Orientalism and Modernity in Baha’i and Ahmadi Writings

Abstract

This chapter begins by interrogating the varied inflections of eastern voices and discourses of orientalism developed in response to the westernisation and modernisation currents of the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. Being aware of these voices, it is argued, will enable a better understanding of how to locate the orientalism encoded in Baha’i writing about the East authored primarily by Shoghi Effendi. The focus of Aryan imaginings of Iran and the anti-Muslim discourse of thinkers like Aqa Khan Kermani and Fath Ali Akunzadeh is weighed against an emerging alignment of western Baha’is – encouraged by Shoghi Effendi – with the pre-Islamic ideology and modernisation policies of Reza Shah Pahlavi. Shoghi Effendi’s self-orientalising tendencies are partly accounted for by his isolation as Guardian of the Baha’i faith in Palestine and his proximity to and identification with British imperial statesmen and orientalists. His scripting of apocalyptic texts about the destruction of the contemporary world order is linked to personal anxiety about dying colonialism. The last section of the chapter compares Baha’i and Ahmadi schemes for new world orders and reprises their different lines to British rulers as well as Christianising their respective religious messages.