Author Archives: kaweah

Our Daily Bread: Partners of God

by kaweah

Anyone who claims to be on God’s side is a polytheist. To be a true monotheist, one must be either a strict determinist or an agnostic (with regard to the will of God).

I’ve been known to throw around the terms “idol” and “partner of God” ad nauseam among friends. It’s a chip that seems to have appeared on my shoulder during my employment at the Bahá’í World Centre, where a particularly high saint-per-capita ratio gave me some food for thought. Since that time, I’ve slowly come to regard the believers of the Judaic tradition (including most Jews, Christians, Muslims, Bahá’ís, etc.) as worshipers in various polytheistic partnerships and rivalries.

I get the term “partnership” from Islám. The Qur’án makes it clear that God has no partners, and needs no help from anybody.

الْحَمْدُ لِلّهِ الَّذِي لَمْ يَتَّخِذْ وَلَدًا وَلَم يَكُن لَّهُ شَرِيكٌ فِي الْمُلْكِ وَلَمْ يَكُن لَّهُ

All praise is due to God, who begets no offspring, and has no partner in His dominion, and has no weakness, and therefore no need of any aid. (17.111)

The most literal meaning of the term “shirk” (شرك‎) is a lesser god who might help or otherwise harm God or his cause. Thus, anyone who would diminish his belief in God’s omnipotence by ascribing any power whatsoever to any being other than God would be guilty of this offense. The classic example of this offense is the Christian worship of Christ, as the alleged son and accomplice of God, but the problem of partnership goes much deeper.

Any free agent (individual) with any influence whatsoever must be seen as a partner or rival of God. Some might assert that this is not applicable to the Islamic notion of partnership, because people don’t worship people, but don’t they? Isn’t the attribution of any power whatsoever to any free entity the deification of that entity?

How many self-professed Muslims, I wonder, truly internalize the mantra “all praise be to God (الْحَمْدُ لِلّهِ)”?

This is not a problem for the traditional, deterministic Sunni, the Calvinist Christian, or for Zoroastrians who believe in freewill but not in an omnipotent God (partnership is virtuous in Zoroastrianism); but it is a serious indictment of any observant Muslim who claims to be a free monotheist, with one possible exception.

Many people consider themselves believers in an all-powerful God and at the same time consider the destinies of individuals and society to be up to others than God, but that is not really monotheism; rather, it is a form of polytheism, where the pantheon consists of billions of lesser gods that we casually call immortal souls. The Big God—call him Zeus—may have the power to frustrate the wills of any of these minor Gods, or even punish them for all eternity, but notice: He has never claimed to be able to annihilate a soul; not, at least, for a very long time.

But that Zeus is not the God of the inshá’alláh (إن شاء الله) Muslim. That Muslim’s God, so dominant in the Qur’án, is a God who meddles with the intentions of men; who “seals the hearts of men” as he deems appropriate. He is truly omnipotent, and the only will that men possess is a gift (or a curse) from Him. In other words, all individual will is an expression of divine will.

Blessed is He Who doeth as He willeth by a word of His command. He, verily, is the True One, the Knower of things unseen. Blessed is He Who inspireth whomsoever He willeth with whatsoever He desireth, through His irresistible and inscrutable command. Blessed is He Who aideth whomsoever He desireth with the hosts of the unseen. His might is, in truth, equal to His purpose, and He, verily, is the All-Glorious, the Self-Subsisting. Blessed is He Who exalteth whomsoever He willeth by the power of His sovereign might, and confirmeth whomsoever He chooseth in accordance with His good pleasure; well is it with them that understand! —Súriy-i-Haykal

There is, I suppose, one loophole out of all this for the non-deterministic monotheist: if one were not to claim to be on God’s side, perhaps—say, because one considers the will of God to be utterly inscrutable, one need not be tried as a polytheist in the court of strict monotheism. It is, after all, hard to partner up with God if one doesn’t know what God wants.

This would, of course, require a degree of modesty rarely exhibited among believers, and any mention of divine covenants or pacts would immediately disqualify the believer from this exemption.

