October 28. On this date 1997, an individual wrote a letter "inquiring about the recitation of obligatory prayers was forwarded by the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States to the Universal House of Justice. It in turn referred your query to the Research Department for further study, and we are enclosing a copy of the memorandum that was produced in reply."
October 28. On this date in 1949, Shoghi Effendi wrote "The statement in 'Seven Days of Creation' certainly cannot be considered authoritative or correct. The Ark and the Flood we believe are symbolical."
"The statement in 'Seven Days of Creation' certainly cannot be considered authoritative or correct. The Ark and the Flood we believe are symbolical."
(From a letter written on behalf of the Guardian to an individual believer, October 28, 1949: Bahá'í News, No. 228, February 1950, p. 4)
The relevant passage from the Bible (Genesis 7:17-24) is as follows...
The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark. The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days. (Genesis 7:17-24)
October 28. On this date in 1949, Shoghi Effendi wrote "We Bahá'ís do not believe in Genesis literally. We know this world was not created in seven days, or six, or eight, but evolved gradually over a period of millions of years, as science has proved."
1658. We Do Not Believe in Genesis Literally--The World Was Not Created in Seven Days
"We Bahá'ís do not believe in Genesis literally. We know this world was not created in seven days, or six, or eight, but evolved gradually over a period of millions of years, as science has proved. As to where the idea of a seven-day week originated, it is certainly very ancient and you should refer to scholars for an answer."
(From a letter written on behalf of the Guardian to an individual believer, October 28, 1949)
October 28. On this date in 1949, Shoghi Effendi wrote, "Nine is the highest digit, hence symbolizes comprehensiveness, culmination; also, the reason it is used in the Temple's form is because 9 has the exact numerical value of 'Baha' (in the numerology connected with the Arabic alphabet) and Baha is the name of the Revealer of our Faith, Bahá'u'lláh."
1375. Nine as the Highest Digit Symbolizes Comprehensiveness, Culmination
"Regarding your various questions: We must avoid giving the impression of being all tied up with peculiar religious theories; on the other hand, the 9 sides of the Temple, and the 9-pointed star require an explanation, and he feels the best one is this:
"Nine is the highest digit, hence symbolizes comprehensiveness, culmination; also, the reason it is used in the Temple's form is because 9 has the exact numerical value of 'Baha' (in the numerology connected with the Arabic alphabet) and Baha is the name of the Revealer of our Faith, Bahá'u'lláh. The 9-pointed star is not a part of the teachings of our Faith, but only used as an emblem representing '9'. In telling people of the 9 religions of the world, that is, existing religions, we should not give this as the reason the Temple has 9 sides. This may have been an idea of the architect, and a very pleasing idea, which can be mentioned in passing, but the Temple has 9 sides because of the association of 9 with perfection, unity and 'Baha'.
"The Guardian feels that with intellectuals and students of religion the question of exactly which are the 9 existing religions is controversial, and it would be better to avoid it. He does not want the friends to be rigid in these matters, but use their judgment and tact; sometimes one statement is exactly the right thing for one type of mind and the wrong thing for another.
"Strictly speaking the 5-pointed star is the symbol of our Faith, as used by the Bab and explained by Him. But the Guardian does not feel it is wise or necessary to complicate our explanations of the Temple by adding this."
(From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, October 28, 1949)
October 28. On this date in 2000, the Los Angeles Times featured an article titled "Iranian Bahais, Fleeing Religious Persecution, Find a Refuge in Turkey."
Iranian Bahais, Fleeing Religious Persecution, Find a Refuge in Turkey
October 28, 2000|AMBERIN ZAMAN | SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
VAN, Turkey — When the prominent Iranian doctor was invited back home last year with promises that he would no longer be persecuted for his adherence to the Bahai faith, he resigned from a well-paid job in Saudi Arabia and flew to Iran.
"Within six months, I was in jail," said the frail-looking 65-year-old, who now has fled across the border to eastern Turkey, as he broke down in tears. "They fed me my own flesh."
