p03 Arrowhead

Arrowhead of an Awakening

By John Taylor; 2008 May 22, 06 `Azamat, 165 BE

 

This month we have been asking how to get rid of religious fanaticism.

 

Recently, in a brief summary of the Baha'i stand against fanaticism, we pointed out that the entire faith is designed to splice this blight permanently out of the moral genes of the human race.

 

We cited three main sources for this enterprise.

 

The first was Abdu'l-Baha's Secret of Divine Civilization the first foundational Baha'i document for the implementation of this goal. Written to those compatriots who would reform perhaps the most fanatical country in history, 19th Century Persia, this book points out that one of the fundamental instructions of the Muslim religion, enshrined in the Qu'ran, is a divine injunction to deal with those of opposing beliefs in terms that can only be described as meek and mild,

 

"See for example the divine words that were addressed to Muhammad, the Ark of Salvation, the Luminous Countenance and Lord of Men, bidding Him to be gentle with the people and long-suffering: `Debate with them in the kindliest manner.' (Q16:126) That Blessed Tree Whose light was `neither of the East nor of the West' (Q24:35) and Who cast over all the peoples of the earth the sheltering shade of a measureless grace, showed forth infinite kindness and forbearance in His dealings with every one. In these words, likewise, were Moses and Aaron commanded to challenge Pharaoh, Lord of the Stakes: `Speak ye to him with gentle speech.'" (Q20:46) (Secret, 52)

 

In the light of current events, this makes it starkly clear how profound is the betrayal of their own religious ideals by the dogmatists of Shi'ih Islam. Baha'u'llah, in His last major work, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, addressed at length the root causes of this egregiously un-humanitarian attitude on the part of the religious leaders of Persia.

 

"O Hadi! The blind fanaticism of former times hath withheld the hapless creatures from the Straight Path. Meditate on the Shi'ih sect. ... It is now necessary to reflect a while, that haply that which hath come between the True One and His creatures may be discovered, and the deeds which have been the cause of protest and denial be made known." (Baha'u'llah, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 163)

 

In effect, He states, a faith founded on protest against the martyrdom of Husayn had embroiled itself in the same politicized hatred, immorality, envy and greed that caused his martyrdom in the first place. In the 1920's Shoghi Effendi described the consequent impotence of the religious and secular leadership of the land his ancestors to address the challenges of modernism,

 

"Persia, the cradle of an unfolding world civilization, is still bereft of her freedom, sunk in ignorance, a prey to contending policies and factions, beset on one hand by the powers of orthodoxy and sectarian fanaticism and assailed on the other by the forces of materialism and unbelief." (Shoghi Effendi, Baha'i Administration, pp. 88-89)

 

The Muslim sectaries to whom Abdu'l-Baha and Baha'u'llah addressed their appeals have, since the Iranian Revolution, given up completely on dialog with rival faiths. They have openly adopted terror, including cleansing Iran of its Baha'is, as their chief way of proselytizing their faith and vindicating the validity of their worldview.

 

At the same time, relations among other faith groups, while less overtly violent, are far from what they should be if religion is ever to become a positive force for cohesion in the face of the pressing challenges presented by climate destabilization.

 

The second foundational document specifically addressing fanaticism is a letter the Universal House of Justice wrote to the leaders of religion in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September, 2001. This was a historic appeal not just for love and cooperation among disparate faiths, but a specific proposal for following Baha'u'llah's injunction to extirpate fanaticism root and branch.

 

The House opens this letter by pointing out that while prejudice used to seem inherent to human nature, the legacy of the 20th Century is to break up the logjam obstructing our progress. Unfortunately, faith groups are hardly at the cutting edge of the breakup.

 

"Tragically, organized religion, whose very reason for being entails service to the cause of brotherhood and peace, behaves all too frequently as one of the most formidable obstacles in the path; to cite a particular painful fact, it has long lent its credibility to fanaticism. We feel a responsibility, as the governing council of one of the world religions, to urge earnest consideration of the challenge this poses for religious leadership."

 

The House then summarizes events of the past century, both tragic and hopeful, that push religion into prominence. This is a problem that will not go away by itself. There is a "reluctant recognition that there is no credible replacement for religious belief as a force capable of generating self-discipline and restoring commitment to moral behaviour." There has been a spread of general knowledge about world religions and an increase in interfaith worship, but there remains a lack of,

 

"both intellectual coherence and spiritual commitment. In contrast to the processes of unification that are transforming the rest of humanity's social relationships, the suggestion that all of the world's great religions are equally valid in nature and origin is stubbornly resisted by entrenched patterns of sectarian thought."

 

The House points out that racism and sexism, or to put it positively, a lack of recognition that there is but one human race, is at the heart of the failure of believers of different races to recognize the validity of one another's religious heritage. They do not downplay the evils and dangers of interfaith tension. History, they point out, teaches a frightening lesson of what can happen.

 

"The consequences, in terms of human well-being, have been ruinous. It is surely unnecessary to cite in detail the horrors being visited upon hapless populations today by outbursts of fanaticism that shame the name of religion. Nor is the phenomenon a recent one. To take only one of many examples, Europe's sixteenth century wars of religion cost that continent the lives of some thirty percent of its entire population. One must wonder what has been the longer term harvest of the seeds planted in popular consciousness by the blind forces of sectarian dogmatism that inspired such conflicts. (The Universal House of Justice, 2002 April, To the World's Religious Leaders, para 12, p. 4)

 

The third foundational document was "One Common Faith," commissioned and published a few years later by the House to expand upon the themes it had broached in the letter to leaders of religion. Here they explore the scriptural justifications for interfaith harmony. The intention of the book is to empower Baha'is to redouble our efforts to quench the fires of fanaticism and dissension. In the forward they write,

 

"Far from feeling unsupported in their efforts to respond, Baha'is will come increasingly to appreciate that the Cause they serve represents the arrowhead of an awakening taking place among people everywhere, regardless of religious background and indeed among many with no religious leaning."

 

There is evidence that this arrowhead is penetrating deeper. Yesterday we noted with pleasure on this blog the proposal put forward this past March in a large public forum by a major Christian intellectual for a "charter of compassion" based upon the Golden Rule." She suggests that this be devised and posted by the leaders of the three largest and most influential religions. Although she is distancing herself from the Baha'is who initiated this in the first place (not to mention a similar Golden Rule initiative in the 1940's by the likes of Albert Schweitzer and Norman Rockwell) one cannot help but be pleased that, in spite of the reluctance of the world's leading lights, there seems no other way forward than to expose and dry up the roots of religious dogma. It is not quite the same as cutting and composting, as Shoghi Effendi suggests be done here, but it is better than nothing.

 

"The call of Baha'u'llah is primarily directed against all forms of provincialism, all insularities and prejudices. If long-cherished ideals and time-honored institutions, if certain social assumptions and religious formulae have ceased to promote the welfare of the generality of mankind, if they no longer minister to the needs of a continually evolving humanity, let them be swept away and relegated to the limbo of obsolescent and forgotten doctrines. Why should these, in a world subject to the immutable law of change and decay, be exempt from the deterioration that must needs overtake every human institution? For legal standards, political and economic theories are solely designed to safeguard the interests of humanity as a whole, and not humanity to be crucified for the preservation of the integrity of any particular law or doctrine." (Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, p. 42)

 

Next time the plan is to delve into fundamentalism.