Covenant-breaker

Most Covenant-breakers are involved in schismatic groups, but not always. For example, a Baháʼí who refuses to follow guidance on treatment of Covenant-breakers is at risk of being named one. One article[10] originally written for the Baháʼí Encyclopedia, characterized Covenant-breakers that have emerged in the course of Baháʼí history as belonging to one of four categories:

1. Leadership challenge: These are persons who dispute the authority and legitimacy of the head of the religion and advance claims either for themselves or for another. The main examples of these are Mírzá Muhammad ʻAlí and Charles Mason Remey.
2. Dissidence: Those who actively disagree with the policies and actions of the head of the faith without, however, advancing an alternative claim for leadership. This group consisted mostly of opponents of the Baháʼí administration such as Ruth White, Julia Lynch Olin and Mirza Ahmad Sohrab.
3. Disobedience: Those who disobey certain direct instructions from the head of the religion. Mostly the instruction in question is to cease to associate with a Covenant-breaker. Examples of this type include most of the descendants of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá during Shoghi Effendi's time.
4. Apostates who maliciously attack the Baháʼí Faith. Examples include Ávárih, Sobhi and Níkú.

Shoghi Effendi wrote to the National Spiritual Assembly of Canada in 1957:

People who have withdrawn from the Cause because they no longer feel that they can support its Teachings and Institutions sincerely, are not Covenant-breakers -- they are non-Baháʼís and should just be treated as such. Only those who ally themselves actively with known enemies of the Faith who are Covenant-breakers, and who attack the Faith in the same spirit as these people, can be considered, themselves, to be Covenant-breakers.[12]

Beyond this, many other relationships to the Baháʼí Faith exist, both positive and negative. Covenant-breaking does not apply to most of them. The following is a partial list of those who could not rightly be termed Covenant-breakers:

• Members of other religions or no religion—with or without any particular relationship to the Baháʼí Faith.
• Baháʼís who simply leave the religion. (see above)
• Baháʼís who, in the estimation of the head of the religion have insufficiently understood the nature of the covenant from the start. These are sometimes "disenrolled" and are considered to have never actually been Baháʼís, given their fundamental diversion from this core Baháʼí doctrine.

Bábís are generally regarded as another religion altogether. Since Covenant-breaking presumes that one has submitted oneself to a covenant and then broken it, and Bábís never recognized or swore allegiance to Baháʼu'lláh, they are not Covenant-breakers.

Followers of Subh-i-Azal, Baháʼu'lláh's half-brother who tried to poison him, engaged in active opposition to Baháʼís, and Shoghi Effendi did inform Baháʼís that they should avoid contact with his descendants, writing that "No intelligent and loyal Baha'i would associate with a descendant of Azal, if he traced the slightest breath of criticism of our Faith, in any aspect, from that person. In fact these people should be strenuously avoided as having an inherited spiritual disease -- the disease of Covenant-breaking!".[13]

After years of silence on these developments, cables sent by Shoghi Effendi on 2 November 1941 provide background to developments among family members. Ruhi Afnan, Shoghi Effendi's cousin through ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's daughter Tuba:

• "Ruhi's sister married Covenant-breaker Faydi whose mother joined and supported arch-enemy Muhammad-ʻAli and whose father ʻAbdu'l-Bahá denounced openly and repeatedly as His deadly enemy. Ruhi's family concurred. Inform all believers all manner communication excommunicated family forbidden."

Faydi was the son of Furughiyyih Khanum, a daughter of Baháʼu'lláh by his third wife Gawhar. Furughiyyih and her children all supported Mírzá Muhammad ʻAlí. Faydi had two elder brothers. Hussein Effendi Afnan was aide-de-camp to Faisal II of Iraq and Nayyer Effendi Afnan was Commissioner of Parks in Cairo, Egypt. The entire Baháʼí Family was stigmatized by Shoghi Effendi as Covenant-breakers as he was displeased with their marriages.[15]

Then in a 1950 cable:

• "Inform friends that Ruhi, his mother, with Ruha, his aunt, and their families, not content with years of disobedience and unworthy conduct, are now showing open defiance."[16] (Citadel of Faith, p. 87)

And in 1953:

• "Treacherous Ruhi Afnan, not content with previous disobedience, correspondence with Mirza Ahmad Sohrab, contact with old Covenant-breakers, sale, in conjunction with other members of family, of sacred property purchased by Founder of Faith, and allowing his sister to marry son of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's enemy, is now openly lecturing on Baháʼí movement, claiming to be its exponent and is misrepresenting the teachings and deliberately causing confusion in minds of authorities and the local population. Inform National Assemblies." (Messages to the Baháʼí World – 1950–1957, p. 48)

Later, Ruhi was presented with a copy of Sohrab's book about his excommunication:

"… under ordinary circumstances he would have been very much elated, and therefore thankful to see someone make such records of his services to the Cause, but that the references to the Guardian and the Administration changed his attitude completely. He did not wish to be defended; he felt that he must suffer in silence and be true to the Master's last will and testament. Then Ruhi Effendi referred to Ahmad as being in the same plight as himself, but reacting differently. He thought this very regrettable." [p. 281][17]

Concerning Munib Shahid, Shoghi Effendi's cousin through ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's daughter Ruha, Shoghi Effendi sent the following cable to the Baháʼí world in November 1944:

