TruthBook Religious News Blog

‘For once, we’re all in the same room’
By JON TATTRIE
Sat. Jan 24 - 4:47 AM

Halifax joined the global celebration of World Religion Day on Sunday. A couple hundred people from at least 10 faith groups slipped through a snowstorm to gather at All Saints’ Cathedral in downtown Halifax.

Dozens of groups across Canada and thousands around the world united to celebrate what they say is the common heart of all religions. World Religion Day has been observed on the third Sunday of January annually since 1950, when it was initiated by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States.

The Halifax event was organized by the Baha’i community.

"In the Baha’i writings, it talks about all religions being equal and that the purpose of religion should actually be to unite the human race," said Ariel Borden, a dancer in the Baha’i Army of Light Dance Troupe.

"I think that it’s been really inspirational, in the sense that in this day and age, a lot of us see religions as dividers of humanity."

Sunday was a sort of variety show from faith groups. The Baha’i started things off with the dance troupe’s stomping presentation of the words of Baha’u’llah, the Baha’i founder, who said that world peace was not only possible, but inevitable. Billy Lewis then led the Mi’kmaq Kitpu Youth Drummers and Dancers in a smudge ceremony. A youth group from Beechville Baptist Church presented the word of God through interpretive dance, the Vedenta Ashram Society read from the Hindu scriptures and Saint Matthew’s United Church acted out the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Halifax’s Buddhist community joined in with a series of contemplative songs and the Universalist Unitarian Church added some folksy music. Brahma Kumaris captured much of the sense of the meeting with Four Faces of the Soul, a dance/spoken word piece describing the journey of the soul.

It starts off in Innocence, free and unfrightened, but is soon "protected" by Tradition. It eventually rejects those trappings and the Modern incarnation goes into rebellion. In the end, the peaceful soul enters Shakti, the face of transformation.

Ursula Johnson and Billy Lewis of the Mi’kmaq group spoke about their participation after the event. Johnson said it was the group’s fifth year.

"We really enjoy the opportunity to come and share some practices and some music and forms of celebration of our spirituality from the aboriginal culture," she said.

Lewis, an elder, explained the meaning behind the smudge ceremony. Booming drums echoed through the vast church while the Kitpu group sang high-pitched chants as Lewis fanned the smoke from burning sweetgrass onto the gathering.

Attending World Religion Day was for Lewis a sign that at root, all spiritual values are shared.

Debbie Nicholson, the main organizer from the Baha’is, said they had more than 120 participants, from babies to seniors. She was especially pleased to have the Nova Gospel Ensemble for the first time.

"It really worked well," she said of the group’s rafter-raising performance. "It’s a part of our culture in Nova Scotia, that kind of gospel music, so it was nice to bring that element in."

She acknowledged that not all faiths were present, but said they extend the welcome as wide as they can and drew 10 different faith groups this year, plus the ensemble.

She’s got her eyes on groups like the Quakers for future years to expand the celebration.

"For once, we’re all in the same room," she said of the day.

Labels: Baha'i, Canada, interfaith, Jon Tattrie, World Religion Day

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Sunday, January 27, 2008

Baha'i follows far different path than its mother religion of Islam

Sat January 26, 2008

Our Faiths

Q: My daughter told us on her last visit that she converted to Baha'i. Her father was upset with her conversion to a Muslim religion, but she said Baha'i is not Muslim. Can you tell us about Baha'i, please?

— Bette, Oklahoma City

A: As far as religions go, Baha'i (pronounced buh-HI) is new to the world stage, emerging as a separate faith in 1866 while its founder, Bahaullah, was exiled in Turkey from his homeland of Iran.

The Baha'i faith developed out of Babism, which emerged from Shia Islam during the 1840s. Coming from a certain religious tradition does not mean a sect retains the older faith's practices and beliefs. Christianity developed from Judaism, but the two faith families are distinct. Baha'i is even more distinct from Islam.

Followers of the Baha'i faith divide their teachings into two main groups: religious and social. On the religious side, the tradition teaches God is too complex for people to know fully, but He reveals parts of Himself through various manifestations of God that have appeared on Earth throughout history. Among these manifestations was Adam, who in Baha'i understanding was not the first person. Instead, he was the first revelation given to the world's people of God's characteristics and His desires for humanity.

God progressively has revealed more and more about Himself and human purpose through later manifestations, including Abraham, Moses, Krishna, Jesus, Muhammad and Bahaullah. Each manifestation adds to humanity's understanding about God and the universe, according to the Baha'i faith. Each manifestation also deals with issues unique to the time and culture where he appears.

A consistent message from each manifestation has been to say humanity's purpose is to know, love and worship God.

The faith rejects belief in a devil, saying evil is solely the choice of people who attempt to remove themselves from God's presence. Without a separate evil being, each person is responsible for his or her actions.

While the Baha'i believe in an afterlife, they say no living person has enough information to speak definitively about what that existence entails. They also reject the ideas of separate heavens and hells, saying heaven is spiritual nearness to God and hell is separation from God.

