Making the Crooked Straight: A Contribution to Bahá'í Apologetics
Authors: Udo Schaefer, Nicola Towfigh, and Ulrich Gollmer
Translated from German by: Geraldine Schuckelt
Published by: George Ronald, Oxford, 2001, 862 pages
Original title: Desinformation als Methode (Georg Olms Verlag GmbH, 1995)
Review by Denis MacEoin, posted on H-Bahai, 2001
When have I ever had to trudge through such a dreary text
or plough my path through so many footnotes? Why
would anyone have such a massive tome translated at some
expense into English and published for an English-speaking audience,
given that no-one (Bahá'ís included) in that audience had ever heard of
Francesco 'Il Fallace' Ficicchia or his worthless book before this?
The Ficicchia fiasco was a purely German phenomenon with little or no
visible impact outside Germany or Switzerland, where it did indeed do a
lot of damage to the public image of the Bahá'ís. Why, then, did somebody think
there was anything to be gained by translating a bad rebuttal
into English? To make Ficicchia
better known and the Bahá'ís faintly ridiculous? The old adage of
leaving well enough alone comes to mind.
I am perfectly happy to accept that Ficicchia's book,
Der Bahá'ísmus:
Weltreligion der Zukunft? (Bahá'ísm: World Religion of the Future?),
itself a weighty enough indulgence at well over 800 pages, damaged the
Bahá'ís and distorted their cause in certain quarters, mainly within the
Catholic and Protestant churches. That said, I am surpised that so many
German readers, from theologians to academics, were taken in by it for
more than a few moments. The book looks good, of course —
Ficicchia, though not an academic, knew enough to give his writing an
academic appearance, and it has to be said that, for someone who'd been
a Bahá'í for only three years, he really did know a lot about the
subject and its literature.
[1] But the bias, indeed, the
animus that lie behind the whole thing, not to mention the constant
signs of Ficicchia's real ignorance, are so apparent that any honest
reader should have seen them jumping off the page.
Bahá'ís were, I can see, quite justified in feeling upset about
Ficicchia and his work, bearing in mind the very considerable attention
that both received in circles that mattered. And I don't blame Schaefer,
et al., for wanting to pen a rebuttal. But 862 pages? 3860 footnotes? A
32-page bibliography? What normal person is going to read a book like this? Few if any of
those who first read and liked Ficicchia, if only because the rebuttal
is so monumentally dull. I could have written an adequate dismissal of
Ficicchia in ten pages. So could a lot of people I know. What more was
needed?
Some academics may have bought copies, who knows? And some theologians
for that matter, since they seem to be the boys Schaefer et al.
are most concerned about. But it won't have taken long to spot what is
going on in the Schaefer volume, either. If Ficicchia was a non-academic
pretending to erudition he did not possess, so Schaefer and Gollmer are
well-educated non-academics (Towfigh counts as a professional) who seek
to 'correct' Ficicchia, not by addressing him academically, as they
pretend,
[2] but as
adherents and proponents of the religion he criticized. The Bahá'í
arguments on every topic are the same old statements that are published every time their version of doctrines or events is called in
question.
This is most obvious in the sections devoted to history — chapters
7 through 10, by Nicola Towfigh and Ulrich Gollmer. I could not work
out, incidentally, how Gollmer, who is not a historian and is not, as
far as I know, able to read either Persian or Arabic, came to be
qualified to write about some very difficult issues requiring an
expertise in all three areas. You can't complain about Ficicchia's lack
of scholarship if your own team is not, as Benjamin Braddock might have
put it, not fully baked itself. In this area, you need to be completely
baked.
The beginning of confusion in this matter lies in Gollmer's little essay
on 'Problems of Research in the Field of Religious History', where,
among other things, he says: 'it is important to correct a persistent
misconception: there is no "official", doctrinaire, sacrosanct Bahá'í
historiography.' But if Gollmer had taken the trouble to read his own
contributions and those of Towfigh, he surely would have noticed that
their version of Babi and Bahá'í history corresponds down to fine detail
with any other version ever produced by Bahá'í writers since round about
1944.
[3]
It is one of my great stumbling blocks with the Bahá'ís that they go to such lengths to 'correct' any
account of their history that does not fit with
God Passes By or
The Dawn-Breakers or other approved sources. Hhistory just
doesn't work like that. I know of no other area of historical
studies where modern writers routinely provide a version of events that
corresponds to a secondary source written as far back as the
1940s.
And why do modern Bahá'ís (as we shall see) remain so obsessed with
Subh-i Azal and his dispute with Baha' Allah, yet so lacking
in curiosity about, say, the circumstances of Shoghi Effendi's death
and the events that followed it — an episode of considerably greater
relevance to contemporary Bahá'ísm than an old split within the Babi
community of Baghdad?
[4]
Gollmer may well point out that neither Abd al-Baha' nor Shoghi Effendi
was infallible in matters of history (p. 485). How come, then, that I
never come across Bahá'í writers willing to disagree with one or
the other of them on a substantial matter in public? Gollmer doesn't do
it, Towfigh doesn't do it. In the last analysis, they provide us with just another take on the
tired old official version.
Official versions are, after all, what
Making the Crooked
Straight is about. Does the book not, after all, go all out, not
only to say that Ficicchia is wrong on this point or that, but to
delineate in loving detail the 'true' teaching, interpretation, or fact?
I don't think I once came across that classic hallmark of the academic
treatise, an admission that 'I may be mistaken' or 'there is more than
one opinion about this'.
[5] Schaefer, et al., are keen to
portray their book as a work of proper scholarship, but the truth is, it
isn't, and saying so won't make it so. I don't propose to treat it as an
academic work, but as what it is, a Western-Bahá'í
radiyya designed to
refute all bearers of falsity, and to proclaim the true faith in fine
detail.
