“Oh Ḥusayn, you came to visit Ḥusayn but you are killing Ḥusayn oh you unaware and doubtful [person]. We wanted to meet you in Baghdad and put it up to you to choose the meeting place so that we could show you clear arguments. You accepted but when the time came the winds started blowing and you ran away, oh you fly. We came to the house that was the meeting place and we did not find you there, oh you who associates others with the God who sends the winds. When you saw your own weakness you found an excuse for yourself, Oh you trickster. We did not want to meet you except to complete God’s proof upon you and those who are around you so that the fire of hatred would dwell in your chest and the chest of those who do not believe in the Lord of the Lords. You abstained from meeting me even though the inhabitants of paradise and the Heavens yearned for me. You will soon cry and wail but you will find no place to run to. Wait until God brings you a wrath from Himself and then the winds of torment will catch you and will return you to [hell] fire.
(Bahaullah, Athar-i Qalam-i A’la, vol. 1, no. 97, p. 339.)
Bahaullah calls this person a fly, a polytheist, and trickster. He claims this person will be tormented by God and returned to fire. He even claims that he had deliberately sought this meeting to fill the person’s chest with the “fire of hatred”! Is this how Baha’is are supposed to implement the Oneness of Humanity? By deliberately filling the chest of non-Baha’is with the fire of hatred? Where is all the love they were preaching?
Abdu’l-Baha narrates another incident:
When his holiness returned from Sulaymaniyah, he was strolling in the street one day with the late Aqa Mirza Muḥammad Quli. A Kabab seller quietly said, “These Babis have appeared again!” The Blessed Beauty said to Mirza Muḥammad Quli, “hit him in the mouth!” Mirza Muḥammad Quli grabbed his beard and started hitting him in the head. [The man] went to the ambassador and complained. The ambassador imprisoned the man (instead of assisting him) and said, “without doubt, you must have greatly insulted the Babis that they hit you.”
Ref: Ḥabib Mu’ayyad, Khatirati Ḥabib (n.p.: Mu’assisiyi Milli Matbu`at Amri, 118 B.), vol. 1, p.266.
Even if we assume this poor, innocent individual who Bahaullah ordered to be beaten, was his enemy, such an action is still unjustified. For Bahaullah has said himself:
If, God forbid, you have an enemy, do not see him as an enemy but rather a friend. Deal with your friends in the same way you deal with your enemy.
(Abdu’l-Baha, Khatabat (Egypt), vol. 1, p. 154.)
This story is in itself an indication that most of Bahaullah calls for peace and harmony with enemies and followers of other religions were not out of sympathy and love but were for protecting himself and his followers and out of fear of reprisals.