As early as November 1952 when this
writer was on pilgrimage in
Haifa, Shoghi Effendi in his remarks one evening at the dinner table alluded
so clearly that his passing was not far off that his wife, Rúhíyyih
Khánum, jumped up from the table and in tears rushed out of the room
only to return when she had composed herself. He then made some remarks
that served to allay our fears and helped not only her but all of us seated
at the dinner table to put such a dire and dreadful prospect out of our
minds and, apparently in her case, permanently so, as she was to later state
in her book titled: The Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith
written about his life and ministry and published some 30 years following
his passing that "I could never have survived the slightest foreknowledge
of the Guardian's death."
Already prior to the event recounted above, Shoghi Effendi had chosen as
his successor, although not recognized by the Bahá'í world,
a distinguished and eminent believer who had been eulogized by
'Abdu'l-Bahá
and whose multiple, unique and meritorious services for the Faith extending
over a period of half a century unquestionably had been unequalled by any
other male believer. As this outstanding believer, also later to be named
a Hand of the Cause, was not a young man as would have been expected but
one who was some 25 years older than Shoghi Effendi, he had to find a way
to obscure from the Bahá'í world the identity of this successor
who in spite of his advanced age, was destined to outlive him, a prospect
that would definitely imply that Shoghi Effendi's own passing would be in
the near future. How then was Shoghi Effendi to make public his appointment
of a successor so as to conform to the provisions of the Will and Testament
of 'Abdu'l-Bahá. requiring the Guardian to appoint "in his
own life-time him that shall become his successor " while, at the
same time, concealing from the believers, the knowledge that his demise
was near at hand? For certainly such foreknowledge would be a shock so difficult
for the believers to sustain that they would be paralyzed in their current
and future work for the Faith and particularly so in their labors to achieve
the challenging goals established by Shoghi Effendi for the Ten Year Global
Crusade upon which the Bahá'í world was soon to embark.
Shoghi Effendi was certainly aware, as evidenced by the highly emotional
reaction of Rúhíyyih Khánum to the remarks
he had made at the dinner table alluding to his passing, cited above, that she was the
very last person that would be able to sustain such a foreknowledge of his
early passing and consequently he could never confide in her the identity
of the one whom he had chosen as his successor. The fact that she could
not sustain such a terrible prospect is further confirmed by her own words
in her book, as quoted above .
How, therefore, could Shoghi Effendi resolve this dilemma with which he
was faced, that is, the obligation to appoint his successor publicly but
at the same time to make this appointment in such a way as to conceal the
fact that his choice of a man much older than himself as his succesor inevitably
presaged his own passing in but a few years at most? And for those of us
seated around the table that evening in Haifa, additional highly significant
remarks were made by him, whose significance was overlooked by us at the
time, that clearly foretold even more explicitly, that his passing would
take place before the expiration of the Ten Year Global Crusade projected
by him to commence in 1953. (actually fulfilled by his passing in 1957)
The knowledge that the believers had of the terms of the Will and Testament
of 'Abdu'l-Bahá during this period in the Faith was understandably
deficient as they were certainly not expecting the passing of Shoghi Effendi
in the near future and, for this reason, undoubtedly had not referred to
the terms of this sacred Document as they pertained to the matter of succession
for some time. Indeed, their lack of knowledge of these terms became glaringly
obvious after his passing, not to mention their immediate and surprising
loss of faith in the sacredness, immortality and immutability of this divinely-conceived
Document whose terms were subjected to false interpretations that gave rise,
in turn, to erroneous beliefs that were responsible for their following
so readily and blindly the lead of the Hands of the Cause in their repudiation,
in effect, of the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and their
hasty
abandonment of the Guardianship. It was obviously this very lack of knowledge
and understanding by the believers of the terms of the Will and Testament
of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, of which Shoghi Effendi was undoubtedly aware, that played
into his hands in devising an ingenious way to openly appoint his successor
while at the same time obscuring the significance of this appointment from
the believers during the remaining years of his ministry. It was erroneous
beliefs such as the following which served to blind the believers from recognizing
Shoghi Effendi's successor:
That Shoghi Effendi had a son that had been raised secretly whose
presence would be revealed at the appropriate time and who would inherit
the Guardianship.
