Century of Light Part 8

These words prefigured the rise of a similar sentiment among non-Baha'i observers during the Islamic revolutionary years; and this was to become one of the most powerful forces propelling the emergence of the Cause from obscurity. Captured in those early words, too, was the fundamentally spiritual nature of what has always been at stake in the cradle of the Faith. Beyond a revulsion at the senseless brutality of the persecution, a growing body of foreign opinion has been profoundly moved by the response of the Iranian Baha'is.

The twentieth century has, alas, been overwhelmed by the suffering of countless victims of oppression. What made the Baha'i situation unique was the att.i.tude adopted by those who endured the suffering. The Iranian believers refused to accept the all too familiar role of victims. Like the Founders of the Faith before them, they took moral charge of the great issue between them and their adversaries. It was they, not revolutionary courts or revolutionary guards, who quickly set the terms of the encounter, and this extraordinary achievement affected not only the hearts but the minds of those who observed the situation from outside the Baha'i Faith. The persecuted community neither attacked its oppressors, nor sought political advantage from the crisis. Nor did its Baha'i defenders in other lands call for the dismantling of the Iranian const.i.tution, much less for revenge. All demanded only justice -the recognition of the rights guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, endorsed by the community of nations, ratified by the Iranian government, and many of them embodied even in clauses of the Islamic const.i.tution.

The crisis roused the Baha'i world to extraordinary feats of achievement.

National Spiritual a.s.semblies who had little or no experience in developing a working relationship with officials of their countries'

governments were called on to solicit government support for resolutions at various levels of the international human rights system, and did so with outstanding success. Year after year, for twenty uninterrupted years, the case of the Iranian Baha'is proceeded through the international human rights system, gathering support in successive resolutions, ensuring attention to Baha'i grievances in the missions of rapporteurs appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Commission and consolidating these gains through decisions of the Third Committee of the United Nations General a.s.sembly. Every attempt by the Iranian regime to escape international condemnation of its treatment of its Baha'i citizens failed to shake the support the Baha'i issue attracted from a persistent majority of sympathetic nations represented on the Commission. The achievement was all the more remarkable in the context of the Commission's constantly changing membership and a demanding agenda that included human rights abuses in other countries that affected millions of victims.

At the same time as direct pressure was being exerted on the Iranian government, the case was attracting unprecedented publicity around the world in newspapers, magazines and the broadcast media. Newspapers such as _The_ _New York Times_, _Le Monde _and _Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung_, enjoying international readership, gave wide coverage to the persecution, and television networks in Australia, Canada, the United States and a number of European countries produced in-depth, magazine-format presentations. The abuses were denounced in often strong editorial comment. Apart from the support thus lent to the efforts to secure effective intervention at the Human Rights Commission, such publicity had the effect of introducing, usually for the first time and to an audience of tens of millions of people, accurate and appreciative information about Baha'i teachings and belief. Both the publicity and the campaign being carried on through the United Nations' system provided influential officials around the world with a sustained opportunity to judge for themselves both the teachings of the Cause and the character of the Baha'i community.

A problem arising out of the persecution was that faced by several thousand Iranian Baha'is who found themselves either stranded without valid pa.s.sports in countries where they were serving as pioneers, or forced to flee from Iran because they or their families had been singled out as targets of the pogrom. In 1983, an International Baha'i Refugee Office was established in Canada,(139) where the government had been particularly responsive to the representations made by the National Spiritual a.s.sembly of that country. Over the next few years, with the a.s.sistance of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, a series of other countries likewise opened their doors to more than ten thousand Iranian Baha'is, many of whom filled pioneer goals in their new places of residence.

Not only the Baha'i community but the United Nations' human rights system itself benefited from this long struggle. Initially, after the Islamic revolution, the community of believers in Iran had faced a threat to its very survival. In time, the United Nations Human Rights Commission, however slow and relatively c.u.mbersome its operations may appear to some outside observers, succeeded in compelling the Iranian regime to bring the worst of the persecution to a halt. In this way, the "case of Iran's Baha'is" marked a significant victory for the Commission and the Baha'i Faith alike. It served as a startling demonstration of the power of the community of nations, acting through the machinery created for the purpose, to bring under control patterns of oppression that had darkened the pages of recorded history throughout the ages.

This circ.u.mstance highlights the relevance of the Faith's activities to the life of the larger society in which these efforts are taking place.