Our Daily Bread: They Who Know what God Knows

by kaweah

Today we’re having more fun with Bahá’u’lláh’s Book of Certitude …

Bahá’u’lláh cites verse 3.7 (3.6 according to some) of the Qur’án twice in his Book of Certitude. Here’s how Shoghi Effendi (the second successor of Bahá’u’lláh) translated the passage (he translates each citation differently):

None knoweth the interpretation thereof but God and they that are well-grounded in knowledge.

None knoweth the meaning thereof except God and them that are well-grounded in knowledge.

This seems to be saying “no one knows except those who know.” How absurdly circular! But in defense of the Qur’án, every broadly-recognized English translation of that book makes it quite clear that this is not what the Qur’án is saying.

Pickthall:

None knoweth its explanation save Allah. And those who are of sound instruction say: We believe therein; the whole is from our Lord;…

Yusuf ‘Alí:

no one knows its hidden meanings except Allah. And those who are firmly grounded in knowledge say: “We believe in the Book; the whole of it is from our Lord:”

Rodwell:

none knoweth its interpretation but God. And the stable in knowledge say, ‘We believe in it: it is all from our Lord.’

It turns out, though, that all these translations represent the dominant Sunni point of view, that the ultimate meaning of the Qur’án is known only to God. The Shí’a read it differently, as exemplified by Maulana Muhammad `Alí’s Ahmadiyyah translation:

And none knows its interpretation save Alláh, and those firmly rooted in knowledge.

The Shí’a reading, that “only the knowers know” turns out to be the scriptural foundation for the idolatrous Shí’ah doctrine of ta’wil.

What’s so idolatrous about it? First, if men can achieve perfect, divine, knowledge, then men can become equals—or at least partners—of God. They can become infallible, as the Twelver Shí’a regard their “14 infallibles”. By the same reasoning, it is also an elitist doctrine, thereby contrary to what many Muslims consider to be the egalitarian spirit of Islám. Second, if the Qur’án is the perfect word of God and it can be understood perfectly, then the Qur’án itself is an idol; a divine image.

Ok, so it’s idolatrous, but what’s wrong with a little divine imagery? Here’s what’s wrong with it. If a man makes an idol of an image, he becomes enslaved to that image. If a man makes an idol of an idea, he becomes enslaved to that idea. If a man makes an idol of another man, he becomes enslaved to that man.

The whole thrust of Islam is against this kind of enslavement to anyone or anything but God, yet it is a hard lesson to learn. Even though the Qur’án makes it clear that Muhammad was a man who could err and be scolded by God, most Muslims have made Muhammad superhuman, and the Shí’a—particularly the Baháí—have made him an image of God.

We should not be surprised that Bahá’u’lláh, himself a Shí’a, puts such emphasis on the Shí’a interpretation of an ambiguous verse:

And yet, they themselves testify to this verse: “None knoweth the interpretation thereof but God and they that are well-grounded in knowledge.” And when He Who is well-grounded in all knowledge, He Who is the Mother, the Soul, the Secret, and the Essence thereof, revealeth that which is the least contrary to their desire, they bitterly oppose Him and shamelessly deny Him. —Kitáb-i-Íqán

Even as He saith: “None knoweth the meaning thereof except God and them that are well-grounded in knowledge.” And yet, they have sought the interpretation of the Book from those that are wrapt in veils, and have refused to seek enlightenment from the fountain-head of knowledge. —Kitáb-i-Íqán

So let’s not blame the translator, even though he cannot decide between the words “they” and “them” (who can blame him?).

Our Daily Bread: Noah’s Genocidal Prayer

by kaweah

With Hurricane Ike threatening Texas, who better to remind us of the wrath of God then Noah? The Kitáb-i-Íqán tells us that Noah had plenty of time to build his great ark:

For nine hundred and fifty years He prayerfully exhorted His people and summoned them to the haven of security and peace. None, however, heeded His call. Each day they inflicted on His blessed person such pain and suffering that no one believed He could survive. How frequently they denied Him, how malevolently they hinted their suspicion against Him! Thus it hath been revealed: “And as often as a company of His people passed by Him, they derided Him. To them He said: `Though ye scoff at us now, we will scoff at you hereafter even as ye scoff at us. In the end ye shall know.'”