That his successor would be named in a testamentary document that would
be opened following his passing even though the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá
specifically states that the Guardian must "appoint in his own life-time
him that shall become his successor"
That only an Aghsan could inherit the Guardianship (the utter falsity
of this belief is discussed in other writings)
The Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá states
that the Guardian of
the Cause of God is the "sacred head and the distinguished member
for life" of the Universal House of Justice. Therefore, Shoghi
Effendi chose the instrumentality of this institution, whose "sacred
head" and other members he appointed in its first stage of development
and named it the International Bahá'í Council. But he brought
this institution into being only as an inactively functioning embryonic
body with an appointed inactively functioning embryonic head, Charles Mason
Remey, and by subsequently carefully withholding this highest administrative
organism of the Faith from active life during the remaining years of his
ministry (going so far as to guard against this possibility by even appointing
a liaison between himself and the Council) he insured that this institution
would only come into actively functioning life following his passing. At
such a time then, would its embryonic head emerge as the active head of
what had been an embryonic and non-functioning Universal House of Justice
and the active head of this Institution according to the Will and Testament
of 'Abdu'l-Bahá could be none other than the second Guardian of the
Faith. "this historic decision marking the most significant milestone
in the evolution of the Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh
in the course of the last thirty years" (i.e. since the passing
of 'Abdu'l-Bahá) "Hail with thankful, joyous heart at long last the constitution
of the International Council which history will acclaim as the greatest
event shedding lustre upon the second epoch of the Formative Age of the
Bahá'í Dispensation. . ."
On 2 March 1951 he announced in a cablegram" to the
friends of East
and West" the name of the President of the International Council to
be Mason Remey who, as pointed out above, upon activation of the Council
could be none other than the second Guardian of the Faith. That Mason Remey as the appointed Chief Judge of this Court would
be the Guardian of the Faith.
That Shoghi Effendi by setting the goal of establishing the Court prior
to the expiration of the Ten Year Global Crusade was forecasting his passing
no later than the termination of that Crusade (actually passing away at
midpoint of that Crusade). But let us return to 9 January 1951 at the time of the issuance of his Proclamation.
Shoghi Effendi obviously realized that there would be a universal failure
by the believers to perceive the tremendous significance and implications
of his Proclamation establishing the embryonic Universal House of Justice
and because of this he would be able to use the instrumentality of its establishment
as a means to obscure the appointment of his successor. For the key to the
recognition of this successor would be found in the establishment of this
institution as an embryonic organism and the appointment of its embryonic
Head. Indeed, as it turned out, so successful was he in obscuring the appointment
of his successor in this manner that even his appointed successor, Mason
Remey, failed to perceive, at the time, the connection between his appointment
as the President of the embryonic Universal House of Justice and the Guardianship,
not to mention the same failure on the part of the other Hands of the Cause
and the believers throughout the world. It was only some two and a half
years following the passing of Shoghi Effendi that his successor perceived
this connection for the first time, himself (this being the reason why he
had not brought to the attention of the Hands of the Cause and the believers
at large the basis of his accession to the Guardianship immediately following
the passing of Shoghi Effendi) And this is why Mason Remey did so for the
first time in his Proclamation of Ridván 1960 but, tragically
enough,
his Proclamation was rejected and condemned by the Hands and it was never
distributed to the English-speaking world much less translated into the
many languages that would have been necessary for its distribution throughout
the rest of the Bahá'í world. The inevitable result was that
only a handful of believers were ever able to gain access to this document
and judge for themselves the validity of Mason Remey's claim to the Guardianship.
Most of those who were able to do so joyfully recognized him as the second
Guardian of the Faith appointed faithfully by Shoghi Effendi in complete
conformity with the terms of the Will and Testament of
'Abdu'l-Bahá They lost faith (with two notable exceptions) in the provisions of
the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá with respect to the matter
of succession in spite of all that Shoghi Effendi had written concerning
this sacred Document which he had characterized as a part of the explicit
Holy Text.
They declared the Guardianship of the Faith forever ended.
They terminated the institution of the Hands of the Cause as only the Guardian
can appoint them. They set up a body of nine Hands at the World Center of the Faith in
Haifa to administer the world-wide affairs of the Faith completely
outside the provisions of the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and in
so doing completely ignored, as mentioned above, Shoghi Effendi's
establishment of the embryonic Universal House of Justice which should
have assumed this role.