Mind you, it's not as though anyone outside of a hard core of dedicated
Bahá'í bibliophiles is likely to read it at any length. Not that
that will stop it gaining a solid reputation within the community as a
work of deep insight and true erudition, to grace the shelves alongside
Balyuzi and Taherzadeh, or the editions of Ishraq Khavari.
[6] Until
Bahá'í writers are willing to admit to the scholarly shortcomings of
these and other central authors, the chances of anyone ever challenging
the official version of anything are zero.
That this attitude is still alive and well anyone can see by reading
through this book. Schaefer, et al., aren't just content to make a
general case against Ficicchia, they seem compelled to pick their way
through his text almost sentence. Can anyone show me
where, amid all this verbiage, any of our three authors has mounted so
much as a weak contradiction of the tried and tested positions that we
all know and love so well?
This could be put down to ignorance, but I don't think Schaefer
et al. missed any of the controversies that
have dogged the emergence of serious academic scholarship on Babism and
Bahá'ísm. Schaefer, for instance, makes it clear again and again that
the faith-inspired scholarship of believers is the equal or superior of
the work of independent scholars.
'There is no valid reason,' he writes, 'why a presentation of a religion
prefaced by the term "critical" is constantly given preference over
presentations written by believers themselves. The one is no more
"scientific" than the other' (p. 18).
And again, 'That the self-image of a religion must be the point of
orientation for any portrayal of that religion by non-believers, that a
religion must be able to recognize itself in a portrait, is an accepted
methodological standard today' (pp. 20-21).
Perhaps the best place to start responding would
be to point out the double standard employed by Schaefer. Let me ask him
if he thinks the Bahá'í portrait of Christianity, something he has done
much to paint in his own writings, would pass muster in any Christian
church. Christianity stripped of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the
Ascension, the Resurrection, exclusive salvation through Jesus Christ, a
Virgin Mother of God, confession, saints, wine that is truly blood, and
so on, would not be Christianity to any of the millions who profess that
faith.
Nor would it be recognizable to Muslims, who, in their turn, deny the
crucifixion and reduce Christ to the role of prophet. Nor would the
Bahá'í portrait of Islam (which is derived essentially from one
sectarian version of the religion) be recognizable to a majority of
Muslims. The same problem applies in the cases of Hinduism (Krishna a
Manifestation of a single God? Two religious cycles in all history? No
multiplicity of gods? No reincarnation? No Tantric sex?) or Buddhism
(Just one Buddha? No celibacy? No Tibetan gods? No Buddha
representations [don't forget Bamiyan!]? No Dalai Lama?).
It gets worse as one moves through the narrower sectarian or national
forms of each religion, or to smaller religions and cults (Mormonism,
the Unification Church, etc.). None of these people will for a moment
see themselves in the pictures painted by Bahá'í writers. But I don't
doubt that Schaefer thinks the Bahá'í version is correct or the
Christian or Jewish or Zoroastrian self-image a distortion.
So why, if he's doing it himself,
[8] is he so critical of academics
for producing portrayals of religions that diverge from the orthodox?
Maybe they do it for the same reason (though, I would argue, with much
better arguments) as he, that they think their versions, based on their
own and others' research to be closer to the truth. If it works with
Christianity, why shouldn't it work with Babism or Bahá'ísm? Why the
special pleading?
What's wrong with accounts by believers of their own faith, indeed,
what's wrong with 'official', 'sanctioned', or 'authoritative' accounts?
Not a great deal, as long as we recognize them for what they are:
one-sided versions with a particular slant. They are insider accounts,
and, as such, must be treated with caution.
Where other than in religious matters are we
expected to trust official insider versions? Scientific reports from
within the tobacco, GM foods, and pharmaceutical industries? Modern
histories of Iraq published in Baghdad with the imprimatur of the Iraqi
Ministry of Information? The manifestos of political parties? The PR
releases of any major company you care to name? A film star's
autobiography?
But Bahá'í accounts of Bahá'ísm are all subjected to
the approval of national reviewing committees. These we have to prefer,
or at least recognize as just as scientific as an account by a neutral
academic. Take this to its logical conclusion and we may as well give up
any effort to be objective. Why bother to have academics at all, when
men and women with vested interests will do the job for free?
I lost my teaching post at Newcastle University because my version of
Islam differed from that of my Saudi sponsors. I taught subjects like
Sufism, Shi'ism, Babism, and Bahá'ísm, all of which must have alarmed
some of the bearded fraternity in Riyadh. I presume that Dr Schaefer
approved of this, since I was clearly going against the rule that you
must present a religion in a manner recognizable to its adherents.
There are differences between the committed and academic styles of
presentation. Take ten accounts of Babism by Bahá'í writers, and they
will all, as though given the David Blaine treatment, seem magically the
same. Not only that, but they will bear a magical resemblance to books
by Shoghi Effendi, Abd al-Baha', Nabil-i Zarandi, and other approved
texts. On the other hand, take ten such accounts by non-Bahá'í
academics, and no two will be quite alike. I would expect there to be
more and more divergence between the academic versions as different
documents are brought to light and fresh theories debated. But I predict
that ten Bahá'í accounts in the year 2101 will still stick with the
approved version.
And what's with the endless bons mots in Latin? I know
Schaefer was a German judge and big with Church Law; but I'm a British
magistrate, and I don't pepper my texts with Latin tags. It's simply
showing off, of course, and should have been spanked out of him by a
decent editor. But I think it reveals something more substantial than
that.