That’s right, Noah. You tell them! 950 years is a lot of scorn. A guy can get very frustrated being ignored and mocked for a millennium.

Long afterward, He several times promised victory to His companions and fixed the hour thereof. But when the hour struck, the divine promise was not fulfilled. This caused a few among the small number of His followers to turn away from Him, and to this testify the records of the best-known books.

I wonder how many books from Noah’s time have survived.

This is a valuable precedent for prophets, or warlords, with bad track records: “yeah, we lost the first time, the second time, and the third time, but eventually I’ll have victory and you’ll all pay. Just you wait and see!”

After all that, all he had to do was ask: “Dear Lord, kill them all!”

At last from the depth of His being He cried aloud: “Lord! Leave not upon the land a single dweller from among the unbelievers.”

And so it came to pass. Mass murder on a divine scale, and all it took was the malevolent prayer of a single man. Never underestimate the power of hatred.

Our Daily Bread: The Glory of Martyrs

by kaweah

One of the aspects in which the Bahá’í Faith shows its Shi’a pedigree most severely is in its reverence of martyrdom. Bahá’u’lláh made this clear in his Arabic Hidden Words:

O SON OF MAN! Ponder and reflect. Is it thy wish to die upon thy bed, or to shed thy life-blood on the dust, a martyr in My path, and so become the manifestation of My command and the revealer of My light in the highest paradise? Judge thou aright, O servant!

O SON OF MAN! By My beauty! To tinge thy hair with thy blood is greater in My sight than the creation of the universe and the light of both worlds. Strive then to attain this, O servant!

In prayers written for Bahá’ís, Bahá’u’lláh shows the believer what to pray for:

Every moment of my life my head crieth out to Thee and saith: “Would, O my Lord, that I could be raised on the spear-point in Thy path!” while my blood entreateth Thee saying: “Dye the earth with me, O my God, for the sake of Thy love and Thy pleasure!”

And were the infidels to slay me, my blood would, at Thy command, lift up its voice and proclaim: “There is no God but Thee, O Thou Who art all my heart’s Desire!” And were my flesh to be boiled in the cauldron of hate, the smell which it would send forth would rise towards Thee and cry out: “Where art Thou, O Lord of the worlds, Thou One Desire of them that have known Thee!” And were I to be cast into fire, my ashes would–I swear by Thy glory–declare: “The Youth hath, verily, attained that for which he had besought his Lord, the All-Glorious, the Omniscient.”

Oh, that my blood could, this very moment, be shed on the face of the earth before Thee, and Thou wouldst behold me in the condition in which Thou didst behold such of Thy servants as have drawn nigh unto Thee, and those of Thy righteous creatures as have been chosen by Thee!

— Prayers and Meditations

Elsewhere, Bahá’u’lláh elaborates on the the rewards of martyrdom:

This is a Revelation, under which, if a man shed for its sake one drop of blood, myriads of oceans will be his recompense.

— Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh

It was the highest honor among Bahá’ís to refuse to recant one’s faith and thus expose oneself to the accusation of heresy. To submit to execution rather than recant one’s faith was now the highest form of heroism.

Bahá’u’lláh, in the following passage, cites an Islamic prophecy, and the large numbers of Bahá’í martyrs, as proof of his claims:

“He shall manifest the perfection of Moses, the splendour of Jesus, and the patience of Job. His chosen ones shall be abased in His day. Their heads shall be offered as presents even as the heads of the Turks and the Daylamites. They shall be slain and burnt. Fear shall seize them; dismay and alarm shall strike terror into their hearts. The earth shall be dyed with their blood. Their womenfolk shall bewail and lament. These indeed are my friends!” Consider, not a single letter of this tradition hath remained unfulfilled. In most of the places their blessed blood hath been shed; in every city they have been made captives, have been paraded throughout the provinces, and some have been burnt with fire.

— Kitáb-i-Íqán

Imagine pressing your followers toward martyrdom for the sake of fulfilling a prophecy! Or perhaps also to prove the power of your influence over them? I have heard Bahá’ís use those many martyrs so many times as validation of their beliefs!

