Herald the Birth Of a New World

Oct 20, 2004, 12.00am IST
David Bowers.

Few would have believed, when the Bab was born 185 years ago today, that the son of an Iranian merchant would herald the first world religion that would proclaim the equality of gender, the abolishment of slavery and the oneness of the human race. He took on the title "The Bab", which means "gate" in Arabic, to symbo-lise his acting as a gateway leading people from the old era to the new, and as the herald of another messenger of God, Baha'u'llah.



While the teachings of the Bab and Baha'u'llah recognise that we now live in the darkest times the world has ever seen, they are nonetheless optimistic about the ultimate future of the human race. As people everywhere become aware of the inadequacies of fanaticism, materialism, and extreme nationalism to solve the problems of a changing world, the Baha'i teachings point to a new way of life: "We stand on the threshold of an age whose convulsions proclaim alike the death pangs of the old order and the birth pangs of the new."

The appearance of a new religion in the world, signalling a time of great change and upheaval, is not unlike the birth of a human child. Each time a messianic figure comes to a society greatly in need of spiritual rebirth, his message stirs society to the core. His early believers experience great turmoil, followed by obscurity and weakness, and only later emerge in the form of a developed civilisation that can bring undreamt of glory to the human race.

One religious civilisation becomes the mother of the next, and although all religions exist for the same purpose, with the same essence of the faiths that have preceded them, each one represents a unique link in the family of human civilisations as a whole.
The Baha'i teachings say the same: "The whole earth is now in a state of pregnancy" — a world civilisation, divine in origin, is now growing in embryonic form within the body of humankind. The signs of its growth are increasing every day, in the form of more efficient means of communication and travel, more willingness to cross ancient barriers of prejudice, as well as more advanced forms of meeting social needs that were never addressed in previous centuries. Orga-nisations devoted to resol-ving conflict and promoting international peace have appeared, including those that facilitate global medical and scientific collaboration, and enable people from even the poorest of nations to play an important role in the treatment of disease and development of science and industry.


Whereas in the past, tribes, nations and empires have solved their problems through warfare and do-minance, always seeking to advance themselves at the expense of others, the tumult of the modern world is proving that such conflict and segregation must be left behind if the family of humanity is going to survive and prosper. More and more communities are working to develop a new way of living that will at once uphold all that is great and noble about the traditions of the past, while at the same time replacing those barriers to growth, with bonds of unity and cooperation.
Peace-loving people of the world increasingly nurture the embryo of a world civilisation, while those committed to long-standing conflicts and prejudices continue to destroy themselves. But through the Bab's eyes, we might see our own times in a fresh, gloriously optimistic light ... "So fraught with peril, so full of corruption, and yet so pregnant with the promise of a future so bright that no previous age in the annals of mankind can rival its glory."