Shoghi Effendi was a dictator, authoritative, paranoid and a fanatic

(Excepts from Lost History of Bahai Faith By Eric Stetson page 504-513)

After leading the Baha’is for almost 30 years without a Universal House of Justice, ‘Abdu’l-Baha died and left the reins of authority to his grandson, Shoghi Effendi Rabbani, whom he gave the title of “Guard­ian.” However, he made it explicitly clear in his will that Shoghi Effendi should work together with the democratically elected leadership body, at long last to be created, that Baha’u’llah had originally envisioned. As ‘Abdu’l-Baha wrote:

The sacred and youthful branch, the Guardian of the Cause of God, as well as the Universal House of Justice to be universally elected and established, are both under the care and protection of the Abha Beauty [Baha’u’llah]... Whatsoever they decide is of God....

Concerning the House of Justice which God hath ordained as the source of all good and freed from all error, it must be elected by universal suffrage, that is, by the believers. Unto this body all things must be referred. It enacteth all ordinances and regulations that are not to be found in the explicit Holy Text. By this body all the difficult problems are to be resolved and the Guardian of the Cause of God is its sacred head and the distinguished member for life of that body.[8]

Defying his grandfather’s instructions to create the Universal House of Justice and lead the Baha’i faith in conjunction with its elected members as its chairman, Shoghi Effendi chose to rule unilat­erally. His ministry lasted over 35 years, and during that entire time the House of Justice was never brought into being. This was a choice he made—a choice which violated both the spirit and the letter of ‘Abdu’l- Baha’s will. There were plenty of eminent Baha’is from various nations who could have served capably and admirably on a Universal House of Justice, had it been created, but Shoghi Effendi evidently preferred to hold all power in his own hands—just as ‘Abdu’l-Baha had preferred and chosen in his own ministry.

Following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Shoghi Effendi also chose to excommunicate his relatives who did not show absolute def­erence to his wishes and views. By the end of his life, he had excommu­nicated every one of the descendants of ‘Abdu’l-Baha as well as all the descendants of Baha’u’llah’s third wife. Thus, the entire family of Baha’u’llah—except for Shoghi Effendi himself, his wife Ruhiyyih, and ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s widow Munirih and sister Bahiyyih—ended up expelled from the mainstream Baha’i community and shunned.

To be fair to ‘Abdu’l-Baha, the half-siblings he declared as “Cove­nant-breakers” were actually leaders of a competing Baha’i sect, so there is considerably more justification or at least a reasonable argu­ment for his decision. In the case of Shoghi Effendi, he expelled his family for mostly trivial reasons, over issues of their personal relation­ships, based on an extremely authoritarian interpretation of his au­thority as the Baha’i Guardian.

One of the most disturbing examples was Shoghi Effendi’s excom­munication of his cousin Munib Shahid for marrying a Muslim. In the words of Hassan Jalal Shahid, the last surviving grandchild of‘Abdu’l- Baha:

Regarding my brother Dr Munib Shahid of the American University of Beirut (AUB)... His wife Serene Husseini was the daughter of Jamal Husseini. He was a notable of Jerusalem, a prominent and respected Palestinian politician who had been ex­iled by the British to the Seychelles Islands and then to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to put an end to his struggle for an in­dependent Palestine. While there, his daughter Serene wanted to get married to my brother Munib Shahid. She contacted her fa­ther, Jamal Husseini, for his consent. He did not know who Munib Shahid was and asked a fellow exile from Haifa, Mr Tanimi, about him. Mr Tamini told him to consider it an honor that the grandson of Abdul-Baha wanted to marry his daughter. On the recommen­dation, he consented to and blessed the marriage....

