"the Baha’i Faith has no official position on the governance and current disputes regarding this land."and
"The Baha’i Faith is entirely non-political and we neither take sides in the present tragic dispute going on over the future of the Holy Land and its peoples..."and Jerusalem Post writes thus:
"...as an article of faith – it studiously keeps out of the tumultuous world of Israeli politics."Now read these words of Shoghi Effendi:
On March 11, 1936, Shoghi Effendi wrote a letter later published as The Unfolding of World Civilization, a document included in the book titled World Order of Bahá'u'lláh.
Within The Unfolding of World Civilization are sections, such as one entitled Collapse of Islam, in which Shoghi Effendi summarizes late Ottoman and early Turkish Republican history in these terms...
1) Shoghi Effendi considers the British seizure of Palestine a "liberation." By the time World Order of Bahá’u’lláh was published in 1938, the British had permitted the immigration of hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers to Palestine, and in 1937 the Peel Commission proposed a partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab sectors. The proposal was rejected by both the Arab and Jewish leadership. It is not mere conspiratorial inklings that lead detractors to consider the Bahá'í Faith to have ties to Zionism or British and Russian Imperialism.
2) Shoghi Effendi refers to "the further dismemberment decreed by the Treaty of Versailles" of the Ottoman Empire. The Treaty of Versailles was signed between Germany and some of the Allied nations, and it did not pertain to the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire would cease hostilities with Allies through the Armistice of Mudros, and Treaty of Sevres that was signed at the end of World War I was never ratified by the Ottoman Parliament in Istanbul. The nascent Republic of Turkey would later sign the Treaty of Lausanne with the Allies.
3) Shoghi Effendi describes the suffering of Ottoman subjects in World War I to have been "well-deserved calamities" unloosed by the "directing Hand" of Bahá'u'lláh. One wonders how anyone can equate Bahá'u'lláh's exile, where he was still allowed to lead his religious community and publicly declare himself Him whom God shall make manifest, with the suffering of World War I.
Within The Unfolding of World Civilization are sections, such as one entitled Collapse of Islam, in which Shoghi Effendi summarizes late Ottoman and early Turkish Republican history in these terms...
The murder of that arrogant despot in the year 1876; the Russo-Turkish conflict that soon followed in its wake; the wars of liberation which succeeded it; the rise of the Young Turk movement; the Turkish Revolution of 1909 that precipitated the downfall of ‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd; the Balkan wars with their calamitous consequences; the liberation of Palestine enshrining within its bosom the cities of ‘Akká and Haifa, the world center of an emancipated Faith; the further dismemberment decreed by the Treaty of Versailles; the abolition of the Sultanate and the downfall of the House of Uthmán; the extinction of the Caliphate; the disestablishment of the State Religion; the annulment of the Sharí’ah Law and the promulgation of a universal Civil Code; the suppression of various orders, beliefs, traditions and ceremonials believed to be inextricably interwoven with the fabric of the Muslim Faith—these followed with an ease and swiftness that no man had dared envisage. In these devastating blows, administered by friend and foe alike, by Christian nations and professing Muslims, every follower of the persecuted Faith of Bahá’u’lláh recognized evidences of the directing Hand of the departed Founder of his religion, Who, from the invisible Realm, was unloosing a flood of well-deserved calamities upon a rebellious religion and nation. World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, page 175Three thoughts from this passage:
1) Shoghi Effendi considers the British seizure of Palestine a "liberation." By the time World Order of Bahá’u’lláh was published in 1938, the British had permitted the immigration of hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers to Palestine, and in 1937 the Peel Commission proposed a partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab sectors. The proposal was rejected by both the Arab and Jewish leadership. It is not mere conspiratorial inklings that lead detractors to consider the Bahá'í Faith to have ties to Zionism or British and Russian Imperialism.
2) Shoghi Effendi refers to "the further dismemberment decreed by the Treaty of Versailles" of the Ottoman Empire. The Treaty of Versailles was signed between Germany and some of the Allied nations, and it did not pertain to the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire would cease hostilities with Allies through the Armistice of Mudros, and Treaty of Sevres that was signed at the end of World War I was never ratified by the Ottoman Parliament in Istanbul. The nascent Republic of Turkey would later sign the Treaty of Lausanne with the Allies.
3) Shoghi Effendi describes the suffering of Ottoman subjects in World War I to have been "well-deserved calamities" unloosed by the "directing Hand" of Bahá'u'lláh. One wonders how anyone can equate Bahá'u'lláh's exile, where he was still allowed to lead his religious community and publicly declare himself Him whom God shall make manifest, with the suffering of World War I.
More about the so called "Liberation of Haifa" can be read here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Haifa_(1918)
Source : https://www.reddit.com/r/exbahai/comments/923dp9/liberation_of_haifa/
No comments:
Post a Comment