The doctor, a longtime campaigner for Bahai rights, identified himself as Parvaz Mukhtari, but that is not his real name. Like many other Iranian Bahais seeking asylum in Turkey, he refuses to reveal his real name because he wants to protect loved ones back home.
The Bahais are part of a crush of refugees in this eastern Turkish city. Officials here say the refugees, most of them Kurds fleeing a 15-year separatist insurgency in the country's largely Kurdish southeast, have more than doubled the official population of 226,000. Besides Iranian Bahais, who normally are granted asylum because of the persecution they face, there are as many as 10,000 illegal Iranian immigrants here, officials estimate.
Necmettin Salaz, an advisor to Van's mayor, said the refugees have created "unbearable" pressure on city resources. Most of the refugees live in adobe huts with plastic sheeting for windows and no heating or toilets. Many men work illegally in construction; women in growing numbers are said to be turning to prostitution.
Officials at the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Van say the number of Iranian asylum-seekers, including Bahais, has steadily risen over the last three years. Nearly half of those granted refugee status last year were Bahais.
Like most of the other Bahai refugees, Mukhtari believed that conditions for Iran's largest religious minority would improve when the country's moderate president, Mohammad Khatami, was elected in May 1997 with promises of democratic reform.
But Mukhtari said he was arrested and put in solitary confinement in a jail in Isfahan, about 200 miles south of the Iranian capital, Tehran, after refusing to renounce his faith.
A ragged scar zigzags the length of Mukhtari's left calf from where he said his interrogators had carved out a piece of flesh.
"They grilled it in the form of a kebab and forced it down my throat," Mukhtari recalled, tugging fiercely at a set of turquoise worry beads as he spoke. "For them, it was a great joke."
Such treatment is part of what critics call a policy of repression against Bahais in Iran. Western diplomats say that continuing persecution of Bahais might be part of the broader power struggle in Iran between hard-liners and Khatami's reformers.
Just a year after Khatami was elected, Ruhollah Rowhani, a Bahai, was executed on charges of apostasy stemming from his alleged conversion of a Muslim woman to the Bahai faith, said Techeste Ahderom, a spokesman for the Bahai International Community in New York. At least 11 Bahais remain in jail for refusing to recant their faith. Four have been handed death sentences, Ahderom said.
The U.S. State Department's annual report on religious freedom for 1999 accused Iran of implementing policies against Bahais "geared to destroying them as a community" through prolonged imprisonment, confiscation and desecration of their holy sites and graves, and by denying them university education and government jobs.
Iranian authorities in September 1998 shut down a covert chain of Bahai "open universities" set up shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in response to the group's exclusion from high schools and universities. Last year, four Bahai faculty members arrested in the crackdown were sentenced to up to 10 years in prison on charges of having established "a secret organization" engaged in "attracting youth, teaching against Islam, and teaching against the regime of the Islamic Republic," the State Department report said.
Numbering about 350,000 in Iran and 5 million worldwide, the Bahais are considered apostates by Iran's clerical regime chiefly because of claims that their spiritual leader, a 19th-century Persian nobleman named Bahaullah, succeeded the prophet Muhammad as God's latest messenger.
More than 200 adherents of this largely pacifist community have been executed since the revolution. Thousands have fled the country.
In Turkey, however, the Bahais' aversion to politics and calls for equality between men and women have made them welcome. Leaders of this predominantly Muslim but officially secular nation continue to view Islamic radicalism as the No. 1 threat to the modern Turkish republic founded by Kemal Ataturk more than 70 years ago, and they accuse Iran's clerical rulers of seeking to export fundamentalism.
"Of all the Muslim countries in the world, Turkey is where we feel the greatest freedom," said Cuneyt Can, a physics professor at Ankara's Middle Eastern Technical University and a local community leader for Turkish Bahais.
For that reason, says Can, Bahais fleeing Iran are well received by local authorities, and Turkey is a favorite transit route for those seeking asylum in Western countries.
"The Turkish police, the people have been very kind to me," said a 54-year-old Bahai asylum seeker, who would identify herself only as Shaziya. She said her 40-year-old brother was shot dead by Iranian revolutionary guards in 1981.