Schaefer's models are German and Roman law, Christianity in general, and
the Catholic Church (and church law) in particular. There's nothing much
wrong with that, I suppose; it's what he knows. But it does distort his
judgement. He spends much of his time trying to fit Babism and Bahá'ísm,
religions which have their origins in Shi'ite Islam (and, to some
extent, in Sufism), into the framework of something quite alien to
them.
When they do deal with matters Islamic, or, for that matter, with Babism
or early Bahá'ísm, both Schaefer and Gollmer show themselves well read
in the secondary literature, and I congratulate them for that. However,
again and again they bite off more than they are qualified to chew, and
enter into discussions where a good knowledge of Arabic or Persian might
be useful. On page 715, for example, Gollmer writes, keeping alive an
old solecism: 'The
Kitab-i-'Ahd unequivocally affirms the superior
station of 'Abdu'l-Bahá over Mirza Muhammad 'Ali: "Verily God hath
ordained the station of the Greater Branch [Ghusn-i Akbar — Mirza
Muhammad-'Ali] to be beneath that of the Most Great Branch [Ghusn-i
A'zam — 'Abdu'l-Bahá]"' (f.n. 170). The Arabic words akbar and a'zam
do not mean, respectively, 'greater' and 'most great'. For one thing,
they are from totally different roots (kbr and 'zm). For another, there
is no simple distinction in Arabic between comparative and superlative.
Akbar could mean either 'greater' or 'greatest', a'zam could be read as
'mightier' or 'mightiest'. It's a tiny mistake, but an Arabist would
have put it right, rather than just repeating something found in a
secondary source. Now, I'm not criticizing people for not being
Arabists. But I'm afraid that the boundaries between academic and
amateur scholarship do get regularly blurred in the Bahá'í context. I
think it's commendable that so many Bahá'ís want to do some sort of
research into their history or scriptures or whatever, and I'd like to
think I helped foster that development in the days when I was persona
grata.
But you only have to look at the Database of Bahá'í Scholars on the web [note: the database used to reside here at bahai-library.com/database, but is no longer functioning. -J.W.]
to see how many people are dabbling in areas for which they're really
not at all prepared. If you think I'm being judgmental in this, let me
cite an episode that occurred many years ago in a British Summer
School.
An American Bahá'í woman had heard that I was writing a biography of
Qurrat al-'Ayn. She introduced herself and told me of her deep interest
in this area; she was effusive and fluffy, but I just answered her
questions and hoped she would learn some new things. At one point,
however, I tried to explain how Qurrat al-'Ayn had broken with the
shari'a at a very early date, and so on. Well, this woman hit the roof.
'Are you calling the Blessed Tahireh a law-breaker?' she demanded, and
nothing I could say would make her understand anything about the Babi
transition from shari'a-mindedness, to abandonment of the law, followed
by the construction of a new shari'a.
This was the equivalent of someone who knows nothing about medicine
having a stand-up row with a physician because their treatment is 'all
wrong'. 'What's with the angina tablets, it's his heart, you dummy!' Of
course, most Bahá'í 'scholars' are more intelligent and more polite than
Mrs Agitated of Arizona, but that doesn't improve matters too much.
To use the same analogy, but in a real-life example: I have for years
been chairman (and before that, council member) of a consumer body
called the Natural Medicines Society. I've published articles on
medicine, I currently lecture medical students at Newcastle University,
I've delivered papers at, among other things, a conference of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science, last year I
presented a detailed report to the Science and Technology Committee of
the House of Lords, I shall be delivering a paper at a seminar at
Salford University in a few months, and this year I shall be publishing
a compilation on health care problems. I know quite a lot about certain
areas in the history and sociology of medicine.
But I would never dream of considering myself even a quasi-academic in
this field. My papers and articles are those of an informed amateur, and
I would never attempt to write the sort of article that could be
submitted to a medical journal, or one in the sociology of medicine. My
academic expertise is in Islamic Studies.
This is why I feel uneasy when Schaefer and Gollmer, each of whom
certainly has his own areas of expertise, take it upon themselves to
write to what they evidently see as an academic level. Their
bibliography is out of date, their citations omit obvious items, they
perpetuate errors that I had thought corrected long ago, they pour
energy into subjects that really aren't that important (e.g.
Gollmer's ridiculously overlong and overstated section on Römer,
pp. 546 ff.). For goodness sake, they keep citing my dissertation 'A
Revised Survey', when my book
Sources for Early Babi Doctrine and
History (which is in their bibliography, and sometimes in their
notes) is clearly known to be an updated version of the former.
Sloppy.
This over-energetic, unfocussed approach is characteristic of all
amateur 'scholarship'. You can see it on every website where some nerd
has devoted years of his life to assembling every last imaginable fact
about some obscure movie actress; in every fanzine ever published; in
all those Bahá'í lists of pages in books, magazines, and postage stamps
where the word 'Bahá'í is mentioned or (my favourite) the article in
which 'Shoghi Effendi and Charles Mason Remey are barely visible in a
funeral photograph'.
[9]
This is less of a problem with Nicola Towfigh. She has at least studied
'oriental studies', though I'm not quite sure what that means, and
'islamology', and she has a doctorate in 'Creation and Manifestation
from the Viewpoint of the Bahá'í Religion'. I presume she knows Persian
and possibly some Arabic.
[10] Since these are
important things to know about an author, I was disappointed that her
bibliographical details were so sparse. That she is also a member of the
German National Bahá'í Assembly is mentioned only in passing on p.
782.
Nevertheless, the passages by her did show a grasp of secondary and
primary sources. She has read around the subject of Babi history and
writes about it intelligently. But, let's say it again, she is not an
expert in Babi history — as far as I know, she has published
nothing on the subject — and this shows in many different
ways.
