Spiritual Assembly were taken out of town and killed. Until 2018, seven other Baha'i leaders were tortured and arrested - including two women who are treated equally harshly despite the declared leniency and special protection of women by Iran's Muslim leaders. In addition to the leaders, some ordinary Baha'is are also imprisoned without specific charges. Baha'i applicants are refused admission to institutions. But, since this is too bland for a "scandal", very few people of other confessions know about the persecution of Baha'is.

Bahá'u'lláh and Kurrat Ul-Ain

The Bahá'í is named after the first of the leaders of Bahá'u'lláh, one of the followers of the herald of the new faith and its principles, the Bab. The Bab lived in Iran in the nineteenth century. He began to teach universal equality - and, which was especially unusual for monotheistic religions, equality of men and women. The Bab declared that God is fundamentally unknowable (which means that there is no need for clergy), abolished many Islamic dogmas and, despite this, gained many adherents. Among his first eighteen disciples - the Living Letters, something akin to the apostles - was the young Iranian Bahá'u'lláh.

The name "Bahá'u'lláh" - "Glory of the Lord" is the religious name adopted by all the Living Letters of the Bab. From birth his name was Hussein Ali-in-Nuri. It is now believed that he was one of the many manifestations of God in the human world, but when he was a young follower of the Bab, he was only one of the heralds of his teachings. Only after the brutal execution of the Bab and many Babists, Bahá'u'lláh, who miraculously escaped death, announced that he was yet another phenomenon. Yes, the Baha'is believe that God regularly visits the earth, assuming a form understandable to people, and over and over again reveals more to people - which moves humanity forward in small steps. And the fact that God spoke as Krishna or Jesus can be crossed out by the speeches of his further manifestations, since humanity has grown from his previous teachings.

Before joining the Babists, Bahá'u'lláh bore the title Mirza, that is, a prince - he was a descendant of the country's long-standing rulers. He was famous for intelligence and friendliness, but this can be said of many religious leaders. However, it is truly striking, given that it was in Iran in the nineteenth century, how he supported another Living Letter, a poet nicknamed Kurrat Ul-Ain, while her support cost him the respect of many converts to Babists.

The daughter of a mullah, who left her family very young to study and teach - and later to preach - Kurrat Ul-Ain constantly reminded the new Babists that before the world and God, women and men are equal, that one man should have one wife and that not one a woman should not live hiding from the world behind the walls of a harem and a veil on her face. Yesterday's Muslims could not accept this and even tried to expose the poetess by writing a letter to Bab with a demand to clarify the issue of equality. Is it really for women too? Although it could have cost the loss of followers, the Bab firmly replied that Kurrat Ul-Ain did not distort his teachings and should be listened to.

The poetess herself was known for the fact that they tried to keep her in prison many times. However, soon the jailers fell under the spell of her speeches and began to admit pilgrims to her who wanted to hear the sermons. After that, the authorities expelled the poetess away - after all, killing her would mean making a saint in the eyes of people. Once Kurrat Ul-Ain was imprisoned within the walls of a house by her ex-husband and father-in-law, and Bahá'u'lláh, hearing about this, rescued her from captivity and settled in his house - and it was not about love. Another time, Kurrat Ul-Ain and her followers were attacked in the desert by the people of the local mayor, who robbed them of all supplies - but the poet did not die, having managed to find help.

Finally, one day, as you know, personally the Shah of Iran Nasreddin, the one who later photographed his wives, offered the poetess to become his wife if she left the teachings of the Bab and returned to Islam. Kurrat Ul-Ain replied with a poem in which she wished the Shah to continue to be rich and happy, and called the wanderings of a beggar dervish her fate. Soon after, she was killed and her belongings burned, as if she were a witch. Nowadays Baha'is venerate Kurrat Ul-Ain as their saint. Bahá'u'lláh, meanwhile, was imprisoned and tortured. There, under torture, he realized that he was a manifestation of God. After that, he lived and taught for a long time.

Paradise is a journey to God

The Bahá'í faith is captivating and reminiscent of the mystical teachings of the twentieth century - although it was born before them. Baha'is believe that God is one, but he is fundamentally unknowable. He can talk to people, appearing in a form they understand. The life of a person, the Bahá'í teaches, is like the life of a fetus in the womb of a mother. This is development, but it is also preparation for real life. After death, the soul of a person will wander the worlds. If in her spiritual aspirations she draws closer to God, then it will be heavenly bliss. Hell is the inability to approach, the stuck of the soul due to its own vices and laziness far from God. Perhaps it is such a complex concept without an understandable system of punishments and rewards after death that makes the Bahá'ís not yet such a popular religion. Pitchfork torture or dozens of virgin slaves are much easier to accept as a concept.

Among the spiritual practices of the Bahá'ís, in addition to the offers to pray and meditate, there is self-realization in the sphere of one's talent, moreover, such that would benefit humanity. That is, an artist can paint pictures, and a writer - books in order to improve, and if it seems that you have no talents in you, then reading a story to a bored, sick old man, planting a tree or looking after a child can still move you on the spiritual path.

Bahá'í concepts include not only universal equality, without reservations, but also the elimination of extreme forms of poverty and wealth, the benefit of universal education, the rejection of fanaticism, gambling and alcohol. They have their own calendar of 19 months of 19 days, their own religious fast, similar to Muslim, and three daily obligatory prayers, one of which, of his choice, the believer must read once a day. Baha'is do not have official restrictions on food, nor the concept of carnal connection as something dirty, which traditionally made their coexistence with other religions problematic. But the most unexpected thing is that if the family does not have enough money to educate all the children, then parents should choose to educate their daughters or older daughters, since a woman can always teach in her family (or, more precisely, she does it more often). By the way, the same are the recommendations of many volunteer organizations of our time - all practice shows that the education received by one girl leads to an increase in the level of education of many other people at once.

In general, many of the social "inventions" of the twentieth century were secondary - everything had long been invented by the Baha'is. But if they anticipated the future, then next to them and us there still exist People from the Past: How Old Believers, Mormons and Mennonites Live Today.