In a number of places, Bahá’u’lláh alludes to his hope that martyrdom would convince the world of the truth of his claim:

Whoso hath inhaled the sweet fragrance of the All-Merciful, and recognized the Source of this utterance, will welcome with his own eyes the shafts of the enemy, that he may establish the truth of the laws of God amongst men.

— Kitáb-i-Aqdas, ¶7

… were it not for the blood which is shed for love of Thee, what else could tinge the faces of Thy chosen ones before the eyes of Thy creatures?

— Prayers and Meditations

I swear by Thy might! The ornament that adorneth the countenance of Thy dear ones is the blood which, in their love for Thee, floweth out of their foreheads over their faces.

— Prayers and Meditations

Bahá’ís, though now encouraged to be “living martyrs”, are still expected to refuse to recant their faith on threat of death. When Bahá’ís are able to live up to this expectation, their sacrifices are presented to the world as proof of the strength of their conviction, oblivious to the fact that such fanaticism is not universally admired. The Bahá’í Faith, despite its many efforts to modernize itself, still bleeds Shi’ite blood.

The best lack all conviction; the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming

[Edited to include passages from older FBI article, April 2023]

©2008, 2023 Kaweah (Dan Jensen)

Our Daily Bread: Uncertainty as Blasphemy

by kaweah

Bahá’u’lláh’s Book of Certitude, considered by many Bahá’ís to be his premier work, is primarily concerned with arguing that his predecessor, the Báb, was indeed what he claimed to be: the Voice, Image, and Manifestation of God. In making this defense of the Báb, Bahá’u’lláh cited the Qur’án nearly 150 times. It is an apology firmly rooted in Islamic scripture. It is not the purest form of revelation inasmuch as it is a book about revelation, to say nothing of the fact that it was written over a year before Bahá’u’lláh claimed to be a Manifestation of God.

If any slice of the Book of Certitude captures the essence of the book, it is perhaps the following passage about uncertainty, which concerns those Muslims who rejected the Báb on the basis that the Qur’án established that Muhammad was the “Seal of the Prophets”:

“Whoso sayeth ‘why’ or ‘wherefore’ hath spoken blasphemy!” Were these people to shake off the slumber of negligence and realize that which their hands have wrought, they would surely perish, and would of their own accord cast themselves into fire—their end and real abode. Have they not heard that which He hath revealed: “He shall not be asked of His doings?” [Qur’án 21.23] In the light of these utterances, how can man be so bold as to question Him, … ?

This passage declares it a crime (blasphemy) to question any Manifestation of God, or I suppose, any man who claims to be such a mouthpiece of God. If there should be any doubt as to what the word “certitude” meant to Bahá’u’lláh, this prohibition against any expression of doubt ought to help clear things up.

Our Daily Bread: Zero-sum Salvation

by kaweah

Salvation, as religions generally have it, is a fundamentally selfish pursuit. One can make a strong case, though, that in Zoroastrianism, personal salvation ultimately depends on world renewal, that is, the salvation of the world. In the following slice, Bahá’u’lláh appears to promise a follower (of Zoroastrian origin, as it happens) that all he need do is abandon the people of the world to be exalted above all men:

Renounce and forsake the people of the world. O wise one! Shouldst thou heed the counsel of thy Lord, thou wouldst be released from the bondage of His servants and behold thyself exalted above all men. —Tabernacle of Unity, ¶5.6

It appears that it would not be enough to make salvation a mere selfish pursuit; it must be a competition. Hence, salvation in the Bahá’í religion is not purely solipsistic (as Christopher Hitchens would have it), because it appears that there can be no winners if there are no losers. Salvation is a zero-sum game. Someone has to be left behind.

Our Daily Bread: Narcissus

by kaweah

It is evident that, for all of his faults, Bahá’u’lláh had no lack of self-esteem:

Would ye laugh to scorn and contend with Him, a single hair of Whose head excelleth, in the sight of God, all that are in the heavens and all that are on the earth?
—Suriy-i-Haykal (Sura of the Temple)

This passage helps us to understand why Bahá’u’lláh let his hair grow so wildly, in spite of forbidding long hair in his book of laws.