Above all, it shows in her strategy (one already referred to above) of
bringing it all back home. She does not correct Ficicchia on the basis
of current academic knowledge, but instead replaces his 'facts' with a
series of her own 'facts' as presented in standard Bahá'í literature.
She is critical of some of Ficicchia's sources (the Nuqtatu'l-Kaf,
Tarikh-i Jadid, Hasht Bihisht, Browne, and Römer, but never says a word
questioning the accuracy of his Bahá'í sources (which include Balyuzi,
The Bab, Bahá'u'lláh, Edward Granville Browne and the Bahá'í Faith,
Nabil's Narrative,
God Passes By — all books about which I
would have strong reservations. This is known as applying a double
standard, and it gets us nowhere, and makes for very bad history
writing.
Much of her discussion of sources concerns two texts, the Nuqtat al-kaf
and the Tarikh-i jadid, both of which have long been bugbears of the
Bahá'ís, though I don't really understand why. I find it curious (though
others may politely tell me why) that she does not engage with my
arguments concerning these two works, as presented in my
Sources for the
Doctrine and History of Early Babism. To my knowledge, this represents
the latest and fullest (and, to date, the only academic) discussion of
these texts. It is customary in academic circles to engage with the most
recent authority, not proceed as though ignorant of it. Towfigh does
refer to
Sources several times, but only on points of information.
[11]
The result is that her discussion feels very dated, with conclusions
that are no more advanced than those of Balyuzi, who more or less
started this whole business in his book about E. G. Browne. I won't
rehearse my own arguments here: anyone can go out and get hold of a copy
of my book (a snip at Amazon). It may be that Dr. Towfigh's analysis is
correct (though I think not); but that does not alter the unscholarly
way in which she has carried it out.
And it is worth saying that her conclusions are, I think, seriously
mistaken. The idea that the Nuqtat al-kaf is an Azali forgery palmed off
on Gobineau (pp. 511-12) just does not hold water.
[12] But it seems that the mere
mention of Azal in an approving manner in the text is enough to give
Bahá'ís even today a mild form of apoplexy, even though the text also
refers with admiration to Baha' Allah as well. And even though plenty of
other texts indicate that admiration for Azal was at this stage
practically universal and therefore not at all egregious.
The fact is that Towfigh insists on presenting a black-and-white world,
with good guys and bad guys, saints and antichrists, as it occurs in
official Bahá'í histories. But scholarship has moved on from the
worldviews of 'Abd al-Baha', Shoghi Effendi, or Hasan Balyuzi. The world
of middle Babism was more complex and possibly less ridden with
factionalism than Bahá'í historians would have us suppose. It's time all
this nonsense about 'If it's favourable to Azal it must be a sinister
conspiracy and forgery' was put behind us.
What sort of historian can write the following with a straight face?
"... because Browne was not an objective, non-partisan researcher and
therefore committed some serious errors, it is important for the reader
to examine his work critically." (p. 544). Try replacing Browne with
'Shoghi Effendi, Balyuzi, Taherzadeh, Momen', or whomsoever you will,
and you'll see right away how very peculiar all this is. But I can't
imagine a Bahá'í writer publicly disputing the objectivity and accuracy
of a Bahá'í historian, especially one that comes with knobs on, such as
a Guardian or a Hand of the Cause. No doubt Towfigh and Gollmer will
object that I am wrong to claim there is such a thing as an official
Bahá'í historiography. As Gollmer puts it: 'R30; it is important to
correct a persistent misconception: there is no "official", doctrinaire,
sacrosanct Bahá'í historiography' (p. 484). That will come as news to
any Bahá'í who has tried to publish a version of one or more events that
contradicts the official line.
Try criticizing
God Passes By or Zarandi. Shoghi Effendi
describes the latter as 'an unchallengeable textbook'
('unchallengeable'?); others call it 'authentic', 'authorized', even 'a
Gospel'. And Gollmer thinks there is no sacrosanct Bahá'í
historiography?
Not many lines later (p. 485), he writes 'Although, as a Bahá'í one
trusts that the main sequence of events is recorded correctly'. Frankly,
being a Bahá'í doesn't come into it, Ulrich. Facts are facts, and pious
trusting has no place in historical analysis. But Gollmer isn't content
with trusting in the texts: he actually believes that the lives of their
authors make a difference.
Referring to Abd al-Baha' and Shoghi Effendi, he writes: 'The lives of
these two chroniclers testify to this, embodying as they do the ethical
principles of their faith'. I've no doubt Shoghi Effendi was the best of
men (though I know less about him than I do about, oh, let's say, Ann
Frank), but the fact is that, when he wrote
God Passes By, he
hung his 'facts' on a preconceived framework. Just as I might distort
historical characters or events in writing a novel, so he told his tale
in order to meet the demands of a grand scheme, a divine drama played
out in Shiraz, Baghdad, or Acre. It's a work of genius, but I don't
think it's a reliable historical source, if for no other reason than
that there isn't a single reference from beginning to end. We're meant
to take everything on Shoghi Effendi's say-so. Whereas academic books
are open and transparent, displaying their origins in the form of
citations and bibliographies,
God Passes By is wholly opaque,
cramming primary and secondary materials in together without rhyme or
reason, and leaving the reader in the dark throughout. So just what
Shoghi Effendi's rather unknown life has to do with the veracity of his
text is quite beyond me.
One particularly lengthy historical section, written by Towfigh, runs
from page 599 to page 673, and deals, in the main, with the break
between Baha' Allah and Subh-i Azal. I found this a very frustrating
sequence to read, because I sensed throughout that Towfigh was only
marginally familiar with the original texts, but brazened things out by
judicious use of secondary materials, most of them from Bahá'í sources.
