H-BahaiTranslations of Shaykhi, Babi and Baha'i Texts, vol. 5, no. 1 (January 2001)

`Abdu’l-Baha

 

“On the House of Justice and Baha’i Jurisprudence”

Letter of circa 1899

Text, Translation, Commentary

Juan R. I. Cole
University of Michigan




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Subject: `Abdu'l-Baha on Jurisprudence 1

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I will present in serial fashion a translation of and commentary on a letter written by `Abdu'l-Baha circa 1899 about the house of justice, Baha'i jurisprudence, and religion-state issues. It was excerpted in *Rahiq-i Makhtum* but a complete copy is in INBA vol. 59, pp. 275-280, which is up at the H-Bahai Web site under `Abdu'l-Baha's collected works: /~bahai/abtext.htm The first passage follows beneath this message.

 

It is my speculation that the writer of the inquiry to which `Abdu'l-Baha is responding was concerned about the possible theocratic implications of the legislative role of the house of justice. `Abdu'l-Baha's intent was to allay entirely any such fears. Thus, he writes, "You asked about the wisdom of putting the house of justice in charge of important ordinances. First of all, this divine cycle is solely spiritual, full of godly compassion, and is a matter of conscience (vujdani). It has no connection at all to physical, [material]* (mulki) or worldly (nasuti) matters."

 

This phraseology is similar to what `Abdu'l-Baha had written in the "Treatise on Leadership" (for which see /~bahai/trans/vol2/absiyasi.htm )

 

What is different is that there he tended to speak in generalities of the universal principle of the separation of religion and state and non-intervention of religious authorities in political and governmental affairs. Here, he is speaking specifically of the Baha'i faith (its 'cycle' or 'dispensation') and of the house of justice. And, confirming what he said in the "Treatise on Leadership," he says that the Baha'i institutions have nothing to do with the world of governmental and worldly/human matters.

 

He is aware, of course, that different religions have had different relationships to the worldly. The reputation of classical Judaism and of Islam were that they were intimately involved in worldly affairs. The reputation of Christianity and of Buddhism was that they were rather more unworldly. Many authors have described the Baha'i faith as being like Islam in this regard. But here `Abdu'l-Baha repudiates them. He says that it is much more like New Testament Christianity. He writes that "In the same way, the Christian dispensation was purely spiritual. In the entire New Testament, the only laws are the prohibition on divorce and the allusion to the abrogation of the Sabbath." He also quotes John 12:47 that Jesus "did not come to judge the world but to save the world." That is, his religion was not a religion of the Law but rather of spiritual salvation. And `Abdu'l-Baha says that the Baha'i religion is of the same sort. Baha'u'llah did not come to judge the world by putting humanity under the Law, but to save it with universal compassion and teachings of spiritual betterment.

 

In making this comparison, `Abdu'l-Baha was enunciating a vision of the Baha'i faith as a religion of the spirit, with relatively few scriptural laws. He says, "Now, this most great cycle is also purely spiritual, the bestowal of eternal life." The Baha'i faith was devoted, not to practical theocracy as with Muhammad in Medina or to Talmudic legal restrictions as with shari`ah and halakhah, but rather to the betterment of morals and the improvement of character. It was to be an ethical religion of salvation. We know that Baha'u'llah frequently said, in a fashion recalling aspects of Sufism, that the purpose of the faith of God is to acquire the divine perfections in one's own character. That was the focus of the faith according to `Abdu'l-Baha, as well.

 

So, he has attempted in this first passage to put to rest the questioner's fears about the house of justice being a theocratic institution. It is not mulki or [material] . . .

 

cheers Juan

 

 

------------ Source: Majmu`ih-'i Makatib-i Hadrat-i `Abdu'l-Baha ("Collected Letters of `Abdu'l-Baha"). Volume 59. Iran National Baha'i Archives Private Printing: Tehran, 1978. Reprinted, East Lansing, Mi.: H-Bahai, 2000, pp. 275-280.