Together with world peace, the need for the international community to take effective steps to realize the ideals in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its related covenants is an urgent challenge facing humanity at the present moment in its history. There are relatively few places in the world where minority populations, because of religious, ethnic or national prejudices, are not still denied basic human needs of some kind. No body of people on the planet understands better this issue than does the Baha'i community. It has endured-continues to endure in some lands-mistreatment for which there is no conceivable justification, whether legal or moral; it has given its martyrs and shed its tears, while remaining faithful to its conviction that hatred and retaliation are corrosive to the soul; and it has learned, as few communities have done, how to use the United Nations' human rights system in the manner intended by that system's creators, without having recourse to involvement in political partisanship of any kind, much less violence. Drawing on this experience, it is today embarked on a programme to encourage governments in a score of countries to inst.i.tute public education programmes on the subject of human rights, providing whatever practical a.s.sistance of its own is possible.(140) Throughout the world, it is particularly active in promoting the rights of women and children. Most important of all, it provides a living example of brotherhood, from which countless people outside its embrace derive courage and hope.

As the Iranian crisis was unfolding, an initiative taken by the Universal House of Justice suddenly moved the external affairs work of the Baha'i community to an entirely new level. In 1985, the statement _The Promise of World Peace_, addressed to the generality of humankind, was released through National Spiritual a.s.semblies. In it, the House of Justice a.s.serted, in unprovocative but uncompromising terms, Baha'i confidence in the advent of international peace as the next stage in the evolution of society. Set out, as well, were elements of the form that this long-awaited development must take, many of which went far beyond the political terms in which the subject is commonly discussed. It concluded:

The experience of the Baha'i community may be seen as an example of this enlarging unity [of humankind].... If the Baha'i experience can contribute in whatever measure to reinforcing hope in the unity of the human race, we are happy to offer it as a model for study.

While the immediate purpose of the release was to provide Baha'i inst.i.tutions and individual believers with a coherent line of discussion for their interactions with government authorities, organizations of civil society, the media and influential personalities, a collateral effect was to set in motion an intensive and ongoing education of the Baha'i community itself in several important Baha'i teachings. The influence of the ideas and perspectives in the doc.u.ment was soon making itself widely felt in conventions, publications, summer and winter schools, and the general discourse of believers everywhere.

In many respects, _The Promise of World Peace _may be said to have set the agenda for Baha'i interaction with the United Nations and its attendant organizations in the years since 1985. Building on the reputation it had already won, the Baha'i International Community became, in only a few short years, one of the most influential of the non-governmental organizations. Because it is, and is seen to be, entirely non-partisan, it has increasingly been trusted as a mediating voice in complex, and often stressful, discussions in international circles on major issues of social progress. This reputation has been strengthened by appreciation of the fact that the Community refrains, on principle, from taking advantage of such trust to press partisan agendas of its own. By 1968, a Baha'i representative had been elected to membership on the Executive Committee of Non-Governmental Organizations affiliated with the Office of Public Information, subsequently holding the positions of chairman and vice-chairman. From this point on, representatives of the Community found themselves increasingly asked to function as convenors or chairpersons of a wide range of bodies: committees, task forces, working groups and advisory boards. During the past four years, the Community has served as executive secretary of the Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations, the central coordinating body of non-governmental groups affiliated with the United Nations.

The structure of the Baha'i International Community reflects the principles guiding its work. It has escaped labelling as merely another special interest lobby group. While making full use of the expertise and executive resources of its United Nations Office and Office of Public Information, the Community has come to be recognized by its fellow non-governmental organizations as essentially an "a.s.sociation" of democratically elected national "councils", representative of a cross-section of humankind. Baha'i delegations to international events commonly include members appointed by various National Spiritual a.s.semblies who are experienced in the subject matters under discussion and who can provide regional perspectives.

This feature of the Faith's involvement in the life of society-in which motivating principle and operating method represent two dimensions of a unified approach to issues-demonstrated its power at the series of world summits and related conferences organized by the United Nations held between 1990 and 1996. In that period of nearly six years, the political leaders of the world came together repeatedly under the aegis of the Secretary-General of the United Nations to discuss the major challenges facing humankind as the twentieth century drew to a close. No Baha'i can review the themes of these historic gatherings without being struck by how closely the agenda mirrored major teachings of Baha'u'llah. It seemed befitting that the centenary of His ascension should occur at the midway point in the process, endowing the meetings, for Baha'is, with spiritual meaning beyond merely their stated goals.