My brother was a sincere and true Bahai and tried many times, until the last years of his life to return to the Cause [i.e. the organized Baha’i faith], ... Munib was no Covenant Breaker and died a disappointed man for having been deprived of something that meant so much to him and in which he sincerely believed.[9]

The marriage of one of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s grandsons to the daughter of a prominent Muslim politician could have been an excellent oppor­tunity for interfaith dialogue between the Islamic and Baha’i commu­nities in Palestine. Instead, Shoghi Effendi saw this marriage by his cousin as disloyalty to the Baha’i faith, and expelled him for it—even though the Guardian was never given the authority to veto marriages either by members of Baha’u’llah’s family or by any Baha’i.

Shoghi Effendi also excommunicated both of his sisters and an­other cousin for marrying relatives who were descended from Baha’u’llah through his third wife, Gawhar Khanum. Gawhar’s daughter Foroughiyya Khanum and her husband Siyyid Ali Afnan sided with the Unitarian Baha’is for a while, but eventually reconciled with ‘Abdu’l- Baha. Mr. and Mrs. Afnan’s sons seem to have wanted to move beyond the religious conflicts of the previous generation. One of them, Nayer Afnan, is known to have been friendly with all branches of the family, including the descendants of Mohammed Ali and Badi Ullah Bahai; Negar Bahai Emsallem remembers him fondly. Shoghi Effendi appar­ently felt that this third branch of Baha’u’llah’s family was too liberal in their attitude about “Covenant-breakers,” because they didn’t believe in shunning their relatives who had unorthodox ideas about the Baha’i faith. Thus, he excommunicated all of his relatives who married into that branch of the family.

Conventional wisdom among Baha’is is that Shoghi Effendi was trying to defend his family from the spread of heresy, supposedly ema­nating from Nayer Afnan. But as Mr. Afnan’s daughter and Shoghi Effendi’s niece Bahiyeh Afnan Shahid writes:

Regarding [Foroughiyya Khanum’s] second son, my father Nayer Afnan, he and my mother Rouhanguise Rabbani were mar­ried in 1928 in Haifa. The marriage took place in the Master’s [i.e. ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s] house and the Master’s sister, Bahiyeh Khanum of­ficiated at the ceremony. Present were the Master’s wife Mounireh Khanum, the Master’s daughters and other members of the family as well as Bahai friends. Would things have happened this way if Nayer Afnan was a covenant breaker? ...

For some strange reason my father was designated by Shoghi Effendi... as the plotter and schemer behind most of these mar­riages. His was the evil hand that wove this mesh of marriages, connecting generations of ‘covenant breakers’ with one another, serving sinister schemes that took shape seemingly nowhere but in the Guardian’s mind. He simply could not see a group of cousins and relatives from a family that considered themselves Bahais in every sense of the word, but completely cut off from their roots and their natural milieu. Was it not natural that they should choose each other when they sought husbands and wives?[10]

Most likely, Nayer Afnan’s liberal approach to the Baha’i faith—spe­cifically, his refusal to shun the Unitarian Baha’is among his relatives— is what caused Shoghi Effendi to excommunicate him. Although he may have had a relatively open-minded attitude all along, it is possible that this grandson of Baha’u’llah decided to develop friendships with his Unitarian Baha’i cousins precisely because he objected to the au­thoritarian leadership style of Shoghi Effendi and was attracted to the relatively progressive views of the ostracized members of the family.

One more relative of Shoghi Effendi whom he excommunicated deserves special attention: his cousin Ruhi Afnan, a grandson of ‘Abdu’l-Baha who was a prominent and well-respected teacher of the Baha’i faith. Ruhi Afnan was such a significant figure that the liberal Baha’i leader Ahmad Sohrab wrote a whole book about him and his case, an unauthorized biography entitled Abdul Baha’s Grandson: Story of a Twentieth Century Excommunication, even though Mr. Afnan never supported Mr. Sohrab’s denomination. Here is his summary from that book, of Mr. Afnan’s career as a Baha’i administrator and spokesperson:

