GOD IN 1793
In the works of Enlightenment rastionalists like d’Holbach,
Helvetius, Diderot and Voltaire reason assumed the throne which
Revelation till then had occupied. In 1793 in Notre Dame, Paris, God
was publicly ‘dethroned.’ Atheism became a political
movement. The thinkers who laid the philosophical foundations of what
today constitutes the creed of systematic disbelief were: Ludwig
Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche. -Udo
Schaefer, The Imperishable Dominion: The Baha’i Faith and the
Future of Mankind, George Ronald, Oxford, 1992, pp.3-4.
In the works of Shaykh Ahmad and Siyyid Kazim, the precursors of the
Bab; and in the works of Baha’u’llah, Abdu’l-Baha
and Shoghi Effendi as well as the Universal House of Justice a
messianic Shi’ism was transformed into a world religion. The
beginning point, it could be argued, was also 1793 when Shaykh Ahmad
migrated to Najaf and Karbila and began to attract a personal
following. Now, after more than two centuries of slow and painstaking
teaching and consolidation, this belief system is acquiring a
marvellous systematic form and organizational effectiveness. -Ron
Price with thanks to Peter Smith, The Babi and Bahai Religions: From
Messianic Shiism to a World Religion, George Ronald, Oxford, 1987, pp.
7-8.
While God was being dethroned in Paris,
He seemed to be taking up a special place
in Karbila and Najaf, those holy thresholds
or the Atabat, where the Imams were buried,
among the mujtahids, among the ulama, and
especially among the adepts of Shaykhism.
While God was systematically dieing,
if such an organic process can occur
systematically, thanks to Marx
and Freud and a thousand others;
He was getting a new lease on life,
definition, form, place, in a new
holy of holies, in the birth,
the gradual unfoldment of a supreme
Theophany, a charismatic Force
now visible before the eyes of men,
the Desire of all the Divine Messengers,
now a new Jerusalem just down the road.
Ron Price
13 December 1998
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