‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Secret of Divine Civilization

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necessary to provide some more details about the intellectual currents in the second half of 19 th century Iran. The position of the conservative ‘ulama was hardly clearly articulated. They remained in their traditional discourse and their rejection of modernity and modern institutions were usually expressed in the form of denouncement of religious heresy and equating any modernist idea with the Bábí movement, which was automatically condemned by them. Even at the time of Constitutional Revolution in the early years of 20 th century, when the rank of ‘ulama was divided on the question of constitutionalism, the conservative ‘ulama continued to denounce constitutionalism because they identified it with Bábí and Bahá’í doctrines. However, the secular intellectuals were much more articulate in the second half of the 19 th century. During the 1850s and 60s the first group of the reform-oriented secular writings appears in Iran. Akhundzadih and Malkum Khan (1833-1908) are the most active of their generation. They call for reform of law and administration, reform of Persian alphabet and script, defend the policy of granting concessions to Europeans, and found a secret modernist group called Faramush Khanih. The most important development of the 70s, however, was the assumption of political power by the reformist group. Husayn Khan gave political positions to some of the reform-oriented secular politicians including Malkum Khan and Yusif Khan and was specially influenced by Malkum. The decisive defeat of the reform camp at the end of the 70s, turned 1880s to a decade of political pessimism and disillusion. During the 80s Jamalu’d-Din Asadabadi (Al-Afghani) (1838-1896), an Iranian who pretended to be Afghani, wrote political works using Islamic symbols to defend his modernist and anti-colonialist ideas. Finally, it is in the last decade of the 19 th century that bitter opposition to the reign of Nasiri’d-Din Shah is expressed by Malkum Khan from London, and Jamalu’d-Din and Aqa Khan-i-Kermani (1853-1896) from Istanbul. 17 The decade of 1890s paves the way for constitutional revolution in Iran in the next decade. Two particular events mark 1890s. The first is the boycott of tobacco by the religious leaders as a protest against tobacco concession to a British company. From now on many of the ‘ulama participate in Constitutional Movement. However, their ambivalence concerning the relation of modernity and Islam reappears in devastating forms in drafting and implementing the new constitution, which eventually led to the failure of parliamentarian forces. The second event was the assassination of Nasiri’d-Din Shah by a follower of Jamalu’d-Din in 1896. Both Jamalu’d-Din and Aqa Khan-i- Kermani died in the same year. Looking at The Secret we can see the unique position of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in this significant debate. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s position in The Secret has a hidden and a manifest aspect. The hidden aspect is not explicated because ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is writing His text anonymously and cannot make any reference to the Bahá’í Faith. Of course, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá withheld His identity as a Bahá’í leader because otherwise His book would be automatically condemned by religious leaders and would not have a chance to speak to people. However, this implicit message is explicated in ‘Abdu’l- Bahá’s other writings. To begin with the manifest content, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá rejects both positions in the debate. He argues that in fact Islam has been the cause of the emergence of a most wonderful and progressive civilization, and He agrees that the solution to the backwardness of Iran is to go back to the spirit of Islam. However, He does not agree with conservative ‘ulama concerning the relation between Islam and modernity. The spirit of Islam, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá affirms, is not opposed to either the culture of modernity or to learning positive cultural, scientific, and institutional lessons fromWestern non-

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