`Abdu’l-Bahā believes that it does not suffice to say peace is good and war is bad. Talking and knowing will not create peace, rather, peace is obtained through action:

All rational people are unanimous and united [on the belief] that war brings about destruction and peace brings about prosperity. All are unanimous that war topples the foundations of humanity . . . Knowing something is not enough [to make it happen]. If a man knows richness is good, he will not become rich [only by knowing]. If a man knows knowledge is praiseworthy, he will not become knowledgeable [only by knowing]. If a man knows honor is acceptable, he will not become honorable [only by knowing]. Likewise, having knowledge is not the cause of attainment.[1]

So, to attain peace, we must act, not just claim that peace is good. In this section we will analyze how Baha’i leaders implemented this principle with their actions.

In the third chapter, we showed many instances where Baha’is and their forerunners had shown violent actions towards their opponents. Some of these were:

• The Bab’s orders to burn non-Bābī books, behead and massacre those who did not believe in him, and to destroy all monuments.[2]
• The conflicts between the followers of the Bāb in a bid to become his successors.[3]
• Start of three major internal wars in Iran due to the Bāb’s orders with tens of thousands of casualties.[4]
• The fights and quarrels between Bahā’u’llāh and his brother Mīrzā Yaḥyā Ṣubḥ Azal and the consequent fights between their followers.
• The fights between `Abdu’l-Bahā and his brother Muḥammad `Alī Afandī for the succession of their father.[5]
• Shoghi’s conflicts and fights with other Baha’i members.[6]
• Fights of Rūḥiyyih Maxwell and the members of the institution of the Hands of the Cause with Mason Remey.[7]

We will now mention two more examples:

1- Āghā Asad-Allah Kāshī

Āghā Asad-Allah Kāshī, who was known as the lioness, had a short height but showed great servitude and served in the Holy House up to the end of his life. His highness, `Abdu’l-Bahā, used to say, “Do you see this Āghā Asad-Allah and his short height? He would hang a long machete to his back and accompany the Blessed Beauty (Bahā’u’llāh) in Baghdad and the enemies of the Cause (Baha’ism) would fear him.”[8]

The next section shows that Baha’i actions in Iraq were not limited to hanging swords and machetes to their backs.

2-Murders in Iraq

Bahā’u’llāh’s older sister `Izziyi Khanum (Khanum Buzurg) further describes the situation in Iraq and tells us about the atrocities committed by his brother and his followers in Iraq:

They gathered a group of hooligans from different provinces of Iran and from the same places fugitives who had never believed in any religion and had no faith in any prophet and had no work but manslaughter and had no occupation but stealing peoples’ property. Even though they claimed they were following [the customs] of Ḥusayn (the grandson of the Prophet Muḥammad who was ruthlessly murdered by Shimr on the orders of Yazīd) they summoned a group of Shimr-like people around themselves. The breath of any soul who uttered anything but what they were satisfied with was suffocated. They beat any head which made the slightest sound other than accepting their guardianship. They cut every throat which showed other than humbleness towards them. They pierced every heart which had love towards other than them. The first group whose names we previously mentioned fled to Karbala, Najaf and elsewhere fearing those bloodthirsty headsmen. They beheaded Sayyid Ismā`īl Iṣfahānī, they ripped Mīrzā Aḥmad Kāshī’s guts, they killed Āghā Abul-Qāsim Kāshi and threw his body in the Tigris river, they finished Sayyid Aḥmad with a gun, they scattered Mīrzā Ridhā’s brain with rocks, they cut Mīrzā `Alī’s body from the sides and pushed him unto the path of demise. Other than these, they killed others in the darkness of night and threw their bodies in the Tigris river; yet others were killed in the Bazaar in daylight and cut to pieces with daggers and machetes . . .[9]

Even with such a black and violent dossier, `Abdu’l-Bahā insists that Baha’ism is the cause of peace:

In a time when Iran was infested with war and battle and there were wars between religions and faiths, and religions had enmity towards each other and avoided one another and regarded others as impure, and there was war between governments, tribes, and lands, in such a time and such darkness, his highness Bahā’u’llāh appeared and dispelled those darkness’s.[10]   

