Idol Chatter

The year was 1966. The times they were a-changin’. In the Bahá’í universe, the pieces were falling into place. The first Universal House of Justice had been elected, and the world seemed to be ready for new answers and new leaders. It was the time of Martin Luther King Jr. and Muhammad Ali. Malcolm X had recently been assassinated. Black Americans were asserting their status and rights as full citizens. The time was right to introduce Black America to Bahá’u'lláh’s message of racial equality and unity.

I was just a year old. My family moved from south Los Angeles to Saint Helena Island, just off the coast of South Carolina. We lived in the town of Frogmore, the location of legendary Penn Center. Saint Helena Island, midway between Charleston and Savannah, had once been a sanctuary for free blacks (Union territory during the Civil War), and the location of a school for the same. It remains an active cultural heritage center to this day. In the 1960s, Penn Center was a conference center for some of the leaders of Black America. My parents even joined in a meeting attended by Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, and—I daresay—even Joan Baez.

The lower coast of South Carolina was the focus of much Bahá’í campaigning in the late 1960s. My family played a part in those campaigns. This deeply southern portion of the state is generally poor and black, two qualifications that made the area a prime target of proselytizing. But presently, 45 years later, there is little sign of that burst of campaigning. According to the Association of Religion Data Archives, the population of Bahá’ís south of Lake Marion is quite low. Only in Colleton County, just northeast of Beaufort and Frogmore, do Bahá’ís constitute more than 0.7% of the population. On average, the poor, black counties that stretch from the Savannah River to Lake Marion are 0.6% Bahá’í.

The penetration of the Bahá’í Faith is significantly greater in the somewhat less black counties north of the Santee River. From the Santee north to Dillon and Darlington Counties, Bahá’ís constitute 2.4% of the population, four times the density south of Lake Marion. This region has a greater concentration of Bahá’ís than anywhere in the United States. This is probably because the Bahá’ís have an “institute” (LGBI) and a radio station (WLGI) at Hemmingway, in the heart of the area, where Williamsburg, Florence, Marion, and Georgetown Counties meet—just inland from the resort complex along Myrtle Beach. South Carolina, as a whole, has a much lower density of Bahá’ís.

The only area in the United States that comes close to the Myrtle Beach area is the Pine Ridge–Rosebud area of South Dakota, where Bahá’ís began a campaign to convert impoverished reservation Indians in the 1980s. The penetration of the Bahá’í Faith there is just under 2%. The Standing Rock Reservation on the border of the Dakotas has a Bahá’í density of just over 1%.

The Central Mosque of Charleston

The highest density of Bahá’ís in the United States outside of South Carolina and South Dakota can be found in the vicinity of Bosch Bahá’í Institute, on the central coast of California. Over 2,100 Bahá’ís live between Bosch, Salinas, and Monterey (a density of about 0.33%). This is not very impressive, but it’s higher than the same stat for southern South Carolina (0.29%), where once the Bahá’ís made great strides toward their dream of “entry by troops.” Unfortunately for that dream, that great moment of sea change that brought the movers and shakers to Frogmore is long gone, and little sign of the Bahá’í religion remains south of the Santee. A Bahá’í community can be found in listings for the city of Charleston, but elsewhere in the region, you’ll need a Bahá’í membership listing to find a Bahá’í. There are over three times as many Mormons in the area, and don’t look now, but the Muslims are closing in.

Bahá’í web sites for southern South Carolina:

Louis G. Gregory Bahá’í Museum, Charleston. Entry by appointment only. Site last updated in 2003.

When I was a young man, I turned toward the Qiblah and prayed to Allah. I fasted for a month every year, and I refused all alcoholic beverages. I exchanged Arabic greetings with my fellow believers. Of course I went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where I lived for a year and studied Arabic so that I could better understand the words of Allah. You might have found me carrying around a copy of the Holy Qur’án—just in case I might have some free reading time. And, yes: I was a virgin, though perhaps not entirely by choice.

If you had asked me back then whether I was a Muslim, I would have denied it, for I was a member of a Shi’ite splinter group that refuses to be identified as Muslims. It’s a long story—let’s just say that it’s hazardous to be called a heretic in Iran. But when I look back at my youth I say, “what a Muslim!”