 

*I originally rendered mulki as ‘governmental,’ a meaning given in Steingass.  But on

reflection, I think it is probably here just a reference to the realm of mulk as opposed

to malakut, part of a triple parallelism with jasadi (lit. body) and nasuti (lit. human).

 -JRIC 1/9/01

 

 

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Subject:      Re: `Abdu'l-Baha on Jurisprudence 2

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`Abdu'l-Baha began by comparing the Baha'i faith to early Christianity in its focus on spirituality rather than law. He is aware, of course, that there are more than two religious laws in the Baha'i scriptures, unlike the New Testament. That is, a Baha'i shari`ah or code of revealed law does exist. He explains, however, that such laws are actually a form of spirituality and ethics: "they are derivatives of certitude, faith, assurance and mystical insight."

 

Moreover, these laws deal with personal status matters (marriage, inheritance, etc.) as well as with some matters of what we would call criminal law (not all such crimes were actually public in Muslim societies--murder, for instance, is considered a private affair in which the family of the victim has the option of accepting blood money or demanding that the state execute the perpetrator-- or even of killing him themselves). In this, Baha'i law resembles that of the Qur'an.

 

It is often not realized how little actual law there is in the Qur'an. In his history of Islamic law, Coulson notes of criminal law that aside from homicide, "the doctrine was largely confined to the exposition of six specific offenses." These were illicit sex, slander about the latter, theft, wine bibbing, armed robbery and apostasy. In these, "the notion of man's obligations towards God predominated and . . . because God himself had 'defined' the punishments therefore, were known as the hadd (pl. hudud) offences."

 

Obviously, Baha'u'llah's Most Holy Book also contains these h.udu:d or scripturally-defined offenses. Despite the eternal principle of the non-interference of religious institutions in state affairs, `Abdu'l-Baha acknowledges that some Baha'i law does touch on the material world: "Nevertheless, this blessed cycle is the greatest of divine dispensations, and for this reason, it encompasses spiritual and physical aspects and is perfect in its power and authority." Moreover, not only are there hudud or specified offenses, but principles are also enunciated in the Most Holy Book that can form the basis for further jurisprudence. He says, "Therefore, the universal precepts that form the foundation of the religious law are expressly stated in the text." (He means by "text" [nas.s.] scripture revealed by Baha'u'llah.)

 

In Islam, the authority to enact extra-scriptural "ordinances" (ah.ka:m) based on scriptural principle tended to be invested in the ruler in early centuries (or, for Shi`ites, the Imam). After the disappearance of the last Imam and then the Usuli revolution in Shi`ite jurisprudence, some of this function began to be exercised by the Shi`ite clergy.

 

`Abdu'l-Baha says that in the Baha'i faith, such ordinances, which affect the ethical and spiritual life or personal status, and which are not explicitly mentioned in the writings of Baha'u'llah, are to be enacted by the house of justice. It can use subsidiary regulations to keep the religion up to date, and is supposed to act selflessly, not in accordance with narrow institutional aims, for the welfare of Baha'is in their religious law.

 

- Juan

 

 

 

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Subject:      `Abdu'l-Baha on Jurisprudence 3

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`Abdu'l-Baha now goes on to specify more clearly the purview of the house of justice. He does emphasize, as Moojan said, that it has legitimate authority (in Weberian terms, the expectation that its ordinances will be obeyed) that is rooted in religious charisma, i.e., the divine.

 

But he again emphasizes here that it is not a theocratic institution. "Its dominion is heavenly and divine and its laws are inspirational and spiritual."

 

We have already discussed the concept of _h.add_ or scripturally defined offenses. The other side of the coin is _ta`zi:r_ or offenses and punishments specified by religious or civil authority that, while they do not contradict the revealed law, cover areas that it did not address, based on general principles stated in scripture.

