Baha i Studies

This article performs a close reading of the Philip K. Dick novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? While developing the argument for an ‘ironic’ usage of the concept of the Anthropocene. This ironised conception is one that intends to countenance both the Anthropocene’s strength as a designation of human impact on the non-human and the important, valid critiques responding to the Anthropocene. Philip K Dick’s work, in particular Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a superb illustration of such an ironic dynamic because of the dual narrative structure present. For example, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? raises questions about human identity that, while metaphysical, have great significance materially for the characters in the novel, and can be understood as a form of structural discrimination.  To demonstrate this ironic duality that should be brought to the Anthropocene, the article draws on Nick Land’s essay Kant, Capital, and the Prohibition of Incest: A Polemical I...

Being and Becoming: A Photographic Inquiry with Bahá’í men into Cultures of Peace is doctoral research that asks how Bahá’í men know, experience and perform their own masculinities as told through their stories and photographs. Within the spiritual context of the Bahá’í sacred tenet of equality of the sexes it sought new knowledge about how participants negotiate and transform their masculinities to facilitate rather than thwart the building of cultures of peace. Using photographic, art-based methods it asked: What is it to be a man today and attempt to construct a new understanding of masculinity? How is this process evident in practice? What are the stories of resistance and/or negotiation with negative cultural norms of masculinity? The study is upheld by three theoretical guy-wires: Bourdieu’s habitus, the Magic Mirror of visual introspection through photography, and Sacred Relationship a core Bahá'í and Indigenous lens into power, equality and accountability to all our relations. The study used PhotoSophia (a new photo- elicitation method), with a bundle of six methodological practices incorporating arts-based visual methods: Interview, PhotoSophia, group study and discussion, inscription, Photovoice and public exhibit. These methods were designed to seek deep reflection into masculine identity formation. The study concluded with a public exhibit of the photographs and inscriptions created by the researcher and participants opening the process to outside input through anonymous questionnaires. Findings include the agency the self-reflective PhotoSophia method itself as illumination into the shadows of masculinity. Primary findings are: willing vulnerability as a form of moral courage; ambiguity as a state of learning and resisting; the need for examples, a standard for a new masculinity; authenticity to be one’s true self in alignment with the Creator, and all our relations, and finally practicing sacred spiritual relationships in shoulder to shoulder service with women and others. This study has both methodological and theoretical significance to Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS) theory by providing new knowledge about the masculine qualities that best facilitate the building of cultures of peace, equality and human oneness. Access dissertation here: http://hdl.handle.net/1993/34847

The author analyses a definition of mysticism formulated by William Ralph Inge and western ideas on mystical experience. Then he proceeds to discuss mysticism as an intrinsic aspect of the Baha'i Faith and mystical experience as expounded in the Baha'i writings. The latter pay greater attention to the practical and logical aspects of mysticism than to the visionary and illogical ones. The author examines some of the reasons for Baha'i and non-Baha'i criticism of mysticism and suggests a Baha'i definition of mysticism. He then attempts to describe the Baha'i mystical path, as expounded by the Universal House of Justice.

Fezzeh Khanom (c. 1835–82), an African woman, was a slave of Sayyed ‘Ali-Mohammad of Shiraz, the Bab. Information about her life can be recovered from various pious Baha'i histories. She was honored, and even venerated by Babis, though she remained subordinate and invisible. The paper makes the encouraging discovery that a history of African slavery in Iran is possible, even at the level of individual biographies. Scholars estimate that between one and two million slaves were exported from Africa to the Indian Ocean trade in the nineteenth century, most to Iranian ports. Some two-thirds of African slaves brought to Iran were women intended as household servants and concubines. An examination of Fezzeh Khanom's life can begin to fill the gaps in our knowledge of enslaved women in Iran. The paper discusses African influences on Iranian culture, especially in wealthy households and in the royal court. The limited value of Western legal distinctions between slavery and freedom w...

Little scholarly research has been undertaken on the history of African slavery in Iran in the nineteenth century. What has been written focuses, almost by necessity, on statistical information or on the lives of the wealthy and powerful. Haji Mubarak and Fezzeh Khanum offer a rare opportunity for historians of Iran to reconstruct the biographies of two ordinary slaves. Because they were the slaves of the Shirazi merchant, Mirza ‘Ali-Muhammad, the founder of Babism, surviving Babi and Baha’i chronicles (and oral traditions) include them in their pious histories and record at least part of their lives. At the same time, these histories erase these persons by steadfastly refusing to acknowledge any significance in their presence. This paper will demonstrate that the recovery of the history of slavery in nineteenth-century Iran, even at the level of individual biographies, is possible. It will also argue that the significance of large numbers of African slaves in Iran during this time ...

The association of millennialist movements with violence has been a subject of much study following recent high-profile events. This article examines a case of millennialism and violence that occurred just over 150 years ago. It tracks the events leading to the attempted assassination of Nasir al-Din Shah of Iran in 1852 by a small group of followers of the religion of the Bab, a religious leader who claimed to fulfill the prophecies of Shi'i Islam about the coming of the Imam Mahdi. The factors leading to the violence are analyzed and compared with other cases of millennialism and violence. The main factors that stand out in this case include: a pre-existing religious milieu that expected a violent, millennial event and engendered a radically dualist worldview, with the shah's government as the embodiment of an evil destined to be defeated and removed; a severe persecution of the group resulting in some followers' desire for revenge and a dramatic violent act that would...

The field of epistemology has been characterized by a perennial tension between two broadly contrasting approaches to knowledge—one associated with the search for foundational truth, the other associated with assertions regarding the relativity of truth. This paper resolves this tension within the framework of a consultative epistemology. This epistemological framework demonstrates and explores the relativity of the social construction of truth, and in so doing, resolves the paradoxical truth claim, associated with relativist approaches to knowledge, that there are no universally valid truths. The ultimate purpose of the paper is to articulate an epistemology that supports the development of more integrative approaches to knowledge.

... English] The genesis of Babi-Baha'i faiths in Shiraz and Fars / by Mirza ... 217 APPENDICES MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF THE BAHÁ'Í COMMUNITY OF SHÍRÁZ 1. Glimpses of ... enterprise, first by producing an elegant edited translation of Nabíl Zarandí's history, The Dawn ...

... English] The genesis of Babi-Baha'i faiths in Shiraz and Fars / by Mirza ... 217 APPENDICES MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF THE BAHÁ'Í COMMUNITY OF SHÍRÁZ 1. Glimpses of ... enterprise, first by producing an elegant edited translation of Nabíl Zarandí's history, The Dawn ...