Since this is still a controversial area, it requires well-honed
historical and linguistic skills, without which it is easy to slip into
error, as Towfigh does.
As before, I am aware that the only detailed discussions of Babism in
this period are to be found in Chris Buck's
Symbol and Secret and
in two articles by myself, 'Hierarchy and Authority' and 'Divisions and
Authority Claims', along with Juan Cole's translation of the Risala-yi
shathiyya and some discussion that has emerged from it. Yet, apart from
a passing reference to Buck's work, none of these is brought into
Towfigh's analysis.
In other words, she is choosing which sources to cite, and which to
engage with (if any), whereas in proper academic discourse a salient
book or paper demands to be accounted for. In other words, you don't
have the freedom to ignore anything that gets in the way of your
argument. Unless, of course, you don't actually know such materials
exist, in which case you should not be writing on the subject.
Towfigh is constantly out of tune with what seems to have been
happening. She shows no understanding of the Shi'ite concept of ghayba
as an element in Azal's behaviour (it was certainly referred to by his
contemporaries in explanation of his absence), she persists in accepting
'Mystic Source' as an adequate translation for the phrase masdar-i amr,
[13] she believes
(incorrectly) that there is no document in the Bab's hand which
legitimizes Azal's position, and she does not know why Azal was chosen
as the Bab's successor (on account of his 'inspired' writings,
apparently).
In one place she states that 'the early Babis, too, clearly expected the
Promised One to arrive soon', which is debatable at the very least. And
she goes on to say: 'Only this can explain the fact that during the
years immediately following the martyrdom of the Bab so many proclaimed
themselves to be the Promised One.' If she had read the second of my
articles, she would have seen adequate evidence that probably no-one
made that claim at that point, and that all these matters require a much
more sophisticated understanding of events and terminology than Towfigh
brings to them.
Since the range of claims open to the Babis of that period was fairly
large, a researcher in this field ought to be able to access the sort of
texts in which they are laid out. I see no mention at all in Towfigh's
copious footnotes of Naraqi, Dahaji, the Azali compilation Qismati az
alwah, the original texts of Baha' Allah's Baghdad writings, or the
relevant later works of the Bab. The work is being done largely from
secondary texts:
God Passes By is cited no fewer than twenty-one
times,
A Traveller's Narrative thirty-one, and other articles by
Browne thirty-nine times.
Elsewhere, ideology leads to contradictions. On p. 665, we are assured
that, when Browne was writing, 'a single, united Babi community had long
since ceased to exist', whereas on pages 672-3, we are informed that
'the term schism is inappropriate in connection with the conflict
between Mirza Yahya Azal and Bahá'u'lláh, since no division within a
religion occurred'.
There are numerous other points that arise from this section, but I'll
restrict myself to just one here, which is an ethical, not an historical
one. On p. 636, Towfigh quotes a statement from 'Abd al-Baha' to the
effect that the Bab and Baha' Allah agreed to have Subh-i Azal appointed
nominal head of the faith in order to preserve his older brother from
danger. She is not the first Bahá'í writer to cite this with approval,
and I'm sure she will not be the last. Let me only comment here that, if
the aim of this book is to win friends and influence people in the
non-Bahá'í world, this citation alone would undermine the whole
enterprise. Imagine how Christians would react to the suggestion that
Jesus conspired to have Judas substituted for him so he could escape the
cross (an idea actually mooted by some Muslim writers). Or that a French
resistance fighter handed a Jew over to the Gestapo, knowing that doing
so would save his life. Or that John Kennedy, fearing assassination, had
placed a double to ride in his open-top car.
This is something the Bahá'ís have to think about hard. Fortunately, the
solution is historical rather than ethical. We can't prove there wasn't
some sort of conspiracy, but Azal's appointment does seem genuine, we
know that the Bab gave Azal specific instructions to 'preserve himself',
[14] that he issued
instructions to others to take care of Azal,
[15] and that Baha' Allah was in
the public eye from quite an early period.
[16] What Abd al-Baha' was trying
to do was to find a plausible explanation for what was to him an
unpalatable fact: that the Bab had appointed as the guardian of his
faith and writings a man considered by Bahá'ís to be a primary source of
spiritual evil.
That's enough history for the moment. To be honest, the historical
gaffes and distortions gave me less grief than some early sections in
Schaefer's main contribution, and in parts of Gollmer's section on
politics. This isn't easy to convey, but it matters, so please be
patient while I try to develop this point. My problem is this. With one
important exception, which I shall come to later, the tone and content
of much of the book seemed to me deeply conservative and self-righteous.
What is worse is that Schaefer clearly seems to want his voice, with its
illiberal overtones, to be taken for the voice of the Bahá'í faith as a
whole. To be honest, this doesn't surprise me, since a rather puritan
conservatism was the atmosphere within the Bahá'í movement when I was a
member and had much to do with driving me and others out. What does
surprise me is that, after so much worthwhile debate, promoted by organs
like
Dialogue magazine, the liberal voice of Bahá'ísm has not
convinced men like Schaefer that they are dinosaurs who need to modify
their views in some respects if they are not to cause the Bahá'í faith
to petrify in a mode that will become more and more out of touch with
the reality lived by most thoughtful, caring people.