Ruhi Effendi Afnan acted as confidential secretary to the Guard­ian of the Bahai Cause for fourteen years; and the records of the Bahai organization show that during that time, from 1922 to 1936, he was constantly in demand in a variety of capacities. In 1924, he appeared in London as Shoghi Effendi’s personal representative and delivered a brilliant address on the Bahai Religion before The Conference of Some Living Religions Within the British Empire. In 1927, he visited the United States as traveling agent and spiritual salesman of the Guardian, championing with fervor and zeal the system of Bahai administration before recognized and declared Bahais. He was an outstanding and honored guest at the 20th An­nual Bahai Convention in Chicago, where he participated vitally in all proceedings; was the guest speaker at Green Acre Bahai Sum­mer School in Maine, and traveled from coast to coast, delivering Bahai speeches before churches, colleges and outside gatherings.

In 1928, we find him in Geneva, Switzerland, where, as the accred­ited representative of the Bahai Cause, he participates in the Con­ference of International Peace Through the Churches. Here, we see him taking the floor, offering some constructive suggestions which, as one report says, were very much to the point, and carry­ing his argument. In 1935, with the Guardian\'s approval (See Baha ’i News, page 3, October 1935), he pays his second visit to the United States; takes part in the National Bahai meeting in Chicago and, before his departure, addresses a number of local Bahai communities. [11]

Despite Ruhi Afnan’s exemplary record of service to the Baha’i faith, Shoghi Effendi excommunicated him in 1941, stating three rea­sons: (1) that Mr. Afnan’s sister married one of the sons of Foroughiyya and Ali Afnan, all of whom he considered to be Covenant-breakers; (2) that Ruhi Afnan himself married a cousin, one of the granddaughters of‘Abdu’l-Baha, of whom he apparently disapproved; and (3) that Mr. Afnan supposedly made his second trip to the United States without Shoghi Effendi’s approval.[12] On the third point, as Ahmad Sohrab men­tions with documentation, the allegation is simply false. As for the first reason for Ruhi Afnan’s excommunication, it seems that he refused to shun his sister after her marriage, and his continued association with her was unacceptable to Shoghi Effendi. In fact, the main reason for most of Shoghi Effendi’s excommunications of his relatives was that they chose not to shun family members whom they loved.

Although it might have been tempting for an articulate Baha’i evangelist such as Ruhi Afnan to have joined or started a different Baha’i denomination with more respect for believers’ personal free­dom, instead he repeatedly sought to return to the mainstream Baha’i community—as did many other Baha’is and members of Baha’u’llah’s family who had been expelled. In a long and very interesting letter Mr. Afnan wrote in 1970, he recalls, among other things, that:

For twelve years after Shoghi Effendi cast me out of the Cause I regularly wrote a petition—at least once a year—and more often than not, took them to the House [of Shoghi Effendi] myself. Sev­eral times I saw [Shoghi’s wife] Ruhiyyih Khanum who would meet me and end up by rejecting my request. I always wondered whether Shoghi Effendi read those letters or not. One day I asked [Shoghi’s mother] Zia Khanum. She told me that other than myself, many people wrote such petitions, for example Rouha Khanum [Zia Khanum’s sister and Ruhi’s aunt]. Apparently Shoghi Effendi had a special suitcase full of such letters from members of the family, all of which he saved. Zia Khanum added that she herself, every month, sometimes every week, would write such a petition and pour out her heart, in an effort to clarify matters to her son. I don’t know whether that suitcase full of letters still exists. If it does, it would tell the story of those people and the pain they bore.[13]

According to Ruhi Afnan, he was even banned from visiting Baha’u’llah’s tomb, and threatened by Shoghi Effendi’s wife, who informed him that “orders had been given to beat me and throw me out” if he ever went to the Shrine.[14] This only changed as a result of a lawsuit by Kamar Bahai in 1952.[15]

None of Shoghi Effendi’s siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, or even his parents, were ever allowed to return to the organized Baha’i community. They were utterly and permanently shunned, by order of the Guardian and later the Universal House of Justice, which to this day teaches that the Guardian was infallible and therefore all his decisions were automatically justified.

