The Baha'i Studies Listserv On 3 Nov 2010 at 17:17, Naison Jones wrote: > But true equality in its purest sense implies > sameness
So blacks and whites can never be equal? Chinese and hottentots? Frenchmen and Englishmen? It's a pretty bleak picture you paint, if only sameness is good enough. > Also you have sortof contradicted yourself. If their bioligy was > irrelevent then Baha'u'llah wouldnt have made the law of only men > being allowed on the house now would he? I don't believe he did say that only men could be on the House of Justice. He used a word (rijal) which refers to men in Arabic, but in Persian is an honorific, and can refer to women. He explained in another place he writes: Today the Baha'i women (lit., the leaves of the Holy Tree) must guide the handmaidens of the earth to the Lofty Horizon with the utmost purity and sanctity. Today the handmaidens of God are regarded as gentlemen (rijal). Blessed are they! Blessed are they! And in another passage: Today whoever among the handmaidens attains the knowledge of the Desire of the World [i.e., Baha'u'llah] is considered a gentleman (rajul) in the Divine Book. And in another place: ...many a man (rajul) hath waited expectant for God's Revelation, and yet when the Light shone forth from the horizon of the world, all but a few turned their faces away from it. Whosoever from amongst the handmaidens hath recognized the Lord of all Names is recorded in the Book as one of those men (rijal) by the Pen of the Most High. Likewise, 'Abdu'l-Baha in one of his Tablets has made the same point: Verily, according to Baha'u'llah, women are judged as gentlemen (rijal). Abdu'l-Baha explains that the exclusion of women from the House of Justice is a "hikmat" or "wisdom" - a tactic adopted as a strategy, to protect the community, just as at one time some Bahai men adopted long hair and other characteristics of the Sufis, so that the Bahai community would fit into the Islamic context as a sufi order with Baha'u'llah as its Shaykh. > So biology must be relevent as the spirit of man and women is the same. > Therefore their biology is somehow related to the restriction and not > their spirit (which is the same as mens). Unless you can think of a > third part that humans consist of? The third dimension is the social. The exclusion is a concession to the social setting, since biology is obviously irrelevant to membership of a House of Justice. Sen __________________________________________________ You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:[email protected] Unsubscribe: send a blank email to mailto:leave-537158-27401.54f46e81b66496c9909bcdc2f7987...@list.jccc.edu Subscribe: send subscribe bahai-st in the message body to [email protected] Or subscribe: http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/all_forums/subscribe?name=bahai-st Baha'i Studies is available through the following: Mail - mailto:[email protected] Web - http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/?forum=bahai-st News (on-campus only) - news://list.jccc.edu/bahai-st Old Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] New Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