Among those gatherings, the World Conference on Education for All in Thailand (1990), the World Summit for Children in New York (1990), the United Nations Conference on the Environment in Rio de Janeiro (1992), an anguished and chaotic World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna (1993), the International Conference on Population in Cairo (1994), the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen (1995), and the particularly vibrant Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995),(141) stand out as highlights of this process of global discourse on the problems afflicting the world's peoples. At the concurrent non-governmental conferences, Baha'i delegations, made up of members from a wide range of countries, had the opportunity to place issues in a spiritual as well as social perspective. Evidence of the trust the Community enjoys among hundreds of its fellow non-governmental organizations was the fact that Baha'i delegations were repeatedly selected by their peers for inclusion among the handful of member groups to be accorded the much prized opportunity to address the conferences from the podium, rather than merely distributing printed copies of presentations.

During the century's concluding years, many National Spiritual a.s.semblies won impressive victories of their own in the field of external affairs.

Two outstanding examples suggest the character and importance of these advances. The first was achieved by the National Spiritual a.s.sembly of Germany, where the nature of Baha'i elected bodies had been challenged by local authorities as being technically incompatible with the requirements of German civil law. In upholding the appeal of the Local Spiritual a.s.sembly of the Baha'is of Tubingen against this ruling, Germany's const.i.tutional High Court concluded that the Baha'i Administrative Order is an integral feature of the Faith and as such is inseparable from Baha'i belief. The High Court justified its taking jurisdiction in the case by adducing evidence that the Baha'i Faith itself is a religion, a judgement with far-reaching implications in a society where church opponents have long sought to misrepresent the Cause as a "cult" or "sect". The definitive language of the judgement merits repet.i.tion:

...the character of the Baha'i Faith as a religion and of the Baha'i Community as a religious community is evident, in actual every day life, in cultural tradition, and in the understanding of the general public as well as of the science of comparative religion.(142)

It was left to the Brazilian Baha'i community to win a victory in the field of external affairs that is so far unique in Baha'i history. On 28 May 1992, its country's highest legislative body, the Chamber of Deputies, held a special session to pay tribute to Baha'u'llah on the centenary of His ascension. The Speaker read a message from the Universal House of Justice and representatives of all of the parties rose, one by one, to acknowledge the contribution to human betterment of the Faith and its Founder. A moving address by one prominent deputy described the Baha'i teachings as "the most colossal religious work ever written by the pen of a single Man".(143)

Such appreciations of the nature of the Cause and of the work it is trying to accomplish-coming as they did from the highest judicial and legislative levels, respectively, of two of the world's major nations-were victories of the spirit as important in their way as those won in the teaching field. They help to open those doors through which Baha'u'llah's healing influence begins to touch the life of society itself.

XI

The image used by 'Abdu'l-Baha to capture for His hearers the coming transformation of society was that of light. Unity, He declared, is the power that illuminates and advances all forms of human endeavour. The age that was opening would come in the future to be regarded as "the century of light", because in it universal recognition of the oneness of humankind would be achieved. With this foundation in place, the process of building a global society embodying principles of justice will begin.

The vision was enunciated by the Master in several Tablets and addresses.

Its fullest expression occurs in a Tablet addressed by 'Abdu'l-Baha to Jane Elizabeth Whyte, wife of the former Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland. Mrs. Whyte was an ardent sympathizer of the Baha'i teachings, had visited the Master in 'Akka and would later make arrangements for the particularly warm reception that met Him in Edinburgh. Using the familiar metaphor of "candles", 'Abdu'l-Baha wrote to Mrs. Whyte:

O honored lady!... Behold how its [unity's] light is now dawning upon the world's darkened horizon. The first candle is unity in the political realm, the early glimmerings of which can now be discerned. The second candle is unity of thought in world undertakings, the consummation of which will erelong be witnessed. The third candle is unity in freedom which will surely come to pa.s.s. The fourth candle is unity in religion which is the corner-stone of the foundation itself, and which, by the power of G.o.d, will be revealed in all its splendor. The fifth candle is the unity of nations-a unity which in this century will be securely established, causing all the peoples of the world to regard themselves as citizens of one common fatherland. The sixth candle is unity of races, making of all that dwell on earth peoples and kindreds of one race. The seventh candle is unity of language, i.e., the choice of a universal tongue in which all peoples will be instructed and converse. Each and every one of these will inevitably come to pa.s.s, inasmuch as the power of the Kingdom of G.o.d will aid and a.s.sist in their realization.(144)

While it will be decades-or perhaps a great deal longer-before the vision contained in this remarkable doc.u.ment is fully realized, the essential features of what it promised are now established facts throughout the world. In several of the great changes envisioned-unity of race and unity of religion-the intent of the Master's words is clear and the processes involved are far advanced, however great may be the resistance in some quarters. To a large extent this is also true of unity of language. The need for it is now recognized on all sides, as reflected in the circ.u.mstances that have compelled the United Nations and much of the non-governmental community to adopt several "official languages". Until a decision is taken by international agreement, the effect of such developments as the Internet, the management of air traffic, the development of technological vocabularies of various kinds, and universal education itself, has been to make it possible, to some extent, for English to fill the gap.

