All Social and World Issue Book

This book highlights one element in the trilogy of unity, justice and peace that arguably sits at the core of Bahá’í beliefs, through an analysis of the relevant texts of Bahá’u’lláh, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and Shoghi Effendi. By bringing the texts into sharper focus, rather than privileging the sociological or even the historical, it is hoped that the various ideological components of the concept of peace in the Bahá’í religion will be brought to sharper relief under a different light. The study explores the logical, anthropological and ethical extensions of the key theme of peace as it moved from one stage to another in the development of a young religion heavily invested in the world.

Framed as a contribution to intellectual history, the question ultimately addressed is: what kind of peace, human nature and general morality did the key authors envisage when they made some of their weightiest proclamations on peace?

On a December day in 1973, Anisa Abdul-Razzaq Abbas heard a knock at the door of the Baghdad home she was visiting. She opened the door to greet two men from the Iraqi Al-Amn security force, who immediately placed her under arrest. Her crime: being a member of the Bahá’í Faith, a religious minority in her native Iraq.

Over the next six years, Anisa—along with other members of the Bahá’í community who were arrested at that time—would spend three years in Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison and a further three years in Al-Rashaad prison before her release in 1979. During her years of incarceration, Anisa would rely on her faith to meet the myriad challenges of prison life. Day after day, she and her fellow-prisoners experienced levels of cruelty and injustice that most would find unthinkable. Separated from her husband, who was being held in the men’s prison, and from her children who were without both parents, Anisa was sustained through her darkest days by the steadfast devotion and sacrificial love of her family, and by the strength and solidarity offered by her fellow Bahá’í prisoners.

Anisa’s story is one of patience, courage, and steadfastness in the face of religious prejudice and state-sponsored oppression, and it is a reminder to us all of the resilient strength of the human spirit.

Two hundred years from the birth of the Báb, this volume offers a unique, wide-ranging exploration of the life and legacy of the Báb, the Bábí community of Iran, and the origins of the Bahá'í Faith.

What lies beyond Covid-19? How does it challenge humanity as a whole and ourselves as individuals to bring about change?

The global pandemic that changed the world in early 2020, and the subsequent challenges that are emerging as a result, propel us to consider what is beyond this moment. The spirit of humanity, challenged daily by increasing trauma, requires constant reflection on who we are and who we collectively want to be. How can we arise to create a global collective consciousness? What is latent within humanity to bring about the transformation required?