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From: jrcole@umich.edu <jrcole@umich.edu> Subject: Re: Houses of Justice Date: Friday, February 05, 1999 11:06 AM Dear Michael: Specialists in the `Abdul-Baha period who have actually read a lot of `Abdul-Baha's letters in the original (unlike those here) note that his vocabulary in referring to various 'institutions' was quite fluid and inconsistent. Sometimes a 'mahfil' or assembly meant a house of justice, sometimes it meant all the believers in a community. At one point he refers to a women's committee as a mahfil-i rawhani, which sounds like an LSA today, but wasn't what he meant. I have been told by one Iranian scholar that `Abdul-Baha referred to the LSA of Tehran as a mahfil-i `umumi or 'general assembly,' the sort of phrase he uses in the 1909 letter to Corinne True about the Chicago assembly, which had the same position in the US as Tehran had in Iran. I admit that it is possible that the 1909 letter referred to the universal house of justice, but it is not a foregone conclusion and the matter needs more contextual study; if that were the reference it would be odd, since Corinne was only corresponding with him about the Chicago situation. In any case, the reason `Abdul-Baha had given for women not serving on the Chicago LSA in the 1902 letter that Shoghi Effendi mistakenly thought concerned the universal house of justice, was that Baha'u'llah refers to members of such houses of justice as 'rijal' which literally means 'men' but can also mean 'notables' (of any gender). Baha'u'llah demonstrably refers to members of *both* local houses of justice and the universal house of justice as rijal, and in 1902 `Abdul-Baha felt that this phraseology excluded women from membership in any kind of house of justice. In 1912 he allowed women onto the Chicago LSA, which he repeatedly said was a house of justice in all but name, demonstrating that he completely rethought the basis of his earlier jurisprudential ruling and decided that the phrase 'rijal' was no bar to women's membership in houses of justice. By simple syllogism there is no logical way to avoid the conclusion that this 1912 change of mind is dispositive for women's service on all sorts of house of justice, including the universal house of justice, since the rijal argument thereby fell. Moreover, it is not at all clear that even if `Abdul-Baha did want to exclude women from the UHJ in 1909, that he thought they should be forever excluded. These are historical issues. They can be addressed by analysis of historical texts. There is no reason for them not to be discussed. Since `Abdul-Baha clearly finally decided that the issue was *not* in fact addressed in Baha'u'llah's own revelation (`ibadat), then this issue clearly falls into the area of leadership (siyasat) which is given to the universal house of justice by Ishraq 8. Given the tangled judicial history, the house of justice would be perfectly within its prerogatives to rule that this is an obscure matter that comes under its jurisdiction and that women can serve on the universal house of justice because of the principle of equality between the sexes and mutatis mutandis (which they admitted in the notes to the Aqdas). They don't have to. But they could. Discussing the historical record is not a challenge to them that needs to be silenced. cheers Juan In article <79enn0$4hh@freenet-news.carleton.ca>, bn872@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (McKenny Michael) wrote: > Corinne True wrote to Abdu'l Baha asking why only men were allowed on > the Chicago House of Justice. This was in the very early years of this > century (1906?). The reply reads something like, "Women may serve on the > teaching committee, this committee and that committee, but..." The Chicago > House of Justice continued to exclude women as ineligible until it was > dissolved in 1912. > Juan Cole History, U of Michigan https://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/bahai.htm -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- https://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own Homepage |