by Qurrat361
It's amazing how Baha'u'llah manages to say so little in so many words. It reminds me of L. Ron Hubbard. People who proclaim themselves "prophets" generally love to hear themselves talk, and so they do it endlessly and get very good at it.
What these people often present in their religions are very common sense ideas, which can be found outside of their religion. They draw people in by surrounding these ideas in walls of mystical language and making them much more complicated than they already are.
L. Ron Hubbard was infamous for doing this, as any ex-Scientologist would tell you. At its core, Scientology is a lot of common sense ideas—that talking to another person about your problems can help you solve them and stuff like that—but of course Hubbard had to make things weird like religious leaders love to do, and so he somehow connected this all to ancient aliens who are the source of all of your problems.
In the same way, Baha'u'llah and the rest of the Baha'i Central Figures liked to pretend that their theological ideas and especially their social ideas were anything unique to them, and so they wrote pages upon pages explaining these very simple ideas.
World peace isn't something new or unique to the Baha'i Faith, neither is gender equality, etc. The Unity of God certainly isn't a new idea, neither is the concept of theophany, which had been conceived of in polytheistic religion long before the Bab or Baha'u'llah, and in an Islamic context they were spoken of by Ibn Arabi and Shaykh Ahmad, who the Bab and Baha'u'llah were no doubt familiar with.
The Bab had a deep interest in Shaykh Ahmad and his successor Sayyid Kazim and their ideas, and he attended Sayyid Kazim's lectures. Baha'u'llah is known to have associated with Sufi mystics when he was in Kurdistan, so it's easy to see where the two got a lot of their ideas from. For example, the metaphor of wine in the Aqdas and other Baha'i writings is taken straight from Sufi poetry.
The Bab draws from a wide variety of neo-Platonic, Gnostic, and Sufi sources which I can't even begin to list. Baha'u'llah's works, specifically his Seven Valleys and Four Valleys; Hidden Words; and Ode to the Dove are quite clearly inspired by and more or less summaries of 'Attar's Conference of the Bird's; Mulla Sadra's Four Journeys; Umar Ibn al-Farid's Ode of the Way; as well as the hadith and Qur'an of course, and they are all very poor imitations at that. The Iqan, for instance, tries very hard to be Ibn Arabi's Bezels of Wisdom, but it very much misses the mark.
In some places in the Bab's and Baha'u'llah's writing, it can be very obvious which verses of the Qur'an they are trying to imitate. Arabic speakers have attested to this and to very the awkward phrasing of the Aqdas.
Baha'u'llah jumps so quickly between so many different topics without even attempting to smoothly transition between them, introducing a subject at one point and then not elaborating on it until way later in the text, and he repeats himself so many times that the book reads like it's written by some high school student desperately trying to reach a minimum word count.
But of course, when first read, and especially if the person reading it is from the West and/or isn't familiar with the literature the Aqdas is trying to imitate, it seems like such a unique and wonderful book; however, when critically analyzed, the book loses its mystical air.
I know where you got that comment from. So I will add something of my own to this.
ReplyDeleteFirst, a link to my source material: http://kitab-i-aqdas-criticism.blogspot.com/2017/09/a-critical-analysis-of-kitab-i-aqdas.html
Of all the passages in my very long argument, perhaps the most damning of all are these:
Baha'ullah: {{{Whoso layeth claim to a Revelation direct from God, ere the expiration of a full thousand years, such a man is assuredly a lying impostor. We pray God that He may graciously assist him to retract and repudiate such claim. Should he repent, God will, no doubt, forgive him. If, however, he persisteth in his error, God will, assuredly, send down one who will deal mercilessly with him. Terrible, indeed, is God in punishing! Whosoever interpreteth this verse otherwise than its obvious meaning is deprived of the Spirit of God and of His mercy which encompasseth all created things. Fear God, and follow not your idle fancies. Nay, rather, follow the bidding of your Lord, the Almighty, the All-Wise. Erelong shall clamorous voices be raised in most lands. Shun them, O My people, and follow not the iniquitous and evilhearted. This is that of which We gave you forewarning when We were dwelling in ‘Iráq, then later while in the Land of Mystery, and now from this Resplendent Spot.}}}
My response: [[[When I finally realized that one could only claim infallibility by also claiming direct revelation from God himself (by simple force of logic, since no man by himself can ever be equal to God), it put the whole issue of Abdu’l-Baha claiming to be infallible and also his claiming that Shoghi Effendi and the Universal House of Justice would be infallible as well in shocking context! I could NO LONGER claim to believe in Baha’u’llah and also accept the absolute authority of his successors in the Baha’i Faith at the same time. The conflict in my mind that resulted led me to resign from the Faith in 2005.]]]