Any person with an iota of historical knowledge can clearly see the falsity of these claims, a falsity that continues on to this day. `Abdu’l-Bahā closes his eyes to all the atrocities committed by the followers of his father and tries to display a peaceful Baha’i religion and attributes all violence falsely to Islam (and rightly to Bābīsm):

In the Quran and [book of] Bayān, the order was [given] to invade other religions. But the book of Aqdas abrogated these orders, because using the sword has been completely abrogated and invasion has been completely prohibited. Even quarreling with other nations is not permissible.[11]

We will conclude this section with four questions:

1-`Abdu’l-Bahā says:

It may happen that at a given time warlike and savage tribes may furiously attack the body politic with the intention of carrying on a wholesale slaughter of its members; under such a circumstance defense is necessary.[12]

The conditions for self-defense put forward by `Abdu’l-Bahā are too far-fetched. What if a community is attacked by a savage tribe with only the intention of killing a few people? What if a community is attacked but there is no intention of killing anybody? What if a foreign country invades? Must the people lay down their arms because Bahā’u’llāh only approves of defense if Genghis Khan attacks? Should we be thankful for such insightful orders and laws? Did we need the Baha’i faith to tell us these obvious orders that anyone would have known by instinct?

2-How can a creed claim to be the flag-bearer of peace when its leader announces with pride:

And you, oh friends of God, be clouds of grace for those who believe in God and his signs, and be certain torment for those who do not believe in God and are polytheists (deniers of Baha’ism).^[13]

Be like a flame of fire to my enemies and a river of eternal life to my friends.[14]

God has made him (Bahā’u’llāh) a light for the monotheists (Baha’is) and a fire for the polytheists (non-Baha’is).[15]

God will soon take out from the sleeves of power the hands of strength and dominance and will make the Servant (Bahā’u’llāh) victorious and will cleanse the earth from the filth of every rejected polytheist (deniers of Baha’ism). And they will stand by the cause and will conquer the lands using my mighty eternal name and will enter the lands and they will be feared by all the servants.[16]

3- How can a person who starts fights over the smallest incidents, claim to be the vanguard of peace:

When his holiness returned from Sulaymaniyah, he was strolling in the street one day with the late Āqā Mīrzā Muḥammad Qulī. A Kabob seller quietly said, ‘These Bābīs have appeared again!’ His holiness said to Mīrzā Muḥammad Qulī, ‘Hit him in the mouth!’ Mīrzā Muḥammad Qulī grabbed his beard and started hitting him in the head.[17]

4- Why did Baha’is distort their books after it became apparent that `Abdu’l-Bahā’s prophecies about world peace being established in 1957 were false? We already mentioned this in the section on distortions in Chapter 1:

Perhaps the most important change in Bahā’u’llāh and the New Era was made on page 212 of the 1923 edition. Recorded as a Bahā’ī prophecy concerning the “Coming of the Kingdom of God,” Esslemont cited Abdu’l-Bahā’s interpretation of the last two verses of the Book of Daniel from the Bible. He stated that the 1335 days spoken of by Daniel represented 1335 solar years from Muhammad’s flight to Medina in 622 A.D., which would equal 1957 A.D.. When asked “‘What shall we see at the end of the 1335 days?’,” Abdu’l-Bahā’s reply was: “‘Universal Peace will be firmly established, a Universal language promoted. Misunderstandings will pass away. The Bahā’ī Cause will be promulgated in all parts and the oneness of mankind established. It will be most glorious!'” In editions published after his death, Esslemont’s words have been changed to say that Abdu’l-Bahā “reckoned the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy from the date of the beginning of the Muhammadan era” and one of Abdu’l-Bahá’s Tablets is quoted on the same subject in which he writes, “‘For according to this calculation a century will have elapsed from the dawn of the Sun of Truth . . . Esslemont recorded Abdu’l-Bahā as declaring explicitly that the prophecy was to be computed from the Hijra or 622 A.D. and that specific conditions would exist in the world upon it’s fulfillment in 1957. When it became apparent that this Bahā’ī prophecy would not be fulfilled, it was replaced with the ambiguous material which has remained in the text to the present.[18]

[1] `Abdu’l-Bahā, Khaṭābāt, vol.2, pp. 99–100.

