Bahai Faith; Kings and rulers; Shoghi, Effendi, 1897-1957 -- Correspondence
The Faith standing identified with the name of Bahá’u’lláh disclaims any
intention to belittle any of the Prophets gone before Him, to whittle down
any of their teachings, to obscure, however slightly, the radiance of
their Revelations, to oust them from the hearts of their followers, to
abrogate the fundamentals of their doctrines, to discard any of their
revealed Books, or to suppress the legitimate aspirations of their
adherents. Repudiating the claim of any religion to be the final
revelation of God to man, disclaiming finality for His own Revelation,
Bahá’u’lláh inculcates the basic principle of the relativity of religious
truth, the continuity of Divine Revelation, the progressiveness of
religious experience. His aim is to widen the basis of all revealed
religions and to unravel the mysteries of their scriptures. He insists on
the unqualified recognition of the unity of their purpose, restates the
eternal verities they enshrine, coordinates their functions, distinguishes
the essential and the authentic from the nonessential and spurious in
their teachings, separates the God-given truths from the priest-prompted
superstitions, and on this as a basis proclaims the possibility, and even
prophecies the inevitability, of their unification, and the consummation
of their highest hopes.
As to Muḥammad, the Apostle of God, let none among His followers who read
these pages, think for a moment that either Islám, or its Prophet, or His
Book, or His appointed Successors, or any of His authentic teachings, have
been, or are to be in any way, or to however slight a degree, disparaged.
The lineage of the Báb, the descendant of the Imám Ḥusayn; the divers and
striking evidences, in Nabíl’s Narrative, of the attitude of the Herald of
our Faith towards the Founder, the Imáms, and the Book of Islám; the
glowing tributes paid by Bahá’u’lláh in the Kitáb-i-Íqán to Muḥammad and
His lawful Successors, and particularly to the “peerless and incomparable”
Imám Ḥusayn; the arguments adduced, forcibly, fearlessly, and publicly by
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in churches and synagogues, to demonstrate the validity of
the Message of the Arabian Prophet; and last but not least the written
testimonial of the Queen of Rumania, who, born in the Anglican faith and
notwithstanding the close alliance of her government with the Greek
Orthodox Church, the state religion of her adopted country, has, largely
as a result of the perusal of these public discourses of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
been prompted to proclaim her recognition of the prophetic function of
Muḥammad—all proclaim, in no uncertain terms, the true attitude of the
Bahá’í Faith towards its parent religion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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