This is the second part of my detailed criticism of one of the foundational documents of the Baha’i Faith. The first part is here.
As before, the actual text from that Will and Testament is in green bold and my responses will be mainly in orange italics. My source for the document is:
Part Two
O my Lord, my heart’s Desire, Thou Whom I ever invoke, Thou Who art my Aider and my Shelter, my Helper and my Refuge! Thou seest me submerged in an ocean of calamities that overwhelm the soul, of afflictions that oppress the heart, of woes that disperse Thy gathering, of ills and pains that scatter Thy flock. Sore trials have compassed me round and perils have from all sides beset me. Thou seest me immersed in a sea of unsurpassed tribulation, sunk into a fathomless abyss, afflicted by mine enemies and consumed with the flame of their hate, enkindled by my kinsmen with whom Thou didst make Thy strong Covenant and Thy firm Testament, wherein Thou biddest them turn their hearts to this wronged one, to keep away from me the foolish, the unjust, and refer unto this lonely one all that about which they differ in Thy Holy Book, so that the Truth may be revealed unto them, their doubts may be dispelled and Thy manifest Signs be spread abroad.
Yet now Thou seest them, O Lord, my God! with Thine eye that sleepeth not, how that they have broken Thy Covenant and turned their backs thereon, how with hate and rebelliousness they have erred from Thy Testament and have arisen intent upon malice.
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Adversities have waxed still more severe as they rose with unbearable cruelty to overpower and crush me, as they scattered far and wide their scrolls of doubt and in utter falsehood hurled their calumnies upon me. Not content with this, their chief, O my God, hath dared to interpolate Thy Book, to fraudulently alter Thy decisive Holy Text and falsify that which hath been revealed by Thy All-Glorious Pen. He did also maliciously insert that which Thou didst reveal for the one that hath wrought the most glaring cruelty upon Thee, disbelieved in Thee and denied Thy wondrous Signs, into what Thou didst reveal for this servant of Thine that hath been wronged in this world. All this he did that he might beguile the souls of men and breathe his evil whisperings into the hearts of Thy devoted ones. Thereunto did their second chief testify, confessing it in his own handwriting, setting thereupon his seal and spreading it throughout all regions. O my God! Could there be a more grievous injustice than this? And still they rested not, but further strove with stubbornness, falsehood and slander, with scorn and calumny to stir up sedition in the midst of the government of this land and elsewhere, causing them to deem me a sower of sedition and filling the minds with things that the ear abhorreth to hear. The government was thus alarmed, fear fell upon the sovereign, and the suspicion of the nobility was aroused. Minds were troubled, affairs were upset, souls were perturbed, the fire of anguish and sorrow was kindled within the breasts, the Holy Leaves (of the Household) were convulsed and shaken, their eyes rained with tears, their sighs and lamentations were raised and their hearts burned within them as they bewailed this wronged servant of Thine, fallen a victim into the hands of these, his kindred, nay, his very enemies!
So here Abdu’l-Baha accuses his opponents of altering Baha’i Writings to suit their nefarious agenda. There are actually references in the Quran where the Prophet Muhammad also accused Jews and Christians of rewriting their own scriptures to promote dogmas that were against what Allah had intended. Naturally one would wonder if it is possible that parts of the Quran itself was altered, omitted, or added without permission and input from the Prophet himself, since it is acknowledged that the Quran wasn’t even assembled by Muhammad, but only done some years after his death. This was the actual premise of the Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, which led Muslims everywhere to condemn him for blasphemy and even call for his death. But blasphemy is really an offense against God himself and neither the Quran nor the Prophet Muhammad are God. How ironic is that?
Not to mention that yet AGAIN Abdu’l-Baha mostly repeats a lot of what he wrote in part one of his Will and Testament. Just like his father in the Kitab-i-Aqdas did repeatedly.
Lord! Thou seest all things weeping me, and my kindred rejoicing in my woes. By Thy Glory, O my God! Even amongst mine enemies, some have lamented my troubles and my distress, and of the envious ones a number have shed tears because of my cares, my exile and my afflictions. They did this because they found naught in me but affection and care and witnessed naught but kindliness and mercy. As they saw me swept into the flood of tribulation and adversity and exposed even as a target to the arrows of fate, their hearts were moved with compassion, tears came to their eyes and they testified declaring:—“The Lord is our witness; naught have we seen from him but faithfulness, generosity and extreme compassion.” The Covenant-breakers, foreboders of evil, however, waxed fiercer in their rancor, rejoiced as I fell a victim to the most grievous ordeal, bestirred themselves against me and made merry over the heartrending happenings around me.
