Bahaullah Quotes

Husayn Ali Nuri. The equality of women which he proclaimed was another threat to Islam of which Bahai was a reform offshoot. Even in modern times in Iran, many Bahai are hunted down and executed.

In the rest of the Islamic world, the call to prayer was said in Arabic regardless of the national language. This reform was castigated by throughout the Islamic world who wanted Arabic to be the only language for Muslim religious communications. This was not unlike the insistence that they Catholic Church had maintained that all scripture was read in Latin and would not allow Bibles or mass to be said in any other language.

Husayn Ali Nuri. The Persians executed Bahai as they considered these new religionists as Muslim heretics and Sharia—Islamic law—specified the death penalty for all the Muslims who convert or try and change the religion. After the Iranian revolution with the downfall of the Shah, the practice of executing Bahai in Iran was continued.

Islam is a proselytizing religion, and the Wahabi sect that dominates the religion and even the Royal Family in Saudi Arabia, is a particularly fundamentalist exponent. Hence the translation of Islamic books into Arabic. The few books translated into Arabic reflects not only the fear of heresy and cultural imperialism, but there is a conservative Islamic view that everything that is valid and important to know is in the Koran and the Hadith. Therefore, no other books are necessary.

Despite the fact that the statues were holy symbols to Buddhists, they were offensive to Muslims who say statues as “graven images” prohibited by the Koran. See Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil {608419} and Jamal’s other quotation {604665}.

This is often referred to as the “prophetic mission.” This line appears on most Muslim coins and some monuments.

See {624641} for Iranian confirmation of its discriminatory policy. The Iranian "justification for murdering Bahais is this: The Behai were originally Muslims and then they created an heretic form of Islam. Under Islamic Law (Sharia), any Muslim who converts away from Islam to ANY other religioun must be out to death. As barbarous as this sounds, the irrational thinking is the same as that of the Catholic Church when Protestant chiurches emerged. All of them were to be put to death. However that was over 600 years ago, and humanity has much imporoved standards today. But the Muslims are 700 years younnger than the Catholic Church and some point out that they are behaving the same way as the Catholics, brutal as it is, when the Church was at the same level of maturity as Islam is today.

Husayn Ali Nuri

Husayn Ali Nuri. His enthusiastic support of democratic reforms was taken as an attack upon the Ottoman Empire, the Czar and upon all autocratic rulers in general.

Husayn Ali Nuri

Husayn Ali Nuri. This quotation illustrates one of the reasons that the Muslim Iranian fundamentalists are so fearful of Bahai, a reform offshoot of Islam. For the orthodox Muslim there must be no separation of church and state—they are one and the same. The Bahai minority of Iran have been hunted down and in many cases killed on the grounds that they were heretics and blasphemers.

a political party. In the early days of the Muslim religion, the entire Middle East was under the authority of the Caliph who had both religious and civil authority—very much like the Pope did in Europe. However, corruption, independent tribes, feuds, and civil wars destroyed the Caliphate and there has been no common Islamic leader since. Some Muslims want to eradicate the individual countries and restore the Caliphate.

Bashir advocates adapting Sharia—Islamic Law—for all people in Indonesia—regardless of their religion or their preference for separation of church and state. This is diametrically opposite to an Islamic Syrian poet of 1000 years ago—see {624477}. Many Muslims have become more intolerant than some of their earlier scholars. Bashir also differs from most Indonesian Muslims who have historically not shared his bigotry and intolerance.

Ibn al-Nafis was one of the great scientists of all time. He analyzed the human heart, lungs, and circulatory system. This quotation is often given by Muslim modernists and reformers to illustrate that Islam at one time was open to new knowledge, dissent, ideas of all kinds. A century later, Islam closed intellectually and later and even today, Muslims are killed for what became heresy. Truth became determined by the Koran and the words of The Prophet only, Christianity and the Church imposed a similar restrictive view of truth using the Bible and Jesus. However, the Reformation and modernity led Christianity to merge and adopt the more modern and scientific view with the exception of some Christian fundamentalists. Islam had the modern view and abandoned it causing the many educated Islamic reformers and modernists of today great difficulty in changing the culture and laws as a whole.

Iran has been a terrible persecutor of Bahais, their largest religious minority. The Bahai faith was an offshoot of Islam which opposed to the concept of a theocracy and in a political sense at are the opposite end of the religious spectrum from Islam. Bahai in Iran are not allowed to attend higher education institutions, build religious facilities, preach openly or serve in many roles. Many have been executed on the spot by government officials, and others have been murdered by mobs. The radical Islamic justification of these murders lies with the relative intolerance Islam has for other religions. At the inception of Islam, the Prophet preached respect for People of the Book, which included Jews and Christians. He also made exception for Zoroastrians—the pre-Islamic traditional religion of Iran. These were not executed for heresy although they were never allowed to function on an equal footing with Islam. The harshest penalties were reserved for Muslims who abandoned their faith and converted or became atheists—it was death. They were allowed to repent and repudiate their new beliefs and there would be lesser punishments. But if they did not, they were executed. It is much the same logic of the Romans requiring early Christians to renounce their new religion or die in the arena or otherwise. Bahai grew out of Islam and is in many ways a type of reform movement within Islam. The initial torture and execution of the heretics, was not very different from what the Roman Catholic Church and its Inquisition did with Protestants. Some argue that historically Islam is 700 years behind Christianity. In the Middle ages the Christian Church killed non believers and heretics. However, by modern standards, this behavior of Iran and some other Islamic countries is as barbaric and evil as anything could be. The Bahai happen to be the greatest victims these days. See {614912}.

Islamic modernists like Serageldin are many among the educated Muslims but their views are often drowned out by the violence and extremist statements of the fundamentalists.