Compassion

Wow, the Karen Armstrong video was very moving, and I have to say that I agree with all that was being said there. The first thing I found striking was that at the very beginning Armstrong was talking about fundamentalism being "a militant kind of aggressive religiosity" and that there was "sense of rage expressed in religious terms" when trying to deal with the injustice or imbalance in our world today. I think this relates to the points I was trying to make in a previous post about the fundamentalist baptists that were on the Tyra show. They were very aggressive and had a great amount of anger and rage inside of them because they believed so much of the world was corrupt and living in a way that would damn them to hell. But in this Armstrong video, the overarching theme was compassion. Though those baptists believed they were helping people out by telling them their ways were corrupt and sinful, most people who were not also fellow fundamentalist baptists would agree that their message and their religious goals were not those of compassion.

I do wish that the biography we were reading about Baha'u'llah did have more explanations of his actual belief system and the belief system of the Baha'i. And based on the next chapter being titled the writings of Baha'u'llah, maybe we just haven't gotten there yet. But there were some first hand accounts the author did include that illustrated Baha'u'llah as a compassionate person.


Fadil Mazandarani, an Iranian Baha'i historian writes

Among the other manifest qualities of Baha'u'llah were his matchless moral and spiritual courage, his fortitude and joyfulness even in times of hardship and difficulties, his generosity and munificence, his sympathy and compassion towards the poor and misfortunate, and his paying no heed to the rich and powerful (135).

I think this quote portrays Baha'u'llah as compassionate. He is portrayed as always keeping hope and always having sympathy and compassionate to the poor and those in need. I find it remarkable that Baha'u'llah could have everything taken away from him, all this riches and status lost, but yet he still manages to be so compassionate to others as well.  Also, it was stated that when assassins tried to kill him, there were multiple times that Baha'u'llah, just through talking with them, actually caused them to not attempt to kill him. He did not try to convert them to his religion, but there must be something about his personality and compassion that caused these assassins to not carry out their required task.

He loved children and was very involved in creating effective education for children. He set up a school for the Baha'i children in 'Akka, where he and many Baha'i lived. Baha'u'llah, even when he became very sick before he died, still saw visitors and followers because he had so much compassion for his believers that he did not let his sickness get in the way of seeing them. Mirza Ahmad Yazdi, who lived with Baha'u'llah writes "Although so majestic, Baha'u'llah was exceedingly loving, kind, and courteous and generous. When out walking with some of the believers He would chat with them very affably (142)."

He was quoted as telling a fellow Baha'i Sayyid Asadu'llah Qumi, who was upset by the terrible things we witnesses people doing, saying that "We [the Baha'i] manifested ourselves in order that feuding, disputes, tyranny and injustice should be removed and eliminated from the world... These individuals here... block the path of those who are seeking their Beloved (145)." When Baha'u'llah was describing the people that upset Qumi, he described them as perpetuating feuding, disputes, tyranny and injustice in the world, and all of these things go against the idea of compassion. These four aspects all pin people against others with the intent to hurt, sabotage or defeat, and that is not the compassion that Armstrong is talking about.  And Baha'u'llah states that his main goal is to get rid of all those forces that go against compassion.