 

Clearly, six or seven laws derived from scripture, the hudud, were insufficient to the needs of medieval Muslim government. Coulson says that Muslim scholars argued that the caliph or later sovereign had the authority to determine what behavior constituted an offense and to set the punishment for it. "Such discretionary punishment is known as ta`zir or 'deterrence,' since its purpose is to "deter" the offender himself or others from similar conduct." Matters of personal status law were also under the purview of the caliph (and later other authorities, whether sultan or religious jurisprudent). (In Middle Eastern societies of the 19th century, personal status law concerning marriage, inheritance, etc. was often not overseen by the state but rather by the religious institutions of the believer. Catholics in Ottoman Mt. Lebanon were regulated by canon law, not Sunni Ottoman codes, with regard to personal status as well as some ta`zir. They could not marry more than one wife, e.g.).

 

`Abdu'l-Baha says that the house of justice is the body in the Baha'i faith that has authority over personal status laws (ah.ka:m-i madaniyyih), as well as ta`zir. He points out, as we saw above, that in the Qur'an there were only a small numer of h.udu:d or specified criminal offenses. Further Islamic law (ta`zir) was derived from general scriptural principles by jurisprudential reasoning on the part of the Shi`ite jurists. In the Baha'i faith, such practical jurisprudence is to be undertaken by the house of justice. Individual scholars are not forbidden from writing abstract treatises on jurisprudence, but their opinions have no force in positive law unless they are adopted by the house of justice.

 

`Abdu'l- Baha sees two advantages to this procedure. First, the house of justice as a central, over-arching body, will be in a better position to create rationalized legal codes that demonstrate some uniformity. Individual jurists all giving their own rulings had in Shi`ite society created legal chaos. Second, the house of justice, as a democratic, elected institution, would have more legitimacy among believers than an individual, unelected scholar of jurisprudence. `Abdu'l-Baha here specifies a further source of the house of justice's legitimate authority in Weberian terms, its democratic character (he envisaged it as a Baha'i "parliament" elected according to British parliamentary norms). It would be interesting to discuss to what degree either of these expectations has been met in reality.

 

Again, note that what is forbidden to jurisprudents is to make idiosyncratic rulings with legal force. The Baha'i muballighin or ulama in Qajar Iran made rulings with normative effect as informal qadis during `Abdu'l-Baha's lifetime, when there were few local spiritual assemblies and no house of justice existed. `Abdu'l-Baha was dissatisfied with the differing practices that resulted and put that authority under the house of justice. He appears to have foreseen the sort of situation that now exists in the U.S. with regard to civil law, where law professors write articles for law reviews that have absolutely no legal force unless (as sometimes happens) the Supreme Court picks up their arguments and implements them. There does not appear to me to be any warrant in anything `Abdu'l-Baha says here for the folk Baha'i belief that it is illicit for Baha'i scholars of jurisprudence to so much as state their individual views publicly. I would suggest that a recent example of individual jurisprudential reasoning that has no legal force is Udo Schaefer's essay in *Baha'i Studies Review* on infallibility.

 

 

 

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Subject:      Fwd: `Abdu'l-Baha on Jurisprudence

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With regard to Xs posting of the duties laid on the house of justice, Y uggested that these duties pertained solely to the local houses of justice and not the international one.

 

I do not understand the jurisprudential or analytical principle behind such a statement. It seems to me that where Baha'u'llah is speaking generically of duties of 'the house of justice,' then what he says applies equally to all of them at all levels. The ideological subtext of this assertion--that the universal house of justice is not intended when Baha'u'llah instructs members to consult with the community--is that the body is an imperial organ, rather like an absolute monarch. But we know that Baha'u'llah condemned absolute monarchy and instead praised the excercise of "reason" (`aql) by 'the people' (an-nas). So, it makes no sense that having come out for parliamentary consultation on the political side of things, and having instructed the local houses of justice that their very divine mandate would be withdrawn if they did not employ shawr or democratic consultation, he should then turn around and create a absolutist institution.