As the facts show, the ministry of Shoghi Effendi was marked by the kind of dictatorial authoritarianism, paranoia and fanaticism that are not usually associated with great religions in the modern era. None of his relatives were even given a hearing and a chance to defend them­selves before a panel of neutral judges before they were excommuni­cated; and once expelled from the fold, their appeals fell on deaf ears and they were either written out of history or recast as villainous char­acters, despite their strong belief in and service to the Baha’i faith.

Perhaps the clearest illustration of the Baha’i Guardian’s attitude can be found in a polemical, triumphalistic history of the Baha’i faith he wrote called God Passes By. In the following passage of that book, he indulges in bone-chilling schadenfreude, recounting with relish the misfortunes, illnesses and deaths of some of the people he considered to be “Covenant-breakers” and taking comically immature potshots at their memory:

[Mohammed Ali Bahai’s] brother, Mirza Diya’ullah,[16] died prematurely; Mirza Aqa Jan [Kashani], his dupe, followed that same brother, three years later, to the grave;... Mirza Muhammad- ‘Ali’s half-sister, Furughiyyih,[17] died of cancer, whilst her hus­band, Siyyid ‘Ali [Afnan], passed away from a heart attack before his sons could reach him, the eldest being subsequently stricken in the prime of life, by the same malady. Muhammad-Javad-i- Qazvini,[18] a notorious Covenant-breaker, perished miserably. ... Jamal-i-Burujirdi,[19] Mirza Muhammad Ali\'s ablest lieutenant in Persia, fell a prey to a fatal and loathsome disease; Siyyid Mihdiy- i-Dahaji,[20] who, betraying ‘Abdu’l-Baha, joined the Covenant-breakers, died in obscurity and poverty, followed by his wife and his two sons;...

[Mohammed Ali Bahai] was stricken with paralysis which crippled half his body; lay bedridden in pain for months before he died; and was buried according to Muslim rites, in the immediate vicinity of a local Muslim shrine, his grave remaining until the present day devoid of even a tombstone—a pitiful reminder of the hollowness of the claims he had advanced, of the depths of infamy to which he had sunk, and of the severity of the retribution his acts had so richly merited.[21]

As for Shoghi Effendi himself, he and his wife found themselves unable to have children. With no heirs, and having excommunicated every living descendant of Baha’u’llah but himself, there was no one eligible to be appointed as his successor in accordance with the provi­sions of the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Baha, so the office of the Guardianship became permanently vacant upon his passing. He died suddenly of the Asian flu, at the age of 60, while visiting London in 1957. His grave is located in that city instead of among the Baha’i shrines in Israel, because, according to Baha’i law, a body cannot be moved more than one hour’s journey from the place of death.[22] He failed to leave a will, violating Baha’u’llah’s command that “Unto every­one hath been enjoined the writing of a will,”[23] and thus the Baha’is had no clear guidance for how their faith should be led without a sec­ond Guardian after his passing.

The loss of the Guardianship posed a serious problem for main­stream Baha’is. They had been accustomed to having an individual leader of their faith, and in accordance with the intentions of ‘Abdu’l- Baha expressed in his will, they fully expected that there would be a series of Guardians for generations to come. Shoghi Effendi had written that “In this Dispensation, divine guidance flows on to us in this world after the Prophet’s ascension, through first the Master, and then the Guardians.”[24] Furthermore, he wrote:

Divorced from the institution of the Guardianship the World Or­der of Baha’u’llah would be mutilated and permanently deprived of that hereditary principle which, as Abdu’l-Baha has written, has been invariably upheld by the Law of God. “In all the Divine Dispensations,” He states, in a Tablet addressed to a follower of the Faith in Persia, “the eldest son hath been given extraordinary distinctions. Even the station of prophethood hath been his birth­right.” Without such an institution the integrity of the Faith would be imperiled, and the stability of the entire fabric would be gravely endangered. Its prestige would suffer, the means required to ena­ble it to take a long, an uninterrupted view over a series of gener­ations would be completely lacking, and the necessary guidance to define the sphere of the legislative action of its elected repre­sentatives would be totally withdrawn.[25]