I call upon Thee, O Lord my God! with my tongue and with all my heart, not to requite them for their cruelty and their wrong-doings, their craft and their mischief, for they are foolish and ignoble and know not what they do. They discern not good from evil, neither do they distinguish right from wrong, nor justice from injustice. They follow their own desires and walk in the footsteps of the most imperfect and foolish amongst them. O my Lord! Have mercy upon them, shield them from all afflictions in these troubled times and grant that all trials and hardships may be the lot of this Thy servant that hath fallen into this darksome pit. Single me out for every woe and make me a sacrifice for all Thy loved ones. O Lord, Most High! May my soul, my life, my being, my spirit, my all be offered up for them. O God, my God! Lowly, suppliant and fallen upon my face, I beseech Thee with all the ardor of my invocation to pardon whosoever hath hurt me, forgive him that hath conspired against me and offended me, and wash away the misdeeds of them that have wrought injustice upon me. Vouchsafe unto them Thy goodly gifts, give them joy, relieve them from sorrow, grant them peace and prosperity, give them Thy bliss and pour upon them Thy bounty.
Thou art the Powerful, the Gracious, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting!
This is the tedious, the annoying, the self-defeating. Is there a grade lower than F a teacher could give Abdu’l-Baha for his lame looooooong-winded writing here?
O dearly beloved friends! I am now in very great danger and the hope of even an hour’s life is lost to me. I am thus constrained to write these lines for the protection of the Cause of God, the preservation of His Law, the safeguarding of His Word and the safety of His Teachings. By the Ancient Beauty! This wronged one hath in no wise borne nor doth he bear a grudge against any one; towards none doth he entertain any ill-feeling and uttereth no word save for the good of the world. My supreme obligation, however, of necessity, prompteth me to guard and preserve the Cause of God. Thus, with the greatest regret, I counsel you saying: Guard ye the Cause of God, protect His law and have the utmost fear of discord. This is the foundation of the belief of the people of Bahá (may my life be offered up for them): “His Holiness, the Exalted One (the Báb), is the Manifestation of the Unity and Oneness of God and the Forerunner of the Ancient Beauty. His Holiness the Abhá Beauty (may my life be a sacrifice for His steadfast friends) is the Supreme Manifestation of God and the Dayspring of His Most Divine Essence. All others are servants unto Him and do His bidding.” Unto the Most Holy Book every one must turn and all that is not expressly recorded therein must be referred to the Universal House of Justice. That which this body, whether unanimously or by a majority doth carry, that is verily the Truth and the Purpose of God Himself. Whoso doth deviate therefrom is verily of them that love discord, hath shown forth malice and turned away from the Lord of the Covenant. By this House is meant that Universal House of Justice which is to be elected from all countries, that is from those parts in the East and West where the loved ones are to be found, after the manner of the customary elections in Western countries such as those of England.
It is incumbent upon these members (of the Universal House of Justice) to gather in a certain place and deliberate upon all problems which have caused difference, questions that are obscure and matters that are not expressly recorded in the Book. Whatsoever they decide has the same effect as the Text itself. And inasmuch as this House of Justice hath power to enact laws that are not expressly recorded in the Book and bear upon daily transactions, so also it hath power to repeal the same. Thus for example, the House of Justice enacteth today a certain law and enforceth it, and a hundred years hence, circumstances having profoundly changed and the conditions having altered, another House of Justice will then have power, according to the exigencies of the time, to alter that law. This it can do because that law formeth no part of the Divine Explicit Text. The House of Justice is both the initiator and the abrogator of its own laws.
Abdu’l-Baha must have written part two of his Will and Testament soon after completing part one, which makes me wonder why he even bothered to have two or more parts. I have already noted that this document is really at least ten times longer than it needed to be. And even when he begins to make statements with real substance in them, he launches into the kind of hyperbole that makes me cringe. One wonders if he was expecting the authorities of the Ottoman Empire to burst into his home and execute him on the spot. If so, couldn’t they also find, confiscate and suppress his Will and Testament? If that was unlikely, why scream about being in immediate danger of death?
“This wronged one hath in no wise borne nor doth he bear a grudge against any one; towards none doth he entertain any ill-feeling and uttereth no word save for the good of the world.”
What was that earlier about all those angry words he threw out at his own brother, who he stigmatized as the Center of Sedition, the Center of Hate, the Prime Mover of mischief, among other insults?
Here also Abdu’l-Baha defines one of the duties of the Universal House of Justice: to pass legislation referring to issues not dealt with in the Most Holy Book (Kitab-i-Aqdas). And that legislation, once passed, is absolutely binding and cannot be challenged by Baha’is. Thus, even while stating that the House of Justice is democratically elected, Abdu’l-Baha declares its powers are those of an absolute dictatorship!
And now, one of the greatest and most fundamental principles of the Cause of God is to shun and avoid entirely the Covenant-breakers, for they will utterly destroy the Cause of God, exterminate His Law and render of no account all efforts exerted in the past. O friends! It behooveth you to call to mind with tenderness the trials of His Holiness, the Exalted One, and show your fidelity to the Ever-Blest Beauty. The utmost endeavor must be exerted lest all these woes, trials and afflictions, all this pure and sacred blood that hath been shed so profusely in the Path of God, may prove to be in vain. Ye know well what the hands of the Center of Sedition, Mírzá Muḥammad ‘Alí, and his associates have wrought. Among his doings, one of them is the corruption of the Sacred Text whereof ye are all aware, the Lord be praised, and know that it is evident, proven and confirmed by the testimony of his brother, Mírzá Badí‘u’lláh, whose confession is written in his own handwriting, beareth his seal, is printed and spread abroad. This is but one of his misdeeds. Can a transgression be imagined more glaring than this, the interpolation of the Holy Text? Nay, by the righteousness of the Lord! His transgressions are writ and recorded in a leaflet by itself. Please God, ye will peruse it.
