Sixteenth Reflection

there is none other God but Him.” In this quote humans are defined as Adilla’ namely those who reveal, demonstrate, and indicate the sovereignty of God. In other words, humans are reflections of God and therefore they are sacred and glorious. Not only servitude of humans makes them equal, they are all reflections of divine attributes and therefore they are all sacred and endowed with equal rights. The same reason that causes abolishing of slavery in paragraph 72 of the Most Holy Book, causes abolishing, in paragraph 73, of both contention and murder of human beings: Let none contend with another, and let no soul slay another... What! Would ye kill him whom God hath quickened, whom He hath endowed with spirit through a breath from Him. In paragraph 75 of that same book, impurity of various groups of the people, as well as avoidance of certain groups, are all abolished because all should be seen as reflections of divine attributes: God hath, likewise, as a bounty from His presence, abolished the concept of “uncleanness,” whereby divers things and peoples have been held to be impure. He, of a certainty, is the Ever-Forgiving, the Most Generous. Verily, all created things were immersed in the sea of purification when, on that first day of Ri ḍ ván, We shed upon the whole of creation the splendors of Our most excellent Names and Our most exalted Attributes. 3. Emancipation as Prayer Baha’u’llah had rejected slavery long before the revelation of his the Most Holy Book in 1873. Five years earlier, in his message to the Queen Victoria he simultaneously rejects slavery and affirms consultative democracy. Both of these ordinances are expressions of one and the same spiritual logic of revelation. However, decades earlier, and I believe in 1839, Baha’u’llah in the form of a prayer had outlawed slavery. In his Prayer of Enabcipation, he argues that all humans are themselves slaves of God and therefore no human can own another human being. The fact that Baha’u’llah affirms emancipation of slaves through prayer is most fascinating. He rejects slavery because humans are all spiritual beings. It is the fact that we are all servants of God and images of God that make us all sacred, beautiful, equal, and endowed with rights. For Baha’u’llah all beings and all existence is a spiritual dialogue with God. The reality of all beings is a divine dialogue, a conversation between our servitude to God and our glorious reflection of divine attributes. The truth of all beings is a heavenly prayer, and it is this spirit of prayer that transforms the world and replaces the realm of beastly violence into the republic of reason and love.