They further ignored the words of Shoghi Effendi in which he had stated that
the establishment of an International Bahá'í Court, also mentioned above, was an
"essential prelude to the institution of the Universal House of Justice" and
called for the premature establishment of a sans-Guardian and hence headless and illigitmate Universal
House of
Justice in 1963. Having thus abandonned the Guardianship and entrenched themselves in a position of
authority, they led their fellow-believers astray from the Covenant of
Bahá'u'lláh by persuading the vast majority that Mason Remey was an imposter,
withholding from them the opportunity to read his Proclamation
for themselves, instructing them to reject him out of hand as the second
Guardian of the Faith and inducing them to believe as they did, that the
divinely-conceived Bahá'í Administrative Order
delineated
in the Will and Testament by the "master-hand of its perfect Architect
" had come to an untimely end thirty-six years after its inception,
a belief which if accepted by all of the believers without question would
doom to certain destruction the glorious World Order of Bahá'u'lláh,
an Order that has been promised to endure for not less than a full thousand
years.
Little wonder then that Shoghi Effendi should have issued the one and only
Proclamation of his ministry (9 Jan.51) and employed the following
unprecedented
superlative terms in proclaiming the establishment of the International
Bahá'í Council:
As if to further confirm the validity of this appointment, but which all
of us seated at the table that evening in the presence of Shoghi Effendi
still failed to perceive, he clearly indicated to us that Mason Remey was
to be the Chief Judge of the International Bahá'í Court in
the second stage of the evolution of the Council, a stage which Shoghi Effendi
announced on 25 April 1951 would be an "essential prelude to
the
institution of the Universal House of Justice" and a stage which
Shoghi Effendi had set for achievement by the end of the Ten Year
Global Crusade. As this International Court would exercise supreme authority
over "six national Bahá'í Courts in the chief cities
of the Islamic East" in their administration of the Laws of the Aqdas
and such supplementary laws as might be required these courts to be established
within the same time frame would inevitably be faced with questions of interpretation
of the Writings which upon referral to the International Court would call
into play the interpretive authority which is exercised solely by the Guardian
of the Faith. Therefore, as Chief Judgeship of the International Bahá'í
Court and Guardianship are synonomous terms the following conclusions become
obvious, namely:
It is highly unlikely that Shoghi Effendi would have foreseen that the Hands
of the Cause following his passing would prove so faithless and lose faith
so quickly in the immortality and immutabiliy of the Will and Testament
of 'Abdu'l-Bahá as to hastily and shamelessly conclude that the Guardianship
of the Faith had forever ended with his passing and persuade their fellow-believers
to blindly accept the same conclusion. Or would he have foreseen that his
momentous Proclamation of 9 January 1951 was destined to be so
completely
ignored following his passing that the Hands of the Cause, would not permit
the International Bahá'í Council whose establishment he had
acclaimed in that Proclamation in such superlative terms to assume its rightful
active role as the supreme "Nascent Institution" of the
Bahá'í Administrative Order. Or that, instead they would set
up their own illigitimate organization completely outside the provisions
of the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Bahá to exercise world-wide
administrative control over the affairs of the Faith to be superseded in
1963 by the election of a deformed, headless and hence fallible so-called
Universal House of Justice which they, notwithstanding the fact that it
would be a headless body (i.e. without the Guardian presiding as its "sacred
head"), would delude themselves into believing and pretending that
it was the same infallible institution delineated in the Will and Testament
of 'Abdu'l-Bahá.
If, in place of this woeful chain of events, the International Bahá'í
Council, following the passing of Shoghi Effendi in 1957, had been permitted
to actively function, as it should have been, in its role as the supreme
administrative institution of the Faith, perhaps then, not only its appointed
President, but the Hands and all of the believers would have come to the
immediate realization that Shoghi Effendi had, indeed, provided for his
successor in this unexpected way by appointing his successor as the President
"the sacred head" of this supreme Institution of the
Administrative
Order (clearly the supreme Institution, as proclaimed by Shoghi Effendi
in his Proclamation, and therefore not a temporary or provisional body)
and an Institution that could only be presided over by the Guardian of the
Faith.
Tragically, however, following the passing of Shoghi Effendi, due to their
misconceptions and misinterpretations concerning the matter of succession
cited earlier, the Hands of the Cause, failed to perceive the brilliant
manner in which Shoghi Effendi had appointed his successor with the following
tragic results summarized below:
28 August 1998