I was a bit of a fundamentalist. No, I wasn’t outraged by the sight of a woman’s face or anything like that, though I was a bit of a stickler about modesty. Idolatry was my hang-up. I was something of a fanatic about it. I stood firm against the worship of men, and my stomach turned whenever one of my fellow believers presumed to be able to measure the goodness of any person. The soul was a sacred trust to me, and I thought it blasphemy to claim to be able to probe it. Did these people think that they knew the mind of God? These idolators saw their religious heroes as partners of God, whether they admitted it or not. And as for their enemies, …

Yes, I was a bit of a fanatic. I was such a radical iconoclast that I couldn’t help but see idolatry more and more in my religious community, right up to the day that I determined that my religion itself was a kind of idolatry. What a crazy Muslim I was.

I suppose I still am.

Dear Mr. Ayatollah,

Some time ago, a close Bahá’í relation of mine insinuated that I had encouraged you to persecute her fellow believers in Iran. This, I suppose, she did because I have often criticized her religion, having once been a Bahá’í myself. I was very troubled by this assertion of hers. I would hate to think that I had ever encouraged you to persecute anyone, so I am presently writing you to make certain that you have not misunderstood my statements on the subject.

Iran: Ethnicities and Sects

To be frank, I consider your treatment of the Bahá’ís of Iran inhumane, unjust, and thoroughly detrimental to the social welfare of the people of Iran. I consider it divisive and counterproductive.

Now I know the Bahá’ís have sometimes been their own worst enemy when it comes to public relations. They believe that they have received a new revelation from God, which they believe is destined to prevail over the earth. They speak of world government, a kingdom of God on earth, and as if that weren’t enough, they’ve gone and put their world headquarters in a place that has come to be known by the name “Israel.” I can see how some people might feel threatened by the ambitions of the Bahá’ís, but let us get a better look at them.

The Bahá’ís of Iran are not so different from their fellow countrymen. In many respects, they still cling to their Shi’ah heritage. They revere Muhammad, the Imams, and the angels. They too have guardians whom they consider divinely-guided and free from error. They are not as harsh as you in punishment, but they, like you, do not drink wine; like you they believe that men and women should have different roles in society; like you they do not approve of homosexuality; and they, like you, are very proud of their Iranian and Islamic heritage. But they are also proud of their particular sect, perhaps a little too proud.

Having heard Bahá’ís speak of their great destiny of spiritual conquest, you might feel justified in considering them an existential threat to your theocratic reign, but hear me out, because I think that you would be mistaken to fear them: the Bahá’ís, in spite of their lofty ambitions and triumphalistic rhetoric, are utterly impotent and harmless.

The Bahá’ís are harmless, but not merely because of they aspire to be non-violent and non-political. The Bahá’í religion is harmless because it has grown bureaucratic and stagnant with age, while its adherents have grown complacent and apathetic. Their temples may look glorious, but that is merely the mark of an influx of money. Morally and socially, the Bahá’í religion is not so vivacious as it once was. There is little spirit left in its adherents, and even less imagination. They are nearly invisible. The only recent victory they seem to have achieved is in seeking martyrdom at your hands. In your need to punish the Bahá’ís for their heresies, their vain ambitions, and the sins of a few among them, I fear that you are unwittingly playing into their impotent hands, and alas, you achieve nothing of sustained value in making martyrs of them.

It may sometimes be useful to mark a scapegoat, but one must use caution in doing so. It can be a risky task to scapegoat a people whom citizens meet on a daily basis, a scapegoat whom the people can readily see are too powerless to be an effective enemy. Attempting to scapegoat the wrong people, a purely Iranian people of Shi’ah heritage such as the Bahá’ís, can erode public confidence in your leadership.

It may be reasonably contended that some Iranian Bahá’ís have acted greedily. I have seen the ostentatious homes, clothes and cars of some Iranian Bahá’ís that fill many American Bahá’ís with envy and covetousness; I have seen the glorious Bahá’í construction projects in Israel that have undoubtedly been funded largely by wealthy Iranian Bahá’ís, and I wonder how so many Iranians can be so poor while so few are so rich. I can understand your suspicions. But if these men obtained their wealth by criminal means, they could be investigated and prosecuted. Instead, they have been driven overseas, and they have taken their fortunes with them, leaving many less fortunate Bahá’ís behind. Though you may regret having chased so much money away, the Bahá’ís that remain in Iran are certainly no threat to you.