This “Sura of the Temple” is also known as the “Sura of the Body”.

John Walbridge writes:

In the Súratu’l-Haykal the primary sense of haykal is the human body, particularly the body of the Manifestation of God, …

Adib Taherzadeh reported in Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh that Bahá’u’lláh wrote that he was both the author and the addressee of this Tablet. We can almost hear Bahá’u’lláh crying into the reflection pool, “make Me to be thine Idol!”

For more information, see Tablet of the Temple by Jonah Winters.

Gods of Wisdom

by kaweah

The wise (sophos) is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus. —Heraclitus

Zarathashtra worshiped something he called “Lord Wisdom” (Mazda). He called his religion Mazdayasna, which translates to “worship of wisdom.” Heraclitus might have been the first Greek to advocate philos-sophia, or “love of wisdom.”

Heraclitus and Zarathashtra made a God of wisdom. What might they have meant? “Wisdom” is such a commonly used word with secondary shades of meaning. The greek word “sophia” is no less versatile. Heaven only knows the full breadth of the Avestan “Mazda”.

My fat little Oxford Dictionary of Current English provides the following definition:

wisdom • n. 1 the quality of being wise. 2 the body of knowledge and experience that develops within a specified society or period: oriental wisdom.

Alright, so wisdom is primarily a derivative of the adjective wise. That sounds about right. What is wise?

wise • adj. 1 having or showing experience, knowledge, and good judgment. …

I believe this definition does a fair job of breaking wisdom down into its particulars.

Judgment

Good judgment is perhaps the most fundamental aspect of what we think of when we hear the word wisdom. It is necessary because the notion of wisdom depends upon a notion of rationality.

Choice (Action)

Wisdom cannot be automatic or mechanical. It must involve choice. To suggest that any process can be consider wise if that process was not an outcome of some decision is to propose a concept other than wisdom.

Hence, one might rightly say that if freedom is an illusion, so is wisdom.

Action (and wise inaction) are critical to wisdom, of course, but one might argue that so long as wisdom is embodied, it seems that action and inaction are implied in the idea of choice.

Experience & Knowledge

Experience and knowledge are also necessary to the definition, and I don’t think that personal experience and acquired (or a priori) knowledge merge into one, nor do I think that wisdom can be seen as implying one to the exclusion of the other.

Virtue

The adjective good is crucial to the adjective wise, and I don’t think that any specific definition of what is good is necessary to require this. What is wise is dependent upon what is good, regardless of what good is established to be.

To suggest that wisdom could be defined in an amoral context, using a broad, philosophical meaning of moral (ethical, virtuous), would be to violate the general meaning of wisdom, for the word wise must imply judgment that serves the good. To put it simply, it is generally understood that wisdom is a good, virtuous thing. Let’s remember: we are attempting to understand a word, rather than describing an actual phenomenon.

To summarize, wisdom consists of:

  • reason (judgment)
  • choice; action/inaction
  • direct experience
  • knowledge (innate & acquired)
  • goodness

Can we rightly use these concepts to describe the thought of Heraclitus and Zarathushtra?

With respect to Heraclitus: reason, knowledge, and direct experience were crucial, but the roles of choice and goodness in his thought are debatable. Choice may be permissible to his pantheistic God. The fragments of Heraclitus do not seem fatalistic in their social arguments, so one might claim that choice goes without saying. As for goodness, Heraclitus claims that good and evil are not universal aspects of existence. But would it not have been paradoxical for Heraclitus to tout the virtue of his Logos without considering the Logos—in some sense—good? When he spoke of a universal sophos, he must have been implying a higher good.

Regardless of what attributes the actual Zarathushtra acscribed to his God Ahura Mazda, it can fairly safely be claimed that notions of choice and goodness are fundamental to his religion. There is substantial evidence that Zoroastrianism values reason, but I am not so sure that knowledge and experience are fundamental to Zoroastrianism. Some Zoroastrians may claim that their religion values knowledge, and that it is a very empirical religion, but I am dubious on the suggestion that any traditional religion can be called empirical. Still, if we posit that Zarathushtra, be he real or myth, did worship wisdom to the exclusion of all else, we must incorporate a respect for knowledge and direct experience into his religion, for is it not evident that knowledge and experience are the chief elements of the most primitive notions of wisdom?