Let's take a look. After a lengthy section on Bahá'í political ideas, to
which I'll return in a moment, Schaefer really gets going on pp. 301
ff., where he discusses 'the concept of liberty'. At first he seems
quite reasonable, arguing, for example, that the liberty of which Baha'
Allah disapproved was not democratic liberty but anarchy, immorality,
and so forth. From there, he works his way round to a popular Bahá'í
theme, namely that true liberty is obedience to God's law. This too, he
stresses, does not contradict democratic liberties. But this liberal
mask starts to slip not much later. Ficicchia, he says (p. 318), argues
against Baha' Allah's legislation 'purely on the basis of the modernist
attitude held by the sceptical and irreligious person who lacks any
concept or understanding of religious obligations and — horribile
dictu — faithful obedience, who rejects any possibility of absolute
authority, accepting no authority but his own self according to the
principle: "I am the Law!"'
There's nothing like a stereotype to waken certain forms of bigotry, in
this case the notion that non-believers do not understand religious
matters, and that they are anarchists and libertines at heart.
But he goes further. It isn't just non-believers whom we can't trust, it's
people in general:
[17]
'people today value nothing more dearly than their sovereign liberty in
decision-making, their individual right to shape their own lives, their
freedom to decide for themselves what is and what is not permissible as
defined by their sense of moral autonomy' (p. 320).
In the last century, thousands upon thousands of men and women gave
their lives to establish just such a freedom, very rightly rejecting the
'absolute authority' of fascism and communism. Many of these were
religious people of upstanding morals. Others, perhaps the majority,
were agnostics or atheists, also of high moral standards. Many of
Schaefer's own countrymen and women joined the widerstand, the internal
opposition to Hitler, just as many Russians resisted Stalinism, denying
that the authority of the state is absolute and that individuals have no
rights.
Other men and women fought — as many round the world today still
fight — for human rights, for the right of the individual to
believe and speak and write and act within very broad limits. This
sometimes results in speech or behaviour that you or I may find
offensive. But I — and millions of others — would always
prefer to be offended than to be straitjacketed by a Hitler, or a
Khomeini, a Pope, or an 'infallible' religious body. If Schaefer sees
(as I think he does) something ignoble in this, what a very blinkered
man he must be. One of the things that originally attracted me to the
Bahá'í faith was its modernity, its concern with contemporary issues,
the belief that it had passed beyond traditional religions to a new
dimension of belief and action. All I see now, when I look at it, is a
religion led by deeply conservative men and women whose beliefs chime
only too well with those of the conservative wing of all the old faiths.
Bahá'ís have more in common with haredi than Reform Jews, with the
present Pope than liberation theologians, with Southern Baptists and
fundamentalist Muslims than Unitarians and reformist Shi'a. Much of this
neo-conservatism has its roots in just the same fears that prompted Pius
IX to declare war on the liberalism of his day. It's a deep-seated fear
of people, a distrust of anyone who dares to think for himself, to
publish a book without having to ask anyone else's approval, to stand up
in meetings and tell those in charge they are talking nonsense, to tell
obscene jokes like Lenny Bruce, as a weapon against racism and
sexism.
It's a fear of that young man with his shopping bags standing his ground
in front of tanks on Tianenmen Square, of the Catholic women who stand
up in church to demand the right to contraception, abortion, and women
priests, of the Muslim women who jeered at the fundamentalists marching
in support of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, of the angry rabbis who
dared take God to task for allowing the Holocaust to happen, of a writer
daring to satirize a religion that has the temerity to condemn him and
others to death. It's a fear of change, of questions, of the laughter
that punctures the pride of the man on the platform, of satire; a fear
of the power of sex, of the power of words, of the power of people who
are willing to make their own decisions and their own mistakes, people
who have eyes that can see through the Emperor's new clothes. Schaefer
is on the wrong side of history. We atheists and agnostics out here are
not a gang of depraved, self-interested libertarian anarchist
no-gooders. If you want depravity and self-interest, better look in
almost any religious group around. Religious people have been
responsible for an outrageous amount of suffering in this world, and
they still have the gall to tell us: 'It was bad then, but that was a
mistake, just trust us, we've got it right this time round.'
Rationalists believe in the dignity of man, the value of reason, the
worth of ordinary human wisdom, the power of disobedience to irrational
authorities.
Was the Enlightenment a denial or affirmation of the worth of humanity?
Was science hindered or helped by its separation from religion?
[18] Ditto medicine.
Which is the less violent culture, that of largely secular Europe, or
that of the highly religious USA, with its craze for guns, its murders,
drug-related crime, capital punishment, and Star Wars? Is secular
England, where churches are demolished or turned into bingo halls, a
worse place to live than my native Northern Ireland, which has churches
on almost every street corner? Which developing countries have made the
most progress economically and socially: the lightly religious nations
of Asia, or the fervently religious countries of the Islamic world? Are
practices like female genital mutilation, honour killings, forced
marriages, and the like more common in religious (mainly, Islamic)
countries or in secular states?
I could go on here for pages. In case anyone thinks this has just been a
digression, may I point out that my reason for going into all this is
simply to draw full attention to an extraordinary refusal on Schaefer's
part to come face to face with arguments like these which contradict his
self-assertive and, frankly, pompous pronouncements on the frivolity and
danger of the non-religious world.
The fact is that Schaefer and pals are writing an extended polemic, not
just against Ficicchia, but against a host of Bahá'í bugbears, from free
speech to balanced academic enquiry.
On pages 209 ff, Schaefer addresses the questions of pre-publication
review, restrictions on free expression, and so on. I don't intend to
pursue the topic here, since a lot could be said on the matter. But I
will comment that the arguments employed by Schaefer reminded me vividly
of a debate that is currently raging in several Asian countries, notably
Singapore and Malaysia, over the role of the press vis-á-vis the
government. Inevitably, the more authoritarian states take much the view
that Schaefer does here, arguing that the state (for which read
Schaefer's religious institutions) must be above all criticism.
