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Modernity and the Millennium: The Genesis of the Baha'i Faith in the Nineteenth-Century Middle East

2000; Middle East Institute; Volume: 54; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

1940-3461

Moojan Momen,

Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies

Modernity and the Millennium: The Genesis of the Baha'i Faith in the NineteenthCentury Middle East, by Juan R. Cole. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. xi + 197 pages. Notes to p. 223. Bibl. to p. 251. Index to p. 264. n.p. Reviewed by Moojan Momen Middle Eastern scholars and historians have almost completely ignored the role and influence of the Baha'is in the political reform movements of the Middle East in the latter part of thel9th century. Western scholars have likewise failed to take any substantial account of the Baha'is (though writers such as Mangol Bayat have devoted some attention to the minority Azali offshoot of Babism). The book under review, therefore, helps to fill this lacuna by focusing on the Baha'i programs for social reform, attempts to implement these, and on the interactions between the Baha'i leaders and Middle Eastern reformers. Living as they did in cities such as Tehran, Baghdad, Istanbul, Edirne, and Akka during the successive stages of their exile, the Baha'i leaders, Baha'u'llah and his son Abdu'l-Baha, were in a position to observe the major changes that were occurring in the Middle East and to establish contacts with the key reformers. While insisting that religious renovation was their primary goal and denying that interference in political affairs was any part of their program, the Baha'i leaders did nevertheless proffer advice on the optimal way for traditional societies facing the dilemmas of modernity to attain social and political progress without sinking into the dangers of materialism and excessive nationalism. On the one hand, the Baha'i leaders advocated constitutional democracy, human rights and the advancement of women, which would tend to identify them with the liberal Westernising reformers in the Middle East. On the other, they were severely critical of the materialism, colonialism, militarism, and excessive nationalism in the West. They called for spiritual and religious renewal as the basis for social progress, albeit a new religion suitable for the needs of the time. Based on this religious foundation, they advocated human rights, the social advancement of women, international governmental structures to solve social and political problems, as well as collective security as a way of enabling resources to be diverted from excessive military spending towards social reconstruction. In advancing their ideas, the Baha'i leaders established contacts with leading Iranian reformers, such as Mushir al-Dawlih, Mirza Malkam Khan and Shaykh al-Ra'is; with central figures in the Young Ottoman movement, such as Namik Kemal, Ebuzziya Tevfik, Nuri Bey, and Ismail Hakki Effendi; with reformers in the Arab world such as Muhammad Abduh; and with pan-Islamicists such as Sayyid Jamal al-Din Asadabadi (al-Afghani). The extent and content of this contact and correspondence has not yet been fully researched and only sketchy outlines are given in this book. Cole has skillfully embedded his description of the Baha'i program and the early history of Baha'i attempts to implement it within a theoretical framework. …