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Nader Saiedi. Logos and Civilization: Spirit, History, and Order in the Writings of Bahullh .Bethseda: University Press of Maryland, 2000. 404 pp. Notes, index. $45.50 (cloth), ISBN1-883053-60-9.

Reviewed by Christopher Buck, Michigan State University.Published by H-Bahai (March, 2004)

Logos and Civilization: Spirit, History, and Order in the Writings of Bah=ull=h is athematic ("Spirit"), historical ("History"), andstructural ("Order") analysis of the thought of Bahaullah (d. 1892), prophet-founder of theBahai Faith, in its own terms of reference. Logosand Civilization is an original work based onoriginal sources. Author Nader Saiedi prescindsfrom adopting any external theoretical framework of analysis, which he sees as inadequate andtherefore reductive (pp. 11-12). Instead, theauthors framework arises from the originalsources themselves. This book is productive of both an original thesis and what may be construedas a learned apology in defense of a Bahaiposition that strenuously and cogently maintainsBahaullahs quintessential originality, obscuredas it may be by its Islamic overlay. This argumentdepends on a coherence theory of truth that is self-

validating. Logos and Civilization is an engagingwork, written by an engaged scholar (a professedBahai),

Saiedi is anti-reductive (if there is such aword) with respect to previous academicscholarship on Bahaullah. Accordingly, theauthor chooses not to engage with academicBahai studies except to refute the work of Juan R.I. Cole, author of Modernity and the Millennium:The Genesis of the Bahai Faith in the Nineteenth-Century Middle East (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1998). As a controversial(apologetic) work, Logos and Civilization is notwithout controversy. Accordingly, this review willaddress the following issues: (1) purpose; (2)approach; (3) premise; (4) polemics; (5)publication; (6) peer review; and (7) appraisal.

Purpose

The intended audience is specialists inBahai studies as well as the larger Bahaiaudience. Clearly, Dr. Saiedi hopes that scholarsand lay readers alike, after reading Logos and

Civilization , will experience a new intellectual andspiritual appreciation of the originality, majesty,and complexity of Bahaullahs rev elation. "Amajor thesis of this book," states Saiedi in hisintroduction, "is the creative, rev olutionary, andunprecedented character of Bahaullahs spiritualand social vision" (p. 8). This is an evaluativethesis, one that might have been better served hadthe author focused on Bahaullahstransformations of Islamic thought and thenallowed the reader to evaluate the comparativemerits of Bahaullahs new spiritual and socialprinciples. It is really too much to expect of anacademic audience to accept a claim made insuperlative terms when a comparative analysismight have been more acceptable. Britishphilosopher Stephen Toulmin, author of The Usesof Argument (1958) and several works on thehistory of science, has pointed out that relative

arguments are more persuasive than absolutearguments.

Approach

A word on methodology and method (thetwo are related but distinct): Assuming that thisbook was intended, in part, for an academicaudience, one might have expected some kind of academic literature review. But, for the most part,the author does not speak to the community of discourse and research tradition in academicBahai studies. In other words, there is neither acomprehensive nor representative literature review,

although several works of academic Bahai studiesare mentioned.

However, this is not the only legitimate formof academic scholarship. Just about any standardacademic treatment is intentionally limited in itsaudience and rhetorical purposes, and is usuallyaddressed to the small research community of specialists in a eld. Sociolinguistic studies haveshown that the frequency of use of academicconventions of discourse by academic writers

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progresses in a parabola. Graduate students usesuch conventions most frequently, as their mainpurpose for writing is to produce work that will beaccepted by the gatekeepers on whose approvaltheir future career success depends. Well-

established academics, who are secure in theircareers, use such discourse the least, as theybecome free to write for the purpose of expressingwhat they themselves want to say about asubject--and in the way they want to say it--inorder to reach the audience they want to reach. Itis this latter approach that characterizes Saiediswork, although this is Saiedis rst contribution toBahai studies in English outside of two or threearticles in Bahai periodicals.