After Shoghi Effendi’s death, the inner circle of Baha’i leaders he had appointed to assist him during his ministry, called Hands of the Cause, decided to establish the Universal House of Justice. It was elected for the first time in 1963—without a Guardian as its chairman— and the Baha’is, who had been taught by Shoghi Effendi to believe in the supreme importance of a line of living Guardians, were expected to put this belief aside yet continue believing that “the Covenant” of their faith was being fulfilled regardless.

One distinguished Baha’i leader named Charles Mason Remey dis­sented and claimed that Shoghi Effendi had intended for him to be­come his successor, on the basis that he had appointed him as the head of an executive body called the International Baha’i Council. Mr. Re­mey attracted some support, because many Baha’is, quite understand­ably, still clung to the teaching of the absolute necessity of a Guardian to lead the faith; but the vast majority of Baha’is rejected his claim, be­cause he was not a “branch” of Baha’u’llah’s family as the Guardians were required to be according to ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s will, and there was no document in which Shoghi Effendi ever explicitly nominated him for the office of Guardian. Mason Remey formed a sect, the remnants of which continue to exist today as a very small Baha’i denomination called the Orthodox Baha’i Faith and three other splinter groups.

Despite all the unexpected changes, controversies, twists and turns we have described, Baha’is today believe that the succession of divine authority from the Bab, to Baha’u’llah, to ‘Abdu’l-Baha, to Shoghi Ef­fendi, to the Universal House of Justice is a perfect, unbroken Cove­nant—that the head of the faith at each stage was infallible and the transitions unchallengeable. As we have seen, the facts reveal that this is only a myth; that the reality is far more complex, more flawed, and indeed more interesting.

----------------------------------------- 
Footnotes :

[8] The Will And Testament of\'Abdu’l-Baha (Wilmette, Ill.: US Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1990 reprint), Part One, pp. n, 14.

[9]    Hassan Jalal Shahid, “Comments About Munib Shahid,”

http://www.abdulbahasfamily.org/writings/comments-about-munib-shahid/
[10]  Bahiyeh Afnan Shahid, “Comments About Sayyid Ali Afnan, Forough Kha­num, and Their Sons,”http://www.abdulbahasfamily.org/writings/sayyid-ali-afnan-forough-khanum-and-their-sons/
[11]  Mirza Ahmad Sohrab, Abdul Baha\'s Grandson: Story of a Twentieth Century Excommunication (New York: Universal Publishing Co., 1943), pp. 67-68. Em­phasis in original.
[12]  These points were made by Shoghi Effendi in two cablegrams received by the leaders of the American Baha’i community on November 10,1941 and pub­lished in the December 1941 issue of Baha’i News, pp. 1-2. Archives are available online at http://bahai-news.info
[13]   Letter by Ruhi Mohsen Afnan to the Baha’i Spiritual Assembly of Iran, 1970. Translation by Bahiyeh Afnan Shahid, available online at

http://www.abdulbahasfemily.org/documents/Ruhi-Afnan-1970-letter.pdf, pp. 20-21.

[14]  Ibid., pp. 28-29.

[15]  See Chapter 33.

[16]  ZiaUllah.

[17]  Foroughiyya.

[18]  Mohammed Jawad Gazvini.

[19]  Also known as Ismu’llah Jamal.

[20] Also known as Ismu’llah Mahdi.

[21]   Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By (US Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1979 second printing), pp.

319-320.
[22]  Kitab-i-Aqdas (“Most Holy Book”), paragraph 130.

[23]  Ibid., paragraph 109.

[24]  Shoghi Effendi, Directives from the Guardian (India/Hawaii, 1973 edition), section 89, p.

34.
[25]  Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha’u’llah (US Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1991 first pocket-size edition), p. 148.

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