Globally, the Bahá’í religion is no more threatening than those unfortunate native Bahá’ís stranded in your shadow. Their religion has long lost any mark of distinction by which it might be empowered. The only distinction that the Bahá’ís lately advertise is the blood on your hands, which they claim to be their own though it is also the blood of intellectuals, artists, dissidents, and homosexuals.

Listen to the Bahá’ís: they have little on their lips other than the courage of their martyrs. They hope that their imprisoned and executed heroes will bring their religion notoriety. If you wish to silence them, then ignore them; treat them as the ordinary Iranians that they are, and deny them the glory of martyrdom.

Peace.

With the great Iranian harvest festival approaching, I’ve got food on my mind.

Okay. I often have food on my mind.

But I’m not alone. Zoroastrians are religious about food, and who can blame them? There are, by name at least, seventeen feast days on the Zoroastrian calendar. Eight of these feasts are observed religiously. Imagine having eight Thanksgivings throughout the year!

A Tajik No Rooz feast

And no, they don’t fast.

After the harvest feast of September comes Mehregan, a particularly significant feast. It is also a harvest feast, by virtue of its placement on the second day of October. It is the Feast of Mehr, or Mithra. Mehr represents two things in the Iranian mind: ethically, faithfulness to contracts, and symbolically, the sun. Thinking of the crucial role the sun plays in the harvest, and thinking of agriculture as a crucial contract with the earth, one can easily see that Mehr is as good a celestial power as any to be recognized at the onset of Autumn.

Not to suggest that there aren’t other good times to throw a feast. The ancient Iranians also had a Spring feast, a feast for the rains, a Summer feast, a round-up feast (yes, like the cowboys have), a Winter fire feast, and an “All Souls Feast” at the year’s end.

Each Zoroastrian congregation celebrated these festivals by attending religious services early in the day, devoted always to Ahura Mazda, and then by gathering in joyful assemblies, with feasts at which food was eaten communally which had been blessed at the services. Rich and poor met together on these occasions, which were times of general goodwill, when quarrels were made up and friendships renewed and strengthened.

Mary Boyce, Zoroastrians

As I have mentioned more than once before, I was raised in an Iranian religion that has little regard for its pre-Islamic Iranian heritage. I never heard of these feasts as a Bahá’í. If my family had a feast day, that was Thanksgiving. I really liked Thanksgiving. Turkey Day was right up there with Halloween and Independence Day. Thanksgiving was one of those Western holidays that we were free to observe because of its lack of any strong ties to Christianity. It would have been a slippery slope. It seems harmless enough to have a Christmas dinner, but next thing you know you’re fasting for Ramadan. You have to nip these things in the bud!

I attended my first Zoroastrian New Year’s (No Rooz) celebration last Spring, and I’ve been meaning to write something down about what a pleasant experience it was. I went to the fire temple first, with no real intention of joining the festivities in the community hall. I enjoy the fire temple, and I’d go much more often if it were in a more convenient location. It’s a quiet, casual experience. One is expected to remove one’s shoes and wear a cap, but that’s not much to ask. I wouldn’t be comfortable tracking dirt in there anyway, and though the cap is a bit formal for my general liking, it gives me a comfortable sense of—how should I put it—spiritual discipline.

As for the festivities, well, I’m hesitant to jump into the fray with a lot of Iranian strangers (and thus they’ve remained strangers over the years), but once invited, I generally enjoy myself. And what’s not to like? Good food, song, dance, and conversation.

Someone’s bound to point out that Bahá’ís do have observances which they call “feasts”. The Bahá’í Calendar features nineteen meetings which they call “Nineteen Day Feasts.” These Bahá’í “feasts” may have been originally inspired by Iranian culture, but they have little in common with Zoroastrian feasts, or any other traditional feast, for that matter: Bahá’í “feasts” are not really feasts at all.

The 19-day Feast is administrative in function …

Shoghi Effendi, Directives from the Guardian

The Bahá’í feast is primarily an administrative event. It does generally include food in its “social portion” as any good committee meeting would, but the meeting is generally a rather exclusive affair, being limited to Bahá’ís who have not lost their administrative rights, hence these Bahá’í feasts tend to exclude non-Bahá’ís and Bahá’ís without said administrative rights.

