PERSIA’S YOUNGEST FAITH.

Otago Witness, Issue 3211, 29 September 1915, Page 75

PERSIA’S YOUNGEST FAITH.

By Jessie Mackat

Readers of Miss E. S. Stevens’s torrid romance “The Mountain of God” will remember the figure of the Persian prophet who lived in a not uncomforted exile on the sunny slope of Carmel. That prophet held in his hands the many far-flung lines of the Balia religion, a faith sprung out of, but not of, Mohammedanism, and whatever may be said of it, a vast advance on the doctrines of Islam.

A recent article by Robert Richardson in an American paper gives some particulars of the Baha religion, which not only counts at least 100,000 of the most modern of Persians, but has contrived to win a hearing in America, Britain, Germany, France, Egypt, India, and Japan. That Bahaism should make inroads on Moslcmism is not surprising, but that it should win European converts shows that the Western mind, even in religious revolt, cannot cease looking to the East for spiritual guidance.

There is some confusion as to the naming of the sect, seeing that the first phase of it is still known as Babism, and the phase which has become a “fad” religion in the West to-day is undoubtedly known as Bahaism, Baha being the title of the Carmel prophet, or prophets, for father and son ruled there successively before the Young Turkish Revolution released the latter from enforced residence in Palestine.

Much has been written in eulogy of the Bab (or Gate of Divine Knowledge), who began his reforms in Persia more than 70 years ago, and who, from 1844, was regarded by an increasing number of disciples as a Divine teacher, superseding Moses, Mahommed, and Christ. The same claim is made by Abdul Baha, the mildmannered old prophet, who now heads the scattered branches of the Bahais, though he ranks himself a little lower than his father.

Mr Richardson writes from personal knowledge of American Bahaism and its proselytising methods, and though his account of both Babism and its offshoot is far from commendatory, the facts he brings forward of assassination, intrigue, and spiritual assumption must needs have weight against the indiscriminate praise lavished by some Western scholars on the prophets and martyrs of the sect. Nevertheless, those who realise the inconceivably low state of religion ond morals in Persia will have a little more sympathy with the undoubted advance and impulse which Persia owed to Ali Mahommed (the original Bab), to his disciples, whether martyrs or law-breakers, and in particular as regards the Bab’s attitude towards women. Nor will we lightly surrender the whole martyr-fiime of Kurratu-’l-Ayn (Delight of the Eyes), the beautiful and gifted woman who did so much to draw in converts for the new faith and who became a kind of Joan of Arc to the persecuted sect before she was captured and put to a cruel death.

Nevertheless, from Mr Richardson’s account, we see that Babism began something like Mohammedanism in an exaltation of its expounder, and a seemingly real desire to reform, not to overturn, a corrupt national religion. Like Mohammedanism, too, it soon fell away, or perhaps never really left, the violent and underhand methods of the main body in providing against schism and criticism. The Bab’s folloAvers, in fact, dreAV first blood in the strife Avhich was to develop first into fiery persecution and finally exile for them; the \-ictim being the uncle of Kurratu-’l-Ayn,. avlio resented both the doctrines of the Bab and the AvithdraAval of his niece from her duty as a wife and Moslem. In the punishments and reprisals which lasted till Babism was apparently root out of Persia, the neAV sectarians did not scruple both to torture and to kill enemies Avho fell into their hands. The Bab himself was put to death in 1850; but he had nominated a youth, Asal, as his successor. This Azal bears the fairest record of all the Babi or Baba popes; he gave himself to the spiritual Avork of the church, and regarded himself as merely the servant and disciple of his murdered master. His Avas not the hand to control the fiercer sjoirits of the sect, who fell away in the great schism Avhich hailed Azal’s astute and unscrupulous elder brother, Huseyn Ali, as the new Messiah of the church, counting the dead Bab as only a forerunner like John the Baptist. It is fair to say that the party which clung to Azal, and afterwards to his memory, represented the best, the truest, and the mildest in the new faith. It Avas the fiercer sort, however, Avho nowseized supreme poAver, and by their plots against the Shah and the accepted faith made Persia altogether too hot to hold them. And it was not a, company of oppressed lambs which fled to Bagdad and, the tender mercies of Turkey. From Bag-

dad they were removed to Adrianople, where their factional fighting as much as their unorthodoxy brought down the wrath of the Sultan. For Turkey, however, the punishment was mild; the Azalites were deported to Cyprus and the leading body, under Huseyn, to Acre, in Palestine. Some parting amenities with poison and poniard there were before the church took on its second name and form. For Huseyn the militant was now from henceforth the saintly Eaha, who had superseded the Bab, but continued the body of his doctrine from the quiet slopes of Carmel. From that time active violenc'e was over, and the mild and venerable appearance of the prisoned prophet, and still more that of the present Baha, his son, impressed both the weary Oriental and the restless Western hearer with that unquestioning faith which the bulk of the Bahais extend to their head. Nevertheless, the first Baha had two wives, and a younger sou has already induced a small colony to hive off under his leadership. London, tolerant of all prophets, has paid fiomage to the true Baha ere now, though it does not appear that the Persian Messiah had crossed the Atlantic to bless the 30,000 or so claimed in the United States by the Baha missioners. Like the new Buddhism and the new Hinduism, the later Bahaism, once a fundamental condition of faith in its head is granted, seems to offer little that is objectionable to morality, and in precept at least lays down some admirable doctrines of sexequality. Nevertheless, it has already had to tamper with its own records very considerably to make its past and its present professions tally, and it does not appeal to any judgment gifted with the historic sense. In no way can it >be judged superior to the essential and apostolic doctrines of Christ, and it is touched with many puerilities of custom and belief. Yet it continues to win a certain type of rootless Athenian to its fold.

A word on its political trend is of deep interest, seeing that to-day Persia is in the melting-pot. It is asserted by Mr Richardson that the Bahais are strongly pro-Russian and anti-national in sentiment, though they take no open part as a body. The obscure and diminished Azalites, who still exist as the Stundists or Quakers of the movement, on the contrary, have ever stood for reform from within, and constitutional liberty. It will be interesting to watch what influence the Bahais will exert in the new Persia which must emerge out of present chaos.