Nevertheless, the absence of a literaturereview shows that the author, while certainly

aware of the research tradition, chooses to speak "outside" of it. His attitude towards academicBahai studies seems to be expressed in thefollowing statement found in Chapter 1,"Mysticism and Methodology." To wit: "Theadvocates of the current academic Middle EasternStudies approach consider themselves theexponents of an objective, scientic perspective onBahai Studies which is opposed to traditionalBahai Studies" (p. 42). "The traditionalapproach," Saiedi explains, "was dominated byIranian, Islamic, and Middle Eastern culturalperspectives and perceived the Bahai Faith

through the questions and categories of Islamicdiscourse" (p. 42). Saiedi grants that this approachwas born of "historical necessity," but with the"irony" that "the current professional academicapproach of some writers to Bahai studies is insome ways a continuation of that same limitingacademic premise that looks no farther than theimmediate Middle Eastern context to locate theproblematics of the Bahai texts" (p. 42). What,then, characterizes "the current academicapproach" of other writers in the eld? On thisquestion, the author is silent.

Reductionist approaches, Saiedi notes, leadto distortions: "If one insists on reading off themeaning of the terms and symbols in the Bahaiwritings by reference to the traditional Islamic andMiddle Eastern discourses, one will distort thecomplexity of Bahaullahs discourse, miss itssubtlety, and systematically overlook the newmeanings it deliberately creates" (p. 43). Suchscholarship is limited because it is the result of narrow documentary interpretations that view

discourse as a product or epiphenomenon of largersocial forces and cultural inuences. In rathercrude terms, there is temptation on the part of Islamicists to represent the Bahai religion asreconstituted Shiism. This overcontextualization

foregrounds the background, where one cannot seethe forest for the trees. Saiedis methodologicalcritique of current scholarship in academic Bahaistudies is perhaps well taken. But he does notappear to offer a new methodological paradigm,except insofar as his own book represents one.

The methodology of Logos and Civilizationseems to be conated with the subject of the book,Bahaullah, who is represented as offering anentirely new paradigm for scholarship in general."[I]t is the argument of this book," Saiedi explains,"that the writings of Bahaullah represent a

conceptual break with those traditionalassumptions. Bahaullahs vision, in other words,initiates a new paradigm, a new model, a new logicof discourse, a new episteme, and a newproblematic ... in approaching reality" (p. 43).Saiedi reintegrates the phenomenon of "revelation"as a "category of reality" that is "inspired by ahigher, superhuman source," whose meaning is"irreducible to existing worldviews and humanideologies" (p. 45). The direction of inuence thuspoints the other way, in that Bahaullahsrevelation is to be seen "not as the reection of intellectual movements and civilizations, but as the

source that inspires them" (p. 45). This is far morethan a methodological assumption. It is a majortruth-claim.

Even so, the author does concede that"Sacred Text and historical context, therefore,interact with one another" (p. 44). While there doesexist a dialectic between prophetic revelation andsocial thought, the thought-formsthemselves--which are socially determined--arevehicles of an originality that ashes through theinterstices of a historical and cultural framework.Here, an ontological commitment is called for:namely, that Bahaullahs rev elation is no merehuman product, but is sui generis, in a class of itsown.

Such an assertion might not withstandscrutiny within the context of the academic studyof religion, for the simple reason that this amountsto an unfalsiable truth-claim. To assert is not toprove. True, religions advance all kinds of truth-claims. We expect this. What we dont expect isfor an academic (even an "engaged scholar") to go

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so far, at least without clearly demonstrating thetruth of his claim. We can refer to Bahaullahstruth-claims, as indeed we should. But to claim thetruth-claim as truth blurs the distinction betweenscholarship that is intersubjectively available and a

learned apology, that functions somewhat like asophisticated altar call. To be fair, howev er, thewriter does some of both, and proceeds to makehis case for the distinctiveness of Bahaullahslife and work.

The authors purpose is clear, to establishthat Bahaullah presents a "novel paradigm" thatis "distinguished by the unity and organic synthesisof at least three fundamental principles--spiritualtranscendence, historical consciousness, andglobal unity" (p. 43). These categories arereected in the subtitle, "Spirit, History, and Order

in the Writings of Bah=ull=h, and in the threemajor divisions of the book: part 1, "TheDynamics of the Spiritual Journey"; part 2, "TheCritique of Spiritual and Historical Reason"; andpart 3, "The New World Order."

Premise

Logos and Civilization may be described asa study of several of Bahaullahs major works:The Seven Valleys and The Four Valleys (chapter3), the Kitab-i Iqan (chapters 4 and 5), the Kitab-i

Badi (chapter 6), and the Kitab-i Aqdas (chapters7 and 8), among other texts (passim).