The Zoroastrian feasts are quite literally feasts; traditionally an opportunity for the fortunate to share the bounty of their good fortune with the less fortunate. The Bahá’í feast, though it generally involves food, is more often described as a feast of spiritual sustenance — in a distinctively administrative sense so characteristic of Bahá’í practice.

Further Reading

John Walbridge, The Nineteen Day Feast

The Heritage Institute: Gahambar

This is a continuation of the What’s Wrong With Islám thread. I’m not satisfied with where I left it.

I have more than once voiced the opinion that Islám can only move forward by disposing of its idols. This, I believe, can be done by Muslims without forfeiting their religious heritage. They must simply recognize that no aspect of Islám is unchangeable, perfect, immaculate, or infallible. This recognition can be achieved within the context of Islamic belief: one need only recognize passages in the Qur’án that assert that:

• No one fully understands the Qur’án but God.
• The face of God is in everything.
• Muhammad was only a man, with flaws like any other.

If that’s not enough, there’s the generally agreed-upon point that the Qur’án cannot be understood fully without reference to less immaculate source materials such as Hadith and histories.

Based upon this, Islám can be permitted to adapt and grow, and not merely continue as a contest between moderates and fundamentalists. If Islám could be inspired by the idea that no man has a monopoly on truth while retaining its heritage of faith, it could be permitted to rise above its heritage of violence and persecution.

The problem I see with this vision is that, when I read the Qur’án, I see frequent reminders of what made Islám so idolatrous. The Qur’án is saturated with judgmental statements that draw a vast gap between believers and unbelievers. Unbelievers will burn in Hell eternally, and it’s nobody’s fault but their own. This may not mean that Muslims are permitted to mistreat infidels, but it does establish a broad moral distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims. It is not so easy to simply see Islám as iconoclasm, because Islám is all about submission to a specific idol. Its iconoclasm is not fundamental; it is derivative. Muslims, taken as a group, never smashed idols for the sake of some lofty unitarian ideal; rather, they smashed idols for the benefit of their own idols (Alláh, Muhammad, the Qurán, etc.).

We might be able to imagine an Islám that transcends its own idolatrous legacy, but I fear that Islám would need to do more than admit the fallibility of the Qur’án; it would need to renounce the tribalistic, sectarian, violent, judgmental, and idolatrous aspects of the Qur’án. Given this, would I be right to encourage Muslims to follow such a path, when it would be more honest of me to encourage them to simply abandon the superstitions of the past and think for themselves?

I would like to see a day when the ultimate expression of Islamic conviction would be the ritual burning of a single Qur’án. That wouldn’t prevent religious violence or gender discrimination, but it might send a clear message that Islám might just be capable of being self-critical. It would be a start—but I don’t see even that happening. Maybe some minority group of Muslims might come to the fore and give us hope by committing such a criminally noble act. They would be doing so at their own peril, of course.

Here are several of my favorite passages from Bahá’u'lláh’s “Most Holy Book.” I think these passages open a window into the future of Bahá’í fashion.

it is not seemly to let the hair pass beyond the limit of the ears. Thus hath it been decreed by Him Who is the Lord of all worlds.

please read this paragraph. I know your eyes want to gaze at the photo below, but please resist that temptation.

I imagine that Bahá’í hippies will not have long hair like the Founding Fathers of the Bahá’í Faith, or rather if they do, they might use those aboriginal-style ear lobe inserts to extend their ears as far as they desire to grow their hair.

The Look of Rock's Future

… or maybe those long-in-the-back new wave hairdos from the ’80s will be permissible. I remember when the guys in Rush all had their hair cut for Grace Under Pressure. I was so impressed by their kosher fashion that I sent them a copy of The Promise of World Peace! That was a little embarrassing, them looking so extremely anti-homophobic and me being such a pawn, but it hardly diminishes the wisdom of keeping one’s ears clear of overgrowth.

… I mean, unless you’ve got Geddy Lee’s ears. Yikes.

Here’s another window into the future:

God hath decreed, in token of His mercy unto His creatures, that semen is not unclean. Yield thanks unto Him with joy and radiance …

I think the inner significance of this is that Bahá’í Rastafarians of the future might glue their modest dreadlocks with semen, or perhaps when future Bahá’ís need a little mousse, they can come by it in an environmentally responsible manner.

I’m talking about hair mousse, of course.

