Appointment of the Continental Boards of Counsellors

27 October 2015

To the Bahá’is of the World

Dear Bahá’í Friends,

The Day of the Covenant, 26 November 20 I5, marks the opening of a new five-year term of service for the members of the Continental Boards of Counsellors for the Protection and Propagation of the Faith. It is with great joy that we announce the names of the Counsellors appointed for the coming term, whose number remains at eighty-one.

AFRICA (18 Counsellors): Mélanie Bangala, Mariama Ousmane Djaouga, Alain Pierre Djoulde, Clément Thyrell Feizouré, Agatha Gaisie-Nketsiah, Maty Issoufou, Musonda Kapusa-Linsel (Trustee of the Continental Fund), Townshend Lihanda, Sehla Masunda, Maina Mkandawire, Judicaël Mokolé, Aggrey Zeyazi Munubi, Albert Nshisu Nsunga, Ahmad Parsa, Iharinirina Rakotomavo, Nancy Oloro Robarts, Christopher Kiprotich Songok, Djamila Tchakreo

THE AMERICAS (19 Counsellors): José Luis Almeida, Ronny Brenes (Trustee of the Continental Fund), Beatriz Carmona, Brígida Carrillo, Ingrid Umpierr Conter, Daniel Duhart, Farah Guchani-Rosenberg. Sonlla Heem, Nwandi Ngozi Lawson, Boma Noureddin, Arthur Powell, Carmen Elisa de Sadeghian, Pejman Samoori, Bernardino Sánchez, Navid Serrano, Mark Sisson, Raúl Taboada, Shabnam Tashakour, Holly Woodard

ASIA (22 Counsellors): Jamil Aliyev, Vugar Alizadeh, Walid Ayyash, Jabbar Eidelkhani, Shareen Farhad, Nadera Fikri, Kam Mui Sayers Fok, Gloria Javid, Lee Lee Loh Ludher, Tarrant Matthew Mahony, Nibras Sarmad Moqbel, Delafruz Nassimova, Myint Zaw Oo, Sokuntheary Reth, Foad Reyhani (Trustee of the Continental Fund), Hesham Saad, Rajan Sawant, Omid Seioshanseian, Dregpal Singh, Zebinisso Soliyeva, Ircham Sujadmiko, Fang Jung Tseng Chung

AUSTRALASIA (10 Counsellors): Ritia Kamauti Bak ineti, Nadia Fifita, Kirk Johnson, Dinesh Kumar-Mills, Jalal Rodney Mills, Taraz Nadarajah, Daniel Pierce, Kessia Ruh, Tessa Scrine (Trustee of the Continental Fund), Henry Tamashiro

EUROPE (12 Counsellors): Naisan Azimi, Raffaella Capozzi Gubinelli, Olga Daradur, Aiste Elijio, Shirin Fozdar-Foroudi, Zoraida García Garro, Bernard Lo Cascio (Trustee of the Continental Fund), Sabà Mazza, Yevgeniya Poluektova, Mehdi Rezvan, Amir Saberin, Paul Verheij

The following believers, who have earned our abiding gratitude for their self-sacrificing contributions to the progress of the Cause, are being relieved of the duties of membership on the Boards of Counsellors:

Selam Ahderom, Sohayla Asari, Enkhdelger Banzragch, Soheyla Bolouri, Uta von Both, Ann Boyles, Maziar Djoneidi, Bijan Farid, Amina Jaouane, Saba Khabirpour, Ana Hilda de Lemus, Katalayi Mbombo, Firouzeh Moghbel-Naderi, Zowé Tiba Nganyadé, Lori McLaughlin Noguchi, Helen Otia, U’ileiuluwehi Pimental, Khursheda Porsayeva, Ganesh Ramsahai, Leticia Iturburo Rivadeneira, Daniel Scott, George Soraya, Alan Wilcox, Anita Vandella Williams, Tiati à Zock

We are confident that these dear friends will remain a source of inspiration and strength to the believers as they continue their dedicated efforts for the advancement of the Faith in the coming years. We shall offer supplications at the Sacred Threshold on their behalf, that divine blessings may surround their every endeavour in the path of service to Bahá’u’lláh.