 

There is no way of knowing whether the person to whom `Abdu'l-Baha was replying was an Iranian or a Westerner, at present. That volume of his letters contains many to Americans. And, Americans with their first amendment would most certainly have been worried about theocracy. In the context of the secularizing Tehran of the late 19th century that would explode into the Constitutional Revolution in only a few years, the prospect of a new claim to theocratic authority might also have been disturbing to Iranian intellectuals interested in the Baha'i faith.

 

In philology and jurisprudence, words do not mean just anything we would like them to mean. They have a specific semantic field, and a specific disciplinary and historical context. The word 'siyasi' has nowadays come to mean political in a straightforward way. However, 'politics' as such did not exist in an absolute monarchy such as Qajar Iran, and Iranian intellectuals who discovered European politics of a popular nature referred to it in the 1890s as 'politik', using a transliterated French loan word because it was an alien concept to them. Siyasat in Qajar Persian can mean lots of things, but 'politics' in our contemporary sense is not generally one of them.

 

Specifically in the principles of jurisprudence, siyasa or umur-i siyasiyyih refers to the enactment of ordinances by a post-revelational authority that are beneficial to the Muslim community and that are based upon general principles in scripture. Anyone who has read a single work of 19th century Islamic jurisprudence knows this. It is the reason for which among the main connotations of siyasat in Qajar Persian is actually _punishment_. A writer would say, "Hukumat an shakhs-ra siyasat kard"--the government punished that person. It is extremely dangerous and very poor scholarship to read 19th-century texts through a 21st century lens, assuming that neologisms and words invested with a hundred years of new meanings had their same sense then. Anyone who reads the King James Bible knows that 'prevent' in Jacobean English meant, as with the literal Latin, 'to go before', not to 'pose an obstacle'. If one reads the holy spirit as preventing people, it results in an anachronistic blooper. Reading siyasa in these 19th century Baha'i texts as 'politics' is the same sort of error.

 

There is an apparent contradiction in `Abdu'l-Baha's 1899 Tablet, where he begins by saying that the Baha'i faith has nothing to do with the material world, but then later comes back and says it does cover both the spiritual and the physical because of its comprehensiveness. However, in the context this apparent contradiction is easily resolved. He is saying that the faith is generally concerned with spiritual issues. However, some ta`zir or post-scriptural offenses and some personal status laws do overlap with material concerns. He gives the example of marriage, which is a personal status matter and so in some sense civil, but which is also spiritual and governed by Baha'i law. It is only in this sense of a limited overlap in personal status and ta`zir matters that the Baha'i faith in his view had any worldly or material implications. (In the contemporary United States, Baha'i justices of the peace who perform marriages are so designated by the civil state, illustrating the sort of limited overlap of which `Abdu'l-Baha speaks.) This point will become apparent as the translation proceeds.

 

If the houses of justice are consultative institutions, then the whole body of believers has a right to consult about the import of decisions, rulings and enactments. The right flows from the 19th century concept of shawr, or democratic consultation, which underlies Baha'u'llah's conception of the house of justice. Besides, as I said, if no one has the right to point out that a ruling of a religious authority is contrary to scripture or reason, then the that authority could order us all to drink poison cool-aid 'and no one would have the right to object.' This form of reasoning leads to absolutism, tyranny and possibly even to the horrors of the cult. This is an extreme form of taqlid or blind obedience. I would be interested in anyone finding anything but condemnation of taqlid in Baha'u'llah's writings. There is a difference between being law-abiding and being blindly obedient to any command issued by authority.