Finally, here’s one the strikes close to home for yours truly:

Shave not your heads; God hath adorned them with hair, and in this there are signs from the Lord of creation to those who reflect upon the requirements of nature. He, verily, is the God of strength and wisdom.

Geeze. Did he really need to use the word reflect?

Observe that the Lizard Man does not shave his head.

Unfortunately, men of the future will not be able to conceal their bald spots by shaving their heads, so I suppose bald guys will cease reproducing and will go extinct.

It’s a little sad, but all for the betterment of the species, I guess.

What’s wrong with Islám? Is it the ease with which the doctrines of jihad and martyrdom can turn bloody? Is it discrimination against women and homosexuals? Is it the theocratic legacy? These are all serious issues, but I see them as symptoms of a disease called idolatry. The symptoms are not unique to Islám, nor is the disease, but let’s discuss Islám.

Here are the physiological components of the disease, as it has adapted itself to Islám:

1. Arrogance. Islam’s fundamental assertion is that a Muslim is one who has identified the Lord of Creation. It just doesn’t get any more arrogant than that.
2. Idolatry. Islam is primarily based upon a book, regarded to be infallible and wholly divine—even uncreated—that declares specific delineations between truth and untruth, and associates virtue with specific practices.
3. Cult of personality.
   1. Muslims generally regard their prophet as perfect, and even those who claim to think he was a mere man seem to think that he could do no wrong. Hence Muslims have created a form of scripture from a vast collection of biographical accounts of their “perfect man.”
   2. Most Muslims regard the first four successors of Muhammad to be “rightly guided.” Shi’a Muslims idolize 14 early Muslims in all as infallible beings. All of these infallible and rightly guided founders of Islam provide a vast body of biographical material by which pious Muslims guide their lives.

But there is hope.

1. If Muslims resist the urge to exalt their God-image over those of others, and abstain from any assertion or implication that they know God best, then they are true monotheists. It seems to me that if any religion can transcend its own idols, Islám ought to be the first. Isn’t Islám all about abandoning idols? Doesn’t this make Islám intrinsically pluralist?
2. The history of Islám attests to the fact that the Qur’án—as it exists today—is not immaculate. The Qur’án was collected and canonized during the third Caliphate. Some manuscripts were favored, and the rest were destroyed. This only regards the consonants. The vowel markings were not added till even later.
3. The Qur’án itself asserts that only God can fully understand the Qur’án, and also asserts that the face of God can be seen in every direction. Why then be so self-assured about the will and identity of God?
4. The Qur’án itself attests to the fallibility of the prophet Muhammad. His every act need not be an example for Muslims. The same goes for his rightly-guided and infallible successors.

It has often been wondered how the Persian Empire was so thoroughly conquered by the armies of Islam. How could so many Persians, with their deep belief in freewill and the divinity of the Good, convert in such large numbers to a religion of predestination and submission to fate?

Since I’ve been reading Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, I believe I’ve gained a new insight into that transformation.

As Ferdowsi depicts the annihilation of the Persian Empire at the hands of Alexander, he has these words spoken by the Persian king Darius III:

Know that evil and good both come from God.

This, to me, may mark the lesson of the Shahnameh in general. It is a book of fate, of mortal glories given and taken away by God. God is in total control of the fates of men. If men have any control at all of their own fates, it is in their ability to accept their fates gracefully. Each man plays his part in the drama, but in the end every step is preordained by God.

This may not have been the way the ancient Persians saw the world given what we suspect were their beliefs, but by Ferdowsi’s time, the Persians were watching their world consumed in Arab conquest, bit by bit. So much of what they had believed in was annihilated mercilessly; much more completely than what Alexander achieved. How else could they have seen God but as a capricious, amoral, absolute dictator? There was no point in striving, and no role for freewill; only an impotent hope that prayer and piety would satiate their new heavenly despot.

The Iranians, it would turn out, were conditioned by events to make the most steadfast of Muslims, for they themselves had witnessed the awesome, amoral might of Fate. They learned that the God of Fate blesses whom he will, so they chose to submit themselves, however reluctantly, to Fate’s favored ones: their Arab conquerors.

Here’s my latest PowerPoint presentation, saved as a movie, then merged with an audio file with QuickTime and exported. The subject is idolatry (don’t act so surprised!) and Islam. The soundtrack is Mozart’s “Laudate Dominum” sung by Maria Zadori, one of my all-time favorites.