Our Daily Bread: From Divorce to Global Prosperity

by kaweah

In the Sura of Women, Gabriel instructs men on marital separation (divorce?):

And if a woman fears ill usage or desertion on the part of her husband, there is no blame on them, if they effect a reconciliation between them, … (4.127)

Gabriel acknowledges that a man cannot always treat all of his wives equally:

And ye will not have it at all in your power to treat your wives alike, even though you fain would do so; … (4.128)

Gabriel concludes that separation is sometimes perrmissable, and that though resources be divided, God can compensate them:

But if they separate, God can compensate both out of His abundance; … (4.129)

It does not seem entirely inappropriate for Bahá’u’lláh to use this passage in a mystical treatise, but it seems a bit of a stretch:

He burneth away the veils of want, and with inward and outward eye, perceiveth within and without all things the day of: “God will compensate each one out of His abundance.” (The Seven Valleys)

What is this about a “day”? Where did that come from? Is Bahá’u’lláh really quoting the Sura of Women, as all three publications explicitly indicate?

The invention persists in other compositions:

In this station he beholdeth himself established upon the throne of independence and the seat of exaltation. Then will he comprehend the meaning of that which hath been revealed of old concerning the day “whereon God shall enrich all through His abundance” (Gems of Divine Mysteries)

In yet another case, he goes further yet, employing the same invention to fully transform Gabriel’s assurances for irreconcilable marriages into a promise of global prosperity (albeit conditional on global justice) that sounds nothing like the doomsday of the Qur’án:

Were mankind to be adorned with [justice], they would behold the day-star of the utterance, ‘On that day God will satisfy everyone out of His abundance,’ shining resplendent above the horizon of the world. (Words of Paradise)

Verses from the Cow

by kaweah

Here be Bahá’u’lláh’s most commonly cited verses from the Sura of the Cow, his favorite chapter of the Qur’án.

Although they had before prayed for victory over those who believed not, yet when there came unto them He of Whom they had knowledge, they disbelieved in Him. The curse of God on the infidels! (2.89; Book of Certitude; Gems of Divine Mysteries)

Yea, damn those unbelievers! Even though they were educated, they didn’t become believers! How could that ever happen?

Wish ye then for death, if ye be men of truth. (2.94; Book of Certitude; Sura of the Temple)

Perhaps men should not fear death, but to wish for death is simply self-destructive. It is not heroic; it is suicidal.

Whichever way ye turn, there is the face of God. (2.109/115; Book of Certitude; Questions and Answers)

This is my hands-down favorite verse in the Qur’án, but I don’t believe that Bahá’u’lláh interpreted it as I do.

We did not appoint that which Thou wouldst have to be the Qiblih, but that We might know him who followeth the Apostle from him who turneth on his heels. (2.143; Book of Certitude; Tabernacle of Unity)

God helps those who blindly follow.

Verily we are God’s, and to Him shall we return. (2.151/156 Rodwell; The Seven Valleys; The Four Valleys; Gems of Divine Mysteries [twice]; Tabernacle of Unity)

I don’t mind this one, really, in a Heraclitean or Stoic, ekpyrotic sense.

What can such expect but that God should come down to them overshadowed with clouds? (2.210; Book of Certitude [2x])

Be they clouds of ignorance, cognitive dissonance, and idolatry? Yea, ’tis to be expected.

Fear God and God will give you knowledge. (2.282; Book of Certitude; The Seven Valleys; The Four Valleys; Gems of Divine Mysteries)

I have found that experience and reason have failed to support this assertion.

Some of the Apostles We have caused to excel the others. (2.253; Book of Certitude [2x]; Tabernacle of Unity)

And why should I care? Is this a spiritual education, medieval angelology, or fantasy league baseball?

No distinction do We make between any of His Messengers. (2.285; Book of Certitude; Tabernacle of Unity)

Again, what business is this of mine?