Signicantly, Saiedi offers a developmentalhypothesis of a staged sequence in Bahaullahsrevelation. The author has located anautobiographical text (cited on p. 241), in whichBahaullah states that his proclamation wascommunicated, over the course of his ministry, to"mystics, then divines, and then kings" ( Ishraqat ,p. 260). This statement provides a heuristic keythat informs the stages of Bahaullahs rev elation.Saiedi proposes this sequence: (1) Early/MiddleBaghdad period (1852-1860); (2) LateBaghdad/Edirne period (1860-1867); (3) LateEdirne/Akka period (1867-1892). While the

author has not explicitly expressed it in quite thisway, one may say that Bahaullah wrote as amystic, as a prophet, and as a lawgiver.

According to Saiedi, Bahaullah hastransformed Islamic mysticism from its traditionalcontemplative and devotional quest for union withGod into a historical quest for the source of revelation. I might add that Bahaullahspreeminent mystical work, The Seven Valleys ,based on Attars Haft Vadi , represents what might

be characterized as an oblique, realizedeschatology. I hav e discussed Bahaullahstransformations of Attar in Paradise and Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianityand the Bahai Faith , Studies in the Babi and

Bahai Religions, 10 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999; Los Angeles: KalimatPress, 1999).

While this is one instance in which theauthor does not cite previous scholarship inacademic Bahai studies, Saiedi does go beyondmy formal comparison of Bahaullah and Attarto claim that the seven valleys themselves arereally stages of moral development (pp. 100-102).Moreover, they are essentially a pathway leadingto "recognition of the Manifestation of God,"meaning the acceptance of Bahaullah as the

revelator for this day and age (pp. 103-105). InBahaullahs Gems of the Mysteries, anothermystical work, mysticism is historicized. Thespiritual journey through seven "cities"recapitulates "humanitys journey throughsuccessive divine revelations" (p. 167), ateleological view of history that Bahais refer to as"Progressive Rev elation." Mysticism ("Spirit")points to revelation (salvation-"History"), leadingto prophetic legislation ("Order").

This contemplation/revelation/legislationsequence is expressed in the Bahai notion of "New World Order" (p. 240). This progression,Saiedi claims, informs the order of the Kitab-i

Aqdas , which is structured by four "constitutiveprinciples" that serve as "a kind of mysterious codeof Bahaullahs rev elation" (p. 242). "To talk about the order of a text is to dene its logic,"Saiedi writes (p. 238). The four ordering principlesare: (1) the prohibition or removal of the sword; (2)the principle of covenant; (3) the universalrevelation; and (4) the principle of the heart (pp.242-257).

While there are many interesting, thoughexcursive, textual discussions throughout the

book, the author sustains his heuristic keythroughout. He concludes by saying: "Throughoutthis book I have argued for the consistency andcontinuity of Bahaullahs underlying spiritual andsocial principles in all the stages of His writings,and the qualitative novelty and unprecendentedcharacter of those principles" (p. 303). Thisstatement would, indeed, form the naturalconclusion to the book. But chapters 9 and 10 arelargely a polemic against Juan Cole, who is among

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those who "fail to comprehend the complexity,richness, and subtlety of Bahaullahs writings aswell as the actual nature of His message" (p. 303).That this should apply to an individual who hadformerly been a member of the Bahai community

over a quarter of a century (and who despiteresigning from the Bahai Faith, still considershimself to be a professed Bahai) is a mystery.

Polemics

As a polemic against reductive approaches, Logos and Civilization is intended to correctperceived misrepresentations of the Faith, as wellas an attempt to open readers to an appreciation of the beauty and breadth of Bahaullahs rev elation,in all its panoramic grandeur. Logos and Civilization is part of a pitched battle betweenthose who want to reduce Bahaullah to a mere

philosopher--a secondary and unoriginalone--whose message, on the one hand, hassomehow been subverted by Abdul-Baha,Shoghi Effendi, and the Universal House of Justice, and, on the other hand, those who seedoctrinal and institutional developments within theBahai Faith as a faithful elaboration of the"original intent" of Bahaullah. Whoever takes astance on this book is engaged in this battle,according to Saiedi.

Particularly in a major section at the end of his book, Saiedi tilts his lance at colleague Juan

Cole, author of the aforementioned Modernity and the Millennium . Saiedis atomizing of Coleswork, to the relative exclusion of other works of scholarship (Walbridge is referred to in chapter 7),casts an apologetic shadow over an otherwiseengaging discussion. It is as if Saiedi were on thehorns of a dilemma, in which both horns are onColes head.

