BiblioVault - Books about Baha'i

Baha'i

Studies in Contemporary Religion

Margit Warburg

Signature Books, 2001

There are 100,000 Baha’is in the United States, about five million worldwide including a significant population in Iran, their country of origin. They are also the most persecuted minority in Iran, where they are accused of being heretics by the Shi’i establishment.

In fact, Baha’i draws on a diverse heritage that encompasses both East and West. Reflecting their Islamic roots, they observe daily prayers and the reading of sacred texts; a month of fast; pilgrimage to Haifa, Israel, where the religion’s relics are preserved; and abstinence from alcohol. They face toward their prophet Baha’u'llah’s resting place when praying, which is reminiscent of Muslims facing Mecca to pray.

In other ways, the Baha’i religion has dissociated itself from orthodox Shi’ism. Adherents avoid communal prayer, reject the idea of a professional clergy, promote gender equality, and devote a great deal of attention to education, health care, and environmental issues. They work actively through the United Nations system to promote their view of a new world order of peace and harmony that they feel will one day unify humankind across all nations, races, and religions.

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Forget-Me-Not, Iran

The Story of Keith Ransom-Kehler

Sarah Munro

Intellect Books, 2013

Facing hardship, enduring pain, losing all – such things are a bitter pill to swallow for anyone. For those devoted to the life of the spirit, cruel misfortune – even violent opposition – are familiar stages of the journey of life. Walking a spiritual path in a material world is rarely an easy expedition. But, obedience to the object of her devotion certainly provided Keith Ransom-Kehler with her greatest human challenge and spiritual victory.

Keith was an early American believer in the Bahá'í Faith, the latest of the world's global religions. She was elevated posthumously to the high rank of 'Hand of the Cause of God', and became North America's first martyr for the Faith. Her courageous, albeit largely unknown, contribution to history is the subject of Forget-Me-Not, Iran.

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The Making of Brazil's Black Mecca

Bahia Reconsidered

Scott Ickes

Michigan State University Press, 2018

One of the few interdisciplinary volumes on Bahia available, The Making of Brazil’s Black Mecca: Bahia Reconsidered contains contributions covering a wide chronological and topical range by scholars whose work has made important contributions to the field of Bahian studies over the last two decades. The authors interrogate and problematize the idea of Bahia as a Black Mecca, or a haven where Brazilians of African descent can embrace their cultural and spiritual African heritage without fear of discrimination. In the first section, leading historians create a century-long historical narrative of the emergence of these discourses, their limitations, and their inability to effect meaningful structural change. The chapters by social scientists in the second section present critical reflections and insights, some provocative, on deficiencies and problematic biases built into current research paradigms on blackness in Bahia. As a whole the text provides a series of insights into the ways that inequality has been structured in Bahia since the final days of slavery.

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Principles for Progress

Essays on Religion and Modernity by `Abdu'l-Bahá

Translated and with an Introduction by Sen McGlinn

Leiden University Press, 2018

"This book presents three of the works of Abdu.l-Bah., son of the founder of the Bah..i Faith, dealing with social and political issues. In The Secret of Divine Civilization (1875) Abdu.l-Bah. supports the administrative and broader social reforms of Mirz. Hosayn Kh.n, but looks mainly for organic reform through the efforts of Iranian intellectuals to waken and educate the masses. In this work, Abdu.l-Bah. gives virtuous and progressive Islamic clerics a leading role among these intellectuals, indeed most of his appeals are directed specifically to them. A Traveller’s Narrative (1889/90) is an authoritative statement of the broad lines of Bah.’i social and political thinking. The Art of Governance (1892/93) was written as Iran entered a pre-revolutionary phase, and ideas that we recognise today as the precursors of political Islam were spreading. It sets out the principles underlying the ideal relationship between religion and politics and between the government and the people. In addition to presenting the first parallel text translations of these works, the Persian texts incorporate notes on variants in the early published sources. An introduction outlines the intellectual and political landscape from which Abdu.l-Bah. wrote, and in which his expected readers lived. "

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