"I still keep the shirt he was wearing," she said, producing a crumpled, blood-stained garment out of a plastic bag.
She said Iranian secret police still raid the family home and detain males for long periods. Last year, she said, her husband was jailed for refusing to convert to Islam and has yet to be released.
"I decided to come here to save my poor son," Shaziya said, pulling a teenager to her side. The pair made it to Van in February after a harrowing four-day trek through the snow-clad mountains separating Turkey from Iran. Like hundreds of Iranians who cross illegally into Turkey every year, they paid Kurdish smugglers about $600 each to get them across the heavily mined frontier. They are waiting to be resettled in Norway by the High Commissioner for Refugees.
As they await resettlement, community elders such as Mukhtari organize classes for Bahai youth to pass on the religion's teachings but also tutor them on such subjects as English and math. "Come what may," said Mukhtari, "we shall keep the spirit of our faith alive."
October 28. On this date in 1904, Ali-Kuli Khan married Boston socialite Florence Breed, consummating the first marriage between an Iranian and a Western Bahá'í.
Ali-Kuli Khan (also known as Nabílu'd-Dawlih) was an eminent Iranian Baha'i who served briefly as 'Abdu'l-Baha’s English-language secretary between 1899 and 1901, he was subsequently sent to America where he was the first to translate into English some of the most important works of Baha’u’llah, such as the Kitab-i-Iqan, The Seven Valleys and the Glad-Tidings. He also continued to translate 'Abdu'l-Baha’s correspondence with the American Baha'is. Ali Kuli Khan was appointed Iranian chargés d'affaires in Washington in 1910 and later served in various high-ranking diplomatic positions. On October 28, 1904, he married Boston socialite Florence Breed. The couple was the parents of Marzieh Gail.
On July 28, 1920, Shoghi Effendi wrote a letter to Florence Breed outlining his educational ambitions at Balliol College, to study with with eminent professors and Orientalists, noting alumni who were all Imperialists.
He was received there by the many devoted friends of 'Abdu'l-Bahá with genuine warmth and affection. Some of them he already knew personally, such as Dr J. E. Esslemont, who had recently been in Haifa and collaborated with him and other friends in the translation of an important Tablet of the Master; Major W. Tudor Pole, who had met 'Abdu'l-Bahá during His stay in London and had been in Palestine with the British Army of Occupation, rendering the believers every assistance within his power; and Lord Lamington.
Shoghi Effendi was the bearer of letters from this grandfather to some of His English friends, as is attested in a letter he wrote shortly after his arrival to the wife of Ali Kuli Khan in France:
July 28, 1920
My dearest Bahá'í sister:
I have been fearfully busy since I stepped on British soil and so far the progress of my work has been admirable. Equipped with the Tablets of the Master for Lady Blomfield, Lord Lamington and Major Tudor Pole, I have through them come in close touch with eminent professors and Orientalists whether at Oxford or London University. Having secured introductions and recommendations from Sir Denison Ross, and Professor Ker, to Sir Walter Raleigh - professor of and lecturer on English literature at Oxford - and Prof. Margoliouth - the remarkable Arabic scholar and Orientalist of the same University, I hastened to Oxford after a busy week stay in London. In fact before leaving for Oxford, I had a letter from Margoliouth saying that he would do all in his power to be of help to a relative of 'Abdu'l-Bahá. With this man and the Master of Balliol College - a College from which great men such as Lord Grey, Earl Curzon, Lord Milner, Mr. Asquith, Swinburne and Sir Herbert Samuel have graduated - I had the opportunity of speaking about the Cause and clearing up some points that to these busy scholars had hitherto been uncertain and confused.
October 27. On this date in 2009, John Paul Vader, a member of the NSA of Switzerland and Professor of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Lausanne Medical School, gave a talk titled "Some Aspects of the History of the Bahá'í Faith in Switzerland" at the The Ezri Center for Iran & Persian Gulf Studies at the University of Haifa.