 

In my analogy to the U.S. Supreme Court, I pointed out that law professors disagree with past rulings publicly every day. But their disagreements have no practical import, and lie on dusty law library shelves unless some judge or justice takes up their argument. On the very day that the U.S. Supreme Court gave its judgment against the Florida recount, Professor Lawrence Tribe of the Harvard Law School stood before television cameras and said he disagreed with the judgment. Here is someone who argues cases in front of the Supreme Court. He was not afraid to say he thought they were wrong. No one sent an FBI agent to his house to interrogate him, and he was not threatened with any sanctions. In a society based on democratic consultation, it is not treasonous publicly to disagree with the decisions taken by the authorities. It is illegal to do something practical to interfere with the law being implemented. If Professor Tribe attempts to push George W. Bush off the podium at the inauguration, he will be arrested. But speech is not criminal (outside libel and threats of force) in a democracy. And I personally believe that it is obvious that Baha'u'llah and `Abdu'l-Baha were reacting against the tyranny of Shi`ite 'supreme exemplars' (maraji` at-taqlid) among the ayatollahs and attempting to replace that with a spiritual democracy.

 

cheers Juan

 

 

 

 

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Subject:      Re: `Abdu'l-Baha on Jurisprudence 4

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The final paragraphs of this key constitutional document make clear exactly what `Abdu'l-Baha thought Baha'u'llah intended in Ishraq 8 by umur-i siyasiyyih. Now, of course, the word siyasah has many meanings in premodern Islamic thought. However, we can tell which of those meanings is intended by context. The Greco-Islamic idea of 'leadership' (siyasa) at the family, city and monarchical levels is sometimes referred to in the Baha'i writings, of course.

 

But there is another sense of siyasa completely detached from the Greco-Islamic sense of forms of leadership. Coulson notes that the jurists from the eleventh century put in the hands of the ruler the authority to "take such steps as he saw fit to implement and supplement the principles established by the religious law. This system of government was known as 'government in accordance with the revealed law' (siyasa shar`iyyah)." It might better be translated as "administrative policy that is in accord with the revealed law." That is, medieval Muslim jurists saw only revealed law as law, whereas what government's decreed was mere regulations, which were licit only if they did not contradict revealed law or its basic principles. Coulson adds that the sovereign had the authority to determine what behavior constituted an offense and to set the punishment for it. "Such discretionary punishment is known as ta`zir or deterrence,' since its purpose is to "deter" the offender himself or others from similar conduct."

 

Now, how would we know in Ishraq 8 if the phrase umur-isiyasiyyih referred to the Greco-Islamic concept of leadership a la Aristotle, or if it referred to the Islamic juridical concept of as-siyasah ash-shar`iyyah (post-scriptural ordinances enacted by the community's authorities)? Well, homonyms can be distinguished by context, by looking at the other words used around them. In Ishraq 8, Baha'u'llah contrasts siyasah to `ibadat. In Islamic jurisprudence, as well, `iba:da:t (scripturally mandated duties to God), mu`amalat, (duties of believers to one another such as contracts) and as-siyasah ash-shar`iyyah are discussed together.

 

`Abdu'l-Baha's letter, below, puts the final touches on this argument. He *explicitly* puts ta`zi:r (post-scriptural offenses and punishments) and mu`amalat (post-scriptural ordinances about contracts between believers) under the authority of the general house of justice. He talks of marriage law (nikah is a contract in Islamic law and so part of mu`amalat) and administrative punishments. And, he *explicitly* identifies ta`zir or administrative punishments as "the pivot of siyasah" in Islam! He defines for us what siyasah means in Ishraq 8. It means things like ta`zir or specifiying post-scriptural offenses in ordinances. He employs the precise words of this juridical discipline. This has nothing to do with the Greco-Islamic conception of leadership and certainly not with "affairs of state"! And that the enactment of such ordinances is the 'pivot of siyasah' in the narrow sense of administrative law explains why, elsewhere, he calls houses of justice 'siyasi'. It doesn't mean they are "political." It means they administer religious law not specified in scripture.