While this both distracts and detracts fromthe overall contribution the former seeks to make(at the expense of the latter), Saiedi does offer analternative approach to understandingBahaullahs messianic self-consciousness andhis subsequent programs of world reform, as acounterbalance to Coles own approach. Moreover,this distraction is an attraction to an audience thatwishes to see another academic stand up to Coleand hit the target on the forehead with amethodological sling. The stone in that sling isSaiedis critique of Coles translations of severalkey passages in Bahaullahs writings.

One controversial issue is the evolution of Bahaullahs messianic consciousness. Saiediargues that Bahaullahs sense of mission wasfully formed, although undisclosed, throughoutthe entire Baghdad period, while Cole sees

evidence of Bahaullahs messianic consciousnessas a later development in response to both Islamicreformist and Western inuences. Missing in allthis is the wider academic discussion, in whichev en Cole himself once held to a messianicsecrecy hypothesis, as evidenced in his forewordto Symbol and Secret: Quran Commentary in

Bahaullahs Kitab-i Iqan (Los Angeles: KalimatPress, 1995), now electronically republishedonline at: www.bahai-library.org/books/symbol.secret/. In his section"Veiled Declaration in the Kitab-i-Iqan" (pp.119-26), Saiedi completely ignores the nalchapter of Symbol and Secret , which argues for themessianic secrecy hypothesis. While Saiedi is notobliged to cite previous scholarship in Bahaistudies, such disregard--whether intended orunintended--raises more questions than it answers.

Publication

Logos and Civilization is copublished byUniversity Press of Maryland and the Associationfor Bahai Studies, which is the sole distributor of the softcover edition. While this is a jointpublishing venture of the Association and areputable non-Bahai press (in order to make

Logos and Civilization more accessible to largeraudiences and to gain further academiclegitimacy), the Association for Bahai Studiesappears neither on the title page nor on thecopyright page. This gives pause for thought. TheUniversity Press of Maryland also publishes booksfor several other institutions, academic and non-academic. It should be noted that Dr. SoheilBushrui, holder of the Chair in Bahai Studies atthe University of Maryland, published a work onKitab-i Aqdas by the same press.

Peer Review

The issue of peer review is not somethingthat would normally be discussed in an academicbook review. I was told by the ABS editor that

Logos and Civilization did, in fact, undergo aserious review process. This was probably acombined institutional and peer review under theauspices of the Association for Bahai Studiesitself (not the University Press of Maryland),which is authorized by the National SpiritualAssembly of the Bahais of Canada to perform a

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required review for accuracy and dignity ininformation that pertains to the Bahai Faith.

Review is condential; its particulars cannotbe divulged. However, it is highly unlikely that thereview process was as rigorous as a standardacademic peer review under non-Bahai auspices.If it went through more reviewers than usual(which is what I understood the JBS editor tomean), that still does not mean that all of thereviewers were competent academics. And even if it did go through seasoned academics, then thereview process is unlikely to have included any of the serious scholars in academic Bahai studies. Amore rigorous review process, in an academicsetting, would have inv olved three or so top-ratespecialists in the eld of Middle East studies orthe academic study of religion. Had this been the

case, some of the issues that I have raised in thisreview would likely have been "agged" by thepeer reviewers themselves prior to publication.

This leads me to conclude that Logos and Civilization is partly a crusade against some of thedistortions allegedly perpetrated by academics inMiddle East studies, as noted by the UniversalHouse of Justice in its 7 April 1999 letter, whichwarns National Spiritual Assemblies (nationallyelected Bahai governing councils) of "a campaignof internal opposition" promoting "a kind of interpretive authority which those behind itattribute to the views of persons technicallytrained in Middle East studies." Could this letterhave inclined Saiedi to write the previously citedstatement: "The advocates of the current academicMiddle Eastern Studies approach considerthemselves the exponents of an objective, scienticperspective on Bahai Studies which is opposed totraditional Bahai Studies" (p. 42)? In thisunfortunate, adversarial climate, rather thanidentify with other Bahai academics who employcurrent--and professionally standardized (even if insufcient)--methodologies, the author (asociologist) speaks outside that tradition andindeed in some opposition to it. The peer reviewsituation seems to have reected that same negativeorientation.

Ultimately, Logos and Civilization must be judged on its own merits.