The series of Plans that have been launched since I996 have focused the Bahá’í world on a single aim advancing the process of entry by troops. The great strides that have been made during the current Five Year Plan have fully prepared the community of the Greatest Name for the final thrust in the span of years that will culminate in the centenary of the Formative Age. We are calling the Counsellors from all continents to the Bahá’í World Centre for a conference from 29 December 2015 to 2 January 2016, during which deliberations will be held on the exigencies of the next Five Year Plan which will unfold during a period of time pregnant with rich possibilities and on the decisive role the Counsellors are to play, together with their auxiliaries, in the critical months leading up to its launch and in the years that follow.

We will offer fervent prayers at the Sacred Threshold that the consecrated exertions of these eighty-one souls may be guided and confirmed by the boundless grace and abundant favours of the Abhá Beauty.

The Universal House of Justice

(Messages from the Universal House of Justice 2001-2022)

Ridván Message 2015

Ridván 2015

To the Bahá’ís of the World

Dearly loved Friends,

The resplendent season of Ridván is at hand, and from the heights to which the community of the Greatest Name has attained, bright prospects are visible on the horizon. A vast terrain has been traversed: new programmes of growth have appeared, and while hundreds more must still emerge in the next twelve months, efforts to set in motion the necessary pattern of activity have already begun in almost every one of the clusters required to reach the 5,000 called for in the Five Year Plan. Existing programmes are gaining in strength, many showing more clearly what it means for the Cause of God to extend further into the social landscape across a cluster and within a neighbourhood or village. The paths that lead to sustained large-scale expansion and consolidation are being followed with firmer footsteps, valiant youth often setting the pace. Ways in which the society-building power of the Faith can find release in various settings are becoming more apparent, and those defining features that must come to mark the further unfoldment of the growth process in a cluster are becoming gradually discernible.

The call to carry out and support this work is directed to every follower of Bahá’u’lláh, and it will evoke a response in every heart that aches at the wretched condition of the world, the lamentable circumstances from which so many people are unable to gain relief. For, ultimately, it is systematic, determined, and selfless action undertaken within the wide embrace of the Plan’s framework that is the most constructive response of every concerned believer to the multiplying ills of a disordered society. Over the last year, it has become clearer still that, in different nations in different ways, the social consensus around ideals that have traditionally united and bound together a people is increasingly worn and spent. It can no longer offer a reliable defence against a variety of self-serving, intolerant, and toxic ideologies that feed upon discontent and resentment. With a conflicted world appearing every day less sure of itself, the proponents of these destructive doctrines grow bold and brazen. We recall the unequivocal verdict from the Supreme Pen: “They hasten forward to Hell Fire, and mistake it for light.” Well-meaning leaders of nations and people of goodwill are left struggling to repair the fractures evident in society and powerless to prevent their spread. The effects of all this are not only to be seen in outright conflict or a collapse in order. In the distrust that pits neighbour against neighbour and severs family ties, in the antagonism of so much of what passes for social discourse, in the casualness with which appeals to ignoble human motivations are used to win power and pile up riches—in all these lie unmistakable signs that the moral force which sustains society has become gravely depleted.

Significance of Mashriqu’l-Adhkár

18 December 2014

To the Bahá’ís in Iran

Dear Bahá’í Friends,

We hope that by now you have had occasion to study the message we addressed to the Bahá’ís of the World on 1 August 2014, in which the progress of the projects to establish Mashriqu’l-Adhkárs in eight locations throughout the world is described. In every case, these dawning places of His remembrance represent the rising influence of the Faith of God in society. The Bahá’ís of Iran are of course fully conversant with the concept of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár. From the earliest days following the revelation of this law, the friends in the Cradle of the Faith became aware of its significance and committed to its realization within the limited means that their circumstances allowed them. In time, not only did they become the principal force for the construction of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár in ‘Ishqábád, but within Iran too the practice of regular dawn prayers took root and inspired service to humankind, with the vision that the seed they were planting would in time flower into tangible reality, yielding its fruit not only in the construction of these centres of worship, but in the creation of dependencies for humanitarian service which that worship would inspire.