In similar vein, Schaefer writes, refuting Ficicchia's claim that
Bahá'ísm is anti-democratic, 'On no account is [the Bahá'í order]
"anti-democratic", since the democratic elements, along with the
theocratic traits, are dominant' (p.246). The overall impression (and
Schaefer is not alone in giving it) is that the proposed (and, indeed,
the current) Bahá'í system of government is dominantly democratic. I
imagine many of my readers will concur in this understanding. I,
however, beg to differ, as, I think, will most democrats. The trouble is
that you cannot, in reality, just mix monarchy/aristocracy, democracy,
and theocracy (with absolute authority). The result is a denaturing of
each of the elements to no useful purpose. We in Britain have a
monarchy, but the monarch cannot override the will of the people: if she
could, we would no longer have a democracy, and might as well dissolve
parliament.
Theocracy, as in Iran and Afghanistan, tends to demand precedence over
democratic norms (such as the right of the people to enact laws
according to their will). Democracy, where it flourishes, tends to make
other systems redundant.
This is not to say that democracy does not have its problems. But those
problems will not be solved by introducing incompatible notions such as
absolutism or infallibility.
Throughout this section, Schaefer selects his targets so that he does
not have to confront the real issues. The main objections are as
follows: 1) the fact, referred to above, that believers can have their
voting rights and their right to vote suspended should they infringe the
Bahá'í moral code (including, I would argue, improper questioning of the
authorities); 2) the fact that heresy/disobedience to
divinely-constituted authority leads to automatic exclusion from the
community; 3) the fact that, however democratically elected, no Bahá'í
government can introduce major legislation in its own right or abrogate
laws set by Baha' Allah or the Universal House of Justice (democratic
parliaments make and rescind their own laws); 4) the fact that women
cannot serve on the Universal House of Justice; 5) the fact that a
Bahá'í state would be a one-party state (try setting up in opposition to
the official 'divinely-appointed' line even now); 6) the fact that there
can never be open debate about certain basic issues, such as gay rights,
capital punishment, or any number of matters from contraception to the
running of the police, that have yet to be decided by the Universal
House of Justice.
I know that Bahá'ís don't actually want a democracy, but that leaves the
rest of us justifiably concerned. It's not enough to try to reassure us
by saying democracy is dominant alongside theocracy. Democracy is not
divisible, and is only mocked when autocratic states use it as a mask to
conceal their true nature.
Finally, what was the exception referred to above? On pages 256-7 and
page 742, Schaefer and Gollmer mention something that they do not,
surprisingly, make much more of. The second reference is to two texts,
one by 'Abd al-Baha', the other by Shoghi Effendi, both writing about
the need to accord human rights to covenant breakers.
To be honest, this flabbergasted me. I had never seen the passages in
question before, and they caught me unawares. Anything, whether
scriptural or otherwise, I had ever read previously on
covenant-breakers, had been extremely negative: reading their words is
like "eating vomit" (as put by a Hand of the Cause), they are utterly
despicable, they are to be shunned absolutely, even by their families,
and so on. All of those vitriolic passages in
God Passes By about
Azal and Mirza Muhammad 'Ali, and Ruth White, and Ahmad Sohrab, and
every 'enemy of the Faith' from Hajj Mirza Aqasi on. So to learn that
even Covenant-Breakers have rights turns a lot of my assumptions upside
down. The biggest puzzle, of course, is why there aren't more passages
displaying this degree of humanity, and why the Bahá'ís haven't made
greater efforts to present this side of their faith, instead of the
heavy-handed conservatism to be found in the work of so many eminent
exponents.
There are also, of course, obvious contradictions between these texts
and others. 'Abd al-Baha' instructs some believers not to obstruct a
covenant-breaker in seeking employment as a teacher, since even such a
person has to earn a living. That's terrific, and much more sensitive
than I'm used to in Bahá'í texts; but if we move forward a bit in time,
to a large village or small town where most of the inhabitants are
Bahá'ís, what happens at the school? I can't imagine the Bahá'í
authorities or the other teachers or the parents letting a
covenant-breaker loose on their children just because 'Abd al-Baha' says
he should have a job. Can you?
I also have trouble with the Shoghi Effendi passage. Not with the
statement itself, which is admirable, but with how it squares with other
things. If covenant-breakers are not to be deprived of their civil
rights in a free society, then how come the mere act of drinking
alcohol, or having sex outside marriage, or even, for a man to let his
hair grow below the earlobes, will lead to the loss of voting rights,
the most basic civil rights of all? How humanitarian is it to demand
that a man's wife and children should shun him merely because he has
changed his beliefs?
All of this needs to be addressed, and I was disappointed that neither
Schaefer nor Gollmer chose to do so.
I'm left with a list of items that I'd love to take up, but I realize
this has also become one of the longest book reviews on record. Given
time, I could probably get to 900 or even 1000 pages, but I doubt very
much if anyone would want to publish the resulting book in German.
Why have I been so hard on Dr. Schaefer and co-authors? Basically, it's
because Schaefer himself goes to some trouble to point out how much
Ficicchia's book damaged understanding of the Bahá'í faith within
German-speaking academic and ecclesiastical circles, and even civil
authorities (pp. 1-12). I don't disagree with that, but when I then find
that the volume seeking to correct Ficicchia's misrepresentations is
itself with replete with factual errors, academic sloppiness, and
apologetics dressed as scholarship — in other words, many of the
things Ficicchia stands accused of — I find myself obliged to try
to set the balance as straight as a simple man can.