[2] “The utterance of the [book or religion] of Bayān in the day of the appearance of his Highness A`lā (meaning the Bāb) was to behead, burn the books, destroy the monuments, and massacre [everyone] but those who believed [in the Bāb’s religion] and verified it,” `Abdu’l-Bahā, Makātīb, vol. 2, p. 266.

[3] Twenty seven people among the Bābīs brought themselves forth as the Promised One in the Book of Bayān, such as Mīrzā Yaḥyā Ṣubḥ Azal, Mīrzā Ḥusayn `Alī Nūrī (Bahā’u’llāh), Mīrzā Asad-Allāh Dayyān, Mīrzā Muḥammad Nabīl Zarandī, Mīrzā Ghughā Darwīsh, and Sayyid Baṣīr Hindī. See Muḥammad `Alī Fayḍī, Ḥaḍrat Bahā’u’llāh, pp. 103–104.

[4] See `Abd al-Ḥamīd Ishrāq Khāwarī, Talkhīṣ tārīkh Nabīl, pp. 330, 345–6, 434.

[5] Bahā’u’llāh had willed that his successor would be Ghuṣn A`ẓam (`Abdu’l-Bahā’) and after him Ghuṣn Akbar (`Abdu’l-Bahā’’s brother Muḥammad `Alī): “God has destined the station [for] Ghuṣn Akbar after his position (meaning `Abdu’l-Bahā’), for He is the Commanding Wise. We chose the Akbar after the A`ẓam, an order from the All Knowing and Aware (God). All must show kindness towards the two Ghuṣns . . . All must respect and admire the two Ghuṣns,” Bahā’u’llāh, Majmū`iy-i alwāḥ-i mubārak-ih, pp. 302–303. After Bahā’u’llāh’s death the two brothers differed on the amount of authority they had and fights ensued between them and their followers.  

[6] According to Bahā’u’llāh’s orders the successor after `Abdu’l-Bahā was supposed to be his brother Ghuṣn Akbar. `Abdu’l-Bahā disobeyed this decree and instead appointed his own grandson Shoghi Effendi as his successor. This resulted in many differences and conflicts between Shoghi and many Baha’is who didn’t accept his authority.

[7] In contrast to what `Abdu’l-Bahā had prophesized, Shoghi was sterile and had no children to succeed him. In a bid to become his successor, an internal conflict erupted between Bahā’u’llāh’s followers. Amongst these conflicts, the most intense was the one between Shoghi’s widow (Rūḥiyyih Maxwell) and Mason Remey (President of the International Baha’i Council). Mason Remey claimed that the UHJ established by Rūḥiyyih Maxwell was illegitimate and in a countermove the UHJ excommunicated Mason Remey from the Baha’i community.   

[8] Ḥabīb Mu’ayyad, Khāṭirāti Ḥabīb, vol. 1, p.385 (footnote).

[9] `Izziye Khānum (Khānum Buzurg), Tanbīh al-nā’imīn, pp. 11–12.

[10] `Abd al-Ḥamīd Ishrāq Khāwarī, Payām-i malakūt, p. 72.

[11] `Abd al-Ḥamīd Ishrāq Khāwarī, Ganjīniy-i ḥudūd wa aḥkām, chap. 36, p. 272.

[12] J. E. Esslemont, Bahā’u’llāh and the New Era, p. 171–172.

[13] Bahā’u’llāh, Majmū`iy-i alwāḥ-i mubārak-ih, p. 216.

[14] Bahā’u’llāh, Ad`iyyih-i ḥaḍrat-i maḥbūb, p. 184.

[15] Bahā’u’llāh, Āthār-i Qalam-i A`lā, vol. 2, no. 74, p. 372.

[16] Bahā’u’llāh, Āthār-i Qalam-i A`lā, vol. 2, no. 90, p. 587.

[17] Ḥabīb Mu’ayyad, Khāṭirāti Ḥabīb, vol. 1, p.266.

[18] Vance Salisbury, A Critical Examination of 20th-Century Baha’i Literature. http://bahai-library.com/salisbury_critical_examination_literature (retrieved 22/2/2014).