And so it was that, under the guiding hand of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, a pattern of communal worship—the unity it engenders and the desire to be of service that it inspires—became an integral part of many a local Bahá’í community in Iran. In this regard, the Master’s vision provided for a variety of settings and circumstances in which the concept of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár could, in its embryonic form, be expressed. Consider His words in this regard:

Adversaries’ Efforts to Suppress the Cause

1 October 2014

To the Bahá’ís of Iran

Papua New Guinea comprises a group of islands in the vast expanse of the waters of the Pacific, far, far away from the Cradle of the Faith. We recently learned that your sacrifices have so inspired the believers in that vibrant Bahá’í community in their highly energetic response to the exigencies of the Five Year Plan that a group of them are working to make a television programme to bring to the attention of their compatriots the suffering that their deeply cherished fellow believers in Iran endure because of their adherence to the Cause. In so many ways that extraordinary region, Australasia—where, before long, four Mashriqu’l-Adhkár will shine out as beacons of the light of divine guidance and as testaments to the magnificent response of its population to Bahá’u’lláh’s call for unity and peace—is the embodiment of this emphatic promise by the Abhá Beauty regarding His Cause: “Should they attempt to conceal its light on the continent, it will assuredly rear its head in the midmost heart of the ocean, and, raising its voice, proclaim: ‘I am the life-giver of the world!’”

To be sure, there are those who wish to conceal this light—indeed to snuff it out—in the land where it was first kindled and shrink at nothing to this end. In recent months, there has been a marked increase in calumnies and lies, misinformation and untruths about the Cause. How utterly futile are their efforts! For the expenditure of energy and fortune on systematic campaigns to propagate falsehoods about your beliefs has, as you know, led to an upsurge in interest to study the Bahá’í teachings and its history.

Consider for a moment the reason for the rise in this interest. It is, of course, a well-known fact that when searching for the truth of a matter, one cannot limit oneself to the study of the statements of its detractors; for an unbiased judgement, the original source must be investigated. Consider what lies and calumnies have for 1,400 years been propagated by the enemies of Islam. Is the truth of the Faith of the Prophet Muhammad to be judged by the protestations of His enemies or by immersion in and reflection on the ocean of the sacred Word revealed to Him by God?

Progress in Raising up National and Local Houses of Worship

1 August 2014

To the Bahá’ís of the World

Dearly loved Friends,

Over two years have elapsed since our announcement at Ridván 2012 of projects to raise two national and five local Houses of Worship, to be pursued in conjunction with the construction in Santiago, Chile, of the last of the continental Mashriqu’l-Adhkárs. These undertakings, inextricably linked to the development of community life now being fostered everywhere through acts of devotion and service, are further steps in the sublime task entrusted to humanity by Bahá’u’lláh to build Houses of Worship “throughout the lands in the name of Him Who is the Lord of all religions”—centres in which souls may gather “harmoniously attuned one to another” to hear the divine verses and to offer supplications, and from which “the voices of praise may rise to the Kingdom” and the “fragrance of God” be diffused.

We are deeply moved by the response in every part of the world to our call. Particularly in the nations and localities recently designated for the construction of a House of Worship, we have witnessed the friends’ spontaneous expressions of joy; their immediate and heartfelt commitment to lend their share in carrying out the critical work at hand and to increase the dynamism of those activities integral to the emergence of a Mashriqu’l-Adhkár within a population; their sacrificial contributions of time, energy, and material resources, in a variety of forms; and their sustained efforts to awaken growing contingents to the vision of those edifices dedicated wholly to the remembrance of God that will be founded in their midst. Indeed, the ready response of the community of the Greatest Name augurs well for its ability to further these collective undertakings.

Implementation of the Badí Calendar

10 July 2014

To the Bahá’ís of the World

Dearly loved Friends,

The setting of the sun on 20 March 2015 will signalize the end of the year 171, the close of the ninth Váhid of the first Kull-i-Shay’ of the Bahá’í Era. We call upon the Bahá’ís of the East and West to adopt, on that auspicious occasion, the provisions that will unite them in the common implementation of the Badí‘ calendar.

In keeping with the principle governing the gradual unfoldment and progressive application of the Teachings, the provisions of the Badí‘ calendar have been set forth over time. The Báb introduced the calendar and its broad pattern of periods and cycles, months and days. Bahá’u’lláh provided essential clarifications and additions. Aspects were elucidated by ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, and arrangements for its adoption in the West were put in place at the direction of Shoghi Effendi, as described in the volumes of The Bahá’í World. Still, ambiguities surrounding some Islamic and Gregorian dates, as well as difficulties in the correlation of historical observances and astronomical events with explicit statements in the Text, left certain issues unresolved. When responding to questions concerning the calendar, both ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá and Shoghi Effendi left these matters to the Universal House of Justice. Of its many features, three require clarification for the calendar’s uniform application: the means for the determination of Naw-Rúz, the accommodation of the lunar character of the Twin Holy Birthdays within the solar year, and the fixing of the dates of the Holy Days within the Badí‘ calendar.