The fact is that
Making the Crooked Straight will sell more
copies to Bahá'ís than to others. Most
people aren't sufficiently interested in Bahá'ísm as yet that they will
sit down and read over 800 pages of apologetics. So, I suppose the book
is aimed more at believers than anyone else. If that's so, it means that
Schaefer, et al., have produced a major contribution to a process that
has been going on since Shoghi Effendi's days, but particularly over the
past fifteen years or so. At some point in that period, while expansion
remained a priority, the Bahá'í authorities seem to have woken up to the
fact that most believers had a limited grasp on the basics of their
faith.
Making the Crooked Straight may not be the most systematic
presentation of where Bahá'ís stand on most crucial issues, but it is
certainly the largest, and has the appearance of being the most
authoritative. That's why I've spent so long niggling away at the text,
and why I could go on longer if I thought anybody was still reading.
Major statements require greater care than has been devoted to this
volume. Not only that, but it disturbs me to find that fundamentalist
Bahá'ís have seized the high ground in this way. Why shouldn't some
liberal Bahá'ís tell it like it is for once? If my criticisms nudge
things further in those two directions — accuracy and liberality of
mind and heart — they will have been worthwhile. Thank you for
reading this far.
NOTES
[1] I remain unimpressed by Schaefer's curious
claim that Ficicchia's book was really written by someone else: 'I doubt
if the author, Francesco Ficicchia, who has certainly contributed a lot
of material, was able to write the book himself in the style of a
methodical, scholarly work, using the terminology of theology and
religious studies and Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Greek and Latin terms
— languages of which the author, himself a social worker, has no
knowledge. It is very probable then that the book was written by an
expert of religious studies and that Ficicchia contributed some material
and his name' (Bahá'í Studies Review, 2:1 (1992).
[2] The first sentence of chapter one, part one
reads: 'The goal of all academic research is to find truth', with the
rest of the chapter proceeding along the same lines.
[3] That making academic work conform with Bahá'í
mass opinion is an obligation on Bahá'í scholars is made clear by Moojan
Momen: 'Secondly, you have to satisfy the Bah á'í
community that your scholarship is a true representation of the Faith,
one that most Bah á'ís would agree is a presentation of
the Faith that is consistent with the texts and being interpreted in
ways to which most Bah á'ís would not object' (Bahá'í
Studies Review, 3:2 [1994]).
[4] This episode is cursorily dealt with in a
reference on p. 101, and a footnote on p. 703.
[5] Bahá'ís seem to have a problem with this.
Many years ago, I met with the editor of the Penguin Handbook of
Living Religions and two members of the British NSA, who were there
to persuade him to drop my commissioned article on the Bahá'ís and
replace it with one they would have written by a Bahá'í author. Like any
sensible academic, I admitted during the meeting that I had my biases
and assumptions. The Bahá'ís seized on this, arguing that this alone
disqualified me from writing the piece. Not once did they accept the
possibility that their Bahá'í author might be biased in his own way. The
editor, John Hinnells, admitted to me later that he had been quite
sympathetic to the Bahá'ís until he actually sat through that
meeting.
[6] I'm referring specifically to the many
volumes of scripture edited by him, all of them sloppy, filled with
mistakes and misattributions.
[7] Religion, 12 (1982): 93-129. See also
'Bahá'í Fundamentalism and the Academic Study of the Babi Movement',
Religion 16 (1986): 57-84, and 'Afnan, Hatcher, and an Old Bone',
Religion 16 (1986): 193-195. It's interesting that none of these
articles, which represented one of the first debates between the
old-style Bahá'í scholarship and the new, academic approach, is referred
to in the present work.
[8] Gollmer does it too. On p. 464, he quotes
approvingly a statement by the World Council of Churches: 'A second
danger is that of interpreting a living faith not in its own terms but
in terms of another faith or ideology. This is illegitimate on the
principles of both scholarship and dialogue'.
[9] W. Collins, Bibliography of English-language
Works on the Babi and Bahá'í Faiths, p. 281
[10] In footnote 20, p. 498, she complains that
'Even within Ficicchia's own transcription system, the transcription
Ta'rih (sic) is incorrect, since T áríkh is written with
alif and not with hamza. Since when? Ta'rikh is an Arabic word and is
written with hamza in that language, whatever the Persian pronunciation
might be. Of course, it would be pointless to object if someone left the
hamza out, but it seems most irregular to correct someone for putting it
in. And, by the way, it is not Ficicchia's 'own transcription system',
but a standard one used widely by Arabists and Persianists in Germany
and elsewhere.
[11] Gollmer too shows a reluctance to engage
with current scholarship, and even appears to be unaware of what is
happening in the wider world. On p. 778, for example, he states
magisterially: 'no systematic presentation of the Bahá'í Faith has yet
been published that satisfies academic criteria'. Says who? Peter
Smith's excellent volume for Cambridge University Press springs
immediately to mind. And what about the numerous encyclopaedia articles
by Juan Cole, Smith, Moojan Momen, Todd Lawson, and myself?
[12] Gollmer reiterates this position on pp. 558
and 559.
[13] He gets into greater trouble on the next
page, when he asserts that there are plenty of scriptural texts in which
the phrase masdar-i amr refers to God. I have gone over most of these
texts with Steve Lambden, and I don't think there was one where the
phrase might not as easily have referred to the Manifstation. For
examples, see my 'Divisions and Authority Claims', pp. 118-19. I am
dismayed that Gollmer did not even attempt to engage with these
references.
[14] See MacEoin, 'Divisions and Authority
Claims', p. 109.
[15] Ibid.
[16] See ibid., p. 117.
[17] There's more of this on the next page, p.
321: 'most people at present', 'modern people'. On the next page, p.
322, he expresses his impatience with 'a critical and sceptical
public'.
[18] On this, see an excellent new study by Stephen
Jay Gould, Rock of Ages.