"Unity of thought in world undertakings", a concept for which the most idealistic aspirations at the opening of the twentieth century lacked even reference points, is also in large measure everywhere apparent in vast programmes of social and economic development, humanitarian aid and concern for protection of the environment of the planet and its oceans. As to "unity in the political realm", Shoghi Effendi has explained that the reference is to unity which sovereign states achieve among themselves, a developing process the present stage of which is the establishment of the United Nations. The Master's promise of "unity of nations", on the other hand, looked forward to today's widespread acceptance among the peoples of the world of the fact that, however great the differences among them may be, they are the inhabitants of a single global homeland.

"Unity in freedom" has today, of course, become a universal aspiration of the Earth's inhabitants. Among the chief developments giving substance to it, the Master may well have had in mind the dramatic extinction of colonialism and the consequent rise of self-determination as a dominant feature of national ident.i.ty at century's end.

Whatever threats still hang over humanity's future, the world has been transformed by the events of the twentieth century. That the features of the process should also have been described by the Voice that predicted it with such confidence ought to command earnest reflection on the part of serious minds everywhere.

The changes wrought in humanity's social and moral life received powerful endors.e.m.e.nt at a series of international gatherings called under the United Nations' authority to mark the approaching end of one "millennium"

and the beginning of a new one. On 22-26 May 2000, representatives of over one thousand non-governmental organizations a.s.sembled in New York at the invitation of Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General. In the statement that emerged from this meeting, spokespersons of civil society committed their organizations to the ideal that: "...we are one human family, in all our diversity, living on one common homeland and sharing a just, sustainable and peaceful world, guided by universal principles of democracy...."(145)

Shortly afterwards, from 28-31 August 2000, a second gathering brought together leaders of most of the world's religious communities, likewise a.s.sembled at the United Nations Headquarters. The Baha'i International Community was represented by its Secretary-General, who addressed one of the plenary sessions. No observer could fail to be struck by the call of the world's religious leaders, formally, for their communities "to respect the right to freedom of religion, to seek reconciliation, and to engage in mutual forgiveness and healing...."(146)

These two preliminary events prepared the way for what had been designated as the Millennium Summit itself, meeting at the United Nations Headquarters from 6-8 September 2000. Bringing together 149 heads of state and government, the consultation sought to give hope and a.s.surance to the populations of the nations represented. The Summit took the welcome step of inviting a spokesman for the Forum of non-governmental organizations to share the concerns that had been identified at that preparatory gathering.

It seemed to Baha'is as significant as it was gratifying that the individual accorded this high honour was the Baha'i International Community's Princ.i.p.al Representative to the United Nations, in his capacity as Co-Chairman of the Forum. Nothing so dramatically ill.u.s.trates the difference between the world of 1900 and that of 2000 than the text of the Summit Resolution, signed by all the partic.i.p.ants, and referred by them to the United Nations General a.s.sembly:

We solemnly reaffirm, on this historic occasion, that the United Nations is the indispensable common house of the entire human family, through which we will seek to realize our universal aspirations for peace, cooperation and development. We therefore pledge our unstinting support for these common objectives, and our determination to achieve them.(147)

In concluding this sequence of historic meetings, Mr. Annan addressed himself to the a.s.sembled world leaders in surprisingly candid terms-terms that, for many Baha'is, carried echoes of Baha'u'llah's stern admonition to the now vanished kings and emperors who had been these leaders'

predecessors: "It lies in _your_ power, and therefore it is your responsibility, to reach the goals that you have defined. Only _you_ can determine whether the United Nations rises to the challenge."(148)

Despite the historic importance of the meetings and the fact that the greater portion of humanity's political, civil and religious leadership took part, the Millennium Summit made little impression on the public mind in most countries. Generous media attention was given to certain of the events, but few readers or listeners could fail to note the expression of scepticism that characterized editorial treatment of the subject or the air of doubt-even of cynicism-that crept into many of the news stories themselves. This sharp disjunction between an event that could legitimately claim to mark a major turning-point in human history, on the one hand, and the lack of enthusiasm or even interest it aroused among populations who were its supposed beneficiaries, on the other, was perhaps the most striking feature of the millennium observations. It exposed the depth of the crisis the world is experiencing at century's end, in which the processes of both integration and disintegration that had gathered momentum during the past hundred years seem to accelerate with each pa.s.sing day.

