>>Let's say that for whatever reason certain religious militant fundamentalists look at the Bahai faith's global ambitions and claims to have superceded the previous religions and see the growing Bahai faith as a threat.>>
First it should be said that there is precious little in the Baha'i Writings about such a future condition in society. There is more about the Lesser Peace, when non-Baha'i international institutions govern the world. The Lesser Peace itself goes through stages. One of those stages is, to my understanding, when there are Baha'i governmental institutions related to secular institutions. Shoghi Effendi refers to this in explaining the verse in the Master's Will about the relationship between the executive and the government. At some stage there will then emerge the Baha'i Commonwealth, and apparently this is where Gilberto's question comes in. How the Baha'i Commonwealth relates to the timing of the Most Great Peace, I'm not sure. In any event, what I want to say on this point is that this is a very long process, and great changes will have taken place in the human race. The great cleansing force Shoghi Effendi describes in the opening words of The Promised Day is Come will have run its course. Cataclysms will have occurred. Mass skepticism will have been replaced by mass spiritualization. Prejudices and passions will have been stilled. The "Trust of God" Baha'u'llah describes as latent in each soul will have "emerged". Baha'u'llah predicts a day when a woman can travel the entire surface of the earth and not only be unhindered and unmolested -- but she will not have been looked on with lust even one time. So in considering theoreticals, to be fair, in my view we have to take into account the maturation of human beings. The Lesser Peace is when force is needed by governments to control the tyrants. The Most Great Peace is, to my understanding, when crime, whether local or international, is pretty much a thing of the past. In sum, I am saying I don't accept the premise of the conjecture. To the degree that the hypothetical is valid, my answer would be the same as already stated -- governments have a duty to protect their people. Shoghi Effendi has written that the persecution of the Iranian Baha'is in the past will be far outstripped by the future worldwide persecution of the Baha'i Faith, that when the fullness of the claim of Baha'u'llah is realized, persecution will be worldwide and universal. Yet the principle of no holy war, no defense of the Baha'i Faith as a faith, will hold. As Shoghi Effendi also predicts, this will attract the greatest persecutors to become Baha'is. This occurs in every Dispensation. The great persecutor of Christians Saul, witnessed the spiritual exaltation of St. Stephen as he was being martyred by stoning, and became St. Paul. This process will occur on a wider scale. As far as the view that the Baha'i Faith really does not uphold the equality of men and women, my response is to say, take a look at the changes in the generality of the Baha'i community. Look in families, look on local and national Asssemblies, look at couples. I think that it is fair to say that, as far as we still have to go, a great distance has been traveled. I was watching "Gandhi" and in that program his wife states that her husband is her Lord. That attitude is entirely gone in the Baha'i Faith. As the House of Justice has made clear, the couple is to consult, and sometimes the husband defers to the wife, sometimes vice-versa. That is a very significant social change. Since the Baha'i Writings address the very roots of problems, it takes time before the Baha'is implement them properly. Then, it takes time for those seeds to come to harvest. My point is, look to improvements in the grassroots. This demonstrates that to us, the principle of the equality of the sexes is a real one. Another thing to keep in mind is that we do not have only one Book. The authentic Baha'i Writings are manyfold larger in volume than the Bible or the Qur'an. I would guess that on my own shelf in English I have easily thirty times the volume of the Qur'an. The Writings published in Persian and Arabic of course exceed that amount, and the unpublished add yet another factor. So it takes time for us Baha'is to get familiar with our own Writings. It takes decades of methodical study. I'm not talking about the lifetime of study of the Word, that it always yields new fruit. I'm talking about even a first good reading. Add to that the number of books on Islamic topics by Baha'is, and our efforts to understand at a deep level the principle of progressive Revelation, and how this newly expressed dynamic all fits together. There is also the principle of the sacralization of that which was profane, and the desacralization of what came before. Chris Buck goes into this in one of his two very good books, I think the second one. Desacralization of holy war is an example, and elevation of the equality of men and women, of work as worship, and of race unity, to the level of divine principle, are examples of formerly secular matters which have been made sacred in this Dispensation. This is because the conduct of humanity can only be gradually changed. The Prophets cannot change the human race into the fullness of human potential in one fell swoop, or in one Dispensation. Brent __________________________________________________ You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:archive@mail-archive.com To unsubscribe, send a blank email to mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, use subscribe bahai-st in the message body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Baha'i Studies is available through the following: Mail - mailto:bahai-st@list.jccc.edu Web - http://list.jccc.edu/read/?forum=bahai-st News - news://list.jccc.edu/bahai-st Public - http://www.escribe.com/religion/bahaist Old Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st@list.jccc.net New Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st@list.jccc.edu