In short, according to the explicit Divine Text the least transgression shall make of this man a fallen creature, and what transgression is more grievous than attempting to destroy the Divine Edifice, breaking the Covenant, erring from the Testament, falsifying the Holy Text, sowing the seeds of doubt, calumniating ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, advancing claims for which God hath sent down no warrant, kindling mischief and striving to shed the very blood of ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, and many other things whereof ye are all aware! It is thus evident that should this man succeed in bringing disruption into the Cause of God, he will utterly destroy and exterminate it. Beware lest ye approach this man, for to approach him is worse than approaching fire!
Question: If the teachings of the Baha’i Faith are indeed as airtight as they should be, why must Baha’is shun fellow Baha’is that disagree with them on how to interpret those teachings? That seems like a clear contradiction of the supposed Baha’i principle of independent investigation of truth. You cannot do that while blindly obeying a commandment not to even talk to people who might in fact be closer to the truth than you are! How would you ever know?
Gracious God! After Mírzá Badí‘u’lláh had declared in his own handwriting that this man (Muḥammad ‘Alí) had broken the Covenant and had proclaimed his falsification of the Holy Text, he realized that to return to the True Faith and pay allegiance to the Covenant and Testament would in no wise promote his selfish desires. He thus repented and regretted the thing he had done and attempted privily to gather in his printed confessions, plotted darkly with the Center of Sedition against me and informed him daily of all the happenings within my household. He has even taken a leading part in the mischievous deeds that have of late been committed. Praise be to God affairs recovered their former stability and the loved ones obtained partial peace. But ever since the day he entered again into our midst, he began afresh to sow the seeds of sore sedition. Some of his machinations and intrigues will be recorded in a separate leaflet.
We already discussed this in part one of this analysis. Now we see Abdu’l-Baha expressing “literary chaos”, repeating yet again and in a different place what he did before. And if I was a lawyer and Badi’u’llah was a witness at a trial, I’d be asking him, “So when did you lie? Before you defected to Abdu’l-Baha or after? Or was it when you returned to serve Mirza Muhammad Ali again? How can we tell? You have no credibility!”
Speaking from my own experience, I became a Baha’i because of ignorance about the Faith and because of my being love-bombed by Baha’is at the firesides I was attending. I can imagine what must have been said about me among the Baha’is once my defection from the Faith become known. “Dale Husband must have realized that to continue to follow the Baha’i Faith would in no way promote his selfish desires, so he rebelled and now seeks to destroy our community! He even has allied with the godless Unitarian Universalists against us, because they do not make him believe in anything.”
So it seems Badi’u’llah and I are in good company.
My purpose is, however, to show that it is incumbent upon the friends that are fast and firm in the Covenant and Testament to be ever wakeful lest after this wronged one is gone this alert and active worker of mischief may cause disruption, privily sow the seeds of doubt and sedition and utterly root out the Cause of God. A thousand times shun his company. Take heed and be on your guard. Watch and examine; should anyone, openly or privily, have the least connection with him, cast him out from your midst, for he will surely cause disruption and mischief.
Well, if I was Badi’u’llah, I probably would not want be around brainwashed bigots like the Baha’is loyal to Abdu’l-Baha and later Shoghi Effendi either. I do know that after I resigned from the Baha’i Faith, I made absolutely NO attempt to contact members of the Baha’i community, nor would I have responded to requests by any members to meet with them anywhere.
I say this because recently Scott Hakala, who lives in the Dallas, Texas area and is a dedicated defender of the Haifan Baha’i dogmas, repeatedly demanded I meet with him to have a discussion of our disagreements. He never seemed to understand my commitment to SHUNNING him just as he would be expected to shun a “covenant-breaker”. Same difference, except I CHOSE freely to do this, unlike Bahai’s being ORDERED by their superiors to shun dissidents. I am content to battle with Hakala and other Baha’i dogmatists on the internet and that’s all they should EVER expect from me, period.
O ye beloved of the Lord! Strive with all your heart to shield the Cause of God from the onslaught of the insincere, for souls such as these cause the straight to become crooked and all benevolent efforts to produce contrary results.
O God, my God! I call Thee, Thy Prophets and Thy Messengers, Thy Saints and Thy Holy Ones, to witness that I have declared conclusively Thy Proofs unto Thy loved ones and set forth clearly all things unto them, that they may watch over Thy Faith, guard Thy Straight Path and protect Thy Resplendent Law. Thou art, verily, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise!
(((No comment again.)))
And so ends the second part of my critique. I am thankful indeed this part is so mercifully short, for I am once more getting sick of this crap!
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