 

Moreover, he began the letter by insisting that the house of justice is a purely spiritual institution that has little to do with the physical, material world. (This would make it difficult for it to act as the civil government, to say the least). When he speaks specifically and positively about its function, he speaks of it enacting laws about whether you can marry your cousins or what the punishment is for an extra-scriptural offense. This is as-siyasah ash-shar`iyyah, to a "T". I realize that this argument may be difficult to follow for those who have not formally studied Islamic law, and apologize. However, there are good overviews of the subject, especially Coulson's, and intellectuals should be able to grasp its essentials. I think this letter and its technical terms settle the whole debate, for anyone who is actually interested in what words mean or what Baha'u'llah and `Abdu'l-Baha meant to say.

 

cheers Juan




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Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 14:28:52 -0500
From: "Juan Cole, University of Michigan" <jrcole@UMICH.EDU>
Re: siyasa
To: H-BAHAI@H-NET.MSU.EDU

With regard to siyasa, . . . the objections to my characterization of the 1899 letter . . . fall into a number of categories: An argument from authority (which is always a fallacy); anachronism (using later concepts and thinking they are the same as earlier ones); and reading words that have various meanings in various contexts as somehow monochrome, as if semantic fields were static.

>>1. There is a statement written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi in which we
>>find: "In fact Baha'u'llah clearly states that affairs of state as well
>>as religious questions" are to be referred to the House of Justice.

I personally find this sort of thing irrelevant. This "statement" was written by Hossein Afnan. If you would like to enter as authoritative every statement ever written by Hossein Afnan, then that would at least be consistent. But Hossein Afnan did not know the slightest thing about the history of Islamic jurisprudence or the historical philology of such word use, and he was simply wrong. He was writing at a time when 'siyasa' had taken on its modern connotations of politics, and he misunderstood the passage. Ali Kuli Khan also translated the passage from Ishraq 8 (at `Abdu'l-Baha's instance), and he was an early 20th century Iranian intellectual much more steeped in tradition. He translated this phrase as "administrative affairs are all in the charge of the House of Justice" (Baha'i World Faith, p.200). Ali Kuli Khan understood siyasa here correctly, as 'administrative affairs.'

>>2. Again, Shoghi Effendi, in late 1921 or early 1922, translates >>"umoor-i-siyAsiyyih" in `Abdu'l-Baha's Will and Testament as "political >>affairs". Throughout his ministry, Shoghi Effendi consistently and >>without exception translates siyAsat, siyAsee, siyAsiyyih as >>"political"

Since the word had different meanings in different contexts, this point is also irrelevant, aside from being an argument from authority, which is a fallacy. Shoghi Effendi said that his translations were often not scholarly or technical in intent, and moreover allowed that they would be improved upon in the future. There are some venues in which people can be silenced by this sort of specious argument. This is not one of them.

>>3. For Islamic thinkers and philosophers, siyAsah meant the form of
>>government as well as politics. Farabi speaks of al-siyAsat
>>al-nabawiyyah the rule of the Prophet, l-siyAsat al mulookiyyah
>>monarchy, al-siyAsat al-`Amiyyah democracy, al-siyAsat l-khAs.s.iyyah >>aristocracy, al-siyAsat al-dhAtiyyah autocracy, and al-siyAsat
>>al-khis.s.ah Oligarchy.

This is one of the word's connotations. No one is disputing that. The word does not mean politics in the modern sense even then, but forms of governmental *leadership*. That is, that connotation was of 'political affairs' in the Aristotelian sense. So, your points through 8 are all true and well taken, but frankly irrelevant. For, siyasah had other connotations, and the question is which connotation is being referred to in the 1899 Tablet. There, `Abdu'l-Baha *explicitly* says that ta`zir (post-scriptural ethical offenses) and personal status laws were the pivot of siyasah in Islam, which demonstrates that the connotation there is as-siyasah ash-shar`iyyah or administrative regulations. Farabi did not conceive of leadership as the setting of regulations on whether you can marry your cousin or not.

>>9. When punishment or fine is intended in the Baha'i Sacred Writings,
>>the term h.add is used such as the h.add for theft or for adultery,
>>etc.