• "Monib Shahid, grandson of both ʻAbdu'l-Bahá and the King of Martyrs, married according to the Moslem rites the daughter of a political exile who is nephew of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. This treacherous act of alliance with enemies of the Faith merits condemnation of entire Baháʼí world."[18] (Baháʼí News, No. 172)

Husayn Ali was Shoghi Effendi's brother. In April 1945, Shoghi Effendi sent the following cable to the Baháʼí world: "My faithless brother Husayn, after long period of dishonourable conduct, has abandoned the Master's home to consort with his sister and other Covenant-breakers"[19] (Baháʼí News, No. 174, p. 2). In March 1950, Shoghi Effendi would send a further cable: "Faithless brother Hussein, already abased through dishonorable conduct over period (of) years followed by association with Covenant-breakers (in) Holy Land and efforts (to) undermine Guardian's position, recently further demeaned himself through marriage under obscure circumstances with lowborn Christian girl (in) Europe" [20] (Baháʼí News, No. 229, p. 1). Shoghi Effendi would later clarify the use of the term "lowborn Christian girl" as follows: "Regarding his cable concerning Hussein: he has been very surprised to note that the terms “low-born Christian girl” and “disgraceful alliance” should arouse any question: it seems to him that the friends should realize it is not befitting for the Guardian's own brother, the grandchild of the Master, an Afnán and Aghsán mentioned in the Will and Testament of the Master, and of whom so much was expected because of his relation to the family of the Prophet, to marry an unknown girl, according to goodness knows what rite, who is not a believer at all. Surely, every Bahá’í must realise that the terms low-born and Christian are definitions of a situation and in no way imply any condemnation of a person’s birth or the religion they belong to as such. We have no snobbery and no religious prejudice in our Faith. But the members of the Master’s family have contracted marriages which cannot be considered in any other light than disgraceful, in view of what ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wished for them.”[21][22] (Baháʼí News, No. 236, p. 4)(Unfolding Destiny, p. 248).

Concerning his own brother Riaz, the following cable was sent in December 1951:

• "With feeling profound concern, grief, indignation, am compelled disclose Baháʼí world recent developments Holy Land furnishing further incontestable proof relationship established old and new Covenant-breakers demonstrating increasing boldness, marked, tragic decline in character and spiritual condition grandchildren ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. Their shameful attitude and conduct receiving approbation their elders. Evidences multiplying attesting Ruhi's increasing rebelliousness, efforts exerted my eldest sister pave way fourth alliance members family Siyyid Ali involving marriage his granddaughter with Ruha's son and personal contact recently established my own treacherous, despicable brother Riaz with Majdi'd-Din, redoubtable enemy Faith, former henchman Muhammad-'Ali, Archbreaker Baháʼu'lláh's Covenant. Convey information all National Assemblies."[23] (Messages to the Baháʼí World – 1950–1957, p. 16)

He dispatched a cable concerning his younger sister in December 1941:

• "Sister Mehrangis [Mehrangiz] followed example Ruhi's [Ruhi] sister Justice demands announce believers her expulsion.".[24] (Unfolding Destiny, p. 149)

The reason for her being declared a Covenant-breaker was that she followed the example of Ruhi's sister by marrying to one of his cousins without the Guardian's consent. Mehrangiz married to Hassan Afnan, the son of Furughiyyih Khanum, a daughter of Baháʼu'lláh by his third wife Gawhar.[25]

Juan Cole, an American professor of Middle Eastern history who had been a Baháʼí for 25 years, left the religion in 1996 after being approached by a Continental Counselor about his involvement in a secret email list that was organizing opposition to certain Baháʼí institutions and policies.[4] Cole was never labeled a Covenant-breaker, because he claimed to be Universalist-Unitarian upon leaving. He went on to publish three papers in journals in 1998,[28] 2000,[29] and 2002.[30] These heavily criticized the Baháʼí administration in the United States and suggested cult-like tendencies, particularly regarding the requirement of pre-publication literature review and the practice of shunning Covenant-breakers.[4] For example, Cole wrote in 1998, "Baha’is, like members of the Watchtower and other cults, shun those who are excommunicated."[28] In 2000, "Baha'i authorities... keep believers in line by appealing to the welfare and unity of the community, and if these appeals fail then implicit or explicit threats of disfellowshipping and even shunning are invoked. ... Shunning is the central control mechanism in the Baha'i system"[29] In 2002, "Opportunistic sectarian-minded officials may have seen this... as a time when they could act arbitrarily and harshly against intellectuals and liberals, using summary expulsion and threats of shunning".[30]

Moojan Momen, a Baháʼí author, reviewed 66 exit narratives of former Baháʼís, and identified 1996 (Cole's departure) to 2002 as a period of "articulate and well-educated" apostates that used the newly available Internet to connect with each other and form a community with its own "mythology, creed and salvation stories becoming what could perhaps be called an anti-religion".[4] According to Momen, the narrative among these apostates of a "fiercely aggressive religion where petty dictators rule" is the opposite experience of most members, who see "peace as a central teaching", "consultative decision-making", and "mechanisms to guard against individuals attacking the central institutions of the Bahá'í Faith or creating schisms."[4] On the practice of shunning, Momen writes that it is "rarely used and is only applied after prolonged negotiations fail to resolve the situation. To the best knowledge of the present author it has been used against no more than a handful of individuals in over two decades and to only the first of the apostates described below [Francesco Ficicchia] more than twenty-five years ago - although it is regularly mentioned in the literature produced by the apostates as though it were a frequent occurrence."[4]