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HERMANN ZIMMER |
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l. A HANDWRITING ANALYSIS OF THE TESTAMENT IN 1930 The fictitious Will and Testament of Abdul Baha is discovered to be a falsification by a London handwriting expert — Further external indirect proof of falsification - The reaction of the Guardian to these accusations - Time works against the Guardian Motto: "Protect yourselves with utmost vigilance, lest you be entrapped In the snare of deception and fraud." 11 In her book The Bahai Religion and Its Enemy, the Bahai Organization (Rutland 1929), the American Ruth White directed sharp attacks against the alleged testament of Abdul Baha and the man it favored, Shoghi (Effendi) Rabbani. The contents of this alleged testament were not only a reversal of the teachings of Baha'u'llah themselves, but they also stand in direct contradiction to the commentary and explanations concerning these teachings by Abdul Baha. In March of the following year, 1930, Shoghi wrote a letter which was published in April by the German National Spiritual Assembly of Bahais and published in New York In 1938 In the series of letters of the "World Order of Baha'u'llah". In this writing, the Bahai world was warned by Shoghi about the slowly forming truth of the alleged testament of Abdul Baha with the words, "For let every earnest upholder of the Cause of Baha'u'llah realize that ... this Infant Faith will have to contend with enemies more powerful and more insidious than the cruelest torturers and the most fanatic clerics who have afflicted it In the past..." 12 This sentence represents a pure diversionary tactic because the attacks of the clergy, particularly in the Western world, are completely insignificant compared to the sharp criticism from the ranks of non-organized Bahais. These highly dangerous enemies described by Shoghi are simply the factual evidences which in the time to follow would be presented against his system. Only a few days later, Shoghi received a letter from Mrs. White (dated March 19, 1930) requesting the original document of the alleged last will of Abdul Baha for analysis by a handwriting expert who was familiar with Persian script. Although the receipt of this letter was acknowledged by Shoghi's secretary, a reply never came. A few months later, the first of the "more powerful and more insidious enemies" prophesied by Shoghi appeared in the form of a report that the handwriting expert Dr. Ainsworth Mitchell, a staff member of the British Museum in London and publisher of the periodical "The Analyst", had presented on June 3, 1930 about his examination of the photocopy of the alleged testament of Abdul Baha. Mrs. White condensed the most important points of the report into two statements: 1 "The alleged will of Abdul Baha was not written throughout by the same person 2 No part of the alleged will has the characteristics of the writing of Abdul Baha, In other words, the alleged testament did not issue from Abdul Baha and thus it is fraudulent. 13 This attack by Mrs. White, carried out with much courage, the spending of much energy in the procurement of photocopies and with considerable investment of her own means, found a strong response only in Germany and resulted In the creation of the "Bahai World Union" by W. Herrigel and the friends of Abdul Baha who assembled around him. The further arguments of Ruth White, for example, about Abdul Baha's extraordinary care in the translation of his Tablet To the Central Organization for a Durable Peace, The Hague, 1919, which was republished by the Bahai Verlag in 1968, left the great majority of Bahais rather cold. At that time, two other Persians worked with Shoghi Effendi and Dr. Esslemont as translators.14 Nothing more is mentioned about them in the publication of 1968. Mrs. White's very appropriate question remained open: Why, then, did a so much more important manuscript, namely Abdul Baha's alleged testament, have to be translated by the one person favored by the document, namely Shoghi himself, completely on his own? Moreover, this translation took place after the demise of Abdul Baha. For the critically oriented Bahais, it was a further piece of evidence for the charge of fraudulency.15 The problems of the alleged testament of Abdul Baha had been brought into the open a couple of years earlier, not by the organization but by some independent thinkers, particularly in written form by Mrs. White herself. The problems were these: The inherited Guardianship; the placing of succeeding Guardians at the summit of the "House of Justice" in an indisputable political function; the payment of the tax allegedly instituted by Baha'u'llah, not to the House of Justice but to the Guardian himself and the rigid organization with paid officials or priests, the "Hands of the cause". All this was precisely the opposite of what Baha'u'llah and Abdul Baha had taught.16 Ruth White had discussed these problems in Bahai assemblies in many large cities in the USA when she traveled to California