Baha'u'llah: {{{He Who is the Dawning-place of God’s Cause hath no partner in the Most Great Infallibility. He it is Who, in the kingdom of creation, is the Manifestation of “He doeth whatsoever He willeth.” God hath reserved this distinction unto His own Self, and ordained for none a share in so sublime and transcendent a station. This is the Decree of God, concealed ere now within the veil of impenetrable mystery. We have disclosed it in this Revelation, and have thereby rent asunder the veils of such as have failed to recognize that which the Book of God set forth and who were numbered with the heedless.}}}
My response: [[[Here again is that damning (no pun intended) issue of infallibility that got me so riled up in the final months of my being a Baha’i. Abdu’l-Baha tried to get around that by claiming he only had “conferred infallibility” from Baha’u’llah. That is bullshit; I might as well claim that I have “conferred perfection” from my own father. But perfection and infallibility are ABSOLUTE attributes or otherwise they are meaningless words. “I AM ALWAYS RIGHT BECAUSE I SAY I AM!” is the mantra of the egomaniac and the narcissist, not a legitimate leader. Even Baha’u’llah only claimed to be infallible because of his unique relationship with God, which, as I showed earlier, he denied anyone else would have for 1000 years after him…..not even his son Abdu’l-Baha.]]]
Baha'u'llah: {{{Say: O source of perversion! Abandon thy willful blindness, and speak forth the truth amidst the people. I swear by God that I have wept for thee to see thee following thy selfish passions and renouncing Him Who fashioned thee and brought thee into being. Call to mind the tender mercy of thy Lord, and remember how We nurtured thee by day and by night for service to the Cause. Fear God, and be thou of the truly repentant. Granted that the people were confused about thy station, is it conceivable that thou thyself art similarly confused? Tremble before thy Lord and recall the days when thou didst stand before Our throne, and didst write down the verses that We dictated unto thee—verses sent down by God, the Omnipotent Protector, the Lord of might and power. Beware lest the fire of thy presumptuousness debar thee from attaining to God’s Holy Court. Turn unto Him, and fear not because of thy deeds. He, in truth, forgiveth whomsoever He desireth as a bounty on His part; no God is there but Him, the Ever-Forgiving, the All-Bounteous. We admonish thee solely for the sake of God. Shouldst thou accept this counsel, thou wilt have acted to thine own behoof; and shouldst thou reject it, thy Lord, verily, can well dispense with thee, and with all those who, in manifest delusion, have followed thee. Behold! God hath laid hold on him who led thee astray. Return unto God, humble, submissive and lowly; verily, He will put away from thee thy sins, for thy Lord, of a certainty, is the Forgiving, the Mighty, the All-Merciful.}}}
DeleteMy response: [[[Here Baha’u’llah directly addresses his younger half-brother, Mirza Yahya, who had the title of Ṣubḥ-i-Azal. Baha’u’llah and his brother became enemies during their time together in the Turkish city of Adrianople (now called Edirne), when Mirza Yahya rejected Baha’u’llah’s claims of being the one the Bab foretold, and insisted that he was the rightful leader of the Babis, having been appointed to that role by the Bab himself. But he proved to be so cowardly and incompetent that Baha’u’llah was able to win most of the Babis to his side, making them Baha’is, while the remaining Babis were renamed Azalis after Mirza Yahya’s title. You’d think it was obvious that the Bab had made a mistake with his appointment, but the hilarious thing about Manifestations of God like the Bab and Baha’u’llah is that THEY ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE MISTAKEN ABOUT ANYTHING! So Baha’i history has been rewritten to whitewash this issue.
A generation later, Baha’u’llah stated in his will and testament that Abdu’l-Baha was to be the rightful leader of the Baha’i community, but also stated that Mirza Muhammad-Ali, Abdu’l-Baha’s own younger half-brother, would be the first son’s lieutenant and eventual successor. But Abdu’l-Baha decided to pull the same stunt against his brother that Baha’u’llah did against Mirza Yahya, denying him any place in the hierarchy of the Faith! Again, it could not be admitted that either Baha’u’llah had made an error or that Abdu’l-Baha had been treacherous, so Baha’i history was written to make it appear that the “betrayal” was all on Mirza Muhammad-Ali after Baha’u’llah’s death, depicting this wayward son as a horrible villain and Abdu’l-Baha as a virtuous hero in ridiculously cartoonish terms. Never mind that many of Baha’u’llah’s relatives actually sided with the younger brother in this case.
The intense thought control and self-censorship of the Baha’i Administrative Order over the past century or so has allowed this sort of manipulation of history in the Baha’i Faith. We simply have no way of knowing for sure what really happened.]]]
Bahá'u'lláh revelation is Truth. Period. Allah'u'Abha fam bam, now let's work together to make this world a more peaceful place for everybody. 💙
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