Iran’s Humane Religion
Mordecai Schreiber
Rabbi
The title of this piece may throw off the reader. No, it does not refer to Iran’s state religion, namely, Shi’a Islam, which sponsors terrorists around the world and brutalizes its own people. Such religion can hardly be called humane. Under the ayatollahs, Iran became a ruthless theocracy that seeks regional domination by all possible means. Along with North Korea, Iran’s cleric rulers have managed to turn their county into one of the least popular nations in today’s world.
Iran, however, historically known as Persia, is a major and very old civilization with an illustrious history. It has played a key role in the development of world civilizations and world religions. In the mid-nineteenth century Iran gave birth to a new religion called The Baha’i Faith. While the Baha’i faith grew out of Shi’a Islam, it parted ways with its parent religion, and became a new independent Faith with new laws and teachings. By doing so, the Baha’i faith became, arguably, the world’s most humane religion, setting an example for all other religions to emulate.
How so?
The founders of this new faith, mainly Bahá’u’lláh, taught the fundamental idea that all the major world religions’ messengers are divinely inspired by the same One, Unknowable Essence in that all humanity essentially worship the same God of the Universe, A God who is progressively revealed to different people in different ages by successively inspired messengers. All human beings are equal, women are equal to men, religion needs to embrace science and vice versa, and a harmony between the human mind and the human spirit needs to be established. All this put into the realm of sincere effort and action would lead to the betterment of humanity and the forming of new just and peaceful society; the next stage of the evolution of humankind.
The ruling class of Iran did not take kindly to these radically progressive ideas. From its very inception, this new faith was severely persecuted in its country of origin. Bahá’u’lláh was exiled by the Shah of Iran from his country forever and in 1879 was finally dispatched to a far corner of the Turkish empire, namely, Akka, where he was incarcerated in a prison across the bay from what was going to become my native town, namely, Haifa, the future world center of the Baha’i faith. From this place of exile, well before the formation of the future State of Israel in 1948, the faith spread around the world, never commanding large numbers, but nonetheless playing an important role in world affairs. Meanwhile, the followers of Bahá’u’lláh back home in Iran were severely persecuted by both the Shah and Shi’ite clerics, and they continue to be oppressed from cradle to grave by policies put in place to this very day.
When I grew up in Haifa, we lived across the street from the Baha’i world center. To this day, the white temple with the golden dome and the magnificent Persian gardens is Haifa’s most spectacular sight, rising from the bay nearly to the top of Mount Carmel. As a child I was free to roam the gardens with the flower beds and with plants from around the world (my favorite were and still are the cacti), a place that had an air of mystery about it, and I recall an American Baha’i handing me a brochure that explained the faith and its acceptance of all religions, an idea that even as a child I realized was extremely different from what I was studying in school about the historical clashes among the major religions. I concluded that these strange people were extremely idealistic, but somehow I felt they were on the right track.
Haifa in the forties and fifties was mainly a town of socialist Zionists, many of whom believed in Karl Marx’s teachings of human equality and the forming of an ideal society where each person worked for the common good. In the Soviet Union, and later in China and the rest of the communist bloc, Marxist teachings were forced on millions of people, with the promise of establishing a brotherhood of man and camaraderie among nations. Those were lofty ideals that have failed to become a reality. Under communism—in the name of the common good—people were deprived of personal freedom, and in the end the Soviet Union collapsed and countries like China became communist in name only.
The Baha’i faith, on the other hand, due to its teaching of the need for the Independent investigation of truth was never coercive or doctrinaire. Unlike communism, or, for that matter, Shi’a Islam, it did not impose its will on its followers, but rather granted people freedom of choice in their personal beliefs. This freedom may perhaps explain why their numbers remained small (about six million worldwide). Recently, while doing research on the universality of prayer, I befriended a Baha’i community in south Florida and joined its study group. I was deeply impressed with the Baha’i people I met in this group. They form a rainbow of the entire human race; they all seem well-educated, well-spoken; they are caring and generous; they are perhaps the most genuinely spiritual people I have ever met. Getting to know them made me realize that we Jews, Christians and Muslims have a great deal to learn from them. Many of us profess to believe in human equality and in the universality of God, but we pray as if we are addressing our own exclusive God. Our clergy preach, but they, who have no clergy, act on their beliefs.
Now, many years later, having wandered far away from my native Haifa and the Baha’i gardens, I have finally come to appreciate the impact they have had on my life, in their respect for and love of nature, of all human life, and their abiding belief that someday this suffering planet will indeed become, once again, a Garden of Eden.
(I am writing these lines during my current stay in Israel, where I am visiting with my sisters. Before I left Florida, I told the co-tutor of the Baha’i study group, Dr. Heather Hosseini, I would like to say a prayer for her when I got to Israel. She sent me the following prayer to be said for her family and for all humanity. I find it to be so soulful I would like to share it with the reader:
O Thou kind Lord! Thou hast created all humanity from the same stock. Thou hast decreed that all shall belong to the same household. In Thy Holy Presence they are all Thy servants, and all mankind are sheltered beneath Thy Tabernacle; all have gathered together at Thy Table of Bounty; all are illumined through the light of Thy Providence.
O God! Thou art kind to all, Thou hast provided for all, dost shelter all, conferrest life upon all. Thou hast endowed each and all with talents and faculties, and all are submerged in the Ocean of Thy Mercy.
O Thou kind Lord! Unite all. Let the religions agree and make the nations one, so that they may see each other as one family and the whole earth as one home. May they all live together in perfect harmony.
O God! Raise aloft the banner of the oneness of mankind.
O God! Establish the Most Great Peace.
Cement Thou, O God, the hearts together.
O Thou kind Father, God! Gladden our hearts through the fragrance of Thy love. Brighten our eyes through the Light of Thy Guidance. Delight our ears with the melody of Thy Word, and shelter us all in the Stronghold of Thy Providence.)
Rabbi Mordecai Schreiber is the author of the new book Why People Pray: The Global Power of Prayer.