Those who long to believe the visionary statements of world leaders struggle at the same time in the grip of two phenomena that undermine such confidence. The first has already been considered at some length in these pages. The collapse of society's moral foundations has left the greater part of humankind floundering without reference points in a world that grows daily more threatening and unpredictable. To suggest that the process has nearly reached its end would be merely to raise false hopes.

One may appreciate that intense political efforts are being made, that impressive scientific advances continue or that economic conditions improve for a portion of humankind-all without seeing in such developments anything resembling hope of a secure life for oneself, or more importantly, for one's children. The sense of disillusionment which, as Shoghi Effendi warned, the spread of political corruption would create in the minds of the ma.s.s of humankind is now widespread. Outbreaks of lawlessness have become pandemic in both urban and rural life in many lands. The failure of social controls, the effort to justify the most extreme forms of aberrant behaviour as primarily civil rights issues, and an almost universal celebration in the arts and media of degeneracy and violence-these and similar manifestations of a condition approaching moral anarchy suggest a future that paralyzes the imagination. Against the background of this desolate landscape the intellectual vogue of the age, seeking to make a virtue out of grim necessity, has adopted for itself the appellation and mission of "deconstructionism".

The second of the two developments undermining faith in the future was the focus of some of the Millennium Summit's most anguished debates. The information revolution set off in the closing decade of the century by the invention of the World Wide Web transformed irreversibly much of human activity. The process of "globalization" that had been following a long rising curve over a period of several centuries was galvanized by new powers beyond the imaginations of most people. Economic forces, breaking free of traditional restraints, brought into being during the closing decade of the century a new global order in the designing, generation and distribution of wealth. Knowledge itself became a significantly more valuable commodity than even financial capital and material resources. In a breathtakingly short s.p.a.ce of time, national borders, already under a.s.sault, became permeable, with the result that vast sums now pa.s.s instantly through them at the command of a computer signal. Complex production operations are so reconfigured as to integrate and maximize the economies available from the contributions of a range of specializing partic.i.p.ants, without regard to their national locations. If one were to lower one's horizon to purely material considerations, the earth has already taken on something of the character of "one country" and the inhabitants of various lands the status of its consumer "citizens".

Nor is the transformation merely economic. Increasingly, globalization a.s.sumes political, social and cultural dimensions. It has become clear that the powers of the inst.i.tution of the nation-state, once the arbiter and protector of humanity's fortunes, have been drastically eroded. While national governments continue to play a crucial role, they must now make room for such rising centres of power as multinational corporations, United Nations agencies, non-governmental organizations of every kind, and huge media conglomerates, the cooperation of all of which is vital to the success of most programmes aimed at achieving significant economic or social ends. Just as the migration of money or corporations encounters little hindrance from national borders, neither can the latter any longer exercise effective control over the dissemination of knowledge. Internet communication, which has the ability to transmit in seconds the entire contents of libraries that took centuries of study to ama.s.s, vastly enriches the intellectual life of anyone able to use it, as well as providing sophisticated training in a broad range of professional fields.

The system, so prophetically foreseen sixty years ago by Shoghi Effendi, builds a sense of shared community among its users that is impatient of either geographic or cultural distances.

The benefits to many millions of persons are obvious and impressive. Cost effectiveness resulting from the coordination of formerly competing operations tends to bring goods and services within the reach of populations who could not previously have hoped to enjoy them. Enormous increases in the funds available for research and development expand the variety and quality of such benefits. Something of a levelling effect in the distribution of employment opportunities can be seen in the ease with which business operations can shift their base from one part of the world to another. The abandonment of barriers to transnational trade reduces still further the cost of goods to consumers. It is not difficult to appreciate, from a Baha'i perspective, the potentiality of such transformations for laying the foundations of the global society envisioned in Baha'u'llah's Writings.

Far from inspiring optimism about the future, however, globalization is seen by large and growing numbers of people around the world as the princ.i.p.al threat to that future. The violence of the riots set off by the meetings of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund during the last two years testifies to the depth of the fear and resentment that the rise of globalization has provoked. Media coverage of these unexpected outbursts focused public attention on protests against gross disparities in the distribution of benefits and opportunities, which globalization is seen as only increasing, and on warnings that, if effective controls are not speedily imposed, the consequences will be catastrophic in social and political, as well as in economic and environmental, terms.