Yes, that is what I said. And `Abdu'l-Baha in the 1899 specifies the term ta`zir for the supplementary ordinances passed by the house of justice regarding moral offenses. And he further says that ta`zir is the pivot of siyasah/administration.

>>11. Al-siyAsah al-shar`iyyah does not mean politics within the
>>religious realm as opposed to politics within general society. It
>>basically means system of government in accordance with the laws of
>>religion, in accordance with shar`. Ibn-i Taymiyyah who wrote the book
>>on this topic discusses the ideal form of politics and state, a
>>political system and state which corresponds to the teachings of Islam.

This is what I have been saying for some time . . .

Where `Abdu'l-Baha's conception differs from classical jurists like Ibn Taymiyyah is that he was writing in late Ottoman times. At that time, a good deal of siyasah shar`iyyah as it affected religious minorities had been devolved from the state onto the councils and/or clergy of the millets (religious communities) themselves. Thus, the Maronite Catholic millet administered canon law to Catholics in what is now Lebanon, and was delegated to do so on behalf of the Ottoman state. [In Ishraq 8 Baha'u'llah also designates the scope of authority of the House of Justice as being over the "millet," i.e. the Baha'i religious community.] In the same way, `Abdu'l-Baha expected the civil state to delegate to Baha'i institutions the administration of Baha'i personal status law and of moral offenses within the community. He also expected that in a Baha'i-majority society, civil institutions might adopt some elements of Baha'i law (just as the U.S. congress has enacted most of the Ten Commandments from the Bible into civil law). In the Risalih-i Siyasiyyih or Treatise on Leadership, however, he made it clear that the civil sphere and the religious sphere would always remain completely separate; and that religious leaders were not to intervene in civil government except when they were actively asked for their views by politicians. He reinforces these instructions in the 1899 letter, where he makes it clear that the scope of the house of justice is purely spiritual, having to do only with personal status regulations and ethics within the Baha'i community, not with wider worldly affairs.

>>12. Ibn-i Khaldoun's discussion about siyAsh al-shar`iyyah (government
>>in accord with Islam) and siyAsah al-`aqliyyah (government in
>>accordance with reason) makes it clear that he is talking about the
>>form of state in general and not about leadership within the religious
>>organization.

Ibn Khaldun died in 1405, and was a Sunni. In Safavid and post-Safavid Iran (after 1501), in Shi`ite Islam the mujtahids or religious jurisprudents took over many of the functions of as-siyasah ash-shar`iyyah that earlier Sunnis had imputed to the civil state. `Abdu'l-Baha grew up both in the Sunni and the Shi`ite cultural spheres, and drew on institutions and terminology from both, applying them in an Ottoman context of millet administration. Citing a medieval Sunni authority of the Mamluk period for what `Abdu'l-Baha intended by a word in 1899, with no further nuancing, is not very helpful. If you want a contemporary successor to Ibn Khaldun, Rifa`ah at-Tahtawi (d. 1871) sed 'siyasah' to translate the French "loi" and "réglement," that is, law and regulations. That shows you what an informed Muslim reformer of the 19th century thought one of the word's primary connotations was.

>>15. In the 1899 Tablet under discussion , `Abdu'l-Baha gives authority
>>to the Universal House of Justice to rule upon *ALL* spiritual and
>>jismAnee physical matters. This qualifying word "all" [jAmi`-i >>jamee`-i...]

Actually, he begins the letter by saying that the scope of the house of justice is precisely *not* worldly or physical (it is not jasadi/physical, mulki/worldly, or nasuti/having to do with mundane human affairs). When he comes back to qualify this statement, he simply says that the Baha'i *faith* (not the house of justice) is so encompassing that it affects all elements of life, including jismani/bodily ones. And, his examples for this are personal status laws like marriage, which overlap slightly with civil authority. A theocratic reading of the second time he brings up bodily affairs can only be effected by completely ignoring his prologue, which is bad philology . . .

Sincerely,

Juan R. I. Cole Professor History, U of Michigan

 

 



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