Liberator from Fear

Baha'u'llah, Liberator from Fear

By John Taylor; 2006 October 25

The Tabernacle of Unity continues to occupy the center of our field of vision. Already a brief but accurate article treating the several Tablets in Tabernacle is available on Wikipedia. A cursory check this morning found that there is still no official etext of the authoritative version of Tabernacle available on the Net, but somebody has taken the initiative and scanned the book in; their non-official copy is available at the Baha'i Online Library, at:

http://bahai-library.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?p=5154

Another important document dealing with this Tablet is to be found on this mega-site by one Ramin Neshati. It consists of an earlier provisional translation along with an outline and a more extensive introduction, one that gives details not found in the introduction just published by the World Center. I will include at the end of this mail-out some of its most interesting passages, especially those giving background on who this Manikchi was. Let us now go on to our subject for today, the second Tablet in Tabernacle, entitled:

Responses to Questions of Manikchi Sahib from a Tablet to Mirza Abu'l-Fadl

One of the unique features of the first two Tablets in this set of Tablets to Zoroastrians is how they uncover the extent to which Manikci Sahib failed to understand or misunderstood the answers to his questions that prompted the Tablet named after him. Most other Tablets we are familiar with were to believers (who would have inhibitions about writing back and saying, "I did not understand,") or to Kings and other eminent figures who did not reply at all, directly or indirectly. For example, Manikchi apparently asked which of the prophets of God and which of their holy books is to be preferred, and Baha'u'llah answered in paragraph 1:4 of Manikchi's Tablet as follows:

"As to thy question concerning the heavenly Scriptures: The All-Knowing Physician hath His finger on the pulse of mankind. He perceiveth the disease, and prescribeth, in His unerring wisdom, the remedy. Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. The remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as that which a subsequent age may require. Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and centre your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements."

Manikchi did not get it. He was unsatisfied and asked for more detailed, explicit answers. Baha'u'llah, in the second Tablet in this compilation, gives to Mirza Abu'l-Fadl more detailed answers but insists in paragraph 2.5 of the Tablet to him through Abu'l-Fadl that the above paragraph in the original adequately answers his question.

"Every fair-minded soul will testify that these words are to be viewed as a mirror of the knowledge of God, wherein all that hath been inquired is clearly and conspicuously reflected. Blessed is he who hath been endowed with seeing eyes by God, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise. (Tabernacle 2.5, p. 19)

Not only that particular question either but also several other of his questions all are adequately answered by this pithy paragraph, Baha'u'llah asserts. As the father of a twelve year old daughter, I can imagine how she would express what Baha'u'llah is trying to convey to Manikchi: "What part of `be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in' do you not understand?, What part of `the age ye live in' don't you get? It means now. Now!" she would shout. Of course the Lord of the Age is more patient than that, but He clearly does single out that phrase in that sentence in that paragraph as having the most to say about how to think about religion.

To look at it from another angle, imagine what it would be like if most physicists studied not matter but the history of science. Imagine their exclusive concern being how past scientists used to imagine matter to be, instead of investigating the situation for themselves using the latest tools and theories. Imagine a field dominated by obsolete scientific theory, whose concerns were what past ages thought of the world, rather than about science itself, how atoms and molecules actually behave. That is how religion was studied by Manikchi Sahib and, it is fair to say, by just about everybody else, then and now. If physics were in religion's state of torpor we would be trying to get from place to place in carts with square wheels pulled by oxen.

I have not finished my first reading of this second Tablet, but the following paragraph jumped out at me:

"As to the Sahib's reference to the kings, they are indeed the manifestations of the name of God, the Almighty, and the revealers of His name, the All-Powerful. The vesture that beseemeth their glorious temples is justice. Should they become adorned therewith, mankind will partake of perfect tranquillity and infinite blessings." (Tabernacle 2.10)

Today we have lost the institution of kingship, except for some tiny vestigial appendages in Europe. However, Baha'u'llah seems to imply that if we had just kings the populace would "partake of perfect tranquillity and infinite blessings." This is a very perceptive analysis.

Fear mongering is pandemic. Those in my own trade, writers and especially journalists, are most often guilty of pandering to fear. You can understand that a writer needs to be read, and nothing grips a reader like having the bejeebers scared out of them. So shrill pieces pointing out the dangers of just about anything are common in the media. The result is massive depression. Compare that to the liberal, general, kind, optimistic words and images projected in the talks of the Master in the West.

Ditto for political leaders. They are well aware that a scared democracy is a malleable one. My recent debating partner Lefty had been scared out of his rationality, and he clearly believed that he had to distort the truth in order to defend America. However, as Alexander Trudeau in a recent article points out, the overall effect is that we are being systematically robbed of one of our most fundamental human rights, the right to be free from fear.

from: "We Have to Defeat Fear, In a frightened society, rights are too often abused," by Alexandre Trudeau, McLeans, September 11, 2006, p. 40

From the moment I learned about this measure, before I even met Hassan Almrei or any of the four other men also targeted by security certificates, I was disturbed. In my view, only a nation in the grips of fear would behave in such a way toward a person who has not been found guilty of any crime. I was worried by the idea that Canada might be succumbing to policies of fear, the same policies of fear that have transformed the United States. I am terrified of fear. For me, the arrival of fear in the affairs of state always marks a turn towards a more barbaric order.