The QuickTime plugin is necessary for viewing. A lower quality version can be found on YouTube.

I considered “James Dean” by the Eagles for an ironic twist, but solemnity won out over humor in the end, and besides, there’s ample irony in using a idolatrous prayer as the soundtrack for this sequence.

The lyrics:

Laudate Dominum omnes gentes
laudate eum, omnes populi
Quoniam confirmata est super nos misericordia ejus,
et veritas Domini manet in aeternum.

Gloria Patri, et Filio et Spiritui Sancto.
Secut erat in principio, et nunc, et simper,
et in saecula saeculorum. Amen

And in English:

O praise the Lord, all ye nations;
Praise him, all ye peoples
For his loving kindness has been bestowed upon us,
and the truth of the Lord endures for ever.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen.

I haven’t, as of yet, been able to upload the movie at full quality to YouTube. Perhaps YouTube has trouble processing the fade transition between slides, as removing those transitions appears to enable YouTube to process the file. So here it is, posted on the blog. This required that I do some customization of my blog header file, which was a bit of a hassle.

The Bahá’í religion, though Islamic in its fundamentals, retains a remarkable wealth of Zoroastrian residue from its Iranian heritage.

The Most Great Peace

In spite of all the prophecies of doom that I had to endure as a young Bahá’í, I remember having a vision of a more distant future utopia; a clean, civilized world civilization that would balance urban and rural economies, and accomplish great scientific and technological feats. This is what Bahá’ís call the Most Great Peace. Though I now find it unrealistic, I still look back on that naive vision with sentimental sighs of what might have been if reality hadn’t broken into my childhood and robbed my world of its innocence.

Yet there are many Bahá’ís who still look forward to the Most Great Peace.

It was years after I abandoned that vision that I encountered the ancient vision in whose womb the Most Great Peace appears to have been conceived. I discovered that the ancient Zoroastrians also had such a utopian vision of a renewed, purified world. Note that they weren’t looking forward to the end of the world, but rather its reform and renewal. This vision permeates both Bahá’í and Zoroastrian world views.

Progressive Revelation

It’s not just a utopian view of the future that these oldest and newest of Iranian religions have in common, but their views on the purpose and history of religion are also quite similar:

Be it known that, the reason for mankind becoming doers of work of a superior kind is religion; and it is owing to it only that there is a living in prosperity through the Creator. It is always necessary to send it (religion) from time to time to keep men back from being mixed up with sin and to regenerate them. … All the reformers of mankind (i.e. prophets) are considered as connected with its (religion’s) design;… —Dénkard 3.35

Thoughts, Words, & Deeds

The phrase “doers of work” in the above passage is reminiscent of the great Zoroastrian mantra “good thoughts good words good deeds.” Does this not recall one of characteristic themes of the Bahá’í Faith, as a religion of deeds that recognizes the influential nature of words?

Glory, Light, & Fire

As I’ve discussed before, the closely related themes of fire, light, and glory are also held in common between these two faiths. Some of this commonality can be tracked through Iranian religious themes of illumination and glory from Zoroastrianism through Shí’a Islám to the Bahá’í Faith.

The “New” Calendar

Then there’s the Bahá’í calendar, which is based on the old Iranian solar calendar—from name days, feasts, an end-of-year adjustment, to No Rooz itself, rather than the lunar Islamic calendar, except that the Bahá’í calendar replaces the natural 12:1 lunar:solar cycle ratio with 19:1, and inserts a month of fasting (in Islamic fashion).

Fire Temples and Sunrise Temples

Even the Bahá’í “mashriqu’l-adhkar”, a term that carries an intimation of fire in its meaning “dawning place of remembrance” seems to hearken back to the old Persian fire temples than the Islamic mosques that were also inspired thereby:

… The fire-temples of the world stand as eloquent testimony to this truth. In their time they summoned, with burning zeal, all the inhabitants of the earth to Him Who is the Spirit of purity. —Bahá’u'lláh, in a letter to Mírzá Abu’l-Fadl

Etc.

• emphasis on cleanliness
• love of gardens (Zoroastrians are famous gardeners)
• 15 as the age of maturity (or is it technically 14 for Bahá’ís?)

Some related entries:

• The Glories of God
• Parsí Dualism in Shí‘a Islám
• Our Daily Bread: Lord Wisdom
• Our Daily Bread: Flamin’ Metaphors