Is Logos and Civilization an originalcontribution to the eld? Does it offer a freshperspective, open up new vistas, provide freshinsights into the writings of Bahaullah? In theprocess, does the book successfully reveal the

inadequacies and tendentiousness of Coles work?As stated earlier in this review, Logos and Civilization is an original work of scholarship,based on original sources, that eloquentlyelaborates on Bahaullahs originality.

In addressing the question of Bahaullahsdialectic with history and his response tomodernity, Saiedi admits: "It is undoubtable thatBahaullah approves of certain elements that arefound in modern Western political philosophy andsystems of government. But at the same time, andev en more signicantly, He also criticizes andtranscends their limitations. A careful study of Hiswritings discloses that they contain a newphilosophical basis for political theory and aholistic vision which, without being merelysyncretistic, incorporates the positive elements of

Eastern and Western political philosophy andrepresents a novel and unprecedented structurethat neither the existing categories and discourseof either East or West are capable of describing"(p. 317).

Well said, but perhaps not for the rst time.In my second book, Paradise and Paradigm , Idiscuss Bahaullahs dialectic with modernity as aprocess of sacralizing (making sacred) certainsecular developments in the West anddesacralizing (abrogating) perceived religiousexcesses in Babism, Islam, and Christianity. Seealso the extended discussion of Bahaullahsresponses to modernity in Modernity and the

Millennium , where Cole presents features of Bahaullahs critique of modernity and, on severalmajor issues, demonstrates how Bahaullah wasev en more "modern" than contemporary Islamicmodernists or western thinkers. I have also arguedfor the originality of Bahaullahs thought. I haveev en provided a paradigm analysis or "symbolicprole" of Bahaullahs thought and imagery, andconsequently a stained-glass window of Bahaireligious consciousness. But Saiedi goes quitebeyond me in his systematic treatment of Bahaullahs thought. While I remain somewhatskeptical of Saiedis analysis of the Kitab-i Aqdas ,I am impressed by his description, in chapter 6, of the Kitab-i Badi , Bahaullahs lengthiest work.

Although not above criticism, Logos and Civilization has advanced interpretive Bahaistudies to a new threshold in that the book is atext-centered, paradigmatic systematizing of Bahaullahs thought and discourse. If it errs atall, it errs in favor of reading too much structure

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("order") into Bahaullahs writings rather thantoo little. In this analysis, Saiedi may be tooprogrammatic in his systematizing analysis of Bahaullahs rev elation. Even so, Logos and Civilization stands as a counterbalance--and

possibly as a corrective--to some of the ratherreductive treatments of Bahaullahs thought thathave been published to date.

My only recommendation is that a revisededition be published, in which previous works of scholarship are referenced. Otherwise, Logos and Civilization may unjustly imply that its author isanti-academic. While he is unabashedly anti-reductionist, Saiedi is not anti-academic. However,by writing from outside the community of discourse rather than from within it, Saiedi createsthe false impression that academic Bahai studies

is dominated by such individuals in the eld asJuan Cole and John Walbridge to the exclusion of others, such as Todd Lawson, Moojan Momen,Frank Lewis, and Stephen Lambden, to name afew.

This book can contribute to a wider audienceif revised, and I strongly urge both author andpublisher to undertake this revision. Saiedi writespellucidly and cogently (even if incompletely andthus less than convincingly in terms of argument)and brings fresh insight to Bahai studiesdiscourse. In a revised edition, I would recommendtoning down the superlative claims for Bahaullah(even if true), in order to make the work more"objective" or intersubjectively available to a non-Bahai audience. (Perhaps the devotional andapologetic tradition of Persian Bahai scholarshipis in evidence here.) For the book to be taken moreseriously in the academic world, the revised editionmust take cognizance of both the researchtradition and the community of discourse as awhole, and not treat that tradition as reductively ashe claims it treats Bahaullahs rev elation.However, these recommendations should notsignicantly detract from the merits of Logos and Civilization . The book is rich with newinformation, provisional translations, and what onemight call a conceptual crystallization of Bahaullahs rev elation.

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Library of Congress call number: BP392 .S25 2000Subjects:

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Bahullh, 1817-1892.Bahai Faith--Doctrines.

Citation: Christopher Buck. "Review of Nader Saiedi, Logos and Civilization: Spirit, History, and Order

in the Writings of Bahullh, H-Bahai, H-Net Reviews, March, 2004.URL: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=211321084249496.

Copyright 2004 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of thiswork for nonprot, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, dateof publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposeduse, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.

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