When Franklin Roosevelt said that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,' he was addressing his nation in the darkest years of the Great Depression. He was attempting to steady the faith of American citizens in the American economy right after yet another banking crisis. The fear that he described was thus an economic fear, and emphasized the fact that the free-market economy only functions properly when there is trust in the rules of society and confidence in the monetary system.

Over the years, Roosevelt's words have come to resonate far more broadly, however. They have come to represent the fortitude and unwavering dedication to principles of a great nation that stays the course in the face of odds and obstacles. Indeed, Roosevelt's monument in Washington solemnly highlights what one understands to be the four most American types of freedoms. Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Freedom from want. Freedom from fear.

Freedom from fear is a most abstract principle. But when thought about carefully, it may well be the first freedom of society. It harks back to Hobbes's early logic for the emergence of society: the free man is the one freed from animal suspicion and selfishness by his faith in the protecting force of the law. This freedom also connects back to Roosevelt's warning that fear itself poses a crucial threat to the most basic social union. Really, a society wrought with fear is a society teetering on the edge of anarchy. In contrast, the law is fearless, justice is cold, and a secure freedom is a freedom without fear.

Terrorism is a crime explicitly connected to fear. A terrorist terrorizes us. Granted, the term "terrorist" has been sorely misused over the years, but in essence it usually means someone who uses violence or the threat of violence against civilians to try to influence political realities when other means of change are available. For other means of political change to be available, a certain social order is presupposed, a certain set of rules is deemed to be in place. But the terrorist is the individual who reintroduces fear into the social order. Thus terrorism is deemed such a major offence, because it not only causes loss of life and property, but it also challenges and shakes the social order. Terrorism undermines our freedom by inducing fear in us.

It doesn't take much of a jump to then conclude that the only legitimate war on terror must also be a war on fear itself. Terror is defeated when the fear it has induced is dispelled. Dispelling fear is much more than merely neutralizing a threat. To dispel fear, the threat also has to be rendered irrelevant by precisely a moral fortitude unshaken by terror, by an unwavering dedication to higher principles.

The war on terror as it has been conducted for the last five years has done nothing but increase fear worldwide, and thus enhance the impact of terror. Indeed, increased fear has been sown in so many different ways by those who purport to fight terror. To begin with, the very vocabulary of this new war on terror has been nothing but inflammatory and vague from the start. Terms like "axis of evil," "evildoers" or "crusade" conjure up the most dramatic imagery. How deeply they contrast with the sober words of Roosevelt. The appropriate conduct 'of a leader in the face of adversity should be to exert a calming and reassuring influence on the people, not to rile them up with apocalyptic warnings.

Of course, fear has also been sown in far more concrete ways abroad. I can only think of an Iraqi mother trying to explain to her child why bombs are falling on them. In Iraq, since the onset of violence, originally justified by the most fearful of principles -- the pre-emptive strike -- the social order has decayed to the point where now only violence and fear hold sway. Afghanistan inches closer to such a reality every day.

From introductory notes to Lawh-i-Manikchi Sahib, by Ramin Neshati.

http://bahai-library.com/?file=bahaullah_lawh_manikchi_neshati.html

Published in Lights of Irfan 3; pages 121-128

Wilmette, IL: Irfan Colloquia, 2002

Manikji met Baha'u'llah in Baghdad in 1854 while enroute to Iran and later corresponded with Him on more than one occasion. He was impressed by Baha'u'llah's dignity and comportment and in due time became well disposed to the Babi community through an enduring rapport with Him. This tablet was revealed in response to one of Manikji's letters in which he posed specific questions to Baha'u'llah on Divine Names, language preference (i.e., Persian over Arabic), education and the like. Although Manikji did not read or write Persian, he had, nonetheless, a keen interest in safeguarding it in its pure, non-Arabicised form. He hired Mirza Abul-Fadl Gulpayagani, the celebrated Baha'i scholar and recognized expert in pure Persian, to teach in a school he helped found for educating Zoroastrian children. [9] In subsequent letters, Manikji continued to seek out Baha'u'llah's views on the validity of various religions, nationalism, the origin of humanity, and other such topics. [10] For Zoroastrians the tracing of Baha'u'llah's ancestry to the last monarch of the pre-Islamic Sasanian dynastyYazdigird IIIand His claim to be Shah Bahram Varjavand, the latter-day Savior promised in their Scriptures, provided further impetus for their rapid conversion. [13] Ironically, the Zoroastrian priests (dasturs) and the Muslim clergy found themselves united in pressuring these converts to abandon their newfound religion.

Manikji, it appears, was not merely a promoter of the Persian language or a protector of Zoroastrian rights. His activism and influence spanned the socio-cultural, religious and political spheres. Being reform-minded, he routinely communicated with Persian intellectuals, political activists and dissenters such as Mirza Fath Ali Akhundzada, Aqa Buzurg Kirmani, Mirza Malkum Khan and the like. [14] Also, doubts have persisted about the nature of his Anglo-Indian connections and his possible role as a British mole. [15] He frequently commissioned others to write on topics that held his interests, but would either tamper with the finished product or would claim authorship for material he did not write. [16] As mentioned, he employed prominent Baha'is and specifically commissioned Mirza Husayn Hamadani to write a history on the Babi religion that came to be known as New History (Tarikh-i Jadid), a work not devoid of controversy. Despite the growing tensions between the Zoroastrian dasturs and prominent Zoroastrian converts, however, Manikji retained a favorable outlook toward the Babis and Baha'is and continued to maintain a warm friendship with Baha'u'llah.