On the social side, the tradition looks to Bahaullah's writings for direction. In "Tablets,” he said the world's people are "the leaves of one tree and the drops of one ocean” but prevented from treating each other as brothers and sisters by social and political divisions.

"The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established,” Bahaullah wrote. This unity requires equality in treatment of all people, and the group's social agenda works toward equality with an ultimate aim of unity.

Following this teaching, the faith says men and women are equal in God's eyes; therefore, the sexes must have the same legal, political and educational rights. Education also is considered vital to the Baha'i goal of all the world's peoples sharing equally in God's provision of resources and opportunities. The poor must receive schooling that at least teaches reading, writing and the skills necessary to hold a productive job, according to Baha'i doctrine.

Toward this same goal of sharing Earth's bounty, the Baha'i contend extreme wealth and extreme poverty should be abolished by requiring businesses to share profits with their employees and by establishing tax laws to take excess funds from the wealthy and give them to the poor.

All of this looks forward to God's desire for the unification of all humanity, the Baha'i faith teaches. As people have grown from clans to tribes to city-states to nations, so they will eventually unite into one world. To realize God's goal for humanity, the world must develop a single governmental structure and a universal language. The Baha'i work for world unification and urge learning a "supplemental language” to facilitate communication around the globe but not to replace all other tongues.

While the faith emerged in the Middle East and had some success in establishing itself in the United States during the 19th century, today most of its 1.5 million adherents are found in Africa, South Asia and Latin America — commonly referred to as the Third World. The religion's headquarters is in Acre, Israel, where the Universal House of Justice, its ruling body, sits.

Labels: Baha'i, faith, God, religion, Shia Islam, society, unity

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Sunday, September 30, 2007

Iran's Crackdown Victimizes Baha'is

RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION |
Rest of the world needs to speak out on minority's behalf

September 30, 2007
BY MARK KIRK

As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the stage this week to address students at Columbia University, his government was working at his direction to find and expel students from Iranian universities -- solely based on the religion they practice.

There is a little-told story from Iran -- a story we thought would forever stay buried in the darkness of 1930s Europe. This story is about a religion founded in Iran in the mid-1800s that has become Iran's largest religious minority with over 250,000 members.

As the representative in Congress for the Baha'i Temple of North America, I know the Baha'i faith well -- a faith of tolerance and diversity of thought. These are values we embrace on the North Shore. But in an oppressive Islamic dictatorship like Iran, Baha'is pose a clear and present danger to the regime.

In March 2006, just a few months into Ahmadinejad's presidency, the Command Headquarters of Iran's Armed Forces ordered the police, Revolutionary Guard and Ministry of Information to identify all Baha'is and collect information on their activities.

Two months later, the Iranian Association of Chambers of Commerce began compiling a list of Baha'is serving in every business sector.

In May of last year, 54 Baha'is were arrested in Shiraz and held for several days without trial -- the largest roundup of Baha'is since the 1980s. Then in August, Iran's feared Ministry of the Interior ordered provincial officials to "cautiously and carefully monitor and manage" all Baha'i social activities. The Central Security Office of Iran's Ministry of Science, Research and Technology ordered 81 Iranian universities to expel any student discovered to be a Baha'i. A letter issued in November from one university stated that it is Iranian policy to prevent Baha'is from enrolling in universities and to expel Baha'is upon discovery.

This year, the safety of Iranian Baha'is continued to deteriorate, as 104 Baha'is were expelled from Iranian universities. In February, police in Tehran and surrounding towns entered Baha'i homes and businesses to collect details on family members. The First Branch of the Falard Public Court refused to hear a lawsuit "due to the plaintiffs' belonging to the Bahaist sect."

In April, the Iranian Public Intelligence and Security Force ordered 25 industries to deny business licenses to Baha'is. The Ministry of Information threatened to shut down one company unless it fired all Baha'i employees. Banks are closing Baha'i accounts and refusing loans to Baha'i applicants. Just last week, the Iranian government bulldozed a Baha'i cemetery, erasing the memory of thousands of Iranian citizens.

The U.S. State Department's 2007 Report on International Religious Freedom paints an even darker picture.

"Broad restrictions on Baha'is severely undermined their ability to function as a community. The Government repeatedly offers Baha'is relief from mistreatment in exchange for recanting their faith. . . .

"Baha'is may not teach or practice their faith or maintain links with co-religionists abroad. Baha'is are often officially charged with "espionage on behalf of Zionism. . . . "

"Since late 2005 Baha'is have faced an increasing number of public attacks. . . . Radio and television broadcasts have also increasingly condemned the Baha'is and their religion. . . .

"Public and private universities continued either to deny admittance to or expel Baha'i students."

On Tuesday, the Iranian president addressed the United Nations General Assembly. That will be a defining moment for our new century. The lessons of the 20th century gave us all the warning signs of what will come if we do not speak out.

U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk represents the 10th Congressional District of Illinois. He is co-chairman of the House Iran Working Group and a member of the Human Rights Caucus.

Labels: Baha'i, Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mark Kirk, religious freedom, Report on International Religious Freedom