in 1926.17 We read the reaction to this explanatory activity in a letter from the Guardian dated February 27,1929: "I will not attempt in the least to assert or demonstrate the authenticity of the Will and Testament of Abdul Baha, for that In itself would betray an apprehension on my part as to the unanimous confidence of the believers In the genuineness of the last written wishes of our departed Master"18 With these slick words, truly a masterpiece, Shoghi sneaked away from the proof he could not provide. How elegantly he has taken in the Bahais with the proverbial cunning of the Levantines. He had learned from his teacher Machiavelli, "You must probe the malignity of the abscess and if you have enough power to heal it, then do it quickly and ruthlessly. If you do not have this power, leave It alone and don't provoke it." 19 On December 31, 1928, Mrs. White had publicly maintained in a letter to the former English High Commissioner of Palestine that the alleged testament of Abdul Baha was fraudulent. At the same time she had requested this highest official of the mandate government to investigate this accusation. She had distributed this letter as a pamphlet under the title "Abdul Baha's Alleged Will is Fraudulent". In his above mentioned letter of February 27, 1929, Shoghi is supposed to have expressed his opinion about this pamphlet in the following words: "The friends meanwhile should avoid hurting Mrs.White's feelings and refrain from provocation. Her case ... should remain completely unnoticed by the believers.."20 This letter from Shoghi on February 27, 1929, was printed as the first letter in Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Baha'u'llah (New York, 1938). There, too, the above mentioned passage is missing and no marks of omission make it plain that this letter was not printed in entirety. Perhaps a scend letter was written by Shoghi Effendi on this day. Shoghi faithfully followed the directions of his mentor Machiavelli at that time: it paid to be completely quiet and wait until the storm, complete with lightning, thunder and torrents of rain intermixed with big hailstones, was over. The appearance of Mrs. White's book about The Bahai Religion and its Enemy the Bahai Organization and, one year later In 1930, the proof by the handwriting expert that the alleged testament of Abdul Baha did not corne from him were accepted nearly without question as fact by the Bahai world and then laid aside. A few years later in Haifa, fortune smiled on the Guardian again. The heavy storms were forgotten and Shoghi sat in the saddle more securely than ever and whistled Machiavelli's tune as he wrote: "The attitude which a besotted woman later on assumed, her ludicrous assertions, her boldness In flouting the Will of Abdul Baha and in challenging its authenticity and her attempts to subvert Its principles were again powerless to produce the slightest breach in the ranks of its valiant upholders." In the emotional excess of the victor, Shoghi writes a couple of lines later: "...these notorious exponents of corruption and heresy have succeeded in protruding for a time their ugly features only to sink, as rapidly as they had risen, into the mire of an ignominious end."21 The score of the discussions between the critics of the alleged testament of Abdul Baha and the favored Shoghi Effendi was 1:0 for the critics. Yet the great majority of Bahais were sleeping then and still clung to the Guardian, although no one saw him. If the Captain of Koepenick, alias Shoemaker Wilhelm Voigt, had the courage to put on a uniform he had bought and to keep a small town at bay with a handful of soldiers, Shoghi never had the courage to put on the self-made uniform of Guardian — continuing the comparison — and to proclaim the teachings of Baha'u'llah of the unity of mankind, the unity of religion and the necessity of world peace. "The power is mine. . .", Shoghi seemed to want to say, and in so doing ignored the opposing argument, "...yet tremble before the slow, quiet power of time." 22 It was only time which brought the further proof that the alleged testament of Abdul Baha was fraudulent. With the publication of Shoghi's greatest work, God Passes By in 1945 and Its German translation in 1954 arose the opportunity to compare passages stylistically from the book with expressions and excerpts from the alleged testament of Abdul Baha (published in toto in 1964 In Frankfurt by the Bahai Publishing Committee). Any intelligent 14-year old schoolboy can follow this linguistic comparison, and thus the expert evidence of the London handwriting expert finds confirmation from many quarters. But before this linguistic proof of coincidental expressions of one and the same author comes an historical comparison with another great falsification in the area of religion, "one of the most momentous falsifications" of history, the famous "Constantinian Grant". -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11. Words of Baha-ullah, cited in BWF, p. 431. |
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